Ryszard Legutko Quotes

Captured by the ideological animus, both socialist and liberal-democratic art abandoned the criterion of beauty - considered anachronistic and of dubious political value - and replaced it with the criterion of correctness.

Liberal democracy is a powerful unifying mechanism, blurring differences between people and imposing uniformity of views, behavior, and language.

…egalitarianism and despotism do not exclude each other, but usually go hand in hand. To a certain degree, equality invites despotism, because in order to make all members of a society equal, and then to maintain this equality for a long period of time, it is necessary to equip the controlling institutions with exceptional power so they can stamp out any potential threat to equality in every sector of the society and any aspect of human life: to paraphrase a well-known sentence by one of Dostoyevsky’s characters, ‘We start with absolute equality and we end up with absolute despotism.’ Some call it a paradox of equality: the more equality one wants to introduce, the more power one must have; the more power one has, the more one violates the principle of equality; the more one violates the principle of equality, the more one is in a position to make the world egalitarian.

The ideological man is thus both absolutely suspicious and absolutely enthusiastic. There seems to be no idea under the sun that he would not put into question and make an object of derision, skepticism, or contempt, no idea that he would not reduce to an offshoot of hidden instincts, mundane interests, biological drives, and psychological complexes. Hence he is likely to despise reason as an autonomous faculty, to downgrade lofty ideals, and to debunk the past, seeing everywhere the same ideological mystification. But at the same time, he lives in a constant state of mobilization for a better world. His mouth is full of noble slogans about brotherhood, freedom, and justice, and with every word he makes it clear that he knows which side is right and that he is ready to sacrifice his entire existence for the sake of its victory. The peculiar combination of both attitudes--merciless distrust and unwavering affirmation--gives him an incomparable sense of moral self-confidence and intellectual self-righteousness.

The illusion they cherish of being a brave minority heroically facing the whole world, false as it is, gives them nevertheless a strange sense of comfort: they feel absolutely safe, being equipped with the most powerful political tools in today's world but at the same time priding themselves on their courage and decency, which are more formidable the more awesome the image of the enemy becomes.

But it does not require much effort to see that the dialogue in liberal democracy is of a peculiar kind because its aim is to maintain the domination of the mainstream and not to undermine it. A deliberation is believed to make sense only if the mainstream orthodoxy is sure to win politically. Today's 'dialogue' politics are a pure form of the right-is-might politics, cleverly concealed by the ostentatiously vacuous rhetoric of all-inclusiveness.

„We współczesnym świecie trwa ostra konkurencja w niemal wszelkich dziedzinach życia. Wśród tych cech, które pozwalają w owej konkurencji zaistnieć, jest oryginalność, a więc zdolność do intrygująco nowego spojrzenia na rzeczywistość. Nie jest to jedyna cecha, a jej posiadanie nie gwarantuje sukcesu. Stanowi ona jednak bez wątpienia rzecz bardzo ważną. Tej cechy Polak na razie nie wykazuje. Oczywiście korzystanie ze zdobytych doświadczeń i wykorzystywanie potencjału nie posiadanego przez innych także nie gwarantują sukcesu. W skali światowej mamy wszak również do czynienia z czymś, co można by nazwać kulturowym konformizmem i dlatego nie każdy nonkonformizm bywa nagradzany. Bywają takie nonkonformizmy, za które można być odtrąconym. Tak czy inaczej sukces zależy od zbyt wielu czynników, by głosić jakąś prostą na niego receptę. Nie ma również pewności, że polskie doświadczenie zawiera coś, na co jest zapotrzebowanie we współczesnym świecie. Wbrew temu, co sądzą multikulturaliści, istnieją społeczeństwa, które nie potrafią wnieść wiele do światowej kultury i są zmuszone przebywać na jej marginesie. Czy Polakom również musi przypaść taka rola niezależnie od obecnej fali imitatorstwa przewalającego się przez nasz kraj, to problem, którego nie podejmuję się rozstrzygnąć. Nie jest przecież wcale powiedziane, że nasze doświadczenie zawiera treści i siły, które mogą uczynić nas społeczeństwem bardziej obecnym w dzisiejszym świecie. Wśród społeczeństw, tak jak wśród jednostek, nie ma równości; jedni osiągają sukces, a inni – tych zaś jest znacznie więcej – muszą zadowolić się mniej eksponowanymi miejscami. Ważne jest jednak – i to jest główne przesłanie niniejszych wywodów – aby potrafić zmusić się do myślenia w kategoriach szukania tego, czym można się wyróżnić, a nie w kategoriach tego, czym można się wtopić w istniejący świat. Nie da się a priori określić, jakie miejsce jest dla nas stosowne w dzisiejszym świecie. Określenie stanie się możliwe dopiero wówczas, jeśli weźmiemy udział w walce o wpływ na kształt świata. Tego udziału zaś najwidoczniej nie mamy ochoty brać. Jest coś przygnębiającego w fakcie, że miliony Polaków wyzwolonych po wielu dziesięcioleciach z najgorszych reżymów, jakie stworzono w historii, okazują się niezdolne do pełnego korzystania ze zdobytej wolności. Uświadomienie sobie źródeł tego uczucia przygnębienia – gdy jest wystarczająco mocno przeżyte – może mieć skutki pobudzające. Problem jednak w tym, iż ciągle zbyt niewielu ludzi odczuwa zgnuśnienie polskiej duszy. Dla licznych rzesz owa dusza przeżywa rozkwit, a jego miarą jest to, iż zaczyna być nieodróżnialna od innych dusz. Idąc dalej tym tropem, można dojść do przekonania, że swój największy triumf osiągnie w momencie, gdy przestanie istnieć.

