Leszek Augustyn

Proceeding from a metaphorical (figurative) account of the problem of evil, and based on Leszek Kołakowski’s selected thoughts, this paper’s considerations aim to deliberate on “evil in politics” in the spirit of the shortcomings and excesses of freedom: namely, the lure of autocratic and totalitarian power. At issue is how the bounds of freedom are anthropologically and politically transgressed at the expense (to the point of abolishing) the freedom of others.

The article considers the religious nature of the creative life of Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) from a philosophical point of view. The writer’s creative life is understood as a struggle (bodily and spiritual) between God and the world, life and death. This struggle builds a kind of stage on which the writer’s life unfolds. In addition, the article takes up the perception and understanding of reality as “banality” (Rus. pošlost’), the demonism and atheism that are connected with it, the religious function of art, and the ways of seeking salvation (at various levels of experience and under different guises: the salvation of the world, salvation outside the world, and the salvation of oneself). Finally, the problem of religious alienation is considered, seen through the prism of the life and creative experience of Gogol.

Recenzja książki: Janusz Dobieszewski, Absolut i historia. W kręgu myśli rosyjskiej, TAiWPN Universitas, Kraków 2012, 342 strony

Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadayev (1794–1856), the author of the famous Philosophical Letters, is usually regarded as a “paradoxical” conservative, a representative of historiosophy and a social thinker. In the present paper Chaadayev is discussed from the perspective of the philosophy of religion with special emphasis put on the following issues: tradition vs religion (the traditionalist’s standpoint), history vs religion, freedom vs religion, and an outline of the proposed philosophy of religion (or religious philosophy). The paper also touches upon typically Russian issues: Russian identity facing the West, and primarily religious Occidentalism, which was the position taken and elaborated by Chaadayev.