Filozofia tomistyczna w metodologii historii Feliksa Konecznego

Feliks Karol Koneczny was born in Cracow in 1862. He studied history at the Jagiellonian University and worked in various Cracow science institutions focusing mainly on specific studies about Poland and neighboring countries. Between 1919 and 1929 he worked at the Vilnius University, later returning to Cracow. In this time period he focused on the philosophy of history, publishing his most important works from this area: "Polskie Logos i Ethos", "O wielości cywilizacyj" and "Rozwój moralności". Koneczny died in Cracow in 1949. In his historical studies he was careful to correctly state individual events sticking to the positive traditions of the Cracow school. When creating historical syntheses he considered connecting to Thomism with his philosophical concept of necessary people. He considered historical philosophy, upon which the laws of history are formed from, a final step to historical studies. He used this as a base for his famous theory of civilization as a method of living community. Building historical methodology based on thomistic philosophy lead to Koneczny’s civilization theory differing from other well known ideas of Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee or Erazm Majewski. Without the concepts of people as beings with a body, soul, knowledge, and freedom, Koneczny couldn’t have used the basic categories that comprise the “Quincunx” concepts of truth, goodness, beauty, health and well-being He considered his biggest scientific discovery claiming that there can not be synthesis between civilizations. It is the main similarity between his theory of modern civilization, and the most popular modern theory of Samuel Huntington.