The Enlightened do not Need to be Enlightened... Reflections on School, the Seriousness of Reading and the Madness of Ideology

Abstract

Pointing to the progressive marginalization of the Enlightenment literature in the Polish language curricula implemented in secondary schools over the last several years, the author focuses on the related phenomenon of biased reception of that literature, dominated by stereotypes and simplifications. The author asks how the 18^th and early-19^th-century texts should be read – with the aim of restoring their proper rank in the cultural tradition – to perceive them not only in the historical and social context, and thus not to reduce their meaning to a didactic or political message. In the face of the disturbing trends in the field of literary studies, which instrumentalise a literary work, the author also stresses the need to avoid a situation in which the ideological beliefs of the researcher projected on an older text seem to dominate it, distorting its image.