Dialogue and Universalism

Volume 19, Issue 3/5, 2009

2009: Year of the Meanings of Polish and European History: Freedom and Independence—True Open University Education — Self-Knowledge of Panhuman Universal Civilizations

The Meaning of History in Siemek’s Philosophy of Marek Siemek

In the paper I try to define some basic ideas and sketch a style of Marek Siemek’s epistemological reflection and its influence on the notion of do called “meaning of history”. I referee some elements of his interpretation of Kant and Hegel as a background to paradox of “meaning of the history”—the paradox of its necessary transcendence and immanence, the contradiction between a history as an eschatology, and history as a “project”, a dialectic of sense and non-sense. The conclusion is following: the “history” for Siemek is the becoming of self-sufficiency of the “modern spirit” and therefore a tragicomedy in the Hegelian sense. It excludes any transcendent point of view or any utopia.