Marian Zdziechowski was a Polish

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...

 philosopher, Slavist, publicist

Publicist

A publicist is a person whose job is to generate and manage publicity for a public figure, especially a celebrity, a business, or for a work such as a book, film or album...

 and cultural historian

Cultural history

The term cultural history refers both to an academic discipline and to its subject matter.Cultural history, as a discipline, at least in its common definition since the 1970s, often combines the approaches of anthropology and history to look at popular cultural traditions and cultural...

. Critic of fascist

Fascism

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

 and communist

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 totalitarianism

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...

. Representative of catastrophism

Catastrophism

Catastrophism is the theory that the Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope. The dominant paradigm of modern geology is uniformitarianism , in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, create the Earth's appearance...

 and philosophical pessimism

Pessimism

Pessimism, from the Latin word pessimus , is a state of mind in which one perceives life negatively. Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "Is the glass half empty or half full?"...

. He was a brother of Kazimierz Zdziechowski

Kazimierz Zdziechowski

Kazimierz Zdziechowski, also known under pseudonyms Władysław Zdora, Władysław Mouner, was a Polish landowner, prose writer, publicist, literary critic and novelist. Brother of Marian Zdziechowski, Polish philologist and philosopher....

, writer.

Since 1888 was a lecturer and since 1899 professor of Jagiellonian University

Jagiellonian University

The Jagiellonian University was established in 1364 by Casimir III the Great in Kazimierz . It is the oldest university in Poland, the second oldest university in Central Europe and one of the oldest universities in the world....

. In 1919–1931 professor and 1925–1927 rector of Stefan Batory University. Since 1902 member of the Academy of Learning

Academy of Learning

Academy of Learning was a primary Polish scientific institution during the annexation of Poland founded in 1871 in Kraków and formed as a continuation of the Kraków Scientific Society . The institiution began activity two years later, in 1873...

. Honoris causa in universities of Vilno, Tartu

Tartu

Tartu is the second largest city of Estonia. In contrast to Estonia's political and financial capital Tallinn, Tartu is often considered the intellectual and cultural hub, especially since it is home to Estonia's oldest and most renowned university. Situated 186 km southeast of Tallinn, the...

 and Szeged

Szeged

' is the third largest city of Hungary, the largest city and regional centre of the Southern Great Plain and the county town of Csongrád county. The University of Szeged is one of the most distinguished universities in Hungary....

.

His area of study was historical, literary, philosophical and religious problems. He was an initiator of Slavic Club in Kraków

Kraków

Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...

 which was active from 1901 to 1914 and periodical Świat Słowiański (Slavic World) published in the years of 1905–1914. Zdziechowski propagated idea of co-operation between all of Slavs. He was interested mainly in the problem of evil

Problem of evil

In the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is the question of how to explain evil if there exists a deity that is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient . Some philosophers have claimed that the existences of such a god and of evil are logically incompatible or unlikely...

, modernism

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 in Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

, ideology of Romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

, and crisis of European culture

Culture of Europe

The culture of Europe might better be described as a series of overlapping cultures. Whether it is a question of North as opposed to South; West as opposed to East; Orthodoxism as opposed to Protestantism as opposed to Catholicism as opposed to Secularism; many have claimed to identify cultural...

, in which he indicated fascism and communism as a dangerous. He referred to thoughts of Vladimir Solovyov

Vladimir Solovyov (philosopher)

Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov was a Russian philosopher, poet, pamphleteer, literary critic, who played a significant role in the development of Russian philosophy and poetry at the end of the 19th century...

, Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

, Nikolai Berdyaev

Nikolai Berdyaev

Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev was a Russian religious and political philosopher.-Early life and education:Berdyaev was born in Kiev into an aristocratic military family. He spent a solitary childhood at home, where his father's library allowed him to read widely...

 and Dmitry Merezhkovsky

Dmitry Merezhkovsky

Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky, , 1865, St Petersburg – December 9, 1941, Paris) was a Russian novelist, poet, religious thinker, and literary critic. A seminal figure of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry, regarded as a co-founder of the Symbolist movement, Merezhkovsky – with his poet wife Zinaida...

.

Notable works

• Mesjaniści i słowianofile (1888)
• Byron i jego wiek (vol. 1–2, 1894–1897)
• Pestis perniciosissima (1905)
• Wizja Krasińskiego (1912)
• U opoki mesjanizmu (1912)
• Pesymizm, romantyzm a podstawy chrześcijaństwa (1914)
• Zygmunt Miłkowski a idea słowiańska w Polsce (1915)
• Gloryfikacja pracy (1916)
• Wpływy rosyjskie na duszę polską (1920)
• Renesans a rewolucja (1925)
• Walka o duszę młodzieży (1927)
• Niemcy. Szkic psychologiczny (1935)
• Węgry i Polska na przełomie historii (1937)
• Terror intelektualny w Rosji (1937)
• W obliczu końca (1937)
• Widmo przyszłości (1939) – published posthumously