Doctoral Dissertation
Access to the doctoral dissertation and reviews: Jagiellonian University Repository
Abstract: This dissertation was written in order to resolve several research problems and to propose a new—and more adequate—perspective for the study of Józef Gołuchowski’s thought. Although it cannot be said that nobody has studied Gołuchowski’s life and thought, both his figure and his philosophy remain little known in wider circles; and, as I show in this work, even within the narrower scholarly milieu numerous errors recur, are multiplied, and then accepted as facts, thus becoming part of a tradition that remembers Gołuchowski in separation from life. Identifying and explaining these errors, and indicating a new path of inquiry, has genuine significance for contemporary readers. Although more than 160 years have passed since Gołuchowski’s death, I maintain that the relation between philosophy and life—and especially its actualisation in the form of politics—remains an entirely contemporary question. We may not live in an age of threats as grave as those of the nineteenth century; yet we do live in a situation in which admirers of former times, acting against their own tradition, continue to add fresh fuel to the furnace of political romanticism. As the philosopher from Garbacz showed by his own life, this may be a dangerous path, for it involves the disruption of order in a way one does not expect: not by violence, but by logos—such a struggle for inner light is one that people decidedly do not like.
The principal aim of the dissertation was to present Gołuchowski’s philosophy from a social and political perspective, which I regard as the central thought of his philosophy, everything else serving only as its underpinning. The overriding task of his work was the creative transposition of metaphysics onto an expressly practical terrain, namely social and political thought. Metaphysical and religious premises were of decisive importance to him, but to a large extent because, as he understood them, they led to what mattered most to him: salvation and social order. This core thesis of the dissertation presupposed the need for interdisciplinary research on Gołuchowski’s philosophy. In my judgment, these issues have not yet truly been studied in an adequate and substantive way. Maurycy Straszewski had already written of the need for such work when he observed that “the philosophical value of Gołuchowski’s social writings is enormous, yet unfortunately has thus far been entirely neglected.” The main goal of the dissertation therefore depended upon a series of premises whose demonstration led to the central conclusion.
The first assumption of the dissertation was that Gołuchowski’s thought should be taken seriously (1). This means that everything he wrote had value for him and genuinely conveyed what he wished to communicate. The second important criterion, connected with the first, was the assumption that Gołuchowski’s thought was articulated as a (2) philosophical system. My view is that, although certain elements of his ideas develop, they do so within definite and non-transgressible limits, directed precisely toward touching life in every possible way. A third issue concerns history: scholars of philosophy have repeatedly tried to confine the richness of his reflections within the framework of so-called (3) philosophical affiliation, cutting his system with surgical precision into elements belonging now to Enlightenment thought, above all to Romantic thought, then to Catholic or Schellingian thought. Beyond the rejection of his philosophy as a system, I perceived in this labelling another serious error that makes an actual understanding of his thought impossible. A fourth problem is the abandonment of any real effort to understand (4) arationalism, which is not only distinct from irrationalism, but, on logical grounds, constitutes a category of its own. In my reading of the thinker from Garbacz, I regard his system as a philosophy of paradox, which strives toward a new quality through a prior negation that becomes a synthesis with the principal thesis. The final problem is (5) the correction of earlier scholars’ errors: some never reached the source texts and wrote solely on the basis of so-called authorities; others, once they did reach the sources, overinterpreted certain matters or tried to make mysteries out of things that were plain enough, only then to resolve them triumphantly. This point is linked with a number of additional findings—above all on the historical plane, since I reached manuscripts long regarded as inaccessible and was able to establish certain facts from the life of the thinker from Garbacz.
In structuring the dissertation, I chose to invoke the Trinitarian division of history proposed by Joachim of Fiore, whose history of salvation and philosophy of history significantly influenced Christian dogmatics, especially Protestantism, which in turn was of key importance for the development of German thought. This symbolic, Trinitarian development—proceeding from life toward spirit, from obedience to laws (including the immovability of history), through dialogue, toward the advent of a project of complete freedom—provided the architecture for the three major parts of the dissertation. The work is divided into three principal sections: Father: The Ages of the World; Son: Logos; and Spirit: Love Realised in the Social and Political Sphere. Yet the dissertation is intended to reflect the fundamental assumption of Gołuchowski’s philosophy, namely unity in multiplicity and multiplicity in unity. Thus, although I designed the dissertation so that understanding could develop hermeneutically, its chapters are in large measure self-standing wholes. For the sake of greater clarity, I also employed more detailed subsections. In the first part I focused on all that symbolises the Father: what is unquestionable, unchanging, and enduring. This is the metaphorically conceived history of the world in the theological sense and, from a methodological perspective, it comprises the historical foundations as well as those events in the history of philosophy and religion that became the basis for constructing the edifice of ideas and the philosophical system. I sought to include there everything that shaped not only Gołuchowski’s views, but also the environment in which he had to live, develop, experience, and create. Logos represents the Son. Here human interpretation of understanding, experience, and the operation of ideas begins to act. It is at this point that the proper analysis of the philosopher from Garbacz’s system begins. The becoming and realisation of Spirit forms the third section: Spirit—love realised in the social and political sphere. According to Joachim of Fiore and to authors who followed, even unconsciously, in the wake of his idea (as Schelling did), the Age of the Spirit is a project of the future, full of ultimate happiness and freedom. Much the same may be said of Gołuchowski’s project, the realisation of which was meant to guarantee a good life on earth and salvation after death. In this section, using the conceptual tools developed in the previous parts, I analyse the explicitly social and political philosophy of the Vilnius professor as it appears in his writings. I have sought to show his method of transposing metaphysics into politics across the greater part of his social writings, which I present critically. The task of this final part was to demonstrate his genuine reactionary character and his actual rootedness in the world of thought, thereby justifying his earlier theoretical reflections.