Wokół kultury umysłowej w Polsce — jej źródła i przejawy

The author defines intellectual culture as a tendency to base decisions on objective analyses or the habit of investigating issues analytically. In the broader sense, intellectual culture may be considered to be the way the collective reacts to phenomena that appear in the real world. A high level of intellectual culture, in the author’s opinion, is shown by a modern form of thinking manifested in the ability to make use of abstracts and to take into account alternative systems of constructing opinions. On the basis of selected analyses of Polish scholars the author advances the hypothesis that Poland has failed to form proper institutional mechanisms favoring rational analysis in public life. The author demonstrates that this is the result of many factors, such as the long-lasting model of Sarmatian customs (including its providentialism), the strong and lasting influence of a radical form of romanticism, and also the nugatory influence of Enlightenment and positivist models. These factors have been accompanied by the unsuitability of educational and scholarly institutions, the delayed development of modern forms of economics, which force the use of rational calculations, and a structure of society that does not favor exchanges of ideas and deliberation.