Abstract

This article concerns the interpretation of the thought of the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza by Jerzy Żuławski, a Polish writer and philosopher from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) was a descendant of Portuguese Sephardic Jews who emigrated to Amsterdam in the 15th century as a result of religious persecutions. He formed his philosophical views in polemic with Descartes, aiming to overcome Cartesian dualism in favor of monism (pantheism). The Dutch thinker’s views were significantly influenced by his attitude to Judaism, seeking to re-evaluate the Jewish religious tradition. Despite being one of the most prominent representatives of European culture, Spinoza did not gain fame during his lifetime. His Theological-Political Treatise was included in the Index of Prohibited Books, while most of his works, including the most important one, Ethics, were published after his death. He lived in the shadow of Descartes and Blaise Pascal, and was completely forgotten after his death for many years. He was rediscovered in the 19th century by Johann W. Goethe and Gottfried J. Herder — thinkers interested in Spinozian pantheism, who consciously blurred the line separating philosophy from literature. Although in Poland the interest in Spinoza was not as great as the interest in Descartes or Immanuel Kant, there were several supporters of the Dutch scholar as well. These included, above all, Jerzy Żuławski (1874–1915), a Polish poet, writer, playwright, and philosopher but also a mountaineer and legionnaire. Today’s readers know him mainly for his Lunar Trilogy, and especially for its first part, On the Silver Globe. Little is usually known about Żuławski’s other works although both their number and quality are impressive. The writer did not confine himself to one genre; he left behind several volumes of poetry, dramas, novels, short stories, and essays. Being a Pole of Jewish origin, he knew the Hebrew language well, as evidenced by his Polish translations of the original Hebrew texts of the Old Testament (1905), which are highly appreciated. For example, Aleksander Brückner claimed that they were “transcriptions rather than translations” and ranked them among the most valuable works by this writer. Żuławski received a thorough professional philosophical education. He graduated from the University of Bern (1897) with a degree in philosophy, having defended his doctoral thesis on the problem of causality in Spinoza (Das Problem der Kausalität bei Sponoza). The thesis was published in full in German, while its simplified version, Benedykt Spinoza – człowiek i dzieło (“Baruch Spinoza: Man and Work”) was published in Polish in 1899. Two years later, in 1901, Żuławski published a comprehensive summary of this work in Przegląd Filozoficzny (“The Philosophical Review”). As a graduate of a renowned Swiss university, he was well acquainted with the views of the leading thinkers of the time, such as Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Eduard von Hartmann, and, to some extent, was inspired by them. Yet, his most important inspiration was Baruch Spinoza. In this article, I will try to present the views of the Dutch scholar, especially his pantheism, as seen by the Young Poland writer from the perspective of his experiences and reflections contained mainly in his book Benedykt Spinoza – człowiek i dzieło.