Abstract:

Abstract The one and basic characteristic feature of Polish Romantic reflection on race was that it associated race with tribeness. Such a reduction of the notion ‘race’ to ethnicity resulted from the then known definition of nation as a multiethnic and multicultural community which constituted the superior and the superb form of organizing the societal world, as well as from weakness of scholarly reflection in the field of physical anthropology. For Polish Romantics, race was not an objective category that on the basis of exiting physical differences enabled a division of humanity into permanent and clearly delimitated phonotypical populations. Race was identified with tribeness and related to a long gone past when the human kind merely created primitive social ties based on kinship of blood. However, what is really binding people is not biological criteria but spiritual semblance: communion of thought, feelings, and purpose. Color of skin or shape of skull do not determine a given populace’s brain capacities; in fact what counts only is cultural and civilization factors. For Romantics, in their thought a Eurocentric attitude dominated, although it was devoid of clearly racist connotations. Superior and inferior races, if existed at all, appeared only in the context of a level of development of civilization, that is, merely temporarily, because every race was able to achieve the level of the most developed races or even a higher one.

Keywords: