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Polish Political Platos in Brill’s Companion
Brill’s Companion to the Legacy of Greek Political Thought edited by David Carter, Rachel Foxley, and Liz Sawyer is one of the latest volumes in the series (vol. 8, Leiden-Boston 2024). Contributors to this volume investigated a range of responses to issues surrounding the legacy of Greek political thought, exploring the ways in which political thinking has evolved from antiquity to the present day.
One of the chapters in this book was authored by Tomasz Mróz who discussed variety of Polish interpretations of Plato’s political works in studies written by nineteenth-century Polish authors (Plato’s Political Works in Nineteenth-Century Polish Thought, pp. 335-363), including historians of philosophy, philosophers and social thinkers. Their diverse views on the Republic of Plato reflected the wealth of ideas which are present in Plato’s opus. In spite of their various intellectual backgrounds and goals, all these authors found inspiration in Plato’s work for the implementation of his political ideas into their own arguments touching upon contemporary social or political issues, including the questions of democracy, socialism and gender equality.
Let’s say a few words about the authors presented in Mróz’s chapter to give a glance of its content: Bolesław Limanowski (1835-1935), a socialist thinker, regarder Plato as a progressive philosopher, despite his disregard for democracy. For Wojciech Dzieduszycki (1848-1909), a conservative politician, Plato’s socialist and feminist ideas were too destructive for society to be implemented. Wincenty Lutosławski (1863-1954), a famous Plato scholar, considered Plato’s socialism as a natural consequence of his metaphysics and only a transitional step in his development. Stefan Pawlicki (1839-1916), a neo-Scholastic philosopher, claimed that even Plato’s most controversial political ideas (communism and feminism) had stemmed from his deep moral beliefs, but all their shortcomings were later to be corrected by Christianity. Eventually, Eugeniusz Jarra (1881-1973), a historian of legal philosophy, emphasised gender equality and the possibility of social promotion as progressive ideas supporting democracy.
PS.: this chapter was edited and improved by Una Maclean-Hańćkowiak and is presented on Kudos platform.
Renaissance Platonism in Polish Debates at the symposium in Saint Louis, MO
In June (9th-11th) 2025, Saint Louis University (Saint Louis, Missouri) held the Twelfth Annual Symposium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SMRS). This year’s optional theme was Synthesis and Reconciliation.
Symposium gathered over a hundred of scholars debating on various aspects of mediaeval and Renaissance studies, but only a couple of papers were devoted to philosophy or historiographical discussions. A booklet including a plentiful schedule, all the sessions, papers etc. can be downloaded here. Tomasz Mróz’s paper was delivered during a session titled Studying Renaissance Literature and Philosophy Through New Eyes. Mróz’s attendance at the SMRS was funded through a “Small Grant” scheme from his home institution, University of Zielona Góra, and his presentation was devoted to Bohdan Kieszkowski: Florentine Platonism between Ideology and World War II: The Case of Bogdan Kieszkowski (1904-1997).
It was for the first time that Kieszkowski’s life and works were presented to international audience. Mróz discussed his biography, including successful beginnings of his academic career in interwar Poland and his later difficult life on the exile in Paris, as well as various hypotheses regarding undocumented period of his life directly following the war. Philosophical part of the paper focused on Kieszkowski’s dispute with Marian Heitzman (1899-1964), who accused him of underestimating the influences of mediaeval neoplatonism on Ficino and it was the role of mediaeval philosophy in forming Renaissance Platonism that turned them against each other. After the war, in 1973, Kieszkowski managed to publish the edition of Pico della Mirandola’s Conclusiones (Geneve 1973). This book was based on the materials he had been able to collect and study in various European libraries before the war and thus his work was far from perfection. Reviews of this book emphasised insufficient accuracy in editing the original Pico’s text, yet his scholarship and experience in Renaissance philosophy were assessed as indisputable. The most eminent and meticulous critic of this late Kieszkowski’s work was a Portuguese scholar, José Vitorino de Pina Martins (1920-2010).
A dozen of scholars attended the session and the questions from the audience were concerned both with biographical and philosophical parts of the paper, that is, with Kieszkowski’s later life on exile as a possible consequence of a PTSD resulting from his serious bullet wounds and subsequent disabilities, and with the connection between the developments of neo-Scholasticism in Poland and Europe and resulting appreciation of the role of mediaeval culture and philosophy.
