Stanislaw Brzozowski and the Polish Beginnings of "Western Marxism"

by Walicki, Andrzej

• ISBN13: 9780198273288
• ISBN10: 0198273282
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1989-06-01
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

This book introduces the English-speaking reader to the thought of Stanislaw Brzozowski (1878-1911), an outstanding Polish philosopher and literary critic. Although little known in the West, Brzozowski is an important forerunner of the intellectual tradition of "Western Marxism" most commonly associated with Georg Lukács and Antonio Gramsci. Walicki argues that Brzozowski's antinaturalistic approach resulted in a radical reinterpretation of Marxism that dealt with many of the problems of the revolt against positivism in European philosophy, and that it was Brzozwski, not Lukács, who initially conceived of the retrieval of the philosophical and humanist aspect of Marxism and its separation from the Engels school of "scientific Marxism."

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Biographical Note	p. 25
On Some Specific Features of Early Polish Marxism	p. 38
'Scientific Marxism' and 'Philosophy of Action'	p. 76
The Early Phase of Brzozowski's Thought	p. 76
The Critique of 'Scientific Marxism'	p. 88
Idealism as Philosophy of Action	p. 94
The First Outline of a New Interpretation of Marxism	p. 101
Marxism as an Anti-Engelsian 'Philosophy of Labour'	p. 111
Knowledge, Nature, and History	p. 111
The Ideal of Autocreation	p. 124
The Encounter with the Russian 'Neo-Marxists'	p. 133
Beyond Marxism: From Anti-Engelsian Marxism to a Re-evaluation of Marx's Thought	p. 141
New Inspirations and Confrontations	p. 141
The Further Development of Brzozowski's 'Philosophy of Labour'	p. 155
Continuity and Change in Brzozowski's Thought	p. 169
The Intelligentsia and the Working Class	p. 176
Different Conceptions of the Intelligentsia and its Calling	p. 176
The Intelligentsia and Revolution	p. 183
The Paradoxes of the Intelligentsia	p. 187
The Working Class, Socialism, and Syndicalism	p. 199
The Working Class and the Nation	p. 212
Culture and Society	p. 223
Individualism and Sociologism	p. 223
The Social Tasks of Art and Literary Criticism	p. 231
Sociological Criticism and the Critique of Sociology	p. 243
The Illusions of Consciousness	p. 254
National Cultures	p. 267
Religion	p. 275
From Religious Individualism to Militant Atheism	p. 275
The Greatness and Weakness of Catholicism	p. 288
Towards Transcendence	p. 300
Instead Of A Conclusion	p. 315
Brzozowski's Works	p. 337
Select Bibliography	p. 339
Index Of Names	p. 345
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