On the term “culture” in “Outline of the History of Culture and Enlightenment of the Polish Nation” by Ignacy Lubicz Czerwiński (1749–1834)

Abstract

The author explores the meaning of the term culture in Ignacy Lubicz Czerwiński’s Rys Dzieiow Kultury i Oswiecenia Narodu Polskiego [Outline of the History of Culture and Enlightenment of the Polish Nation]. This was one of the first proposals for an orderly reflection on culture in Polish writing at a time when it was still dominated by the use of the word ‘civilisation’. Czerwiński’s understanding of culture and the Enlightenment, as well as his explanation of these concepts, is based on Enlightenment theories of progress and physiocratic ideas, as well as the theory of three or four stages, which was then widely discussed. In doing so, he draws on the Statutes of Casimir the Great, noting the existence of cultural practices associated with customary law. Czerwiński,
however, announces a shift from an attributive understanding of culture to discussing it from a distributive point of view: as Polish culture, the culture of the Polish nation. This is a concept worthy of attention and a further, broader and more detailed discussion.