August Cieszkowski - Legacy

Legacy

Cieszkowski exerted a significant (and reciprocated) influence on Polish Romantic poet, playwright and Gothic novelist Zygmunt Krasinski, whom he met in Milan in 1839 and became close friends with (Józef Kallenbach published (in Polish) two volumes of their correspondence in 1912). He also influenced the poet Cyprian Norwid, philosopher Bronisław Trentowski and philosopher, art historian and proto-psychologist Józef Kremer. He is arguably the creator of the "philosophy of action." His most important philosophical legacy is probably his influence on the young Karl Marx, via German communist and Young Hegelian Moses Hess. The latter adopted Cieszkowski's idea of that the dualism between consciousness and action would collapse in the latter part of the history of humanity, though he believed the synthesis had occurred on various occasions throughout history and located the transition to the 'third age' at the Reformation instead of the philosophy of Hegel. Marx, who was a friend of and collaborator with Hess from a few years from 1841 onwards, owes various aspects of his thought on alienation and the nature of and transition to communist society to Cieszkowski, including that the dualism between consciousness and action would collapse in revolutionary praxis.

The University of Life Sciences in Poznań was named the August Cieszkowski Agricultural University of Poznań from 1996 until 11 April 2008, when it gained official university status, in recognition of Cieszkowski's contributions to agricultural science and education in the region.