Wielkie bulwary kultury : pedagogiczne tropy wokół hierarchii i klasyków

Abstract

In our world, information is the problem, not a solution. It is increasingly difficult to separate the important from the petty affairs, the creative, authentic contents and activities from the appearance of the advertised. The eminent American scholar George Steiner point out the necessity of the hierarchy, the canon, the cultural impact of the masters. Confrontation with the sophisticated creations of the human spirit is a kind of hygiene of attention and reaction. Maturation of personality requires justified overwhelming effect which can be possible in serious treatment of the classics. Without their stories, man is walled up in a vacuum. How could we pick the significant voices from the informational downpour? What may prove to be helpful—in addition to the clues in the work of Steiner—are such categories as Leszek Kolakowski’s the great philosopher, Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom’s Great Books, Hans-Georg Gadamer or Thomas Stearns Eliot’s classicisms, Tadeusz Sławek’s the master of the difficult speech, or Lech Witkowski’s symbolic authority. From a pedagogical point of view this is a sensitive issue. What is at stake is the choice between the opening and burying the human sensitivity and reflection.