The Latin Civilization

by

Feliks Koneczny

translated by

Maciej Giertych

 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS


  Page
Translator’s Note 9
Publisher’s note of the London (1981) Edition 11 
   
THE STATE IN THE LATIN CIVILIZATION 15 
I. Introductory Chapter 17 
II. Confronting Civilizations  24
III. Ethics and Law  35 
IV. Private and Public Law  71 
V. States and Societies 101 
VI. Administration  139 
VII. Bureaucracy  145 
VIII. The State and the Decalogue 170 
IX. Errors in the Love of Neighbour  230 
X. Self-governing entities  249 
XI. Schools 277 
XII. The Judiciary 303 
XIII. Political Parties and Parliaments  323 
XIV. Four Ministries  346 
XV. Vis-à-vis Lithuania and Ruthenia  365
XVI. Vis-à-vis the Slav World  397
   

THE PRINCIPLES OF LAW IN THE LATIN CIVILIZATION 

421
I. Definitions 426
II. In the Face of Civilizations  429 
III. Ethics and Law  435 
IV. Private and Public Law  439 
V. States and Societies  439 
The whole chapter is the same as on p. 101 in SLC  439 
VI. Administration  439 
The whole chapter is the same as on p. 139 in SLC.  439 
VII. Bureaucracy  440 
VIII. The State and Decalogue  442 
IX. The Nation 442 
   

FRAGMENTS PERTAINING SPECIFICALLY TO THE LATIN CIVILIZATION FROM SUNDRY PAPERS WRITTEN BY FELIKS KONECZNY AT VARIOUS TIMES 

457 
   

THE CHURCH AS THE POLITICAL EDUCATOR OF NATIONS 1938 

483 
I. About the Methods 485 
II. Four Postulates of Catholic Missions 487 
III. The Principles of the Public Life of Nations  494 
IV. Universalism and the Idea of a Nation  503 

V. The Presence of the Church in History (expressed in two sentences) 

508 

VI. The Following of the Church’s Principles in the History of Poland 

509 
   
Literature 513 
Index of Personal and Place Names 517 
   
 

Translator’s Note

 

            Feliks Koneczny (1862-1949) never wrote a book entitled The Latin Civilization, but he did write about it in all of his works. The present volume contains a compilation of several texts that deal specifically with the Latin civilization. These are two books, The State in the Latin Civilization and The Principles of Law in the Latin Civilization. The close relationship between these two books is explained in the Publisher’s Note of their London (1981) edition. Also some short fragments pertaining specifically to the Latin civilization taken from several of Koneczny’s smaller papers are included. Finally this is followed with the booklet The Church as the Political Educator of Nations. There is much about the Latin civilization in other books of Koneczny that have already been translated into English. These can be consulted directly by English readers[1].

 

            As in the previous translations of Koneczny’s books, all additions that come from the translator are given in square brackets [ ]. Koneczny wrote for the Polish intelligentsia of his generation assuming a certain level of general knowledge of languages, culture and history, both Polish and universal. Where the translator considered it necessary to add some explanation, either in the text or in the footnotes, this is in square brackets.  

 

            Quotations in other languages are left intact in italics and are followed by an English translation in square brackets. Russian words were given by Koneczny in a Polish transliteration, which is usually understandable to Poles. These words are given in Russian followed by an English translation in square brackets.

 

            The compilation of texts was done by the translator.

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[1] Koneczny’s major works on civilizations have been published in English by Wydawnictwo Antyk, in Komorów, Poland: On the Plurality of Civilisations (2011), The Jewish Civilization (2011), On Order in History (2013), The Laws of History (2013), The Byzantine Civilization (2014), The Development of Morality (2016).

 

                                                                       Maciej Giertych (2016)

 

 

THE STATE IN THE LATIN CIVILIZATION

 

I.         Introductory Chapter

 

            The present book is a direct consequence of my previously published studies On the Plurality of Civilizations [Koneczny 1935; 1962; 2011] and The Development of Morality [1938; 2016] as well as of the already prepared for publication two volume study The Byzantine Civilization [Koneczny 1973; 2014]. The science of civilizations would be deficient without a consideration of the state.

 

            The question of civilizations lies at the core of entire universal history, thus, it is of upmost scientific interest. Furthermore, it has a practical significance. I dare to claim that absolutely all the “crises” which Europe has gone through and continues to go through derive from the mixing of civilizations. A return to the pure Latin civilization is a condition for the regeneration of Europe. I must admit however that I have a subjective motive, which makes it imperative for me to undertake these studies and which makes me cry out aloud that the Latin civilization has to be sustained and exalted: this is the conviction that the independence of Poland is possible only within the Latin civilization. A regenerated Latin civilization would be a guarantee of a better future for Poland and for Europe.

