Pisma machabejskie

Justyna Melonowska is one of Poland’s most interesting intellectuals, one whose philosophical work is marked by a relentless nonconformity. She emerged into the public consciousness as a critic of the anthropology of John Paul II, sparking interest in liberal circles. However, she soon redirected the barb of her criticism toward the liberal identity of contemporary Europe. Her interest in the decadence of Western culture resulted in the book Pisma machabejskie. Religia i walka [Maccabean Writings. Religion and Struggle], one of the main themes of which is the inability of Euro-American culture to fight for the very principles and values that shaped the West. This failure, Melonowska writes, is linked to the false conviction that instead of fighting for these values, it is enough to simply employ violence against those who consider the battle worth waging. In consequence, beneath the veneer of the anti-violence rhetoric that has gained such popularity in the West, there is a stifling of debate about the actual problems facing Western culture.

Melonowska argues that the belief – once shared throughout the classical West – that it was necessary to fight for the truth, both the internal truth of our civilization and the struggle with other cultures over the truth that would shape human existence, was a fundamental product of Western thought that has since been lost. The West today is preoccupied with the symbolically, economically, and politically violent imposition of new, ultraliberal social and political models onto the rest of the world – models that would fail, the author maintains, if tested in the fire of true intellectual battle.

Melonowska uses the Maccabean Revolt, a famous chapter in the history of Israel, as a stepping stone for further consideration of the range of actions that could be undertaken – including restoring the capacity for struggle without resorting to savage violence – to reclaim what the writer believes to be the truly universal elements of the West’s legacy. In Melonowska’s view, classical Europe, unlike its modern successor, was not an ideological monolith, but a culture that lay the groundwork for discussion among divergent strains of thought, from which good was subsequently extracted: good society, true religion, and mature liberty.