Stanisław Barszczak, Lepszym aniołom naszej natury,

Nie ma nic silniejszego niż serce ochotnika… Tak więc wybaczcie mi tę odwagę, by zabrać tutaj głos. A wiecie dlaczego? Bo nie mogę porzucić człowieka samego w epoce terroryzmów i powszechnej globalizacji! To wiedzcie najpierw, że nie staram się być szlachetny, wręcz obawiam się tego. A pomysł posiadania więcej miłości niż posiadłem jej kiedykolwiek, jak i wiedza o tym, że już nigdy nie mógłbym jej posiąść, dopiero to przeraża mnie jeszcze gorzej niż cokolwiek innego. Ktoś mi podpowiada już: jakkolwiek jest jakaś bitwa o zasrane wzgórze, to wiesz, zrezygnuj za wczasu. Jest jedna rzecz, którą możesz zrobić. Możesz zrezygnować teraz. Możesz odmówić prowadzenia tej rozmowy. Osobiście powiem tedy: widzisz, nie mogę tego uczynić. Nie można zostawić człowieka. Nie można zostawić go w tym ataku na jakieś tam rządy choćby najpiękniejszej góry.  Tutaj góra symbolizuje dla mnie uczucia ludzkie, które trzeba zdobywać nieustannie. Nie można tak tego zostawić- osobiście nie zgadzam się na to. Głos z trzeciego rzędu zaraz mi podpowiada- że to wszystko jest w rękach Boga-a może Bóg naprawdę chce tego, w taki sposób właśnie. Przecież wszyscy, ale to wszyscy umrą. I my stracimy górę. Nawet jeśli ktoś zdobędzie wzgórze- co im zostało, co nam zostało- co po wszelkiej amunicji, oto nasi najlepsi ludzie odeszli? Istotnie więc przekonuję sie, że nie mogę odmówić, nawet nie mogę wycofać się, nie mogę zostawić piechura, by walczył sam o wzgórze. To są moi ludzie, moi chłopcy. Boże, pomóż mi, nie mogę tak rozstać się z nimi… To było 12 grudnia 1981, oto Wojciech Jaruzelski uczuł się gnany losem, by ogłosić rano, że będzie żyć w niesławie. Padało całą noc, jak mi się zdawało. Następnego dnia była niedziela, trzynastego grudnia. Z prószącym śniegiem zaczęły się internowania przywódców Solidarności. Nastało Boże Narodzenie, ale nie jako dzień czy sezon – choć było oczekiwanie, obietnica pokoju, tak i obowiązek przebicia zasłony prostoty, oddzielającej mnie od całego wszechświata, bardziej atrakcyjnej odpowiedzialności, z racji na tę samą noc, prawdziwej chrześcijańskiej antycypacji tego, że Bóg Wszechmogący, sam Bóg, w momentach ciszy tej nocy uczynił skok w nieznane między to, co boskie i ludzkie i gminne zarazem dla nas wszystkich. Zapanowało oczekiwanie i wyzwanie: a ja znaleźć spokoju nie mogłem, znaleźć radości, która nie byłaby moja, znaleźć przebaczenia i być pojednanym- podczas gdy w rzeczywistości, mój jedyny grzech i moja jedyna cnota, wtedy i teraz, to była moja samotność. Oto duchy przechadzały się w moim sercu. A marzenia nie są tą męczarnią ludzką ostatnią. Często zaczynają się od uniesienia różnego od mojego doświadczenia w życiu. Cierpienie przychodzi, gdy czuję, że szczęście ustępuje, a ja usiłuję je za zatrzymać, i smucę się z tego powodu. Czy płaczę za każdym razem otwarcie, tego też nie wiem. Ale nawet już wtedy nie wiedziałem, jak wiele z tego mógłbym ukazać komuś, kto widział mnie kiedy te marzenia mnie ogarniały.  A potem poznałem przyjaciela. W jakiś sposób zapragnąłem stać się lepszym dla niego, wiedząc, że on posiadł na nowo jedyny instynkt walki. A to było coś, czego potrzebowałem, żeby uwierzyć – że wszyscy ludzie gdziekolwiek są, mają godność cenić własne życie. I to już wystarczyło, bym ujrzał wystarczająco ramię tego, który rzuca cię wilkom. I wtedy znowu rozmyślałem o przyjacielu, szczególnie gdy zastanawiałem się nad samym sobą. Kim jesteśmy naprawdę? Czy jesteśmy teraz reprezentantami naszych najgorszych uczuć, czy raczej tych najlepszych? Bo spodziewamy się czegoś zawsze, i marzymy by znaleźć gdzieś wiarę. Ale zaraz potem wątpliwość rozprzestrzenia się, nierzadko przy naszym udziale, jako ciemny strumień cieczy, karmiony nie tyle przez świat poza nami, co przez jakieś źródło w naszych duszach. Wiara i wątpliwość pojawiają się w naszym życiu, jak dwóch gości, przybywających bez zaproszenia i pozostawionych ich zachciankom. A my karmimy ich obu wciąż, a gdy opuszczają nas wreszcie, zapamiętujemy głos każdego z nich i pytamy się, który z nich wyrażał nasze prawdziwe serca -gdy oba to czyniły. Pojawia się w związku z wiarą i wątpliwościami pierwsza odpowiedź myślna wreszcie: jeśli ludzie kiedyś byli równi, powiedzmy kiedy walczyli o niepodległość Stanów Zjednoczonych w Ameryce, ci wszyscy Polacy, Czesi, Anglicy i Murzyni, istotnie byli oni równi wszędzie, i naprawdę nie było czegoś takiego jak cudzoziemiec, obcokrajowiec- byli tylko ludzie wolni i niewolnicy. W wojnie secesyjnej Ameryki, wszystkie rzeczy zostały zamienione, moc, ideały, stara moralność, praktyczna konieczność wojskowa. To, co pozostaje na zewnątrz nich, wydaje się, to musi być pokusa, aby być bogiem. Bo konflikt istnieje w sercu każdego człowieka, między racjonalnym a irracjonalnym, między dobrem a złem. A dobro, nie zawsze zwycięża. Czasami, ciemna strona zwycięża to, co Abraham Lincoln nazwał lepszymi aniołami naszej natury. Każdy człowiek otrzymał punkt krytyczny. Ty i ja także. Jeśli jest coś w życiu o czym wiem, że jest prawdziwe, to jest to, że samo życie jest kwestią ducha.Człowiek ze złamanym duchem, którego dusza nie była karmiona niczym innym z wyjątkiem przekonania, że trucizna w jego własnym sercu jest udziałem całej ludzkości; taki człowiek nie ma nadziei na nic poza pragnieniem, żeby każdy, kogo spotyka podzielał jego niedolę- taki człowiek jest rzeczywiście chory, i jego ciało, jakkolwiek zdrowe w swej potencjalności, jest skorumpowane. Natomiast  osoba z wyznaczonym sobie celem, ogrzewana wrażeniem, że mimo wszystkich swoich niedociągnięć, coś w niej mieszka, że jest zdolna do kochania i bycia kochaną, taka osoba może znieść wszystko, jak wierzę wszystko może, i wszystko znosi. Ciało tej osoby zagoi się szybciej od tego, co wyobrażają sobie medyczne głowy i umysły. Przezwycięży ból; w wielu przypadkach nie będzie czuć go w ogóle. Tak więc w rzeczy samej to, o co walczymy nawzajem, to jest to, żeby każdy z nas zawsze był zdrowy!(jest to fragment opowieści o Polskiej Solidarności z 1980 roku, będzie kontynuacja)

 

 

      Stanisław Barszczak

 

      A struggle for esteem. On philosophical anthropology by Paul Ricoeur and Joseph Conrad

 

 

    Abstract: There has always been a hermeneutic problem in Christianity, as Paul Ricoeur told, the hermeneutic question today seems to us a new one.There has always been a hermeneutic problem in Christianity, because Christianity proceeds from a proclamation. Man is this plural and collective unity in which the unity of destination, the differences of destinies are to be understood through each other. If the Resurrection is resurrection from the dead, all the hope and freedom are in spite of death. Testimony gives something to be interpreted. Joseph Conrad proposes something new. A man’s most open actions have a secret side to them. The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. So, they talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience. Then, a caricature(in human life) is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth. Going home must be like going to render an account… Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men. History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird. I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go, Conrad said. Though, in order to gain respect you need to give us wisdom.

