Home » Posts tagged 'W. Lutosławski'
Tag Archives: W. Lutosławski
AΦR at the 3rd Congress on Polish Philosophy
The 3rd Congress on Polish Philosophy took place in October (18th-20th) in the Rydzyna Palace. It gathered scholars interested in researching the tradition of Polish philosophy and developing it. Two members of the Ancient Φilosophy Reception research group took part in this philosophical event: Adrian Habura – online, and Tomasz Mróz – onsite. The first of them spoke about the concept of love in the works of Władysław Tatarkiewicz (1886-1980), while the latter – on the history of studies on the reception of ancient philosophy in Poland.
Mróz’s paper was directly concerned with problems related to the reception of ancient philosophy and started with quotes of diverse opinions of two eminent Polish researchers in the history of Greek philosophy, that is, Stefan Pawlicki (1839-1916) and Wincenty Lutosławski (1863-1954). Lutosławski, when composing his works on Plato, searched for Polish authors and their studies to provide references to them, while Pawlicki paid no interest to the works of his compatriots on Greek philosophy.
In more recent decades it was Izydora Dąmbska (1904-1983), a philosopher and historian of philosophy, who published a study on the reception of Plato in Poland (1972), but nowadays many books and papers on this topic were published by the members of the AΦR research group. Concluding his talk Mróz briefly presented research projects of the members of the AΦR and the books they had published, to start with the latest one:
Henryk Jakubanis, Empedokles – filozof, lekarz i mag: Przyczynek do jego zrozumienia i oceny (Empedocles: a Philosopher, a Doctor and a Magus. Materials for Understanding and Assessing Him), transl. from Russian and ed. Mariam Sargsyan, A. Habura, Wydawnictwo Marek Derewiecki, Kęty 2024, 104 pp. (Studies and Texts in the History of Reception of Ancient Philosophy, vol. 3).
T. Mróz, Stanisław Lisiecki (1872-1960) i jego Platon (Stanisław Lisiecki (1872-1960) and His Plato), Wydawnictwo Marek Derewiecki, Kęty 2022, 150 pp. (Studies and Texts in the History of Reception of Ancient Philosophy, vol. 2).
T. Mróz, Plato in Poland 1800-1950: Types of Reception – Authors – Problems, Academia Verlag / Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden Baden 2021, 480 pp. (Academia Philosophical Studies, vol. 75).
S. Lisiecki, O Platonie, Arystotelesie i o sobie samym (On Plato, Aristotle and on Himself), ed. T. Mróz, Wydawnictwo Marek Derewiecki, Kęty 2021, 367 pp. (Studies and Texts in the History of Reception of Ancient Philosophy, vol. 1).
and some earlier ones…
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.
Plato in Poland book available in OA
This post is only to announce that the book by T. Mróz, Plato in Poland 1800-1950. Types of Reception – Authors – Problems (Academia Verlag/Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden Baden 2021), as a result of the agreement with the publisher, is now available free in open access on the Nomos Verlag website here and in the repository of the University of Zielona Góra, here. Enjoy!
AΦR at the Twelfth Polish Congress of Philosophy in Łódź
In September (11th-16th) 2023 the 12th Polish Congress of Philosophy took place in Łódź. Three members of AΦR took part in this great event, and they delivered four papers there. Tomasz Mróz spoke about three traditions of doing philosophy and three interpretations of Plato at the ancient philosophy section, and the other three papers were presented in the section of Polish philosophy: on the influence of Aristotle on the works of W. Tatarkiewicz (Adrian Habura); on H. Jakubanis’ arguments for the reneval of philosophy in accordance to its ancient roots (Mariam Sargsyan); and on B. Kieszkowski, a researcher of Renaissance Platonism, on his life, works and their reception (again T. Mróz).
T. Mróz’s paper, Three Traditions of Doing Philosophy and Three Interpretations of Plato, was devoted to presenting three Plato scholars of the turn of the 20th century, Paul Natorp (1854–1924), a German, Paul Shorey (1857–1934), an American, and Wincenty Lutosławski (1863–1954), a Pole, and their interpretations of Plato. Mróz attempted to relate these three personalities of one generation and their Platonic studies with their native, dominant philosophical traditions: neo-Kantianism, Emersonian tradition and Polish Romantic Messianism. Their methodologies, views on the chronology of the dialogues and the status of ideas were discussed, as a starting point for future comparative research of their Platonic studies and reciprocal references.
