Review: Chantal Delsol Kamienie węgielne. Na czym nam zależy? (Cornerstones: What do we care about?), translated by Małgorzata Kowalska, Znak, Krakow 2018, pp. 320

Wrocławski PRZEGLĄD Teologiczny 27 (2019) 2, 265–272 Wrocław Theological REVIEW Fr. Maciej Raczyński-Rożek Pontifical Faculty of Theology in Warsaw ORCID: 0000-0002-4843-4743 Review: Chantal Delsol Kamienie węgielne. Na czym nam zależy? (Cornerstones: What do we care about?) translated by Małgorzata Kowalska, Znak, Krakow 2018, pp. 320 C ornerstones. What do we care about? is another book by Chantal Delsol translated into Polish. Chantal Delsol (born in 1947 in Paris) specializes in political philosophy, history of ideas and philosophical anthropology. She wrote over a dozen philosophical books and several novels, some of which have been translated into Polish: Essay on the man of late modernity (Znak, Krakow 2003), What is man? The anthropology course for the uninitiated (Znak, Krakow 2011), Hatred of the world. Totalitarianisms and post-modernity (PAX, Warsaw 2017) and Cornertones discussed in this article. As a columnist, Delsol cooperates with Le Figaro and the magazine Valeurs actuelles. She is a member of the French Academy, a professor at the University of Marne-le-Vallée and the founder of the Hannah Arendt Institut. She is also considered to be the heiress to this thinker. Among the Western European authors, she is distinguished by her sensitivity to the situation of the Central and Eastern Europe, her knowledge of its history and her attempt to use the tragic experiences of this region (especially the Soviet regime) as a warning to the rest of the Old Continent. The book entitled Cornerstones. What do we care about? analyses the European culture and its growing similarity to the 20th-century totalitarianisms, which the author observes in an attempt to indicate the direction of repair. Delsol traces those elements of the Old Continent’s culture without which Europe will no longer be itself, and then puts them to the cohesion test because, as she writes, “all cultures are respectable and in all cultures people can live happily, but none can survive without a minimum of cohesion” (p. 9). Each chapter of the book DOI: 10.34839/wpt.2019.27.2.265-272 266 Reviews explains the different cornerstones of the European culture: understanding of the human being as a person and the values associated with it, such as freedom of conscience and the imperfect character of the person; the joy of following values; the promise that brings hope; the primacy of truth. In the first chapter, entitled Choosing a person, Delsol focuses on describing the human being as a person. It is the starting point and the basis of the author’s entire worldview. Describing the human being as a person is a matter of faith, or choice, claims the French philosopher. In other cultures, a different choice has been made, something has been lost and something gained at the same time. Delsol points out that European culture traditionally treats the human being as a person. However, that kind of treatment has been degenerated these days. The anthropology of postmodern culture is falling into schizophrenia, writes Delsol, because, on the one hand, it sees the human being as something sacred (never again the Holocaust), and on the other hand, in the light of discoveries in neuroscience and biology, treats him as a higher level animal. Therefore, in order to speak of the human being as a person, it is necessary today, first and foremost, to firmly embed the person’s inviolable dignity, and secondly, to review and adjust the status of the person. Human dignity, in order to be inviolable, cannot be attributed to the human being from the outside. This is the case in cultures that lack the notion of the human being as a person, where society or some of its elements have the primary role. For example, in ancient Greece or ancient Rome, eugenics was a normal thing. Children with developmental delays or those considered unnecessary for the society were killed and no one considered it unethical. Similarly, for the Nazis, human dignity was given from the outside by ideology: it was granted only to the Germans, while the Jews or Poles were regarded as sub-human. Delsol emphasizes that today’s liberal individualism, which also decides who is human and who is not (for example as regards abortion), fits into the logic of the 20th-century totalitarianisms. At the same time, it tries to avoid returning to those criminal systems, constantly fuelling the outrageous atmosphere by reminding about the crimes of the Holocaust in schools or television programmes. According to the French philosopher, that is not enough. In such a case, human dignity is granted to him from the outside by creating a certain mood, and the mood can change at any time, whereas dignity must be an internal human category, independent of current social moods, and must therefore be based on the dogmatic faith derived from Christianity. For any dignity that is not based on transcendence is not unconditional. Besides, for human dignity to be unconditional, it must be without definition, according to Delsol. This is because it stems from a mystery. We human are mysterious beings and no science can describe us in a comprehensive manner. Reviews 267 If we assume that science can determine what a human being is, we could reduce him to neurons or to biology or chemistry, and then he will cease to be a respectable being. In order for unconditionality to appear, it is necessary to acknowledge spirituality. For spirituality introduces the fear of violating something divine and mysterious in a human being. Only such an attitude can make him inviolable. Having clarified the foundations of unconditional human dignity, Delsol shows how to review and adjust the status of a person. According to the French philosopher, the subject has been degenerated and must be distinguished from the notion of a person. In fact, the Enlightenment has led to a distortion of humanism, since the rule of human-king over the world, present in Judeo-Christian culture, has been transformed into an unlimited power of human-god. The human being began to be treated as an independent subject. This independence, in turn, meant power without responsibility and brought tragic consequences for the world entrusted to him. For he ruled the world without taking into account its rights. In response to this approach, “anti-humanism” was born. Freud, for example, argued that the man in the Bible granted himself an immortal soul and divine origin, and lost the sense of solidarity with the animal world. A further consequence of such an attitude was the blurring of the boundaries between the animal world and the human world. The values ceased to be the source of the creature’s this ability, and were replaced by the ability to feel. Since animals also had this ability, they deserved the same respect as humans. This is how the morality of compassion based on emotions, which is still valid today, was born. Emotions, however, are not permanent and it is impossible to build unconditional human dignity on (...truncated)