Culture – Education – Development Cultural revolution according to Jan Stachniuk’s Culturalism

Abstract

Thesis. The subject of this article is Jan Stachniuk’s concept of cultural revolution.
In Stachniuk’s opinion, Poland has been an underdeveloped country since the middle
of the 16th century. He thought that a cultural revolution is mandatory in order to in
order to bring Poland out of her centuries-old backwardness. The change of the Poles’
national character would be the fundamental element of such a revolution.

Concepts described. The text outlines the concepts of: vegetative individualism,
the theory of culture and backulture, the Institute of the Reconstruction of Culture,
ideo-matrix, the idea of the creative community, the four principles of the cultural
revolution. To sum up – the article describes the factual state and the methodology of
revolution.
Results and conclusion. The analysis showed that the revolution is to be made
by changing the Poles’ national character. The fi rst step should be the founding of
the Institute of the Reconstruction of Culture – a center of political and intellectual
disposition. The institute should carry out the revolution by transvaluation of Polish
culture and development of the idea of the Creative Community (the leitmotiv of the
new Polish identity). This idea would be based on four principles: the duty of creation,
heroic individualism, the comradeship of the human mission and the ethics of creativity.
These principles would be the basis of the Poles’ new worldview.
Originality. The article describes a relatively litt le-known thinker and outlines a
strand of his oeuvre which was hardly ever researched.