Analytical-Linguistic Marxism in Poland

Abstract

Before ing part the of Second the cultural World life War of philosophy Poland. The was diversity a flourishof ing part of the cultural life of Poland. The diversity of schools and the intensity of research reached a level unprecedented in the history of Polish philosophy. Thus phenomenology had its center in Cracow and, in the philosophy of art, arrived at original and lasting results, mainly due to the works of Roman Ingarden; Neo-Thomist philosophy was also significantly represented and had its stronghold in the Catholic University of Lublin. However, analytical philosophy was the embodiment of what was the best and most accomplished in Polish philosophy at that time. Although it was conducted in the idiom of ratiocinative rigor, it did not become narrowly restricted to the point where philosophical problems are strangled rather than solved, as was the case with the Vienna Circle; although it was preoccupied with minute and often piecemeal analyses, it arrived at more general and more systematic conclusions in the tenor of traditional philosophy, and these conclusions could not be easily discarded as bad metaphysics. Kazimierz Twardowski, a pupil of Brentano, was responsible for the rise of this philosophy. However, Polish analytical philosophers learnt much from Bertrand Russell. Under the auspices of Principia Mathematica, which was conceived as the opening up of new vistas for philosophy based on inquiry into logic and language, Polish philosophers and logicians later