 

 

Keywords in this article:  transcendence, memory, ethics, beyond relational externality, the proximity with no relation, the struggle for identity, immanence, substitution, the inevitability of God, agathological consciousness, love

 

 

1. From a narrative identity to a recognition of the relation of the self to an other

 

This essay seeks to follow also the intellectual path of Paul Ricoeur at grips first of all with the notion of identity. “Oneself as Another” (1990) and “Memory, History, Forgetting”(2000) are at the heart of the topic. The essay also studies certain aspects of The Course of Recognition (2004), the last great work of the philosopher returning to this topic. Thus it is observed how Ricoeur grants to different theories of the quest for the temporal meaning of identity a choice place in the development of a hermeneutics of the self, and how he leads the reader to the heart of a central inquiry, that of the capacity of a person to establish a relationship to himself/herself, and to the society. Rights of mankind even cosmopolitical cannot be claimed on my behalf unless they are recognized in the same way for others. This extension of individual capacities belonging to legal persons concerns not only the enumeration of their civic rights but widens the sphere of application to new categories of individuals and powers previously scorned. This extension is the occasion for conflicts stemming from exclusions due to social inequalities but also those arising from forms of discrimination inherited from the past that still afflict various minorities. Disdain and humiliation, however, infect the social bond at a level that surpasses rights; this concerns social esteem directed to personal value and to the capacity to pursue happiness in accordance with one’s own conception of the good life. This struggle for esteem occurs in the context of different spheres of life: at work, the struggle to prevail, to protect one’s rank in the hierarchy of authority; at home, relations of neighborhood and proximity, together with all the many encounters that make up daily life. It is always personal capacities that demand to be recognized by others. The question then arises whether the social bond is constituted only in the struggle for recognition or whether there is not also at the origin a sort of good will tied to the resemblance of one person to another in the great human family.

When Paul Ricoeur distinguishes human time both from inner and from cosmic time, what he wants to do is call our attention to the time of human action and suffering. Only in and through the act of telling a story can this time acquire a figure and, in so doing, be preserved from oblivion as ‘time passes by’. Story telling makes it be that there is someone who can be referred to when we ask: ‘Who has done this?’, ‘Who has behaved in this way?’, or ‘To whom did such a thing happen?’ This comes down to asserting that an individual or collective entity can only be identified along with and through the act of composing what we call a narrative, be it of the fictive or the historical kind. As Paul Ricoeur states  in a condensed formula: ‘the story relates the Whom of the action’. Or, as he also puts it: ‘the identity of this whom is no other than his narrative identity’. The notion of ‘a narrative identity’ allows one to think through the question of ‘personal identity’ in a new way, taking into full account the temporal dimension (the temporality) of a being who, by existing with others in the horizon of a common world, is led to transform him (her)self in the course of a life history, that is, who is what he or she is only in the course of becoming himself or herself. This notion also makes it possible for Paul Ricoeur to distinguish two dimensions: identity as sameness (Latin: idem); and identity as selfhood (Latin: ipse). The thesis I hope to develop here in outline is the following: “Oneself as an Other” shows that selfhood cannot be reduced to a form of narrative identity. And this, because the question of selfhood exceeds that of narrative identity… It is precisely this excess that brings to the fore the ethical dimension of the self, thereby inviting the question: how selfhood is associated with narrative identity, without being absorbed into it. Only on this basis is it possible to do justice to the ethical patterns embodied in the very act of telling a story. To put it otherwise: When we tell a story we inevitably prefer a certain course of action to others, we value one character and devalue another. The axiological neutrality of narrative is not equivalent to ethical neutrality… We have to bear in mind that, for Paul Ricoeur, a ‘philosophy of selfhood’ is needed to replace the philosophy of the ego, the advantage being that the refusal of the latter makes it possible to dispense with the claim of a transcendental egology to furnish an epistemological foundation for philosophy. In opposition to an ego that, in a specific act of reflection, removes itself from the world, the self recognises itself as having been given over to itself, thereby at the same time acknowledging, as fundamental to its very being, its essential passivity. In sum, the self understands itself by being open to otherness and affected by it. It follows that, in its own apprehension of selfhood, the self feels itself vulnerable, exposed to others and to those actions of the other by which it is affected, and this whether the actions in question are its own or those done by others. This amounts to saying that this kind of self-apprehension encompasses a temporal experience which schematises itself as a life history. Thus, narrative identity presents itself as the essential structure of human identity and so of human self-understanding. Paul Ricoeur also holds narrative identity responsible for mediating between the two poles of personal identity, the pole of sameness (idem), referred to by what we call character, a set of innate or acquired attitudes and capacities, and the pole of selfhood (ipse), including trustworthiness and faithfulness to oneself, despite all the deviation and transformations which mark the path of life… The latter polarity is the key to what Ricoeur names his ‘philosophy of selfhood’, where narrative identity ensures a mediation between the two poles (character and selfhood). Character can be the object of a narrative thanks to a narrative identity through which it is referred to the temporal becoming of a particular existence. However, it is only when we return the pole of selfhood that the ethical dimension of a person (its personal identity) can be fully revealed… By remaining true to oneself (with regard to which the crucial experience is that of keeping one’s word), the identity of the self emerges in response to the continuous changes which occur in the course of a life, and this in the form of a relation to an other which is constitutive of one very own self. The dialectical relationship involved in being true to oneself also makes it possible for the self to be true to others. As Ricoeur puts it: “to be faithful to oneself is for a person to behave in such a way that an other person can rely upon him or her”.[1]  My self-engagement in keeping my word makes it possible for another to trust me, which at the same time assures me of my own internal consistency, of my own identity. The result is not some sort of sticking to oneself by dint of stiffness or inflexibility but rather what is meant by being reliable, responsible.

So, for Ricoeur, ethics has its place within a philosophy of selfhood. The corollary of this is the impossibility of reducing ethics to the question of moral obligation, as in a Kantian horizon, where the subject (viewed exclusively from a transcendental point of view) subjects himself to the categorial imperative as the form through which the moral law presents itself to him. Beyond the universality of the moral law, there is the aspiration for a true and good life. Because this could seen as something of a paradox, what now has to be done is to complete the Kantian ethics with an ethics drawn from Aristotle. But what does this call for a true life, placed under the sign of the Good and heard within oneself, actually consist in? Ricoeur answers: ‘I am called to live well with and for the other within righteous (fair) institutions’. [2] This formulation lets us see how each one of us is responsible for developing his own answer to the injunction to lead a good life, a life oriented toward the Good. It is the diversity of our personal answers to this call that explains the variety of those narratives by means of which our life experiences get told. Through them we are confronted with the crises of identity that have affected the self in the past and that can even lead to a loss of self. Some of these crises may be analyzed as permanent, as in cases where the self is diluted ‘forever’.(The Man without Qualities) . But the self can also be presented in a multitude of facets. An approach of the coherence of a life in “Oneself as an Other” concentrates on the question of the intrinsic constitution of the self, excludes neither the experience of love nor the relationship established between the self (ipse ) and God. Only through just a genuine dissolution and destitution of the ego could the self be fully restored to itself by God, acknowledge itself as being a creature among the other creatures of this very same God. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ (Lk 6.31). For, by starting out from action, the latter inevitably privileges the ethical dimension of selfhood at the expense of the affective and the mystical. “Inward creative reciprocity” of contemporary, this state itself is but a further stage of man’s ontological individualization or self-interpretation in existence. The “reciprocity of love” first of all consists in a search for the meaningfulness of events for our own existence, which results in “ciphering” their significance into the weaving of the thread of our existence. It is also an attempt to find the meanings which “the beloved” gives them in reference to his own thread. The interrogatory process is shared by both members of this relationship. The identification of the dialogical relations occurs merely in the perspective of the creative function of man, because it proceeds using all the ways and means of creativity. We seek for clues of our lifes to the meanings to be given to our interior existence as radically turned toward the Other, considered as caught within his own identical quest. This self interpretation in destiny is not oriented toward ciphering a rational intersubjunctive message. We attempt to penetrate into the most secretive tendencies and intentions of the other self and into the way in which he appreciates their significance by confronting them with our own, in order to dig deeper into our virtualities. So we sustain the perduring validity of our very self, it must be wrung from the fleeting segments of existence and spun by their means. In order to “transcend” our natural, empirical, everyday self at the present stage in which we are constituted and seemingly stabilized, we must reorganize even our vital functioning at its elementary stage. So by trial and error crystallizes at the and a mutual self-revelation. My own new self becomes “other without ever stopping in its course and without identifying itself with a form; indeed, no definite form may grasp it. We then address our interrogatory quest simultaneously in a two-fold direction: toward our innermost self and toward the Other, while we attempt to scrutinize the most intimately personal experiences, convictions, and attitudes in their foundations and reasons. But we do not expect to find within the Other an already established sense of life which we could accept. This must come from within our own resources and upon our own evidence, but none of these to offer which is ready and waiting to be discovered. So to know “all the reasons” for our choice “we have to invent ourselves.” This interrogatory quest is, thus, not yet a passive flow. We address ourselves to the Other as to a witness and a judge, seeking his approval or consent for our deepest concern and conflicts. We then introduce the Other into the very heart of our creative investigation as a second self. We face him as an “other self”…We face him as a being-in-a-quest, other than ourselves and over against whom we may measure our own self. He is an “other self”. None of their meanings appears capable of transmitting, of holding this unique significance we seek to establish.

