KAROL LIBELT’S PROPHETIC PROJECT OF “SLAVIC PHILOSOPHY” IN A HISTORICAL LITERARY MIRROR

Abstract

The cultural projects currently attracting the attention of humanists, sometimes with far-reaching political consequences, such as the Three Seas Initiative project, turn out to be older. The aforementioned Three Seas Initiative appears – in its original version – in the broader draft of the Manifesto to the Slavic Nations, submitted by the Polish philosopher Karol Libelt at the Slavic Congress in Prague in 1848 as the final expression of the “Slavic philosophy” he created. The philosopher coupled its idea in a very interesting way with late-romantic Polish literature, but also with the folk literature of the southern Slavs, as he was also exploring aesthetics. Taras Shevchenko was also interested in it.

The author proves that – contrary to the opinion of later Ukrainian historians – both Libelt and Shevchenko had similar views, not only aesthetic. This noticeable convergence made the author put forward a hypothesis of the prophetic significance of the aforementioned project in aspects far broader than aesthetic; a hypothesis that may be of interest to both Polish and Ukrainian researchers – historians of literature, as well as ideas for which Slavophilism (as opposed to Pan-Slavism, especially Russian) is still a living concept.