Jerzy Szacki
Encyclopedia
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
sociologist
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and historian of ideas
History of ideas
The history of ideas is a field of research in history that deals with the expression, preservation, and change of human ideas over time. The history of ideas is a sister-discipline to, or a particular approach within, intellectual history...
, and emeritus professor of the University of Warsaw
University of Warsaw
The University of Warsaw is the largest university in Poland and one of the most prestigious, ranked as best Polish university in 2010 and 2011...
.
After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, worked for the Polish Telephone Authority, first as a locksmith, later in a desk job. In 1948, he began to study sociology at the University of Warsaw
University of Warsaw
The University of Warsaw is the largest university in Poland and one of the most prestigious, ranked as best Polish university in 2010 and 2011...
. Incidentally, his was the last class to graduate before sociology was declared a "bourgeois
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
" discipline and the sociological departments of Polish universities were closed in 1952. Szacki himself was sent to work in the Wrocław-based train wagon factory Pafawag
Pafawag
Pafawag is a Polish locomotive manufacturer based in Wrocław. The company became part of Adtranz in 1997 as Adtranz Pafawag, and in 2001 part of Bombardier Transportation...
.
In 1956, when the sociological department in Warsaw re-opened, Szacki returned there to obtain a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
degree. He wrote his thesis at the "Institute for the Education of Research Staff" (Instytut Kształcenia Kadr Naukowych), which was attached to the Central Committee
Central Committee
Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...
of the Polish United Workers' Party
Polish United Workers' Party
The Polish United Workers' Party was the Communist party which governed the People's Republic of Poland from 1948 to 1989. Ideologically it was based on the theories of Marxism-Leninism.- The Party's Program and Goals :...
and was soon afterwards renamed to "Institute for Social Sciences" (Instytut Nauk Społecznych), whose director at the time was Bronisław Baczko.
Szacki completed his habilitation
Habilitation
Habilitation is the highest academic qualification a scholar can achieve by his or her own pursuit in several European and Asian countries. Earned after obtaining a research doctorate, such as a PhD, habilitation requires the candidate to write a professorial thesis based on independent...
at the department of philosophy in 1965. He was appointed "extraordinary professor" in 1973 and "ordinary professor" in 1987, the highest rank in Polish academe. In the meantime, Szacki held various administrative positions at the University of Warsaw, including Vice-Dean of the Department of Social Sciences (1967–1968), Dean of the Department of Philosophy and Sociology (1981–1983), and director of the Institute for the History of Social Thought within the Institute of Sociology (1968–1999). Szacki retired from the university in 1999, but has been teaching at the private university-level Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities
Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities
The Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities is the private university in Poland. Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities was founded in 1996 by Andrzej Eliasz, Zbigniew Pietrasiński and Janusz Reykowski, former professors of the Institute of Psychology at the Polish Academy of...
since 2003.
Szacki lectured and researched at several universities and institutions worldwide, including the New School for Social Research, the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
, the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
, the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
(All Souls College
All Souls College, Oxford
The Warden and the College of the Souls of all Faithful People deceased in the University of Oxford or All Souls College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England....
and the Institut für die Wissenschaft vom Menschen (Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
).
From 1972 to 1976, Szacki was the president of the Polish Sociological Association
Polish Sociological Association
The Polskie Towarzystwo Socjologiczne is the main professional organization of sociologists in Poland. The PTS defines its mission as "supporting the development of sociology and popularizing sociological knowledge within society".Currently the organization states to have approx...
, and held numerous further administrative positions, including in the Polish Academy of Sciences
Polish Academy of Sciences
The Polish Academy of Sciences, headquartered in Warsaw, is one of two Polish institutions having the nature of an academy of sciences.-History:...
(PAN). From 1974 to 1991, he was editor-in-chief of the Polish Sociology Bulletin.
Szacki is perhaps most noted for his monumental Historia myśli socjologicznej ("History of Sociological Thought"). Written in Minneapolis and Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
and originally published in English in 1979, it failed to make a strong impact on international sociology, but remains a popular textbook among Polish teachers and students of sociology until this day. The updated edition of 2002 was awarded with the Prize of the Foundation for Polish Science
Prize of the Foundation for Polish Science
The Prize of the Foundation for Polish Science is an award presented by the non-governmental non-profit Polish organization, Foundation for Polish Science , from March 1992, for 'significant advancements of Polish civilization on the international level'....
(Nagroda Fundacji na rzecz Nauki Polskiej), colloquially dubbed the "Polish Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
", in 2003
In the 1970s, Szacki began to maintain contacts with oppositional circles, although he never became an active figure in politics. In 1978, he participated in the informal discussion group Doświadczenie i Przyszłość, which brought together pro- and anti-government intellectuals.
In 1991, Szacki co-founded the Solidarność Pracy (Labour Solidarity), a short-lived social-democratic party formed by left-wing Solidarity members, which merged with the Labour Union
Labour Union (Poland)
The Labour Union is a social-democratic political party in Poland. It is a member of the Party of European Socialists and Socialist International....
(Unia Pracy) the following year. In 1998, he prefaced a book about the Gdańsk
Gdansk
Gdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the...
-based milieu of Polish liberals edited by the politician Donald Tusk
Donald Tusk
Donald Franciszek Tusk is a Polish politician who has been Prime Minister of Poland since 2007. He was a co-founder and is chairman of the Civic Platform party....
