The Society of Free Individuals According to Stanisław Brzozowski

Abstract

In the paper I sought to show the individualized character of S. Brzozowski's thought about the society of free individuals. His writing testifies to his great efforts made to abolish the antonymy between the individual man and his social surrounding, between being free and being in a society. He struggles, however, not after an abstract, objective idea of self-determination, but after his own concrete being as a free man, writer, thinker who creates among others and for others. Now society gives the individual concrete categories which allow man to attain self-identification and mutuality of feelings. There is no contradiction between the individual, its autonomy and society, but they are mutually complementary. An absolute negation of a society means to turn back from civilization and from any attainments of humankind; it means to choose chaos and anarchy, to drift towards individuals fighting with one another. Man's right is that he must combine permanently his transient essence with the existence of society. It is the law that man makes himself on the basis of his own sense of identity, yet he recognizes this identity owing to the cultural tradition of a given social group. Thus he gains the categories which define his way by which to perceive the world and to be rooted in it. Such basic categories, defining man's identity, are, according to Brzozowski, work, religion and nation.