Kultura i cywilizacja w pismach Andrzeja Niemojewskiego

Abstract

The paper contains an attempt to present the views of Andrzej Niemojewski — the outstanding thinker, publicist and writer on the turn of the 19th century — on the conception of culture and its various — historical, national and related to civilization — conditioning. On the base of an analysis of the work of the creator of „The Sovereing Thought” the author of the paper proves the fact that the cathegory of „culture” functions as a complex of factors characteristic of the national tradition, the of knowledge and the substance of artistic production. Culture appears in a relation (mutually conditioned) to education, learning and morality as well as in a negative one towards religion. The essence of the above-mentioned conception of culture is evident in the dissociation of cultural tradition, in the opposition between a creator and a recipient of culture etc. Culture possesses some specific characteristics: a capacity to create general social ideas (Niemojewski stresses the importance of „freedom”, „truth”, „humanitarianism”), to define social aims (that of national unity), as well as the ways of the material verification of the cultural level of a society (with the help of „workshops” and „work” itself). At the end of the paper the author reconstructs (in the form of an outline) Andrzej Niemojewski’s views on the situation (contemporary to him and criticized by him) of Polish culture. In connexion with it the writer formulates a programme based upon the principles of secularity, scientific rationalism and a selective approach to national history; all this takes place within the framework of the organized universal education of a sovereign nation.