(then a member of the Freedom Union
Freedom Union (Poland)
The Freedom Union was a liberal democratic party in Poland. It was founded on March 20, 1994 out of the merger of the Democratic Union and the Liberal Democratic Congress . Both of these parties had roots in the Solidarity trade union movement. It represented European democratic and liberal...
).
In 1994, Szacki published a book on Liberalism after communism (original title Liberalizm po komunizmie), which was translated into English and other languages and received favourable reviews in the West. In it, Szacki addresses the challenges faced by liberal democracy in an environment shaped by decades of communism and earlier non-democratic governments - a topic that has occupied much of Szacki's academic publications and popular essays in the general press.
Szacki also translated several classic works from English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
into Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
: Some English-language writings by Florian Znaniecki
Florian Znaniecki
Florian Witold Znaniecki was a Polish sociologist. He taught and wrote in Poland and the United States. He was the 44th President of the American Sociological Association and the founder of academic sociology studies in Poland...
, a pioneering Polish sociologist, as well as Émile Durkheim
Émile Durkheim
David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology.Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain...
's classic work Les Règles de la méthode sociologique, Jean-Pierre Vernant
Jean-Pierre Vernant
Jean-Pierre Vernant was a French historian and anthropologist, specialist in ancient Greece. Influenced by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Vernant developed a structuralist approach to Greek myth, tragedy, and society which would itself be influential among classical scholars...
's Les origines de la pensée grecque and Marcel Mauss
Marcel Mauss
Marcel Mauss was a French sociologist. The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss' academic work traversed the boundaries between sociology and anthropology...
's Sociologie et anthropologie.
In 2004, Szacki was honoured as a Righteous among the nations
Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous among the Nations of the world's nations"), also translated as Righteous Gentiles is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis....
. As a teenager during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Szacki had helped his mother Barbara Szacka (who was also honoured) hide and support a pregnant Jewish woman named Irena Hollender, who had escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto
Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all Jewish Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established in the Polish capital between October and November 15, 1940, in the territory of General Government of the German-occupied Poland, with over 400,000 Jews from the vicinity...
. In Nazi-occupied Poland, hiding Jews was an offence punishable by death.
Szacki is married to fellow sociologist Barbara Szacka.
Works
- 1958: Historia jedynego romansu. Opowieść o Mochnackim [The history of a romance: A tale about MochnackiMaurycy MochnackiMaurycy Mochnacki was a Polish publicist and independence activist. He participated in the November Uprising as a soldier and chronicler - Powstanie narodu polskiego w roku 1830 i 1831. After the defeat, he emigrated. In his early life, he was a supporter of Polish Jacobins ideology. He died in...
]. Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna. - 1962: Ojczyzna, naród, rewolucja: Problematyka narodowa w polskiej myśli szlacheckorewolucyjnej [Fatherland, nation, revolution: The national issue in the Polish Nobles' revolutionary]. Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy.
- 1964: Durkheim. Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna.
- 1965: Kontrrewolucyjne paradoksy: wizje świata francuskich antagonistów Wielkiej Rewolucji, 1789-1815 [Counter-revolutionary paradoxes: The world-views of the French antagonists of the Great Revolution, 1789-1815]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
- 1968: Utopie [Utopias]. Warszawa: Iskry.
- 1971: Tradycja: przegląd problematyki [Tradition: A survey of the topic]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
- 1977 (ed.): Czy kryzys socjologii? [Sociology in crisis?]. Warszawa: Czytelnik.
- 1977 (ed.): Idea społeczeństwa komunistycznego w pracach klasyków marksizmu [The idea of communist society in the works of Marxism's classics]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
- 1979: History of Sociological Thought. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-20737-2
- 1980 (2nd edition 2000): Spotkania z Utopią [Encounters with Utopia], Warszawa: Iskry / Wydawnictwo Sic! (2nd edition). ISBN 83-86056-79-7
- 1981: Historia myśli socjologicznej [History of Sociological Thought]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. ISBN 83-01-02014-8 (new edition 2002, ISBN 83-01-13844-0.
- 1984 (ed. with Joanna Kurczewska): Tradycja i nowoczesność [Tradition and modernity]. Warszawa: Czytelnik. ISBN 83-07-00599-X.
- 1985 (ed. with Edmund Mokrzycki, Maria Ofierska): O społeczeństwie i teorii społecznej: księga poświę̨cona pamięci Stanisława Ossowskiego [On society and social theory: A book dedicated to the memory of Stanisław Ossowski]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. ISBN 83-01-05488-3.
- 1986: Znaniecki. Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna. ISBN 83-214-0507-X
- 1991: Dylematy historiografii idei oraz inne studia i szkice [Dilemmas of the history of ideas and other studies and sketches]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. ISBN 83-01-10482-1
- 1994: Liberalizm po komunizmie. Kraków: Znak. ISBN 83-7006-364-0
(English translation: Liberalism after communism. Budapest, New York: Central European University Press, 1995. ISBN 1-85866-015-7. - 1995 (ed.): Sto lat socjologii polskiej: od Supińskiego do Szczepańskiego [One hundred years of Polish sociology: From Supiński to Szczepański]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. ISBN 83-01-11787-7.
- 1997 (ed.): Ani książe, ani kupiec: obywatel. Idea społeczeństwa obywatelskiego w myśli współczesnej [Neither prince nor merchant: The citizen. The idea of civil society in contemporary thought]. Kraków: Znak. ISBN 83-7006-786-7