Jolanta Brach-Czaina

(1937-2021) – professor of philosophy, university lecturer, author and co-author of many books in the fields of aesthetics, philosophy, art, culture and anthropology.

She worked at the School of Social Sciences of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences and at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw, and had a longstanding connection with the University of Białystok. In her books, she went beyond the academic understanding of philosophy, employing the form of the essay and expressing philosophical content in miniatures about human existence and the everyday. At the beginning of her academic career, she focused on aesthetics and the study of theatre, and in subsequent decades – on ethics and literary studies. In the 1990s and later she was interested in political and social issues, and became known as a women’s rights advocate.

Her 1992 essay “Szczeliny istnienia” (The Fissures of Being) was enthusiastically received by readers and critics, and received the Polish Association of Book Publishers award. Its reception among readers was uniquely personal. It seemed like it spoke with various languages of existence, described various experiences – of the mother, the prisoner, the victim, of those dying and those being born. Fundamentally, Brach-Czaina’s essay spoke of existence, about what it means that something is, that I am, that someone is. According to the author, to be is to undertake the effort of existing. To organise. To busy oneself. To care and to strive. It is not only intellectual effort, the effort of a writer and philosopher, that is interesting from an existential perspective. Everyday existence, ordinary being is also interesting. This elevates the status of what is usually unobserved: the everyday bustle, ordinary people’s activities, women’s efforts. Brach-Czaina’s book was deemed “a bible of feminism”, and it became an intellectual stimulus within the field of feminist studies. The essay proved to be inspiring also from a historico-literary perspective. It brought to light the existential message of poetry by Tadeusz Różewicz and Miron Białoszewski. The Fissures of Being is one of the most important works of the last decades, a masterly combination of philosophical precision and poetic language, intellectual resonance and literary universalism. This approach can also be found in the author’s book “Błony umysłu” (The Membranes of the Mind, 2003), emphasising the role of touch (“the guardian of reality”) and taste, senses which enable a person to come into contact with what is existentially concrete.

The last, posthumous collection (“Rzeczywistość komponowana” – Arranged Reality) is a selection of Brach-Czaina’s most important essays and press interviews, demonstrating the philosopher’s interest in the political and social dimension of reality. Speaking about mores, religiousness, interpersonal relations and values, she shows a characteristic interest in the “here and now”, indicating the necessity of combining thinking and living within the everyday.