Philosopher to Philosopher: Regarding a Letter by Bolesław Miciński to Fr. Augustyn Jakubisiak

Abstract

The article presents an unknown letter by Bolesław Miciński to Fr. Augustyn Jakubisiak found in his archives at the Polish Library in Paris. It is an opportunity to call to mind these outstanding but somewhat forgotten philosophers and to present their intellectual connections. After meeting in Paris in 1937, they maintained close contact until the death of Miciński in 1943. From the beginning, they were united by their opposition to the idealistic German philosophy and neopositivism of the Vienna Circle with its materialism, scientism and scepticism. In Fr. Jakubisiak, Miciński discovered views similar to his own on space and time. In Miciński’s recent essays from the war, there are moral theses that Fr. Jakubisiak has voiced, namely individuality and self-determination. Individuality means valuing an individual in the face of everything that may threaten him, especially totalitarianism. In turn, self-determination is the granting of absolute autonomy and freedom to human beings, which acts in the previously adopted way. It was the negation of determinism and atheism. The contexts of Miciński’s statements on the subject of individuality and self-determination (as well as the less outlined problems of time and space) indicate that he not only took from Fr. Jakubisiak the concepts relevant to him, but also embedded them in a close philosophical context. The thought of a Polish clergyman must have been doubly inspirational for Miciński. First, he discovered in his works known philosophizing styles derived from St Augustine, Leibniz, Pascal or Kant. On the other hand, he expanded his own search field and found answers to relevant existential questions; he turned towards modern science (for instance Einstein’s theory), and especially to Christianity, which became for him an increasingly important intellectual and spiritual asylum.