Tomasz Herbich
MICKIEWICZ’S CRITIQUE OF PHILOSOPHY: A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY
The purpose of this article is to show philosophical meaning and significance of the critique of philosophy formulated by Mickiewicz in Parisian lectures. The article starts with a reference to the opinion about Mickiewicz’s critique of German philosophy which was expressed by Brzozowski, who argued for the superiority of Polish Romanticism over German idealism. He claimed that while criticising German philosophy, Mickiewicz was not only interested in particular philosophers or ideas, but he fought against the main principle of this philosophy. But Mickiewicz’s critique of philosophy was not only aimed at German philosophy – it also concerned the philosophical attitude to the world. The main manifestation of the philosophical reason, which was at the same time the crowning of modern philosophy, Mickiewicz saw in the Hegelian absolute idealism. It seemed to him that the standpoint of Hegel presented the very essence of philosophy. In the seventeenth lecture of the third year of Parisian lectures Mickiewicz interpreted the development of modern philosophy as the one that had led to Hegelian philosophy. He tried to connect this development (in which a key role had been played by the idea of transcendentalism) with the gradual annihilation of the essential elements of reality: the world, God and man. Starting with this notion, in the last part I compare the standpoints of Mickiewicz and Voegelin. I end with the question concerning possible links between the worldview of Mickiewicz and Platonism on the one hand, and with the conclusion, that Mickiewicz’s critique of philosophy arose from the need of a philosophical kind – the necessity of truth, which is not satisfied by philosophers – on the other.