2. We create the new phase of our creative world

According to Prof. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka the dynamic thread of our communication with the other self, this creative process is constructive.[3] Furthermore, the self-interpretation in destiny employs for its own purpose the means of human functioning and the constituted life-world. But it is by no means subject to its organizing regulations and projects; on the contrary, it is worked out through a functional system devised for its own unique purpose by the interrogating process itself. Mrs. Professor also repeats: the soul addresses the other self with a transparent sincerity that is not capable of mastery even toward herself alone. She addresses him beyond the reach of any objectivity, leaving the life-pursuits, concerns, and values aside…So do we really ever meet the other self in his truth? Each self progresses, in fact, in separation; in the quest after the new, final interpretative system each has scrutinized all personal signals. There is the quest, by discarding the interpretative schemes one by one like the leaves of a tree…So from time to time we are looking for the self-centered search for the meaning of life or of human existence (cfr. Kafka, Camus). And so is good, when man is convinced that the self and the other self are firmly established within the same meaningful text, that he has constructed a common “universe” which we both share, and that this is meaningful with reference equally to us and to him. But the instants in which we communicate with each other in our ultimate concern with existence are extremely rich in “substance”. So in the common search with the Other, the clues are found for their working into a thread of destiny-every discourse, every interpretative process, every communication fails. But we believe on the eternal, immortal soul. The soul, on the one hand, is left free from the empirical ties. On the other hand, the Other having detached himself and vanished from her horizon, the soul finds herself to be indeed lost. However, cut off from the world, she has spontaneous, and on the other side of the opening abyss the soul discovers the Absolute Other abiding with her face to face. Consequently we consider ourselves to be carried by our creative spontaneity, so we may move to invent more and more and create the new phase of our creative world.

Paul Ricoeur taking as his point of departure, human action (which is itself never ethically neutral), Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of the self not only led him to a conception of narrative identity as forming an essential part of self-understanding but also to a recognition of the relation of the self to an other, a relation intrinsic to the very constitution of the self. On the third part of my book titled “Another and he” I describe the Self in possession of me. That self needs be on the best possible of the realization ourselves. There is here a problem not only what a state we are in but also a problem of being in the state indeed. I am interesting in the liberty of a person but before all I love the truth of our life. My Self may have of me but it depends on many reasons. Life is often messy, things don’t fit together as they should, we often don’t get what we want. There are the questions: Where does our need for love come from, and does it ever disappear? Or are we condemned, or blessed, to fall in love again and again and again? But by going out unflinchingly in front of us the philosophy of today is able indeed, without a trace of sentimentality or condescension, to reassure us – and to show us perhaps what life is really like. What natural right does not recognize is the place of struggle in the conquest of equality and justice, the role of negative conduct in the motivation leading to struggle: lack of consideration, humiliation, disdain, to say nothing of violence in all its physical and psychological forms. The struggle for recognition is pursued on several levels. It begins on the level of affective relations tied to the transmission of life, to sexuality, and to descendents. This struggle for recognition is pursued on the juridical plane of the rights of civil society, centered on the ideas of liberty, justice, and solidarity. Rights cannot be claimed on my behalf unless they are recognized in the same way for others. This extension of individual capacities belonging to legal persons concerns not only the enumeration of their civic rights but widens the sphere of application to new categories of individuals and powers previously scorned. This extension is the occasion for conflicts stemming from exclusions due to social inequalities but also those arising from forms of discrimination inherited from the past that still afflict various minorities. Disdain and humiliation, however, infect the social bond at a level that surpasses rights; this concerns social esteem directed to personal value and to the capacity to pursue happiness in accordance with one’s own conception of the good life. This struggle for esteem occurs in the context of different spheres of life: at work, the struggle to prevail, to protect one’s rank in the hierarchy of authority; at home, relations of neighborhood and proximity, together with all the many encounters that make up daily life. It is always personal capacities that demand to be recognized by others. The question then arises whether the social bond is constituted only in the struggle for recognition or whether there is not also at the origin a sort of good will tied to the resemblance of one person to another in the great human family.

 

3. The diseases of faith –  thinking of Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad grew up in the Polish Ukraine, a large, fertile plain between Poland and Russia. It was a divided nation, with four languages, four religions, and a number of different social classes. A fraction of the Polish-speaking inhabitants, including Conrad’s family, belonged to the szlachta, a hereditary class in the aristocracy on the social hierarchy, combining qualities of gentry and nobility. They had political power, despite their impoverished state. Conrad’s father, Apollo Korzeniowski, studied for six years at St. Petersburg University, which he left before earning a degree. Conrad’s mother, Eva Bobrowska, was thirteen years younger than Apollo and the only surviving daughter in a family of six sons. After she met him in 1847, Eva was drawn to Apollo’s poetic temperament and passionate patriotism, while he admired her lively imagination. Although Eva’s family disapproved of the courtship, the two were married in 1856. After Apollo was arrested on suspicion of involvement in revolutionary activities, the family was thrown into exile. Eva developed tuberculosis, and she gradually declined until she died in 1865. The seven-year-old Conrad, who witnessed her decline, was absolutely devastated. He also developed health problems, migraines and lung inflammation, which persisted throughout his life. Apollo too fell into decline, and he died of tuberculosis in 1869. At age eleven, Joseph became an orphan. The young boy became the ward of his uncle, who loved him dearly. Thus began Joseph’s Krakow years, which ended when he left Poland as a teenager in 1874. This move was a complex decision, resulting from what he saw as the intolerably oppressive atmosphere of the Russian garrison. He spent the next few years in France, mastering his second language and the fundamentals of seamanship. The author made acquaintances in many circles, but his “bohemian” friends were the ones who introduced him to drama, opera, and theater. In the meantime, he was strengthening his maritime contacts, and he soon became an observer on pilot boats. The workers he met on the ship, together with all the experiences they recounted to him, laid the groundwork for much of the vivid detail in his novels. By 1878, Joseph had made his way to England with the intention of becoming an officer on a British ship. He ended up spending twenty years at sea. A journey to the Congo in 1890 was Joseph’s inspiration to write “Heart of Darkness”. His condemnation of colonialism is well documented in the journal he kept during his visit. He returned to England and soon faced the death of his beloved guardian and uncle. Still always writing, he eventually returned to Poland, and he then traveled to America, where he died of a heart attack in 1924 at the age of 67. Conrad’s literary work would have a profound impact on the Modernist movement, influencing a long list of modern writers.

Is there not also a central obscurity, something noble, heroic, beautiful . . . but obscure, obscure? Tolstoi said, “These essays do suggest that he is misty in the middle as well as at the edges, that the secret casket of his genius contains a vapour rather than a jewel”. Moreover the base from which he starts: Christianity “is distasteful to me”(Lev N.Tolstoi) If anybody had ever struggled with a soul, I am the man. . . . I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.” Nevertheless achieves in the course of the novel what one has to call a saving faith, even though he does it at the price of his life. Heyst is not an “infidel…he only thinks he is…Conrad is. Isn’t actually stageable: too much depends on the narrator’s ironic control. For me Victory passes the crudest, indispensable test of tragedy: it makes you cry. That, though, is a necessary but not sufficient condition of tragedy…The tears in Victory are not tragic ones…Heyst says, “She was engaged in the task of defending her position in life. …It’s a very respectable task”. Heyst père is not systematic but a “destroyer of all systems, of hopes, of beliefs”…Heyst is a post-Hume Victorian unbeliever,…But the philosophical position is strong more by force of character than by any argumentation: “You still believe in something, then? You believe in flesh and blood, perhaps? A full and equable contempt would soon do away with that, too. But since you have not attained to it, I advise you to cultivate that form of contempt which is called pity. . . but all action is bound to be harmful It is devilish. That is why this world is evil upon the whole. But I have done with it! I shall never lift a little finger again. At one time I thought that intelligent observation of facts was the best way of cheating the time which is allotted to us whether we want it nor not; but now I have done with observation, too…by folly alone the world moves. His apparently illogical lurch in to action in the interests of progress, bringing coal as “a great stride forward for these regions”…Heyst has none himself, is never hostile or contemptuous. Compare his narrative to Lena: Being cornered, as I have told you, he went down on his knees and prayed. What do you think of that?” Heyst paused. She looked at him earnestly. You didn’t make fun of him for that?” she said. Heyst made a brusque movement of protest. “My dear girl, I am not a ruffian,” he cried. .. Heyst is in fact as far from Kurtz as from Don Martin Decoud, dying because he can’t stand his own company. Heyst prefers his own company and consistently ascribes all his misfortunes to involvement with the world…“A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth that which is good.”Victory is the story of Heyst’s attainment of self-knowledge (perhaps my mother never has any need of that), but whereas in the primeval garden self-knowledge comes, along with the certainty of death, in the later paradise of youth, self-knowledge is of a redeemed state. Heyst the sceptic is unable to resist the temptation of his Christian impulses…Heyst felt a sudden pity for these beings.[4]  Heyst’s goodness—what else to call it?—provokes him to intervene first in the matter of Morrison then in that of Lena,… The Christ-like self-sacrificing love of Lena, for instance, is much clearer in Victory…Heyst-a man more unexpected than an angel. “Nobody has sent me. I just happened along.” In the New Testament our Lord repeatedly assures those he has miraculously healed that their faith has made them whole: without it there would have been no miracle. The moral discovery in Conrad’s Victory is that it may be possible to love God unawares. before Heaven, I am not!’”… As to me, I am no blacker than the gentleman you are thinking of, and I have neither more nor less determination.” It is true that at one point he calls himself “the world itself, come to pay you a visit” But the other signs are consistently Satanic…A man living alone with a Chinaman on an island takes care to conceal property of that kind so well that the devil himself. ”Heyst’s skepticism…Lena or to Heyst, whose convictions are actually redeemed by his passions…Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm mental fog”… You should try to love me!” she said. He made a movement of astonishment…She resisted without a moment of faltering, because she was no longer deprived of moral support; because she was a human being who counted; because she was no longer defending herself for herself alone; because of the faith that had been born in her—the faith in the man of her destiny, and perhaps in the Heaven which had sent him so wonderfully to cross her path…We have here the wholeness of faith…

 

    4. Fight for own sense isolation from past

 

The book of Job demonstrates the exstra-ordinary role which the idea of divine personality plays there. For K. Barth the moral is the discovery that in dealing with God we have to do with a totally unique Personality, with a Subject which alone offers content to the predicates ascribed to him. [5]At the outset of the Jobian drama Job knows only Elohim, the Deus revelatus, God as partner and friend. His idea of God has been formed and confirmed by benevolent experiences in life. Now he suffers terrifying afflictions. He is bewildered because as a believer in one God he knows that whatever sorrow befalls him comes from God. As a monotheist he knows that suffering comes from no secondary god. Job’s faith and honesty force upon him the recognition of a relentless, cruel, hostile force. At the same time the memory of Elohim, and the covenantal compact support his protestation against this alienating power. He appeals to the co-signatory of that ‘record on high’ for witness and vindication. Only at the conclusion of the dialogues with man and the voices out of the whirlwind does Job come to know the identity of this alien and unpredictable form. Yahweh, the concealed personality of the divine, is the same as Elohim. In Job’s moment of truth, the ‘two gods’ are knows as one. Adversary and advocate inhere within the same Personality. Through this shock of recognition Job finds his reconciliation with God.

