CIESZKOWSKI, AUGUST (1814–94)

August Cieszkowski was a leading Polish national thinker and a cosmopolitan intellectual of considerable originality. In Poland, his monumental Polish-language work Our Father has placed him in the forefront of the ideological current known as messianism, though

he must rank as a most untypical messianist. Abroad, attention has focused largely on his German-language Prolegomena zur Historiosophie, a critique of Hegel (see HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM) that first formulated the concept of praxis picked up and elaborated by Marx (see MARX AND MARXISM). Cieszkowski’s mainly French- language publications on social and economic issues, notably Du Crédit et de la circulation, have attracted less scholarly interest though they were among his most popular writings in his own time.

August Cieszkowski was born to a wealthy and moderately prominent landowning family in central Poland. He always used the papal title of ‘count’ acquired by his father. After having, allegedly, taken part as a parliamentary scribe in the Polish insurrection against Russian rule in 1830/1831, Cieszkowski undertook studies in philosophy. These led him to the University of Berlin, then completely under the influence of the recently

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deceased Hegel. Cieszkowski’s closest association here was with two Old Hegelians, the centrist Karl-Ludwig Michelet (1801–93), with whom Cieszkowski maintained a life- long friendship, and the progressive Ludwig Gans (1798–1839).

Cieszkowski soon demarcated himself from his mentors with his Prolegomena zur Historiosophie (1838). Although conceived within a Hegelian framework this slim book represented an early and radical challenge to Hegel’s philosophy. According to Cieszkowski, Hegel had provided insight into the totality of history but he had erred in his interpretation and periodization of history. As Cieszkowski argued, mankind was now entering a third synthetic historical era. This third era was to be post-theoretical and socially oriented. He named its identifying concept praxis and its concrete manifestation, the deed.

The Prolegomena zur Historiosophie stirred interest, even in distant Russia where they constituted ALEXANDER HERZEN’s introduction to Hegelianism. In Berlin they were soon overtaken by the radicalisation of the Young Hegelian School. The historiographical question that has arisen is that of Cieszkowski’s role in shaping the Marxian concept of praxis. Most historians have concurred that Cieszkowski’s influence was real but indirect, transmitted through Marx’s teacher, Moses Hess, an admirer of the Prolegomena .

From Berlin Cieszkowski moved to Paris, where he soon published a substantial economic treatise, Du Crédit et de la Circulation (1839). Its specific proposals for interest-bearing notes based on land values greatly impressed PIERRE-JOSEPH PROUDHON. Its broader aim of finding a proper balance between liberalism and protectionism, between the public and the private sphere, attracted positive attention both from academic economists and from Fourierist socialists (see FOURIER, CHARLES).

In the 1840s Cieszkowski engaged in one of the more esoteric debates among Hegelians with a polemical work on the immortality of the soul entitled Gott und Palingenesie (1842). He continued to write on topical issues, notably on the social question, and he put forward various policy propositions. These ranged from educational projects through land credit schemes. The most sustained such proposal was his De la Pairie et de l’aristocratie moderne (1844) a reform project for the French Upper House that, in fact, formulated a meritocratic theory of elites for the modern state.

During this decade Cieszkowski’s focus turned back to his native Poland, though restrictions in tsarist-occupied Warsaw made him transfer his activities to Prussian-held Poznan. There he undertook a life-long engagement in promoting social reform and in building up civil society. During the momentous events of 1848 Cieszkowski also plunged into political activity. He was elected to the new Prussian National Assembly, set up a pressure group modelled on the British Corn League, so successful that it was banned in 1850, and he addressed the pan-Slavic congress in Prague. Even after hopes raised in 1848 has been dashed, Cieszkowski remained a deputy in the Prussian Diet, with a few years’ interruption, until 1866 and a leader of the Polish parliamentary faction.

Cieszkowski’s Our Father is a monumental meditation on the Lord’s Prayer, understood as a prophetic announcement of the coming future era of true social reconciliation. Its reputation as an expression of Polish messianism, the idea that Poland represented a ‘Christ of Nations’ whose suffering would redeem mankind, rests upon its eschatological expectations as well as its inter-meshing of religious vocabulary and Christian themes with worldly concerns. In fact, the message of Cieszkowski’s Our

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Father, in contrast to that of traditional messianists, is resolutely meliorist rather than apocalyptic. Indeed, the Our Father may be seen as an alternative to messianism rather than an expression of it. Its vast and dramatic historical fresco underpins a peaceful programme of social, economic, and moral, reform and development. Salvation through modernization is its underlying message. Its national Polish dimension is embedded in a vision marked by pan-Slavism and cosmopolitanism. Cieszkowski appears to have worked on Our Father virtually all his life, though he published only one volume in his lifetime. His reluctance to allow broader publication was due, undoubtedly, to its incomplete character—it was unfinished at his death—but also to his fear of violating Catholic doctrine.

Cieszkowski’s life and thought cover a wide span of nineteenth-century history and ideas. Although he contributed to several major intellectual currents he never identified himself completely, in ideological terms, with any of them. As a result, he stands out as a paradoxical figure, a thinker who is both representative of his times and out of step with them.

CIESZKOWSKI, AUGUST (1814–94)