Neverending Story of… Plato in Poland
This time it was at the University of Hradec Králové where the word about Plato reception in Poland was spread. Tomasz Mróz, among his activities in accordance with Erasmus+ Teaching Assignment, delivered a talk on political aspects of Plato reception in Poland. The focus was, naturally, on Plato’s Republic and on the connections between the interpretations of Plato’s political philosophy and the political situation of Poland from the 19th century to the post World War II era. This talk was delivered for international students enrolled in a course: Ancient Greek Democracy and Its Legacy taught in UHK by professor Jaroslav Daneš, with whom AΦR research group has successfully co-operated for many years.
The topics covered in this talk included a brief overview of how political situation of Poland changed and how various researchers of Plato interpreted his political ideas. The lecture started with Bolesław Limanowski (1835-1935), an advocate of socialism, who used Plato’s ideas as an evidence that socialism had been present in European thought from its very beginning. The next was Wojciech Dzieduszycki (1848-1909), a conservative politician, who ridiculed gender equality and socialism as political phantasies. Wincenty Lutosławski (1863-1954) considered totalitarian character of Plato’s polis as a natural consequence of his idealism, but after the World War II emphasised Plato’s evolution and his affinity to Christianity. Stefan Pawlicki (1839-1916), a Christian thinker rejected the connection between socialism and Plato, but praised the idea of preventive censorship. At the dawn of Polish independence after World War I Eugeniusz Jarra (1881-1973) welcomed the idea that social promotion or demotion in the state should depend on personal capabilities, and that the elites should no longer consist of the members of aristocracy but of the most gifted individuals. After World War II, in the Stalinist period, the criticism of Plato stemmed from various premises. Tadeusz Kroński (1907-1958), on the one hand, a Marxist thinker, considered Plato’s political philosophy as an aristocratic reaction to democratic changes in Athens, and in general as an expression of obscurantism and religiosity. Władysław Witwicki (1878-1948), on the other hand, was apparently critical towards Plato’s political project, assessing it as a monastery, concentration camp and a totalitarian state, but actually it was a criticism in disguise of the then political system.
In spite of the fact that the history of Poland or Polish philosophy was completely new for the members of the audience, their questions and remarks demonstrated that they were able to see the relations between the views of Plato’s interpreters and their interpretations of Plato’s Republic. Moreover, as usually, the discussion was the evidence that more general issues related to Plato’s legacy remain topical and stimulating as, for example, the chronology of Plato’s dialogues or reliability of image of Socrates.
Ancient Wisdom in a Lithuanian Interpretation
Connections between Ancient Φilosophy Reception research group at the University of Zielona Góra and the scholars of Vilnius University have been many times documented on this website. This time we want to report on an Erasmus+ teaching visit of a Lithuanian scholar, Mindaugas Stoškus from Vilnius, in the Institute of Philosophy (UZ). He was our guest between 10th and 14th of April.
Among dr Stoškus’ teaching acitivities, there was a lecture titled:
What Can We Learn from the Ancient Concept of Wisdom?
This lecture was delivered twice, during the classes of Philosophical Counselling (above on the photo by A. Habura) and on the course of the History of Ancient Philosophy. At the beginning of his lecture, Dr. Stoškus discussed etymological issues, focusing on the very notion of wisdom. The he took an attempt to enumerate the attributes of the wise man, as the Greeks saw them. They included, for example, knowledge, experience, ability to justify judgments, and desire to disseminate wisdom. Dr. Stoškus discerned philosophical wisdom from its sophistic version and, in conclusion, emphasised the essential connection between theory and practice of wisdom.
Greek philosophy still fares well!
A Guest from Vilnius University
In the last week of November Institute of Philosophy hosted an Erasmus+ visitor from Vilnius University, prof. Jonas Čiurlionis, a long-time collaborator of Ancient Φilosophy Reception research group. It was his second visit in Zielona Góra. One of the tasks of our guest was to consult conclusions of the dissertation by Adrian Habura, the topic of which is a multifaceted reception of Aristotle in Władysław Tatarkiewicz’s oeuvre. It is sufficient to add that prof. J. Čiurlionis is Habura’s auxiliary supervisor.
