MEDIA, MĄDROŚĆ I HUMANISTYKA W KRYZYSIE
Media, Wisdom, and the Humanities in Crisis

Summary/Abstract: The article is an attempt to establish the so far ambiguous relations between the media and philosophy. Understanding these connections may help in seeing the essence of the so-called crisis of the humanities. Until the 20th century, attempts to connect philosophical activity with the problem of media were rare. The values of writing and the book as important carriers of philosophical culture were not questioned—they were rather assumed as a condition for the possibility of practicing philosophy. At the same time, since the end of the Renaissance, the concept of philosophy has been limited to its theoretical aspect. The questions we ask focus on the relationship between the various forms of communication and the concept of philosophy. For this purpose, we combine two shots that complement each other to a large extent. The first approach is the interdisciplinary intellectual tradition of media ecology. Media ecology examines the impact of products of technology—mainly mass media—on our way of thinking and feeling, on our values and ways of organizing our communities. In this perspective, media ecology is a kind of meta-discipline whose foundations are determined by such authors as Marshall McLuhan, Walter J. Ong, Eric Havelock, and Neil Postman. The second approach is metaphilosophical analyses carried out by Pierre Hadot and Juliusz Domański which point to the praxistic aspect of the concept of philosophy. The purpose of this article, however, is not only a historical analysis focusing on the correlation between the change of the media and the concept of philosophy. Rather, it is about listening to the authors who broaden our understanding of the ambiguous relationships between the media and philosophy in the hope of understanding the essence of the current crisis in the humanities.

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