Pierwiastek pałubiczny, konstrukcja i akulturacja w „Pałubie” Karola Irzykowskiego
Pałubic element, construction and acculturation in “Pałuba ”by Karol Irzykowski

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the text is to discuss Karol Irzykowski’s concepts of “pałuba” and construction,which he proposed in Pałuba (1903), where he characterises a “constructional element”appealing to the theses of empirical criticism of Richard Avenarius and Ernst Mach.However, the question of the construction, understood first from the epistemologicaland psychological point of view, was present in the theses of Kant, Fichte and Schelling,and it became popularised thanks to neo-Kantianism and empirical criticism. The thesesrelated to the construction were intensively discussed during the creation of Pałubaand Irzykowski’s subsequent works, in which the issue of construction also appears,considered as a cognitive schema, as the formal element confronted with the content,as the constructional aspect of the verbal and visual (film) communication. His laterworks concern the cultural construction which is also a formal construction, and theycome into being at the same time that Cassirer’s books on the symbolic forms of culturewere published. However, the question of construction is best presented in Pałuba,described with the phrase “constructional element”, which was opposed to a “pałuba”(“pałubic element”). Confronting the terms “pałuba”, i.e. natural, direct, presented tothe human being, and “construction”, i.e. the world created by human beings, specificfor us, Irzykowski defines human existence, he shows the regularities of human acts,cognition and feeling. At the same time, he captures the “natural” aspect of culture withthe use of the term “pałuba”. It is that coexistence of the naturalness and the specificallyhuman products within the world of culture — in the world which annexes the “natural”,bestows the senses and meanings on “pałuba” — that makes an “enculturation” possible,i.e. an introduction of the “wild” man into culture, teaching and adaptating to life inthe cultural world, full of human senses and meanings. The text discusses the categoryof the “constructional element” and presents Irzykowski’s thoughts on the backgroundof the hitherto existing concepts of construction, as well as in the context of his ownanthropological, epistemological and cultural theses.

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