An Intellectual Will not Feed on Barren Ideas… Professor Ryszard Panasiuk on his Academic Career, the Warsaw School of the History of Ideas, and the Marxist Utopia

Abstract

Professor Ryszard Panasiuk has been one of the leading Polish philosophers for the last few decades. His books on Hegel, the Young Hegelian movement and Marx belong in the history of ideas canon. This extensive interview with the Professor published here may be a valuable and original source in the history of the intelligentsia and humanities in “People’s Poland”. Professor Panasiuk narrates about his academic career, at the same time drawing a picture of the general changes in the academic philosophy in postwar Poland. He also devotes much attention to his relationship with Bronisław Baczko and other outstanding representatives of the famous Warsaw School of the History of Ideas. Moreover, the Professor examines the history of dissenting tendencies within Polish Marxism after October ’56 and explains the final decay of post-Stalinist orthodoxy in Polish intellectual life of that period. Marx constitutes an important, still worth studying, chapter in the history of European philosophy, but, as Professor Panasiuk argues, because of its concept of “radical community”, Marxism is essentially a utopian ideology.