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Pole Vitello) The formal history of
philosophy in Poland may be said to have begun in the fifteenth century, following the revival of the
University of Kraków by King
Władysław II Jagiełło in 1400. The true beginnings of Polish philosophy, however, reach back to the thirteenth century and
Vitello (c. 1230 – c. 1314), a
Silesian born to a Polish mother and a
Thuringian settler, a contemporary of
Thomas Aquinas who had spent part of his life in
Italy at centers of the highest intellectual culture. In addition to being a
philosopher, he was a
scientist who specialized in
optics. His famous treatise,
Perspectiva, while drawing on the
Arabic Book of Optics by
Alhazen, was unique in
Latin literature, and in turn helped inspire
Roger Bacon's best work, Part V of his
Opus maius, "On Perspectival Science," as well as his supplementary treatise
On the Multiplication of Vision. Vitello's
Perspectiva additionally made important contributions to
psychology: it held that
vision per se apprehends only
colors and
light while all else, particularly the distance and size of objects, is established by means of
association and unconscious
deduction. According to the Polish historian of philosophy,
Władysław Tatarkiewicz, no Polish philosopher since Vitello has enjoyed so eminent a European standing as this thinker who belonged, in a sense, to the
prehistory of Polish philosophy. 's
Collegium Maius, a site of Polish higher learning since 1400 From the beginning of the fifteenth century, Polish philosophy, centered at
Kraków University, pursued a normal course. It no longer harbored exceptional thinkers such as Vitello, but it did feature representatives of all wings of mature
Scholasticism,
via antiqua as well as
via moderna. In
physics,
logic and
ethics,
Terminism (
Nominalism) prevailed in Kraków, under the influence of the
French Scholastic,
Jean Buridan (died c. 1359), who had been
rector of the
University of Paris and an exponent of views of
William of Ockham. Buridan had formulated the
theory of "
impetus"—the
force that causes a body, once set in
motion, to persist in motion—and stated that impetus is
proportional to the
speed of, and amount of
matter comprising, a body: Buridan thus anticipated
Galileo and
Isaac Newton. His theory of impetus was momentous in that it also explained the motions of
celestial bodies without resort to the spirits—
"intelligentiae"—to which the
Peripatetics (followers of
Aristotle) had ascribed those motions. At
Kraków, physics was now expounded by (St.)
Jan Kanty (1390–1473), who developed this concept of "impetus." Almost at the same time,
Scotism appeared in Poland, having been brought from
Paris first by
Michał Twaróg of Bystrzyków (c. 1450 – 1520). Twaróg had studied at Paris in 1473–77, in the period when, following the
anathematization of the
Nominalists (1473), the Scotist school was there enjoying its greatest triumphs. A prominent student of Twaróg's,
Jan of Stobnica (c. 1470 – 1519), was already a moderate Scotist who took account of the theories of the
Ockhamists,
Thomists and
Humanists. When
Nominalism was revived in
western Europe at the turn of the sixteenth century, particularly thanks to
Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (
Faber Stapulensis), it presently reappeared in
Kraków and began taking the upper hand there once more over
Thomism and
Scotism. It was reintroduced particularly by Lefèvre's pupil,
Jan Szylling, a native of Kraków who had studied at Paris in the opening years of the sixteenth century. Another follower of Lefèvre's was
Grzegorz of Stawiszyn, a Kraków professor who, beginning in 1510, published the Frenchman's works at Kraków. To be sure, in the sixteenth century, with the arrival of the
Renaissance,
Scholasticism would enter upon a decline; but during the 17th century's
Counter-Reformation, and even into the early 18th century, Scholasticism would again become Poland's chief philosophy. ==Renaissance== '
De revolutionibus, 1543.
Click on image to read book. The spirit of
Humanism, which had reached Poland by the middle of the fifteenth century, was not very "philosophical." Rather, it lent its stimulus to
linguistic studies,
political thought, and
scientific research. But these manifested a philosophical attitude different from that of the previous period.