The most important, however, were Čiurlionis’ lectures and talks for students of philosophy and related fields of study. During the first of them he discussed Aristotle’s Physics. He focused not only on the most significant problems of this work, as, for example, the theory of four elements, but also presented the broader context of Stagirite’s reflection, his fundamental premises and his general view of the world. At the end of the lecture, prof. Čiurlionis referred to Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist, who considers Aristotelian physics to be still topical and not outdated.
The second lecture on ancient philosophy was devoted to the subject of harmony, broadly considered. Starting with Pythagorean and Platonic concepts, prof. Čiurlionis moved on to other authors dealing with this issue and demonstrated how harmony manifested itself in various aspects of ancient Greek philosophy and, more broadly, in Greek culture, and in subsequent centuries, in music and astrology.
American Platonism and ISNS Dublin Conference
International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, in accordance with its name, promotes studies and academic work on Platonism, Neoplatonism and Platonic tradition broadly considered. In co-operation with various academic centres throughout the world ISNS organises annual conferences with large number of panels covering a wide spectrum of what can be called Neoplatonism. In 2024 the conference was held in Trinity College, Dublin on June 19th-23rd.
Among numerous panels of the Dublin conference there was one on the American Platonic tradition, its title was: Transcendental Echoes: Neoplatonism’s Influence on American Renaissance Thought. The aim of this panel was described by its originator, prof. Sonya Isaak, as follows: “this interdisciplinary panel endeavors to explore the dynamic intersections between Neoplatonism and American Transcendentalism, elucidating the profound philosophical, spiritual, and literary amalgamations that defined this vibrant movement in the 19th century…”. The panel had only three speakers (prof. Jay Bregman, prof. S. Isaak and T. Mróz), but it gathered many participants in the audience who wanted to learn bout the developments of Platonism in the 19th century American thought.
T. Mróz’s paper was titled Paul Shorey as a Plato Scholar and his Influences from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Shorey (1857–1934) was the most eminent and internationally recognised American Plato scholar at the turn of the 20th century. He took part in the then international disputes on interpreting Plato’s philosophy and the very methods of reading and researching the dialogues.
As an American Plato scholar, Shorey, in his works on Plato, did not avoid referring to American writers, with a particular emphasis on Emerson (1803–1882), the author of Representative Men (with a significant essay on Plato). Shorey, naturally, included Emerson in a long line of thinkers inspired by Plato, but the aim of Mróz’s paper was to focus on the influence exerted by the Transcendentalist writer and philosopher, Emerson, on the classics scholar and academic researcher, Shorey. Although he did not hold Emerson as a philosopher in high regard, there are some traits of his thinking of Plato which may be ascribed with Emersonian origins, for example, reading Plato as a moral philosopher and tendency toward unity. Thus the connection between American Transcendentalist movement and academic studies on Plato in American tradition was demonstrated.
History of Classics Discussed at UHK
An essential part of the Oral History and the Classics project was a conference held in the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Hradec Králové. This academic meeting which took place on June 1st-2nd and was titled Classics: the Past, the Present, and the Future. It gathered specialists reflecting on various issues related to the development of classical studies including history of ancient philosophy.
The head of the project and the conference was professor Jaroslav Daneš, with some help from Tomasz Mróz (University of Zielona Góra), a researcher in the project. Participants of the conference focused on historical developments of the classics, including their own experiences, “personal paths”, on recent problems, e.g. with teaching classics, and on the perspectives of future research in this area of studies.
Platonic Inspirations was the title of the session during which an AΦR member,T. Mróz, delivered his paper: Plato in post-war Poland. Continuities and novelty. His talk was devoted to three Polish Plato scholars, who survived the World War II and attempted to include their experience of war and the post-war political situation of Poland into their studies on ancient philosophy. They were, starting with the oldest: Wincenty Lutosławski (1863-1954), Stanisław Lisiecki (1872-1960), Władysław Witwicki (1878-1948). It is sufficient to mention that it was the Marxist interpretation of Plato that was pushed in Poland after the war by Polish Marxist philosophers (e.g. by T. Kroński) and in general works on philosophy translated from Russian. In these circumstances Lutosławski planned to published a volume on Plato presenting him as an intellectual and moral remedy for Europe, Witwicki, quite the opposite, blamed the philosopher for inventing totalitarianism, and Lisiecki turned from Plato to Aristotle, who was more acceptable then as a naturalist and a critic of Plato.
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