 

            Three civilizations have been intermingled in Europe: the Latin, Byzantine and the Jewish, and furthermore in Eastern Europe there is a fourth, the Turanian. The Jewish question is neither racial, nor religious, but civilizational. Their religion is not universal and has no intent of becoming so. In the course of history there is an increasing restriction of it to native Jews; a growing number of factors make it impossible for it to have adherents who are other than those who were born within it. The Jewish religion is becoming more and more a tribal one; this is so as it is moving from the Torah to the Talmud, then on to the Shulchan Aruch, to the Cabbala, and finally to Hasidism. The greatest Jewish scholars assert that in fact it is not a revealed religion but a “revealed law”. The Jewish method of legalistic thinking has undermined legislation in the whole of Europe, so much so that the legal sense has diverged from the ethical, and finally, law has demoted ethics.

 

            Byzantinism is not a sacral civilization, but it transfers religious issues to the decision of the head of state. The inconsistencies that derive from this have led to the situation where physical forces are granted supremacy over the spiritual ones, and form over content. It recognizes the distinction between the public law and the private, but it frequently has an inclination towards the monism of public law, with a weakening of private law. It frees public life of ethics. The statehood is completely unbound by ethics. Byzantinism is the origin of state omnipotence. It knows no historicism and society is ruthlessly subjected to the state, which is based upon the bureaucracy and etatism. It hates personalism promoting communalism and the mechanisation of communal life. It does not comprehend unity without uniformity. It does not generate nations.

 

            On the contrary, the Latin civilization possesses historicism and an awareness of national identity. It values content more than form, attributes supremacy to spiritual forces over the physical, it leaves religious issues to the decisions of the spiritual hierarchy and it requires that the state follows the requirements of Catholic ethics. The state derives from the society and nurtures personalism in communal life. Thus it respects organisms based on autonomy, the local governments of provinces, the self-rule of social groups, territorial entities and professional associations. It strives for unity in diversity. It protects legal dualism requiring that public law be based upon ethics just as the private law should be ethical. The omnipotence of the state is in direct contradiction to the Latin civilization.

 

            Byzantinism has had periods of expansion towards the West. It has remained in Germany and so already since the Xth c. Germany is divided between two civilizations, the Latin and the Byzantine. This duality is evident throughout German history. German national identity appeared only as late as the beginning of the XIXth c.  Byzantinism spread westwards from Germany winning many victories. It gained Russia during the reign of Peter the Great.

 

            The Turanian civilization knows nothing about the conflict between spiritual and physical forces, nor does it have any ethical doubts. The entire life is based on the camp principle. The commander is master of life and property, because the subjects remain in the condition of personal dependency towards him. This civilization attained its summit in the Uyghur culture (the Mongols of Genghis Khan). It took over the Tatars of Kipchak, Ruthenia and Muscovy. Its purest form emerged among the Cossacks. In Russia it mixed with other civilizations, particularly with the Byzantine. The Turanian influences on Poland came from three directions, from the Islamic Turanians (the Tatars and Ottoman Turks); and from the Cossacks who developed a civilizational mixture that was expressed in Sarmatism[2]. Later, when Poland was partitioned a third source of Turanian influences came from the Russian statehood. These influences continue to have an impact (a very strong one), even after our having regained independence.

 

            The road from this civilizational chaos is evidently leading to an a-civilizational condition. If what we are accustomed to refer as “Europe” is not to decline, miserably crash and perish, we need to undertake a radical turn-about, while it is not too late, purifying the Latin civilization and shedding all the dangerous acquisitions of mixtures. This is a matter of life and death for European nations.

 

            European states must decidedly return to the Latin civilization. For Poland this is absolutely urgent.

 

            It is from such thoughts that the present deliberations about “the state in the Latin civilization” were born.

 

            Since they are the work of an author, who is accustomed to sua mente vivere [live according to his own mind] and they follow a new method, at the beginning, this book may seem to be strange. I am sure however that the reader will in time acquire a conviction that this entire book is composed of very simple observations and comments which are self-explanatory. After all, what it contains could be grasped and written by anybody. It is only the toil that is somewhat tedious.

 

            A Polish reader will probably find it easy to locate himself, as if in his own element, within a state that is operating according to the Latin civilization. The tradition of Polish political writers since the XVth c. all the way down to the four-year parliament [1788-1792] was downright Latin in its civilization. Our Polish historicism must out us back in the same direction.

 

            With the partitions [of Poland 1772-1795] the continuity of Polish scholarship was disrupted. This blow affected also the applied political sciences. In the general ruin of Polish identity, the scientific study of the state was lost and it had to be drawn anew from the currents of contemporary philosophical speculations. Since these were flourishing in Germany, it was there that our theoreticians of the state sought inspiration. But, already the first one of them, Józef GoBuchowski, distanced himself from German thought in a significant way.