How to live? First of All we want to give the memory of our land, from the Bug River to the Oder, from the Baltic see to the Tatras mountaines. For it is in our hands that the future of our country lies. It is not enough to give a sign, such even as solidarity, but pass a personal wisdom! But what I can see here, you are disconsolate spirits! My eye is not looking in another direction! And we need to acquire this land! It depends on the conquest of the earth! Then we have the eyes half shut. But on the other hand may well! In search of a answer for the problem above, let’s give a famous text reproduced here with the English passport Pole, Joseph Conrad. In search of power from on high, we rely on the bible. “Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.” You may had read the texts by Joseph Conrad: “He struggled with himself, too. I saw it. I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.” And again Conrad: “They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance.”[6]  But also: “They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.” “I couldn’t have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life…” “They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance.”On the other hand: “There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.” “We couldn’t understand because we were too far… and could not remember because we were traveling in the night of first ages, those ages that had gone, leaving hardly a sign… and no memories.” “We live in the flicker, may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday.” According to Joseph Conrad, even if we have reached a perfection that awaits us at the end of horror. „Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn’t touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror, of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision, he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: The horror! The horror!” So, “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it much.” “It’s extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts…Droll thing life is, that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself, that comes too late, a crop of inextinguishable regrets.” “My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel, it is, before all, to make you see.” “Let them think what they liked, but I didn’t mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank, but that’s not the same thing.” The writer has said: I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.” “Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream–making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is the very essence of dreams…” “No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence, that which makes its truth, its meaning, its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream, alone! And here we make new mistakes, we begin to do errors: “There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.” His hero has mentioned: “He hated all this, and somehow he couldn’t get away.” He always loves past: “I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more, the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires and expires, too soon, too soon before life itself”. Finally, at this point I want to thank God for my forest, the house where I live now, for it has been one of the dark places of the earth, like a bow over the ark of the covenant of the Lord in the Old Testament. So, I meant to swim until I sank there. It is here that I could open up more strongly the great culture of the East. Also on the west: “There must be a necessity superior to our conceptions there”. I started here issue and publish my books. They now keep me alive. “Of all the inanimate objects, of all men’s creations, books are the nearest to us for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to the truth, and our persistent leanings to error. But most of all they resemble us in their precious hold on life.”In the jungle of passion and adversity, let us support the hope of God’s infinite mercy. Do not be surprised with your weaknesses, but treated each other as you are. Love always pain, which in addition to being a work of divine wisdom, reveals even more the work of His love. Angels envy us, Father Pio said, just one: the fact that they cannot suffer for God. Only pain one can say with certainty of the soul: My God, you see well that I love you!

The uncertainty would have called Joseph Conrad probably as the resignation:“Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham.” Earth would be easier without the sun than without the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Father Pio said. We adore and bless especially that which is most difficult for you. You should ask you about one thing only, love for Him. All the rest should be thanksgiving. Mass is infinite like Jesus. Think of the mercy of God is the only thing that sustains me. To put on Jesus Christ we die to ourselves. And it does not mean leave yourself, but make an effort built in imitation of Christ himself.” „They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force, nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.” And it also means: ”In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility”. The Lord is ready to do great things, but on condition that we are truly humble. Let us serve the Lord with all our heart and will. He always gives us more than we deserve this. “Pain is a grace, which is not deserved. I speak that somebody really loves me when agrees to suffer along with me. Otherwise, it is usurer, who in my heart wants to put his sordid business, ” Leon Bloy said. We must go deeper, to our interior! For “Life knows us not and we do not know life, we don’t know even our own thoughts. Half the words we use have no meaning whatever and of the other half each man understands each word after the fashion of his own folly and conceit. Faith is a myth and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of tomorrow”. Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it”. In depth of the heart lies the root of all good and, unfortunately, all evil: there is a conversion must take place or “metanoia”- so, the change of direction, mentality, life choice. Saint Paul, the most educated of his generation, knew a Syrian language. But he never met Jesus personally before. He was called by name: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”(Act. 9,4) But after his conversion preaches the doctrine of the mystical body of the church. It begins the mission to Ananias, who spoke to Saint Paul: “you have to be baptized in the death of Christ.” This is the name of Jesus is persecuted. Paul now understands what the man what his data, the data Christ. Moreover, he understood: you will be known in the face of authoritarian governments and priorities of this world only from suffering of yours. This is the whole conversion. And now add the mystery of our faith, the bank one is not bad: ”Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you, smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, Come and find out.”“The world is to the young, Joseph  Conrad said”. “Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” Make love, do this in memory of our justice.

 

[1]  Cfr. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (Soi-même comme un autre), trans. Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 (1990); Paul Ricoeur, La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli. Paris: Seuil, 2000.

[2] Cfr. Paul Ricoeur, O sobie samym jako innym, Translation by Bogdan Chełstowski, Warsaw 2003, p.285.

[3] Cfr. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Logos and Life, Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1987-2000, 4 vols.

[4] The lady artists of Zangiacomo’s troupe, exploited, hopeless, devoid of charm or grace, whose fate of cheerless dependence invested their coarse and joyless features with a touch of pathos”, cfr.: J. Conrad, Victory 1915, p.60. In: Victory by Joseph Conrad, Dover Publications; Dover Thrift Editions edition, 1990.

[5]Karl Barth’s Job: “Morality and Theodicy”, see: Harold M. Schulweis, The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Jan., 1975), pp. 156-167 (article consists of 12 pages). Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press.

6 Cfr. all quotes of Heart of Darkness (Penguin Classics) by Joseph Conrad, Owen Knowles, Robert Hampson and J. H. Stape, 2007.

 (to be continued)

 

 

 

