ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the primary source of the vision and its operationalization was a moral awakening in Poland in the late 1960s and 1970s – a period which brings to mind a virtual “second Renaissance” at the heart of European modernity. The original Renaissance, commonly associated with a splendid rinascimento in the arts and sciences – Leonardian paintings, Copernican ideas and Shakespearian aphorisms – took place in a world of cruel religious wars, persecution, and the rule of dogma. Leszek Kolakowski looked up to Erasmus, the Renaissance thinker whose faith reconciled Christianity with the mockery of scholastic logomachy and trust in human possibilities. There are several reasons why a creative, Renaissance-like ferment, and so many bold and audacious visions, emerged in the period preceding Solidarnosc. Irrespective of the reasons behind the cultural rinascimento, the “second Renaissance” intensified under conditions of the brainless and soulless modernity spawned by Marxist-Leninist doctrines.
