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Ryszard Legutko

RYSZARD ANTONI LEGUTKO (Krakow, 1949) is a Polish philosopher and politician. Under communism he was one of the editors of the samizdat quarterly Arka. After the collapse of the communist regime he co-founded the Centre for Political Thought, which combines research, teaching, seminars and conferences and is also a publishing house. He has translated and written commentaries to Plato’s Phaedo (1995), Euthyphro (1998) and Apology (2003). He is the author of several books: Plato’s Critique of Democracy (1990), Toleration (1997), A Treatise on Liberty (2007), An Essay on the Polish Soul (2008) and Socrates (2013). In 2007 he was Poland’s Education Minister, and in 2007–2009 Secretary of State in the Chancellery of President Lech Kaczyński. He is currently a Member of the European Parliament, where he sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Deputy Chairman of the Conservatives and Reformists parliamentary group.

ON YORAM HAZONY’S THE VIRTUE OF NATIONALISM

Yoram Hazony’s book1 has found many sympathetic readers – myself among them – and has been deservedly praised by reviewers. I have a personal reason to think highly of the book. Over the last decades, we have been living in Europe in the grips of a political orthodoxy that brooks

CONCLUSION – EXCERPT FROM THE DEMON IN DEMOCRACY

Excerpt from The Demon in Democracy*   One can look at the affinities between communism and liberal democracy from both a narrower and a wider prospect. The narrower point of view may lead us to a sad conclusion that the modern Western world never really understood quite correctly the communist

OUR NEW UTOPIA – EXCERPT FROM TRIUMPH OF THE COMMON MAN

2. […] A widely accepted definition, not accurate though, states that the word “utopia” denotes a political project which is idealistic in its intentions, but completely unrealistic, impractical and incompatible with human experience. The writers of utopias are therefore usually looked down as naïve sentimentalists or feared as dangerously inhuman