Stanislaw Barszczak, The transformation as Alisdair MacIntyre’s concept of social and cultural change 1. A community as the bearer of traditions Alisdair MacIntyre’s “Whose Justice” Within Rationality? ” recalls the four traditions of the intellectual enquiry, in fact, an outline narrative history of traditions of anquiry into what practical rationality is and what justice is (Alisdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988, see Chapter XVIII, the Rationality of Traditions). I do not stop here on what it is that intellectual study, but now I go directly to the comment Alisdair MacIntyre’s characteristics of these traditions. So the Aristotelian tradition emerges from the rhetorical and reflective life of the polis and the dialectical teaching of the Academy and the Lyceum. Then the Augustinian tradition flourished in the houses of religious orders and in the secular communities which provided the environment for such houses both in its earlier, and in its Thomistic, version in universities. Next and subsequent tradition of Calvinist Augustinianism and renaissance Aristotelianism informed the lives of congregations, of law courts and universities. Finally ‘tradition’ of liberalism, an acknowledgment of a need for the writing of a narrative history of a fourth tradition is, beginning as a repudiation of tradition in the name of abstract, universal principles of reason, turned itself into a politically embodied power, whose inability to bring its debates on the nature and context of those universal principles to a conclusion has had the unintended effect of transforming liberalism into a tradition (ibidem see, p.349) But there can be no rationality as such. Why not… Because these traditions of course differ from each other over much more than their contending accounts of practical rationality and justice, they differ in their catalogs of the virtues, in their conceptions of selfhood, and in their metaphysical cosmologies, A. MacIntyre writes. Moreover, these traditions have very different histories in respect of their relationships with each other. Today you need only one tradition, prominent the Scottish thinker seems to tell us. So the liberal tradition with its relativist challenge rests upon a denial that rational debate between and rational choice among rival traditions is possible, Alisdair MacIntyre said. What’s more, the perspectivist challenge, Alisdair MacIntyre spoken, puts in question the possibility of making truth-claims from within any one tradition. So, while the thinkers of the Enlightenment insisted upon a particular type of view of truth and rationality, one in which truth is guaranteed by rational method and rational person, the protagonists of post-Enlightenment relativism and perspectivism claim that the Enlightenment conceptions of truth and rationality cannot be sustained. What neither was or is able to recognize is the kind of rationality possessed by traditions. Therefore philosopher Edmund Burke supposed of following nature “wisdom without reflection” (see, Reflections on the Revolution in rance, ed.C.C.O’Brien, Harmondsworth, 1982, p.129). The conclusion to which the various arguments have led is not only that it is out of the debates, conflicts, and enquiry of socially embodied, historically contingent traditions that contentions regarding practical rationality and justice are advanced, modified, abandoned, or replaced, but that there is no other way to engage in the formulation, elaboration, rational justification, and criticism of accounts of practical rationality and justice except from within some one particular tradition in conversation, cooperation, and conflict with those who inhabit the same tradition (ibidem see, p.350). But for now considerations urged from within one tradition may be ignored by those conducting enquiry or debate within another only at the cost, by their own standards. So Hume and Rawls agree in excluding application for any Aristotelian concept of desert in the framing of rules of justice, while they disagree with each other on whether a certain type of equality is required by justice. In fact, MacIntyre’s work is extreme, but we live in extreme times, as Stanley Hauerwas noticed it. MacIntyre has sought to help us repair our lives by locating those forms of life that make possible moral excellence. However, Alisdair MacIntyre convincingly proves that rationality and ethics are inseparable, the rationality of a tradition-constituted and tradition-constitutive enquiry it is in key and essential part a matter of the kind of progress of humanity. So, it is impossible for the unjust person to think rationally, or for the irrational person to be just. Every form of enquiry begins in and from some condition of pure historical contingency, from the beliefs, institutions, and practices of some particular community which constitute a given. Within such a community authority will have been conferred upon certain texts and certain voices. Priests, bards, prophets, kings, will all be heard. All such communities are always, to greater or lesser degree, in state of change. A question of positive change is A. MacIntyre’s “transformation” and not to repeat the rules of primitive communities, not to be deceived in part by the communities understanding of the claims sometimes made by members of such societies that they are obedient to the dictates of immemorial custom and in part by their own too simple and anachronistic conception of what social and cultural change is. It is also a matter of what responses the inhabitants of a particular community make in the face of such comforting toward the reformulation of their beliefs or the remaking of their practices or both will depend not only upon what stock of reasons and of questioning and reasoning abilities they already possess but also upon their inventiveness (see, p.355). Since beliefs are expressed in and through rituals and ritual dramas, masks and modes of dress, and by actions in general, the reformulations of belief are not to be thought of only in intellectual terms, or rather the intellect is not to be thought of as either a Cartesian mind or a materialist brain, but as that through which thinking individuals relate themselves to each other and to natural and social objects as these present themselves to them (ibidem). So, it is mind which stands in need of correction. The most primitive conception of truth is the manifestness of the objects which present themselves to mind. And it is when mind fails to “re-present” that manifestness, the inadequacy of mind to its objects, appears. A falsity is recognized retrospectively as a past inadequacy when the discrepancy between the beliefs of an earlier stage of a tradition of enquiry are contrasted with the world of things and persons as it has come to be understood at some later stage. The whole of our commitment should be seen in the creation of tradition. Alisdair MacIntyre notes, a tradition which reaches a point of development will have become a form of enquiry, as an institution must be. It will have had to recognize intellectual virtues, and further questions about the relationship of such virtues to virtues of character. So, a community is the bearer of traditions, the Scottish philosopher says. The Thinker is heading towards presenting an outline of the theory, here appearing arguments, and above all, the theory of the coexistence of members of the community, and their own research activity, on the development of the modern tradition. For example the person outside all traditions lacks sufficient rational resources for enquiry, what tradition is to be rationally preferred, the Scottish thinker emphasizes that. 2. Catholicism instead of what After finishing the War in Vietnam, the American public could not take an official stance regarding this war. So different dimensions of human had been entangled in reality. And today also commonly have to deal with the fragmentation, but of a human life sensu stricto. What is the theory of a common society by Alisdaire MacIntyre? This Scottish thinker seems to say: “I’ll be better.” He shows a good, a rule, a virtue, as a result which we acquire practice of (cf. an article by A. MacIntyre, Plain Persons and moral theory). What are the right play ball? Gaining efficiency. In MacIntyre terms ‘a good’ shows what we get in experience. One must be able to distinguish between what generally makes me happy than what currently makes me happy. We want that, so we should rely on a good trial, or opinion (phronesis- good Judgement). We have to do (it), which we consider to be the most tenable, rational. Alisdair MacIntyre also relies on human inclinations and natural law, which is not going to change. Unlike emotivism by Jean-Paul Sartre (referencing only on doing the decision), utilitarianism (we recognize life), Kantian deontology duty (doing what is necessary), Scottish thinker is based on the authority of Aristotle’s virtues. The main work of MacIntyre gives rise to a new way of thinking in ethics, but rather an attempt to renew Aristotle’s moral philosophy. MacIntyre opposes the philosophy of postmodernism traditionalist anti-modernism. He questions the ways of thinking derived from the dominant culture in our own philosophical enlightenment. MacIntyre’s views are inspired by the Marxist critique of liberalism and weave the moral values ​​that constitute intellectual Christianity in its Catholic variant. At a conference in 2009 in Notre Dame, Indiana, entitled “Catholicism instead of what,” he recalled the French poet Charles Péguy (1873-1914), who is the author of such sayings as: “We must always tell what we see. Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see/…/ “It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been committed for fear of not looking sufficiently progressive/…/ Everything begins in mystery and ends in politics/…/ Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.” So, Alisdair MacIntyre says about the narrative of people, on their progress and regress, but most of all he reads in the thinking of students of today and encourages them to cultivate the values ​​in the Christian children education. Because here is not so much about morality as the viability of their parents. And what is the capacity of the church to improve this situation,? MacIntyre rhetorical question was. Thinker pointed to the correction of the education system, the development of societies: evoking civil America war he gave on it as the most destructive war up. The conflict between societies. So you have to put in the end the question: how good are we? Here a narrative of life is in conflict with the secular mind. Let’s put on our personal development, but also the development of institutions that protect people, also a certain stability is very important now, for human rationalization of public life. All the people are invidious, Alisdair MacIntyre expressed that at some point. The Thinker relied on our personal “madness”, “madness person.” God is a Jew, as if we often agree with this argument. Child- it becomes after his birth. A rational look at the lives that depend on our feelings and choices is important, we need to take this into account. You have to finally ask about how we improve our lives, memory of which we keep in our societies? How people work together? In the face of the various dimensions of our humanity, we must confront mercy and justice. Alisdair MacIntyre invoked here poetry and life narrative. If we believe in the power of meaning, we should ask about the quality of the opportunities of the Christian liberty. Quite to the current show nothingness, and that one we are being wasted, to admit that our metaphysical procedure entails political behavior often. The paradox of our potentiality lies in the fact that we need politicians. And as we pray, so we are. There are daily depravity and poverty of everyday life, we need schools, Catholic workshops we need not only for Christians. Do not isolate moral order of the richness of life. According to our internal tensions must be built in this view our political answer. Conclusion We can now say in terms of A. MacIntyre’s an adequate conception of human good that the virtues genuinely flourish. And it was the aim of his assay: we have to live wisely, with intelligent life. And it also became our goal, we were better. “The rights of property are absolute. There is and can be no standard external to them in the light of which some particular distribution of property could be evaluated as just or unjust. Justice on this view serves the ends of property and not vice versa,” citing D. Hume MacIntyre said. (Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988, p. 295) A. MacIntyre also shows that no conception of justice and ethical life is possible outside of some real community in some place at some time. How to proceed against the way of life in which human relations are governed by the world market? As remarked above, MacIntyre advises each of his readers to look to their own tradition for the resources to take such a challenge forward. Let us try to live wisely now in the families, in our communities. So we drew attention to the A. MacIntyre understandings of the centrality of practical reason, the significance of the body for agency, why the teleological character of our lives must be displayed through narrative, the character of rationality, the nature of the virtues, why training in a craft is paradigmatic of learning to think as well as live, his understanding of why the Enlightenment project had to fail, his particular way of being a historicist, and why the plain person is the necessary subject of philosophy. Abstract: Since beliefs are expressed in and through rituals and ritual dramas, masks and modes of dress, and by actions in general, the reformulations of belief are not to be thought of only in intellectual terms, or rather the intellect is not to be thought of as either a Cartesian mind or a materialist brain, but as that through which thinking individuals relate themselves to each other and to natural and social objects as these present themselves to them (ibidem). So, it is mind which stands in need of correction. And it is when mind fails to represent the objects which present themselves to mind, the inadequacy of mind to its objects, appears. A falsity is recognized retrospectively as a past inadequacy when the discrepancy between the beliefs of an earlier stage of a tradition of enquiry are contrasted with the world of things and persons as it has come to be understood at some later stage. The whole of our commitment should be seen in the creation of tradition. Alisdair MacIntyre notes, a tradition which reaches a point of development will have become a form of enquiry, as an institution must be. It will have had to recognize intellectual virtues, and further questions about the relationship of such virtues to virtues of character. So, a community is the bearer of traditions, the Scottish philosopher says. The Thinker is heading towards presenting an outline of the theory, here appearing arguments, and above all, the theory of the coexistence of members of the community, and their own research activity, on the development of the modern tradition. A. MacIntyre also shows that no conception of justice and ethical life is possible outside of some real community in some place at some time. How to proceed against the way of life in which human relations are governed by the world market? As remarked above, MacIntyre advises each of his readers to look to their own tradition for the resources to take such a challenge forward. Let us try to live wisely now in the families, in our communities. In those days, in A. MacIntyre’s terms, an adequate conception of human good that the virtues genuinely flourish, it reaches its full reality.

