Adam Schaff (10 March 1913 – 12 November 2006) was a Polish

Marxist philosopher Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...

Life

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

origin, Schaff was born in

Lemberg Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukrain ...

(Lwow, Lviv) into a lawyer's family. Schaff studied economics at the ''Ecole des Sciences Politiques et Economiques'' in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

, and

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. ...

in Poland, specializing in

epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epi ...

. In 1945 he received a philosophy degree at

Moscow University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

, and in 1948 he returned to

Warsaw University The University of Warsaw ( pl, Uniwersytet Warszawski, la, Universitas Varsoviensis) is a public university in Warsaw, Poland. Established in 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country offering 37 different fields of ...

. He was considered the official ideologue of the

Polish United Workers' Party The Polish United Workers' Party ( pl, Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza; ), commonly abbreviated to PZPR, was the communist party which ruled the Polish People's Republic as a one-party state from 1948 to 1989. The PZPR had led two other lega ...

, especially during its Stalinist period. He was a member of the

Polish Academy of Sciences The Polish Academy of Sciences ( pl, Polska Akademia Nauk, PAN) is a Polish state-sponsored institution of higher learning. Headquartered in Warsaw, it is responsible for spearheading the development of science across the country by a society o ...

and of the

Club of Rome The Club of Rome is a nonprofit, informal organization of intellectuals and business leaders whose goal is a critical discussion of pressing global issues. The Club of Rome was founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, Italy. It consists ...

Works

* ''Word and Concept'' * ''Language and Cognition'' * ''Introduction to Semantic'' * ''Problems of the Marxist Theory of Truth'' * ''A Philosophy of Man'' Several of Schaff's works were translated into German by Witold Leder.

External links

Adam Schaff (1913-2006) - Necrology

References

1913 births 2006 deaths Writers from Lviv Marxist theorists 20th-century Polish philosophers Jewish philosophers 20th-century Polish Jews Jewish socialists Polish United Workers' Party members University of Warsaw faculty Recipients of the State Award Badge (Poland) {{Poland-philosopher-stub

Life

Works

External links

See also

References