M. Sargsyan’s presentation was titled: Arguments of Henryk Jakubanis (1879-1949) for Renewal of Philosophy and Culture on the Ancient Model. It started with an introductory part about the biography of Jakubanis to familiarise the audience with his personality. Then the main part followed and it consisted in discussing Jakubanis’ work The Significance of Ancient Philosophy for the Modern View of the World (1910). Historical and philosophical research methods of Jakubanis were analysed and compared with those of his academic supervisor in Kyiv, Alexei Gilarov. Another comparative perspective was provided by the works of Tadeusz Zielinski, who was an internationally recognised scholar, and a kind, older colleague for Jakubanis.
A. Habura’s paper was titled Aristotle in the Works of Władysław Tatarkiewicz and divided into two parts. In the first one, following Tatarkiewicz’s own statement, Habura distinguished two “images” of Aristotle’s philosophy which Tatarkiewicz had developed during his research career. Habura took into account various works of Tatarkiewicz and demonstrated that these two images were not contradictory, but rather complementary to each other. In the second part of his presentation Habura distinguished five aspects of Aristotle’s inspiration in Tatarkiewicz’s works, in accordance with Tatarkiewicz’s own reflection on this topic, and proved a significant, substantial and lasting impact of Aristotle on Tatarkiewicz’s original philosophical investigations.
Second paper by Mróz was a presentation of a further development of his research on Bohdan Kieszkowski, a Polish scholar who was a specialist on Renaissance Platonism and Pico della Mirandola. Earlier this year Mróz discussed Kieszkowski’s biography, but this time the focus was on Kieszkowski’s works and their reception, that is, his polemic with another Polish expert in Renaissance philosophy, M. Heitzman (1899-1964), on the sources of Renaissance Italian Platonism, and a critical reception of Kieszkowski’s edition of Pico’s Conclusiones (1973) by a Portuguese researcher, José Vitorino de Pina Martins (1920-2010). Heitzman searched for the roots of philosophy in Florentine Academy in medieval thought, while Kieszkowski tended to emphasise the role of ancient sources. As for Pina Martins, he praised Kieszkowski’s erudition, yet pointed to a large number of errors in Conclusiones, resulting from various reasons, including Kieszkowski’s lack of precision in reading Latin texts.
Bertrand Russell, His Views on Ancient Philosophy and Critical Reaction on Them in Poland
In August 17-18th T. Mróz took part in the sixth annual History of Analytic Philosophy Workshop organised by Tilburg Center for Moral Philosophy, Epistemology and
Philosophy of Science. This year’s meeting was devoted to Global Reception of Russell’s Scientific Philosophy.
T. Mróz’s paper was prepared in co-operation with Paweł Polak (The Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków), who presented his part in an on-line form. The title of their presentation was The Early Reception of Russell’s Philosophy among Polish Philosophers – a Diversity of Perspectives. P. Polak focused in particular on reception of Russell’s ideas among the representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School, while T. Mróz discussed two cases of reception of Russell’s History of Western Philosophy (1945) among Polish historians of philosophy, and some other issues, e.g. the censorship of Russell’s texts in Poland.
What matters here is ancient philosophy. The first Polish critic of Russell’s History was Wincenty Lutosławski (1863-1954), who expressed his views on Russell’s Plato in a letter (Lutosławski’s draft on the left) to the author (a paper in “Russell” on the letters between the two philosophers has been announced here). Despite the differences between them, Lutosławski declared in his letter: “Your History proves that we agree in our esteem of Plato”. Moreover, he praised Russell, “In your six chapters on him [=Plato] I did not discover a single error and I agree with everything you say”. In fact, both authors set themselves different goals in discussing Plato and this resulted in disparate methods in their presentations of Platonism, yet Lutosławski’s opinion was so important for Russell that he passed it immediately to his publisher.