Stanislaw Barszczak— In Poland, is to be more and more beautiful—

Part one:

The Hôtel Lambert, September 9, 1855.

First I would like to tell you about this rich Polish family, who years ago bought the Hotel Lambert.

Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, Adam George Czartoryski in English; 14 January 1770 – 15 July 1861) was a Polish noble, statesman and author. He was the son of Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski and Izabela Fleming. Czartoryski held the distinction of having been part, at different times, of the governments of two mutually hostile countries. He wasde facto Chairman of the Russian Council of Ministers (1804–6), and President of the Polish National Government during theNovember 1830 Uprising against Imperial Russia. Czartoryski was born on 14 January 1770 in Warsaw. He was the son of Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski and Izabela Fleming. It was rumored that Adam was the fruit of a liaison between Izabela and Russian ambassador to Poland, Nikolai Repnin. However, Repnin left the country two years before Adam Czartoryski was born. After careful education at home by eminent specialists, mostly French, he went abroad in 1786. At Gotha, Czartoryski heard Johann Wolfgang von Goethe read his Iphigeneia in Tauris and made the acquaintance of the dignified Johann Gottfried Herder and “fat little Christoph Martin Wieland.” In 1789 Czartoryski visited Great Britain with his mother and was present at the trial of Warren Hastings. On a second visit in 1793 he made many acquaintances among the British aristocracy and studied the British constitution. In the interval between these visits, he fought for his country during the Polish–Russian War of 1792 (was one of the early recipients of the Virtuti Militari decoration for valor there), which preceded the Second Partition of Poland, and would subsequently also haveserved under Tadeusz Kościuszko, had he not been arrested on his way to Poland at Brussels by the Austrian government in the service of Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor. After the Third Partition of Poland the Czartoryski estates were confiscated, and in May 1795 Adam and his younger brother Constantine were summoned to Saint Petersburg. Later in 1795, the two brothers were commanded to enter the Russian service, Adam becoming an officer in the horse, and Constantine in the foot guards. Catherine the Great was so favourably impressed by the youths that she restored them part of their estates, and in early 1796 made them gentlemen-in-waiting. Adam had already met Grand Duke Alexander at a ball at Princess Golitsyna‘s, and the youths at once conceived a strong “intellectual friendship” for each other. On the accession of Tsar Paul I, Czartoryski was appointed adjutant to Alexander, nowTsarevich, and was permitted to revisit his Polish estates for three months. At this time the tone of the Russian court was relatively liberal. Political reformers including Pyotr Volkonsky and Nikolay Novosiltsevpossessed great influence on the tsar.

Throughout the reign of Paul I, Czartoryski was in high favour and on terms of the closest intimacy with the Tsar, who in December 1798 appointed him ambassador to the court of Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia. On reaching Italy, Czartoryski found that that monarch was a king without a kingdom, so that the outcome of his first diplomatic mission was a pleasant tour through Italy toNaples, the acquisition of the Italian language, and a careful exploration of the antiquities of Rome. In the spring of 1801 the new tsar, Alexander I, summoned his friend back to Saint Petersburg. Czartoryski found the Tsar still suffering from remorse at his father’s assassination, and incapable of doing anything but talk religion and politics to a small circle of friends. To all remonstrances, he only replied, “There’s plenty of time.” Tsar Alexander appointed Czartoryski curator of the Vilna Academy (3 April 1803) so that he might give full play to his advanced ideas. Czartoryski was, however, unable to devote much attention to education, for from the beginning of 1804, as foreign-affairs adjunct, he had exercised practical control of Russian diplomacy. His first act had been to protest energetically Napoleon’s murder of a Bourbon royal prince theDuke of Enghien (20 March 1804) and insist on an immediate rupture with the government of the French Revolution, then under First Consul Napoléon Bonaparte, whom the tsar considered a regicide. On 7 June 1804, the French minister, Gabriel Marie Joseph, comte d’Hédouville, left St. Petersburg; and on 11 August a note dictated by Czartoryski to Alexander was sent to the Russian minister in London, urging the formation of an anti-French coalition. It was also Czartoryski who framed the Convention of 6 November 1804, whereby Russia agreed to put 115,000, and Austria 235,000, men in the field against Napoleon. Finally, in April 1805 he signed an offensive-defensive alliance with George III‘s United Kingdom. But Czartoryski’s most striking ministerial act was a memorial written in 1805, otherwise undated, which aimed at transforming the whole map of Europe: Austria and Prussia were to divide Germany between them. Russia was to acquire the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, the Bosporus with Constantinople, and Corfu. Austria was to have Bosnia, Wallachia and Ragusa. Montenegro, enlarged by Mostar and the Ionian Islands, was to form a separate state. The United Kingdom and Russia together were to maintain the equilibrium of the world. In return for their acquisitions in Germany, Austria and Prussia were to consent to the creation of an autonomous Polish state extending from Danzig (Gdańsk) to the sources of the Vistula, under the protection of Russia. This plan presented the best guarantee, at the time, for the independent existence of Poland. But in the meantime Austria had come to an understanding with England about subsidies, and war had begun. While Czartoryski was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Imperial Russia he was rumoured to have been a lover of Louise of Baden, Empress consort to Alexander I of Russia. In 1805 Czartoryski accompanied Alexander to Berlin and to Olmütz (Olomouc, Moravia) as chief minister. He regarded the Berlin visit a blunder, chiefly due to his distrust of Prussia; but Alexander ignored his representations, and in February 1807 Czartoryski lost favour and was superseded by Andrei Budberg. But, though no longer a minister, Czartoryski continued to enjoy Alexander’s confidence in private, and in 1810 the Tsar candidly admitted to Czartoryski that in 1805 he had been in error and that he had not made proper use of his opportunities.

That same year, Czartoryski left Saint Petersburg forever; but the personal relations between him and Alexander were never better. The friends met again at Kalisz (Greater Poland) shortly before the signing of the Russo-Prussian alliance on 20 February 1813 and Czartoryski was in the Tsar’s suite at Paris in 1814, and rendered him material services at the Congress of Vienna. It was considered that Czartoryski, who more than any other man had prepared the way for the creation of Congress Poland and had designed the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland, would be its first namiestnik, or viceroy, but he was content with the title of senator-palatine and a role in the administration. In 1817 he married Anna Sapieżanka. The wedding led to a duel with his rival, Ludwik Pac. On his father’s death in 1823, Czartoryski retired to his ancestral castle at Puławy; but the November 1830 Uprising brought him back to public life. As president of the provisional government, he summoned (18 December 1830) the Sejm of 1831, and, after the end of Chlopicki‘s dictatorship, was elected chief of the supreme council (Polish National Government) by 121 out of 138 votes (30 January 1831). On 6 September 1831, his disapproval of the popular excesses at Warsaw caused him to resign from the government after having sacrificed half his fortune to the national cause… On 23 August 1831 he joined Italian General Girolamo Ramorino‘s army corps as a volunteer, and subsequently formed a confederation of the three southern provinces of Kalisz,Sandomierz and Kraków. At war’s end, when the Uprising was crushed by the Russians, he was sentenced to death, though the sentence was soon commuted to exile. On 25 February 1832, while in the United Kingdom, he founded a Literary Association of the Friends of Poland. Czartoryski then emigrated to France, where he resided in Paris’ Hôtel Lambert—a prominent Polish-émigre political figure, head of a political faction accordingly called the Hôtel Lambert. Czartoryski was the Chairman of the Polish National Uprising Government and the leader of a political emigration party. He founded Polonezköy (Adampol) in 1842. The settlement was named Adam-koj (Adamköy) after its founder, which means the “Village of Adam” in Turkish (Adampol means “Town of Adam” in Polish). Polonezköy or Adampol is a small village at the Asian side of Istanbul, about 30 kilometres away from the historic city centre. Adam Czartoryski wanted to create the second emigration centre here (the first one was in Paris, France.) He sent his representative, Michał Czajkowski, to Turkey. Michał Czajkowski, after converting to Islam in 1850, became known as Mehmed Sadyk Pasza (Mehmet Sadık Paşa). He purchased the forest area which encompasses present-day Adampol from a missionary order of Lazarists. At the beginning, the village was inhabited by only 12 people, and there were no more than 220 people when the village was most populated. Over time, Adampol developed and populated by emigrants from the unsuccessful rebellions of November 1848, the Crimean War in 1853, and by escapees from Siberia and from captivity in Circassia. The inhabitants engaged in agriculture, animal raising and forestry. After the November Uprising in 1830-31 until his death, Czartoryski supported the idea of resurrecting an updated Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on federation principles. The visionary statesman and former friend, confidant and de facto foreign minister of Russia’s Tsar Alexander I acted as the “uncrowned king and unacknowledged foreign minister” of a non-existent Poland. He had been disappointed when the hopes that he held, as late as the Congress of Vienna, in Alexander’s willingness to undertake reforms, did not eventuate. The distillation of his subsequent study and thought was Czartoryski’s book, completed in 1827 but published only in 1830,Essai sur la diplomatie (Essay on Diplomacy). This book is, according to the historian Marian Kamil Dziewanowski, indispensable to an understanding of the Prince’s many activities conducted in France’s capital following the ill-fated Polish November 1830 Uprising. Czartoryski wanted to find a place for Poland in the Europe of the time. He sought to interest western Europeans in the adversities facing his stateless nation that, he considered, nevertheless to be an indispensable part of the European political structure. Pursuant to the Polish motto, “For our freedom and yours“, Czartoryski connected Polish efforts for independence with similar movements of other subjugated nations in Europe and in the East as far as the Caucasus. Thanks to his private initiative and generosity, the émigrés of a subjugated nation conducted a foreign policy often on a broader scale than had the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Of particular interest are Czartoryski’s observations, in the Essay on Diplomacy, regarding Russia’s role in the world. He wrote that, “Having extended her sway south and west, and being by the nature of things unreachable from the east and north, Russia becomes a source of constant threat to Europe.” He argued that it would have been in Russia’s interest, instead, to have surrounded herself with “friend[s rather than] slave[s].” Czartoryski also identified a future threat from Prussia and urged the incorporation of East Prussia into a resurrected Poland. Above all, however, he aspired to reconstitute – with French, British and Turkish support – a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth federated with the Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians and all the South Slavs of the future Yugoslavia. Poland, in his concept, could have mediated the conflicts between Hungary and the Slavs, and between Hungary and Romania. Czartoryski’s plan seemed achievable during the period of national revolutions in 1848–49 but foundered through the lack of western support, on Hungarian intransigence toward the Czechs, Slovaks and Romanians, and on the rise of German nationalism.” “Nevertheless”, concludes Dziewanowski, “the Prince’s endeavour constitutes a [vital] link [between] the 16th century Jagiellon [federative prototype] and Józef Piłsudski‘s federative-Prometheist program [that was to follow after World War I]. Czartoryski died at his country residence at Montfermeil, near Meaux, on 15 July 1861. He left two sons, Witold (1824–65) and Władysław Czartoryski (1828–94), and a daughter Izabela, who in 1857 married Jan Kanty Działyński(see,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Jerzy_Czartoryski)