 

            When German scholarship was sinking in the omnipotence of the state, GoBuchowski declared (in 1822) that the interference of the state should decline as communal understanding was on the increase. The state should be similar to a wise educator who aims at being redundant for the pupil as soon as possible. The development of the state consists in the reduction of all “political mechanics”. Indeed GoBuchowski coined an appropriate term, because mechanisms were to become the nightmare of European statehood[3]. He insisted that state arrangements should derive from the spirit of the nation and whatever is of alien origin should be rejected.

 

            Józef GoBuchowski entered the mind-tract of Schelling’s philosophy, but philosophy was for him only a point of attachment for the theoretical study of issues pertaining to public life. He was competent to be the creator of a modern Polish science of the state and for this reason he deserves to be mentioned here as a pioneer. Unfortunately he did not have the opportunity to develop in this direction. He lectured in Vilnius for only one term (from the end of October 1823 to the end of January 1824), only to be suspended by Novisilcov[4] and in August 1824 he was expelled from the university and the city together with Lelewel, DaniBowicz and Bobrowski[5].

 

            Four generations then passed during which “political mechanics” were developed to the extreme. As always, a happy reaction against evil came from the Church. Catholic corporatism put the science of the state back on the track of autonomy and required that the state be based on society. It condemned the currently practiced suppression of social development, (which was truly Byzantine). The renewed Catholic teaching on the state inevitably led towards the program of autonomy.

 

            The state in the Latin civilization has to be an organism and so this study deals with the unfolding of this principle.

 

            A consequence of this is the radical rejection of the totalitarian state. I therefore promote the maxim of total ethics. I demand that morality be binding not only in private life, but also and to the same extent and in an equal manner in public life, in every office, in every act of parliament and in the entire sphere of politics. I am deeply convinced that there will be less opportunity for demoralization in public life, once the principle of state omnipotence will be abandoned. I therefore also promote, alongside with total ethics and against its background, the maxim of autonomy.

 

            I have thought through and written down these motivated projects of a new state in difficult times, when God’s wrath fell upon us for Sowiniec[6]. Those who were called to serve Truth did not want to do so, and so Providence used blind and hostile tools, and now over our unhappy heads the gesta Dei per latrones [acts of God through robbers] are rolling. The servants of evil were told to clean the earth of evil.

 

            The present study is not an improvisation. In part, it consists of a compilation and systematization of several pieces scattered over a long list of previous studies, which contain more detailed information and justifications. These are works of various size, smaller and larger books, brochures and articles. I list them in chronological order (Koneczny 1896, 1903a, 1903b, 1903c)[7].

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2 [The term "Sarmatism" denotes a deformed hedonist cultural current in baroque Poland that referred to the ancient Sarmatians.]

3 The term „statehood” is not a synonym of the „state” since it denotes the institutions of the state.

4 [Russian curator for education in the Vilnius region of occupied Poland].

5 After the November uprising [1830-31], Goluchowski was a minister of education for a short time and in 1835 he was imprisoned in the Warsaw citadel. In 1847, 1849 and 1859 he published three studies on agrarian issues. See Koneczny (1929).

6 [Sowiniec is a hill in the outskirts of the city of Kraków. An artificial mount was raised on top of it in 1934-7, so as to commemorate Marshal Józef Pilsudski, whom Koneczny strongly opposed for the introduction of Turanian elements in Poland.]

7 [The available typescript of this book mentions only these four items. The rest of the list is missing].

 

 

Endnotes 

 


[1] Koneczny’s major works on civilizations have been published in English by Wydawnictwo Antyk, in Komorów, Poland: On the Plurality of Civilisations (2011), The Jewish Civilization (2011), On Order in History (2013), The Laws of History (2013), The Byzantine Civilization (2014), The Development of Morality (2016).

[2] [The term "Sarmatism" denotes a deformed hedonist cultural current in baroque Poland that referred to the ancient Sarmatians.]

[3] The term „statehood” is not a synonym of the „state” since it denotes the institutions of the state.

[4] [Russian curator for education in the Vilnius region of occupied Poland].

[5] After the November uprising [1830-31], Goluchowski was a minister of education for a short time and in 1835 he was imprisoned in the Warsaw citadel. In 1847, 1849 and 1859 he published three studies on agrarian issues. See Koneczny (1929).

[6] [Sowiniec is a hill in the outskirts of the city of Kraków. An artificial mount was raised on top of it in 1934-7, so as to commemorate Marshal Józef Pilsudski, whom Koneczny strongly opposed for the introduction of Turanian elements in Poland.]

[7] [The available typescript of this book mentions only these four items. The rest of the list is missing].

Copyright © Feliks Koneczny and Maciej Giertych 2018

Version: 8th January 2018