Book Review: L. Gawor, Szkice o cywilizacji, 2009

Jacek Lejman

Abstract

As the title already indicates, and as the author writes in the introduction, these sketches can be read in two ways: firstly, as a whole, aimed at proving a certain, otherwise, original thesis (or rather, a set of at least two theses), or autonomously, as simply a set of articles about civilizational concepts of several more or less known authors. In the latter sense, repetitions (referencing) in subsequent chapters to things described in earlier chapters become understandable. However, despite this inconvenience, the first way of receiving the text is definitely more interesting.

In the presented model, its two components are important. Firstly, a comparison of the humanistic tendencies and ideals of the Enlightenment with the modern ones by juxtaposing the concept of rational humanity (Human Reason) with the project of a rational ecological and political rescue of the modern world. In this way, pluralistic civilizational concepts seem to be only an important, but still, episode in the history of striving for a “civilization of one great humanity”. Secondly, which appears to be extremely original, the author of Szkicy… sees the program framework of this new project not in the IT breakthrough of the global village, not in the economic and social fact of creating a civilization of the world of the globalized market, but in the idea of ​​sustainable development, which until now could rather be regarded as one component of this larger whole.