Empirical natural science had flourished at
Kraków as early as the fifteenth century, side by side with speculative philosophy. The most perfect product of this blossoming was
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543, ). He was not only a scientist but a philosopher. According to
Tatarkiewicz, he may have been the greatest—in any case, the most renowned—philosopher that Poland ever produced. He drew the inspiration for his cardinal discovery from philosophy; he had become acquainted through
Marsilio Ficino with the philosophies of
Plato and the
Pythagoreans; and through the writings of the philosophers
Cicero and
Plutarch he had learned about the
ancients who had declared themselves in favor of the Earth's movement. Copernicus may also have been influenced by Kraków philosophy: during his studies there,
Terminist physics had been taught, with special emphasis on "
impetus." His own thinking was guided by philosophical considerations. He arrived at the
heliocentric thesis (as he was to write in a youthful treatise) "
ratione postea equidem sensu": it was not
observation but the discovery of a
logical
contradiction in
Ptolemy's system, that served him as a point of departure that led to the new astronomy. In his dedication to
Pope Paul III, he submitted his work for judgment by "philosophers." In its turn, Copernicus' theory transformed man's view of the structure of the
universe, and of the place held in it by the earth and by man, and thus attained a far-reaching philosophical importance. and of "
Gresham's law" (in the year, 1519, of
Thomas Gresham's birth)—in the philosophy of man. Yet another
Renaissance current, the new
Stoicism, was represented in Poland by
Jakub Górski (c. 1525 – 1585), author of a famous
Dialectic (1563) and of many works in
grammar,
rhetoric,
theology and
sociology. He tended toward
eclecticism, attempting to reconcile the
Stoics with
Aristotle. A later, purer representative of
Stoicism in Poland was
Adam Burski (c. 1560 – 1611), author of a
Dialectica Ciceronis (1604) boldly proclaiming Stoic
sensualism and
empiricism and—before
Francis Bacon—urging the use of
inductive method. His chief work was
De Republica emendanda (On Reform of the Republic, 1551–54). 's
De optimo senatore Another notable political thinker was
Wawrzyniec Grzymała Goślicki (1530–1607), best known in Poland and abroad for his book
De optimo senatore (The Accomplished Senator, 1568). It propounded the view—which for long got the book banned in
England, as subversive of
monarchy—that a ruler may legitimately govern only with the sufferance of the people. After the first decades of the 17th century, the
wars,
invasions and internal
dissensions that beset the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, brought a decline in philosophy. If in the ensuing period there was independent philosophical thought, it was among the religious
dissenters, particularly the Polish
Arians, also known variously as
Antitrinitarians,
Socinians, and
Polish Brethren—forerunners of the
British and
American Socinians,
Unitarians and
Deists who were to figure prominently in the intellectual and political currents of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The Polish
dissenters created an original
ethical theory radically condemning evil and
violence. Centers of intellectual life such as that at
Leszno hosted notable thinkers such as the
Czech pedagogue,
Jan Amos Komensky (Comenius), and the Pole,
Jan Jonston. Jonston was tutor and physician to the
Leszczyński family, a devotee of Bacon and experimental knowledge, and author of
Naturae constantia, published in
Amsterdam in 1632, whose
geometrical method and
naturalistic, almost
pantheistic concept of the world may have influenced
Benedict Spinoza. In 1689, in an exceptional miscarriage of justice, a Polish ex-Jesuit philosopher,
Kazimierz Łyszczyński, author of a manuscript treatise,
De non existentia Dei (On the Non-existence of God), was accused of atheism by a priest who was his debtor, was convicted, and was executed in most brutal fashion. ==Enlightenment== After a decline of a century and a half, in the mid-18th century, Polish philosophy began to revive. The hub of this movement was
Warsaw. While Poland's capital then had no institution of higher learning, neither were those of
Kraków,
Zamość or
Wilno any longer agencies of progress. The initial impetus for the revival came from religious thinkers: from members of the
Piarist and other teaching orders. A leading patron of the new ideas was
Bishop Andrzej Stanisław Załuski. Under the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's last king,
Stanisław August Poniatowski (reigned 1764–95), the
Polish Enlightenment was radicalized and came under
French influence. The philosophical foundation of the movement ceased to be the
