Alicja Żywczok

Offering Reassurance as a Form of Strengthening Humanity Not Only during a Pandemic. The Inter-Generational Transmission of Wincenty Kadłubek’s Message

Master Wincenty (ca. 1150–1223), who has been known as Kadłubek since the 15th century, was an unquestionable ally of mankind and especially of Poles. In his work entitled Magistrii Vincentii Chronicon Polonorum he encouraged his readers not to neglect reassurance and to seek it wherever possible. He also advised people to try to enjoy offering reassurance to others and to lead a good life connected with faith in God, which in his belief constitutes the most reliable “safeguard of your happiness”. This article aims to provide answers to several questions (and at the same time to solve a number of related research problems), How does Wincenty perceive reassurance and what significance does he attribute to offering it to other people? What advice does he give on not losing but gaining reassurance and on offering reassurance to others? What factors in his belief constitute stumbling blocks in the process of drawing reassurance for oneself and how to protect oneself against them (i.e., how to prevent their occurrence and how to overcome them)? The use of hermeneutic methods in studying the problems of providing reassurance as a social skill, an element that is very conspicuous in Master Wincenty’s literary output, seems well justified, considering the cognitive and noetic significance of the research subject.

Persistence and Humanization of the Human Race. Reception of the Cultural Output of Stanisław Wawrzyniec Staszic

The exceptional position of Father Stanisław Wawrzyniec Staszic in the history of Poland inspires one to reconstruct and interpret his views also in the field of “human philosophy”, “philosophy of upbringing”or social philosophy. Not disregarding other works by Staszic, this paper focuses first of all on the contents of Ród ludzki, due to its originality and the possibility of transmitting the cultural capital of the past to contemporary and future recipients of culture. The priority cognitive aim of the author of the article was to obtain significant material for the social and cultural development of mankind, using hermeneutic methods. The research problems were formulated as follows: How does Staszic understand mankind/human race? (or how does he define this notion?); Is it possible, according to Staszic, to humanize mankind?; If so, how does it take place and how does it manifest itself?; What factors of persistence (or, possibly, survival) and what factors of humanization of mankind can be identified?; What, according to Staszic, most seriously impeded these processes in the history of mankind?; What role does he think philosophers, the clergy and pedagogues played in this area?; What message for modern generations can be drawn as a result of the analysis and interpretation of Ród ludzki?