On March 15th-16th 2025 the first conference of the Academic Club for Ancient Philosophy (Koło Naukowe Filozofii Starożytnej) at the University of Warsaw took place. This academic event was organised by young enthusiasts of ancient thought and gathered scholars from various Polish universitites, and students interested generally in the topic of body and soul or in the subjects of individual papers, the list of which can be found here.

AΦR, naturally, was present at the conference. Tomasz Mróz delivered a paper titled Stefan Pawlicki on the concepts of soul in Greek philosophy. Pawlicki (1839-1916) was once in his career a professor of philosophy in Warsaw, but Mróz’s paper was focused on mature period of his career, when he was a respected professor in Cracow and the author of History of Greek Philosophy. Volume I of this book appeared in print in 1890 (front page on the right) and was the first Polish handbook for ancient philosophy, while the volume III, meant to be devoted to Aristotle, was not finished by the author.

Pawlicki was an admirer of Plato, but instead of presenting well-known opinions of Pawlicki on Plato, Mróz discussed Pawlicki’s criticism of the pre-Socratic thinkers. Pawlicki was a historian of philosophy who aimed not only to provide the readers with an account of the ideas of Greek thinkers, but considered the needs of the Polish reading audiences and supplemented his discussion of the Greeks with assessments and evaluations presented from the Catholic standpoint.

One of Pawlicki’s methods was to draw far reaching conclusions from the fragments of the pre-Socratic thinkers, especially materialist philosophers like Democritus, and then present them as unacceptable. For example, he stressed pantheist traces in Heraclitus and pessimism of Democritus, while at the same time he seemed to appreciate the concept of reincarnation and Pythagorean ethics, as encouraging human beings to improve themselves.

His arguments against most of the Greek concepts of human soul allow to structure them in order of perfection, starting with Aristotle (whom Pawlicki did not manage to present), followed by Plato and Socrates, with Pythagoreanism below, and ending with Heraclitus and Democritean materialism, which was – just like 19th century materialists – a constant subject of Pawlicki’s critical remarks.