Pozytywiści warszawscy ."Przegląd Tygodniowy" 1866-1876. Seria I, Studia, rewizje, konteksty

Abstract

The present volume collects the results of the first part of the project carried out by a team of scholars who by 2018 will have completed the grant „National Program for the Development of the Humanities” founded by the Ministry if Science and Higher Education. The project under the title „Young Warsaw Positivists. Weekly Review 1866-1876. The Birth of Modern Consciousness. New Methodological and Thematic Approaches. The Critical Edition in Two Volumes” is headed by Anna Janicka, PhD, from the Research Unit of the Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Polish Literature, the University of Białystok. The research and editorial grant will result in the publication of monograph studies of Warsaw positivists and a critical two-volume anthology of the articles from Weekly Review from the period 1866-1876. Part of the project was the conference „The Birth of Modern Consciousness. Young Warsaw Positivists. Weekly Review 1866-1876. Edition I: The representation of Man – Revisions” organized by the Research Unit of the Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Polish Literature and the Chair in Philological Studies ‘East-West’, the University of Białystok, 5-6 December 2014. The conference participants discussed the following problems: - Anthropology and utopia: ideological aspects of the representation of man by young positivists, - Anthropological utopia and social life: the aporias of positivistic thought, - The representation of woman in Weekly Review, - Models of masculinity; the ideal of man-positivist, - The child, the old man, the other, the odd, the native and the stranger in the weekly, - Enthusiasts and the disappointed – the young positivist’s self-portrait, - The scientist and transcendence, - The positivist and the horizon of beauty/aesthetic values, - The categories of truth and falseness, good and evil in young positivits’ description of the world, - The genius and the mediocre in the historical process, - The female and the male scientists: anthropological ideals, The nineteenth century as a category; modernity in the positivist anthropological ideal, - The social roles of positivist elite in the theatrum of everyday life (the critic, the philosopher, the physician, the woman, the lady, the suffragette, etc.), - New theoretical approaches to the issue (feminism, men’s studies, geopoetics, new regionalism, etc.), - The notions of time and space and the picture of new man, - The reception of Warsaw positivism, - The positivists as seen by Polish scholars and by others. The papers collected in the volume have been divided into four parts: 1. The picture of man as presented by the positivists of the second half of the 19th century. 2. The pictures of woman and man in utopian projects of culture and civilization. 3. The role of art and literature in positivistic thought. 4. The ideas of positivistic thought as well as those of Spencer, Buckle and Smiles in Central and Eastern Europe. Edited by Adam Wiślicki, Weekly Review was, until 1876, the voice of Polish liberal intelligentsia, the group of people keen on modernizing Polish culture in accordance with the newest European trends of the epoch: evolutionism, utilitarianism, pragmatism, and scientism. The volume shows the anthropological provenance of positivistic ideas, informed by idealism, utopian thinking and pathos. The second conference dedicated to the intellectua ls gathered around Weekly Review was held in 2015. The discussions and debates focused on the representation of Poland, Europe and the world in the writings of positivists. The second volume of the series is planned to be published in 2016.