Leszek Nowak (7 January 1943 – 20 October 2009) was a Polish

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

and legal theoretician.

Biography

Education

In 1965, he graduated in law from Adam Mickiewicz University's Faculty of Law and Administration, having written Master of Jurisprudence (M.Jur.) thesis under the supervision of

Zygmunt Ziembiński Zygmunt Ziembiński OPR (June 1, 1920 – May 19, 1996), usually cited as Z. Ziembinski, was a Polish legal philosopher, logician, and one of the most prominent theoreticians of law in Poland in the second half of the 20th century. He was Pr ...

, who introduced Nowak to the field of legal theory and convinced him to major in the subject. In 1966 he completed his Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) degree in

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

at the University of Warsaw under the supervision of . In 1967 he obtained a Doctor of Law (LL.D.) degree, writing a dissertation on the

legal interpretation Judicial interpretation is the way in which the judiciary construes the law, particularly constitutional documents, legislation and frequently used vocabulary. This is an important issue in some common law jurisdictions such as the United Stat ...

, the

rule of law The rule of law is the political philosophy that all citizens and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers and leaders. The rule of law is defined in the ''Encyclopedia Britannica ...

and semiotic functions of language. He obtained his

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

( post-doctoral degree) in 1970, was subsequently published as a book on the methodological foundations of Karl Marx's ''Das'' ''Kapital''.

Ideas

Nowak got his professorship in 1976, at the age of 33. At that time he was the youngest professor in Poland and the author of the methodological conception – the ''idealizational theory of science''. His theory was inspired by ideas he found in Marx’s writings. He made them explicit and precise by using the language of contemporary logical philosophy. In 1977 he started to work on a new, generalized social theory, which he called the '. In this theory real socialism occurs as the most oppressive system in the history of the hitherto known societies. Nowak was aware of the risk of working on such a theory in the country of real socialism but he did not decide to accept intellectual compromise and in 1979 disseminated the typescript of his book. During the time of '' Solidarność'' movement he spent all energy to educate union members and to reveal the oppressive nature of socialism. He was interned on 13th of December 1981 and spent a year in jail. In 1985 he was expelled from the university and in 1989 his professorship was reinstated.

References

External links

Obituary at PhilPapers
1943 births 2009 deaths 20th-century Polish philosophers Philosophers of law Philosophers of social science Metaphysicians {{Poland-bio-stub