Published : 2025-09-30

Stefan Swieżawski’s Methodology of the History of Philosophy: Theory and Practice

Abstract

This article presents the intellectual profile of Stefan Swieżawski (1907–2004), an important figure in Polish and European medieval studies, an independent philosopher, co-founder of the School of Classical Philosophy at the Catholic University of Lublin, and an outstanding Catholic intellectual involved in the movement for the renewal of the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council. By briefly recapitulating Swieżawski’s life against the background of his contemporary developments in Polish philosophy, the article attempts to reconstruct his thorough methodology of the history of philosophy, as well as his role in practicing philosophy understood as a system. It is then shown how this methodology was modified in research practice, adapted to the specificity of the philosophical sources under analysis. Instead of the so-called philosophical history of philosophy as an indispensable laboratory for doing philosophy, in which the analysis of metaphysical problems plays a central role, Swieżawski in his study of the fifteenth century focuses on the philosophical culture of the time, which is largely a continuation of the medieval heritage, yet poor in metaphysical themes, while emphasizing the world of human experiences and artefacts.

Keywords:

Stefan Swieżawski, methodology of the history of philosophy, Polish philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Lublin



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Roczniki Filozoficzne · ISSN 0035-7685 | eISSN 2450-002X
© Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL & Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II

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