Rationalist doctrine of Wolff and became the
Sensualism of
Condillac. This spirit pervaded Poland's
Commission of National Education, which completed the reforms begun by the
Piarist priest,
Stanisław Konarski. The commission's members were in touch with the French
Encyclopedists and
freethinkers, with
d'Alembert and
Condorcet,
Condillac and
Rousseau. The commission abolished school instruction in
theology, even in philosophy. This
empiricist and
positivist Enlightenment philosophy produced several outstanding Polish thinkers. Although active in the reign of
Stanisław August Poniatowski, they published their chief works only after the loss of the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's independence in 1795. The most important of these figures were
Jan Śniadecki,
Stanisław Staszic and
Hugo Kołłątaj. Another adherent of this empirical Enlightenment philosophy was the minister of education under the
Duchy of Warsaw and under the
Congress Poland established by the
Congress of Vienna,
Stanisław Kostka Potocki (1755–1821). In some places, as at
Krzemieniec and its
Lyceum in southeastern Poland, this philosophy was to survive well into the nineteenth century. Although a belated philosophy from a western perspective, it was at the same time the philosophy of the future. This was the period between
d'Alembert and
Comte; and even as this variety of
positivism was temporarily fading in the West, it was carrying on in Poland. At the turn of the nineteenth century, as
Immanuel Kant's fame was spreading over the rest of Europe, in Poland the Enlightenment philosophy was still in full flower. Kantism found here a hostile soil. Even before Kant had been understood, he was condemned by the most respected writers of the time: by
Jan Śniadecki,
Staszic,
Kołłątaj,
Tadeusz Czacki, later by
Anioł Dowgird (1776–1835).
Jan Śniadecki warned against this "fanatical, dark and apocalyptic mind," and wrote: "To revise
Locke and
Condillac, to desire
a priori knowledge of things that human nature can grasp only by their consequences, is a lamentable aberration of mind." Jan Śniadecki's younger brother, however,
Jędrzej Śniadecki, was the first respected Polish scholar to declare (1799) for Kant. And in applying Kantian ideas to the
natural sciences, he did something new that would not be undertaken until much later by
Johannes Müller,
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz and other famous scientists of the nineteenth century. Another Polish proponent of Kantism was
Józef Kalasanty Szaniawski (1764–1843), who had been a student of Kant's at
Königsberg. But, having accepted the fundamental points of the critical theory of knowledge, he still hesitated between Kant's metaphysical agnosticism and the new metaphysics of
Idealism. Thus this one man introduced to Poland both the antimetaphysical Kant and the post-Kantian metaphysics. In time, Kant's foremost Polish sympathizer would be
Feliks Jaroński (1777–1827), who lectured at Kraków in 1809–18. Still, his Kantian sympathies were only partial and this half-heartedness was typical of Polish Kantism generally. In Poland there was no actual Kantian period. For a generation, between the age of the
French Enlightenment and that of the Polish national
metaphysic, the Scottish philosophy of
common sense became the dominant outlook in Poland. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the
Scottish School of Common Sense held sway in most European countries—in Britain till mid-century, and nearly as long in France. But in Poland, from the first, the Scottish philosophy fused with Kantism, in this regard anticipating the West. The Kantian and Scottish ideas were united in typical fashion by
Jędrzej Śniadecki (1768–1838). The younger brother of
Jan Śniadecki, Jędrzej was an illustrious scientist, biologist and physician, and the more creative mind of the two. He had been educated at the universities of
Kraków,
Padua and
Edinburgh and was from 1796 a professor at
Wilno, where he held a chair of
chemistry and
pharmacy. He was a foe of
metaphysics, holding that the fathoming of
first causes of
being was "impossible to fulfill and unnecessary." But foe of metaphysics that he was, he was not an
Empiricist—and this was his link with Kant. "Experiment and observation can only gather... the materials from which
common sense alone can build science." An analogous position, shunning both
positivism and
metaphysical speculation, affined to the Scots but linked in some features to Kantian
critique, was held in the period before the
November 1830 Uprising by virtually all the university professors in Poland: in
Wilno, by Dowgird; in
Kraków, by
Józef Emanuel Jankowski (1790–1847); and in
Warsaw, by
Adam Ignacy Zabellewicz (1784–1831) and
Krystyn Lach-Szyrma (1791–1866). ==Polish Messianism==