Prince Władysław (Ladislaus) Czartoryski (July 3, 1828 – June 23, 1894) was a Polish noble, political activist in exile, collector of art, and founder of the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków. Son of Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski and Princess Anna Zofia Sapieha, he married Maria Amparo, Countess of Vista Alegre, daughter of Queen Maria Christina of Spain by morganatic relation to the Augustín Fernández Muñoz, Duke of Riansares, on March 1, 1855 in Malmaison near Paris. Their son August Czartoryski contracted tuberculosis at the age of 6, from his mother who died soon thereafter. August (known as “Gucio”) had as a tutor Joseph (later Saint Raphael) Kalinowski. Władysław hoped that his son would pursue a diplomatic career, but Gucio went against his father’s wishes and joined the religious order of the Salesians. Gucio was ordained a priest in 1893, but neither his father nor anyone else in the family attended the ceremony, and he died a year later of tuberculosis at the age of 34. Gucio was beatified in 2004, on track to becoming a saint himself. On January 15, 1872 Prince Władysław married his second wife, Princess Marguerite Adelaide of Orléans, daughter of the Duke of Nemours and granddaughter of King Louis-Philippe of France, with whom he had two more sons in 1872 (Adam Ludwik Czartoryski) and 1876. Prince Władysław was an activist of Hotel Lambert. From 1863-1864 he was the main diplomatic agent of the revolutionary National Government (Rząd Narodowy) with theEnglish, Italian, Swedish and Turkish governments. He was also owner of the great family collection of art: paintings, sculptures and antiquities. He was greatly interested in Egyptian art, making his purchases at sales in Paris and directly in Egypt. He donated some objects to the Polish Library in Paris and also other archeological artifacts to the Jagellonian University. In 1871, he donated objects to the Polish Museum in Rapperswil, Switzerland. In 1865 he organized an exhibition of the “Czartoryski Collection” in the “Polish Room” of the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. In 1878 he reopened the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, which was founded by his grandmother Izabela Czartoryska in 1801 in Puławybut closed after the November Uprising. He died in Boulogne-sur-Seine and was buried in the Sieniawa Family crypt.(see, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wladyslaw_Czartoryski)

—

Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, acting vigorously on a plane Eastern policy Hotel Lambert, acquired a large part of Polish emigration. A person with a lot of authority and recognition in exile circles, was without a doubt Adam Mickiewicz. On 11 June 1855., During an audience with the Emperor Napoleon III, the leader of the liberal-monarchist camp put forward a proposal to entrust the A. Mickiewicz scientific mission of  an historical and literary statistical. On 9 September 1855 Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski  issued on in honor of the poet farewell luncheon at the Hotel Lambert, and 11 September 1855 Breakfast was issued in the Hall of the luxurious restaurant Mesain de la Tour d’Argent. Soon after Mickiewicz flows from Marseilles to Constantinople. Mission East Mickiewicz started a new qualitative stage in his exile episode. The trip was accompanied by the young Prince Władysław Czartoryski, Henry Służalski and personal secretary to the poet Armand Levy. The aim of the mission was led to conclude a political consensus between the rival commanders of the Polish regiments in Turkey: Sadyk Pasha and Władysław Zamoyski. Diplomacy Hotel Lambert was associated with the mission of certain hopes, counting on the authority of Mickiewicz as a mediator in such a delicate matter. Not everyone liked the poet political rapprochement with the Hotel Lambert, there were some who gave expression about it in their polemical disputes. Adam Mickiewicz died in Constantinople 26 November 1855 year. On January 21, 1856 the funeral took place at the Church of St. Madeleine in Paris, and then a poet was buried in the cemetery at Montmorency, attended by many immigrants and the employees of the Arsenal Library, in recent years Mickiewicz worked there. At the cemetery in Montmorency were also students from the College de France, where Mickiewicz in his lectures for the first time spoke about the Balkan nations.

During lunch Adam Mickiewicz said shortly,- Today is my day, I want to be with you forever!

(will be continued)

 

The second part

We are in the palace chapel at the Hotel Lambert, the night is New Year’s Eve 1858, the baptism of August Czartoryski, the son of Prince Władysław Czartoryski and Maria Amparo, Countess of Vista Alegre. Who is this child who is baptized?

Blessed August Franciszek Maria Anna Józef Kajetan Czartoryski, Duke of Vista Alegre (1858–1893) was a Prince of the Polish Czartoryski family, born in Paris during the family’s exile. A sickly child, he spent much of his youth being shuttled to various health spas. He was accompanied and tutored by a Polish patriot, Father Raphael Kalinowski, a man who was later canonized. Prince August also turned to the priesthood, and after dying at a relatively young age of tuberculosis, was himself beatified, on the path towards becoming a saint. Prince August was born in Paris, the only child of Prince Ladislaus (Władysław) Czartoryski and Princess María Amparo, Countess of Vista Alegre (daughter of Maria Christina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Queen of Spain, and her secret husband Agustín Fernando Muñoz, Duke of Riánsares). The Czartoryski magnate was one of the most powerful families in Poland during the 18th century, but in the 19th century they were exiled from Poland by the Russians, and had their base of operations at the Hôtel Lambert in Paris. To his family, the young prince was known as “Gucio”. He was a sickly child, having contracted tuberculosis from his mother at the age of 6 (she later died of the disease, leaving him her title of Count of Vista Alegre). Much of his life was spent being shuttled to different health spas in mountains and along beaches that had “good air” for the afflicted. From the age of 10 to 17 he studied in Paris and Kraków. In 1872, when Gucio was 14, his father Prince Ladislaus remarried to Marguerite Adélaïde, and had two more sons in 1872 and 1876. A tutor was hired for Gucio in 1874—Joseph Kalinowski, a Polish patriot who had just returned to Poland from a ten-year sentence in Siberia. Joseph also suffered from respiratory ailments, and accompanied Gucio to many of his destinations. In a letter to his sister Mary, Joseph wrote that he was “father, mother, nurse, brother, companion and caretaker” for the boy. Joseph and August remained close companions until 1877, when Joseph joined the religious order of the Discalced Carmelites and took the name “Raphael of St. Joseph”. He was declared a saint by Pope John Paul II in 2004. It was Prince Ladislaus’s desire that his son Gucio pursue a diplomatic career, but the young prince felt a different calling. He was encouraged by Pope Leo XIII to follow Don Bosco (later Saint Don Bosco) of the Salesians. In 1887, after meeting Don Bosco, Gucio joined that order in Turin, with the ailing Bosco’s blessing. He studied theology and philosophy but his health continued to decline. On April 2, 1892 he was ordained as a priest by the Bishop of Ventimiglia, though his family discouraged this, and refused to attend the ceremony. He died only a year later, on April 8, 1893, in Alassio, Italy, of tuberculosis, at the age of 34. He had been created Duke of Vista Alegre in 1876. The title was inherited by his eldest sister’s son.(see, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Czartoryski; the continuation of the second act)

Stanislaw Barszczak— In Poland, is to be more and more beautiful— Introduction:

