Philosophical Excursions into Jewish Problems

When I was asked to deliver the Aleksander and Alicja Hertz Annual Memorial Lecture, I pondered for a long time on the choice of the subject matter. Perhaps the easiest and most appropriate solution would have been to talk about the place of Jews in Polish philosophy. Not philosophy in Poland, because it is a much broader subject which demands inclusion of strictly Jewish motifs, such as those of Nachman Krochmal, but Polish philosophy specifically.

A great deal can be written on the subject and undoubtedly should be one day. The Lvov-Warsaw School, which I have been working studying intensively, lists over 20 scholars of Jewish origin out of a total of 80, according to a list I compiled some twenty years ago. That group included Alfred Tarski (originally Tajtelbaum), Adolf Lindenbaum, Janina Hosiasson, Edward Poznański, Henryk Mehlberg, Janina Kotarbińska (née Dina Sztejnbarg), Eugenia and Leopold Blaustein, Mordechaj Wajsberg, and Moses Presburger, to name only a few. Their vicissitudes, careers, problems, hopes, and expectations pose a very interesting subject for research in connection with the place of Jewish intelligentsia in the Polish intellectual life of the 20 th century, and particularly at the time of the Second Republic.