Marian Heitzman (1899-1964) was not a philosopher of a similar recognition to Lutosławski, he was an expert in Renaissance philosophy and in F. Bacon. His views on Russell’s History were published as an extensive review study in the oldest Polish philosophical journal „Philosophical Review” [Przegląd Filozoficzny]. His general opinion on Russell’s book was the following: “it is worth to read the book and it is worth to have it on a bookshelf, but it cannot be recommended as a handbook or a synthetic study of the history of philosophy”. He appreciated Russell’s style and his „humour coloured by a bit of Volterian scepticism”. His focus was Renaissance philosophy, but he remarked on many deficiences in Russell’s chapters on ancient topics. For example, the missing or too shortly discussed subjects, according to Heitzman, included Gorgias, Zeno and the logic of the Stoics. Although Russell intended to emphasise issues in political and social philosophies, in Heitzman’s eyes he missed the cosmopolitanism of the Cynics and misrepresented the problem of the Sophists and democracy. Finally, Russell aimed to present various philosophers as the effects of their social conditions, but he failed to illustrate this with Antisthenes of Athens (not an Athenian citizen) and his philosophy of cynicism.
20th Annual Conference of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies
International Society for Neoplatonic Studies (ISNS) has for decades been a forum for scholars researching various phaenomena in the history of Neoplatonism, including even the latest developments of the reception of Platonism. In June 14th-17th, 2023, ISNS conference was held at the foot of Etna, in Catania, in co-operation with Università degli Studi di Catania.
One of the numerous panels at the conference was devoted to Plato’s Timaeus, the concept of time and its influence on various thinkers across the history of philosophy up to recent times. The panel was organised by the two professors, Laura Marongiu and Laura Follesa, both of University of Milan. Although this panel focused on relatively narrow topic, the response from scholars was impressive and thus the list of speakers in this successful panel demonstrated incessant interest of generations of scholars in the Timaeus, the late dialogue of Plato. The topics ranged from Speusippus, Aristotle, Xenocrates, Numenius, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Simplicius and Philoponus to M. Ficino, L. Bruno, F.W.J. Schelling, G.W.F. Hegel, H. Bergson and E. Husserl (on the photo: L. Follesa, L. Marongiu & T. Mróz).
T. Mróz presented a paper titled The Timaeus and Three Scholars of One Generation: P. Natorp, P. Shorey and W. Lutosławski. Mróz discussed various interpretations of the Timaeus by the three scholars, focusing on their general methods in reading Plato and their views on Plato’s concept of the time, although none of them considered the time to be the central issue in the dialogue.
ISNS conferences have always been a forum for scholars who explore various aspects of Platonism, Neoplatonism and Plato reception from antiquity up to contemporary times. Professor John Finamore, spiritus movens of all of ISNS symposia, spares no efforts to hold ISNS events in various academic centres and to provide opportunity for scholars throughout the world to take part in them. He has recently announced that next year’s ISNS conference will take place in Dublin, in co-operation with Trinity College.
Erasmus Teaching Visit in Vilnius University
In April, 18th-22nd, 2023, Tomasz Mróz enjoyed his third Erasmus teaching visit in Faculty of Philosophy, Vilnius University.
Vilnius University is a unique research and teaching institution in Central-Eastern Europe. It has a long and sometimes turbulent Polish-Lithuanian history. Some of the lectures delivered by T. Mróz to philosophy students in Vilnius concerned a part of this history and, naturally, reception of ancient philosophy.
One of the lectures discussing the issues of ancient philosophy reception had Wincenty Lutosławski (1863-1954) as its topic. The focus was on his Vilnius period and his vision of a philosophical development of Plato from idealism to spiritualism. Since Lutosławski considered Polish Romantic Messianism to be founded on spiritualism, consequently he could consider this unique tradition to be rooted in Plato, who was presented by Lutosławski as an ancient philosophical predecessor of Polish 19th century literary and philosophical tendency.
Another lecture in which ancient philosophy reception appeared was devoted to Vitello (ca. 1230-1300?) and his theoretical reflection on the nature of the daemons. Vitello’s demonology stemmed from his research in natural sciences and it employed neo-Platonic and Aristotelian elements, such as a belief in a mathematical structure of the universe and the theory of four elements. Vitello’s philosophical investigations were presented against the background of the 13th century developments in philosophy.
Teaching duties were supplemented with meetings with the Faculty members and discussions on the plans of a future co-operation activities between philosophers of Vilnius University and University of Zielona Góra.
Recent commentaries