(to be continued) You need to discover the meaning of our birth, where we come from, the global pattern, that humanity is now trying to pursue. The planet must first of all to live a spiritual transformation, not only from the perspective of the earth, but also from the perspective of after-life. Fear was the great enemy of the people during her long and tortured history. Understand the fear, it’s like meeting old a man. In Turin, I saw a wonderfully bright face of the Italian, Saint John Bosco. He was raised by the Catholic Church to the height of the altar, was declared a saint. He stood out in my spirit like a inner guide and a guide divine of ours. In fact, you also have to listen to the inner guide. Open a real Christmas, and that means to choose, take the process of sanctification yourself! At the end hear a voice from heaven, and accept this sign, continue reflection, which takes a group of people, our brothers and sisters! We live in the flesh. Each body is functioning at maximum efficiency! You need to understand the different stages of the process (eg. pain, etc). Also surrender of authority, and adopt the culture of technological civilization. Moreover, even physician has to go down to the ivory tower of today, he has to open to on the patient ‘s visions up, in order to appear more attentive to their intuitions. I would like to be one of us. For example, during my visit to Turin once again I recognized a sign on my priestly way, as the turn on the way to our God. You have to do something good in life, a work that transcends even you. At this point, I will tell you something that may hurt a reader from the inside: we Poles do not have memory, we do not respect the sanctity of … A few years ago, I learned that after 144 years, in 2008 the Poles have resigned from applying for a special property for our nation, namely, the Hotel Lambert in Paris, they separated from this monument-souvenirs decisively. Thus, the world of my dreams, he had stuck in the rubble of culture destruction and self-destruction as if our boyish joy is gone unless ultimately. “The Hôtel Lambert is a hôtel particulier, a grand mansion townhouse, on the Quai Anjou on the eastern tip of the Île Saint-Louis, in 4th arrondissement of Paris. In the 19th century, the name Hôtel Lambert also came to designate a political faction of Polish exiles associated with Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, who had purchased the Hôtel Lambert. On 10 July 2013 the building was ravaged by a fire which started in the roof during renovation work. The house, on an irregular site at the tip of the Île Saint-Louis in the heart of Paris, was designed by architect Louis Le Vau. It was built between 1640 and 1644, originally for the financier Jean-Baptiste Lambert (1644) and continued by his younger brother Nicolas Lambert, later president of the Chambre des Comptes. For Nicolas Lambert, the interiors were decorated by Charles Le Brun, François Perrier, and Eustache Le Sueur, producing one of the finest, most-innovative, and iconographically coherent examples of mid-17th-century domestic architecture and decorative painting in France. The entrance gives onto the central square courtyard, around which the hôtel was built. A wing extends to the right at the rear, embracing a walled garden. At the same time, Louis Le Vau constructed a residence for himself adjacent to the Hôtel Lambert. He lived there between 1642 and 1650. It was where all of his children were born and his mother died. After the architect’s own death in 1670, his hôtel was bought by the La Haye family, who owned the other residence as well. Both buildings were then joined and their façades combined. The painters worked on the internal decoration for almost five years, producing the gallant allegories of Le Brun’s grand Galerie d’Hercule (still in situ, but heavily damaged in the 2013 July fire) and the small Cabinet des Muses, with five canvases by Le Sueur that were purchased for the royal collection (now in the Louvre) and the earlier ensemble, the Cabinet de l’Amour, which in its original configuration featured an alcove for a canopied bed upon which the lady of the house would receive visitors, according to the custom of the day. Significantly the alcove was eliminated about 1703. All the ensembles featured themes of love and marriage. However, the paintings have since been dispersed. In the 1740s, the Marquise du Châtelet and Voltaire, her lover, used the Hôtel Lambert as their Paris residence when not at her country estate in Cirey. The marquise was famed for her salon there. Later, the Marquis du Châtelet sold the Lambert to Claude Dupin and his wife Louise-Marie Dupin, who continued the tradition of the salon. The Dupins were ancestors of writer George Sand, who, because of her relationship with the Polish composer Frederic Chopin, was also a frequent guest of the 19th-century Polish owners of the property. In 1843, the hôtel particulier was bought by Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski of the powerful family of Polish magnates. Two of its members, Konstanty Adam and Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, were leaders of the liberal aristocratic faction of the Polish Great Emigration, which came into being after the collapse of the November Uprising of 1830–1831 in Poland. The political group was formed around the latter, and his palatial dwelling lent its name to the faction. The political beliefs of the Hôtel Lambert faction were derived from the May 3rd Constitution that the members supported. The Hôtel Lambert played an important part in keeping the “Polish question” alive in European politics by promoting the Polish cause. It also served as a safe harbor for Polish emigrants and royalists, exiled from their country after the unsuccessful uprising against Russia. Among the notable politicians taking part in Hôtel Lambert’s activities were Władysław Czartoryski, Józef Bem, Henryk Dembiński, Karol Kniaziewicz, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Władysław Stanisław Zamoyski, and Władysław Ostrowski. Activist Leon Kaplinski was also a member. Initially a political think tank and a discussion club, the political faction also started to work on the preservation and promotion of the Polish culture. A Polish language library, a historical society, two schools teaching Polish (one for girls, one for boys), and several other notable social and cultural organizations were founded next to the hôtel. Within time, it became one of the most important centers of Polish culture in the world, especially after the January Uprising, when the Polish language and culture became heavily persecuted in Poland itself. Among the notable guests and patrons of the Hôtel Lambert were some renowned artists and politicians of the epoch, including Frédéric Chopin, Zygmunt Krasiński, Alphonse de Lamartine, George Sand, Honoré de Balzac, Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, Eugène Delacroix, and Adam Mickiewicz. In fact, Chopin’s “La Polonaise” was composed exclusively for the Polish ball held there every year. The Polish library, founded in the Hôtel Lambert, still exists, although it was moved to a different place after World War II. The Hôtel Lambert was discreetly split into several luxurious apartments. It was once the home of actress Michèle Morgan, Mona von Bismarck, and of Alexis von Rosenberg, Baron de Redé, who rented the ground floor from 1947 until his death. De Redé entertained his lover Arturo Lopez-Willshaw (1900–1962), who continued to maintain a formal residence with wife Patricia in Neuilly. Redé and Lopez-Willshaw’s dinner parties were at the center of le tout Paris. In 1956, at de Redé’s Bal des Têtes, young Yves Saint-Laurent provided many of the headdresses, a gesture which boosted his career. In December 1969, de Redé had his most famous ball, the Bal Oriental, with guests such as Jacqueline de Ribes, Guy de Rothschild, Salvador Dalí, Brigitte Bardot, Dolores Guinness, and Margrethe II of Denmark. In 1975, the Czartoryski heirs sold the Hôtel Lambert to Baron Guy de Rothschild, whose wife, Marie-Hélène de Rothschild, was a close friend of de Redé; they used it as their Paris residence. The Lambert, a UNESCO-listed site, was divided into apartments by the Rothschilds, and parts of the wooden structure are rotting; the staircases are sagging, and the paint is cracked and discolored. Thierry Tomasi, the prince’s lawyer, has claimed that the installation of air conditioning will preserve the paintings and hinder cracking. In September 2007, Prince Abdullah bin Khalifa al-Thani, brother of the Emir of Qatar bought the Hôtel Lambert from the Rothschilds for the purported sum of about 80 million euros ($111 million). The prince’s plan for a comprehensive overhaul of the building has sparked controversy and became the subject of legal action brought by French conservationists. The scheme reportedly includes plans to install lifts, an underground car park, and a number of security measures, including digging under the garden and raising the 17th-century garden wall about 80 cm. Former tenant Michèle Morgan criticized the plans in an interview, suggesting that super-rich clients wanting a tailor-made luxury modern residence should consider a larger site on the outskirts of Paris rather than a cramped position limited on all sides by the river Seine and listed monuments. However, Alain-Charles Perrot, the architect in charge of the project, suggests that there is an element of racism in objections to the plans. On 10 July 2013 a portion of the building was severely damaged by a fire which started in the roof during renovation work. The Cabinet des Bains with a series of ceiling frescoes by Eustache Le Sueur was completely destroyed, and another series of frescoes by Charles Le Brun in the Gallery of Hercules was heavily damaged…” (see the web: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B4tel_Lambert) Recently, it is in January 2015, I watched available only from the coast of the River Seine glorious Hotel Lambert, which is located on the island of saint Louis in Paris.( we will continue the story in the next episode)

Stanislaw Barszczak— In Poland, is to be more and more beautiful—

Introduction

Here I describe something like a movie about a homeland, that cannot be gotten once and for all. I would like to give you the most beautiful indulgence for this reason, it would be getting the participation of each of us. And it is only in order to assist you in achieving happiness in heaven. So, if Europe can be the Promised Land for Africa, so that finally civilization of the third millennium and a particular Promised Land for the whole world, it may be Poland also, my homeland, I believe. Favors peace in the world now. That’s good. Poland by this dossier is a very great responsibility … Now Europe  needs Iran, he attempts to gain access to its natural resources. So, Poland needs a respect her institution abroad today, the latter tribunals of justice for Lands between the Oder and Bug, I ponder. The are new technologies for humanity now. On the other sides we live in a world that evolves from materialism towards a new global and spiritual concepts.  You have a wonderful recognition of history, and in every period of history, I think. You need to discover the meaning of our birth, where we come from, the color-pattern global, that humanity is now trying to pursue…(TO BE CONTINUED)