I remember how surprised I was to discover that Isaiah Berlin's famous essay on the two concepts of liberty, which once inspired many Polish intellectuals, myself included, was nothing more than a collection of platitudes and falsehoods that further prevented rather than encouraged any serious reflection on freedom.

In defiance of Berlin, I believe the concept of freedom should open us up to an abundance of weighty philosophical questions about the world and our place within it, rather than discourage us out of fear that we put our freedom at risk by answering these questions.

Under communism, the conceptual engine that animated the communist ideology was the idea of class struggle, supposedly fought throughout the entire history of humanity. In a liberal democracy, this engine—believed to have been present in the history of humanity since the beginning of time—is an improved version of the original. The Marxists had only “class” as an ideological leverage. In today’s liberal democracy the main ideological triad is “class, race, and gender.

In today’s world entertainment is not just a pastime or a style, but a substance that permeates everything: schools and universities, upbringing of children, intellectual life, art, morality, and religion. It has become dear to the hearts of students, professors, entrepreneurs, journalists, engineers, scientists, writers, even priests. Entertainment imposes itself psychologically, intellectually, socially, and also, strange as it might sound, spiritually. A failure to provide human endeavors—even the most noble ones—with an entertaining wrapping is today unthinkable and borders on sin.

The modern sense of entertainment increasingly resembles what Pascal long ago called divertissement: that is, an activity—as he wrote in his Thoughts—that separates us from the seriousness of existence and fills this existence with false content. Divertissement is thus not only being entertained in the ordinary sense of the word, but living and acting within artificial rules that organize our lives, setting conventional and mostly trivial goals which we pursue, getting involved in disputes and competitions, aspiring to honors-making careers, and doing everything that would turn our thoughts away from fundamental existential matters. By escaping the questions of the ultimate meaning of our own lives, or of human life in general, our minds.

The liberal-democratic mind, just as the mind of a true communist, feels an inner compulsion to manifest its pious loyalty to the doctrine. Public life is full of mandatory rituals in which every politician, artist, writer, celebrity, teacher, or any public figure is willing to participate, all to prove that their liberal-democratic creed springs spontaneously from the depths of their hearts.

All political projects that neglect human nature and disregard the lessons drawn from centuries of political experience have to compensate for their lack of realism by a disproportionately high degree of intervention in both the social fabric and in human minds.

Despite philosophical fantasizing about self-sufficient individuals, human beings need a deep belonging and the more they are individualized, the more they are eager to assimilate collective identities - even absurd ones - without realizing to what extent their self-proclaimed individual sovereignty is illusory

[Libertarianism] crumbles because it attempts to square the circle. Two loyalties -- one particular to one's own community, the other to an infinitely open system -- cannot be reconciled.

The actors in this sexual revolution bore a closer resemblance to Plato's "huge strong beast" that could be easily tamed by clever guardians than Nietzsche's independent Supermen impelled solely by their own inner dynamic.

There are four things that an aristocrat should contribute to the modern world to countervail its ideological tendencies: the rejection of historical inevitability; the defense of the ethics of obligations; an acceptance of the body/soul dualism with the soul taking the dominant position; and a classical concept of shame. All of them are interrelated.

As regards the modern liberal democrat who represents the class of victors in this process of emancipation, despite his loud bragging about transgressions, too much of his language and presuppositions sound discordant with the idea of freedom -- too much necessity, inevitability, irreversible change, and too many natural God-given drives. His language holds too many references to the tides of history and refers to excessive adapting, yielding, giving in, and indulging. There is also too much easiness in pursuing freedom, too much self-absolution, and too much nonchalance in dismissing all the caveats and counterarguments accumulated over the centuries. He appears more like an actor who takes part in a performance in which he has been ordered to play the role of a free man. He duly obeys the author's and director's orders but is utterly unaware that, by listening to those orders, he has already lost his chance to be his own master.