Abstract

Before his untimely death, Stanislaw Brzozowski (1878-1911) had proven himself a thinker of exceptional acumen, through critical analyses spanning the gamut of Polish and European culture. Next to Czesaw Milosz, he holds a signal place in twentieth-century Polish intellectual culture, yet is surprisingly little-known abroad. A prolific writer of literary and cultural criticism, philosophy, and prose fiction, Brzozowski remains to be situated within the broader cultural thematics of his time. Brzozowski's Legend of Young Poland: Studies in the Structure of a Cultural Soul (1909) can be read for its author's philosophical views on history. Brzozowski's extensive knowledge of and critical engagement with Continental philosophy mean that his ideas on history must be related to those of Marx, Nietzsche, Sorel, Vico, and Husserl. While not a full-fledged philosophical system, Brzozowski's philosophy of history borders on prophetic in the magnitude of its import and sheds light on the intellectual concerns of pre-World War I Europe.

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