Lords and boors - westernisers and ‘narodniks’

The Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Philosophy of the Research Centre for the Humanities (used to be the Institute for Philosophical Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences before 2012; and the Institute of Philosophy of the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences before 2019) have been collaborating in the field of Polish and Hungarian comparative intellectual history over last ten years. Their first initiative included a short-term project entitled Affectivity and its Vicissitudes in Contemporary Humanities and Social Sciences, supported by the Visegrad Fund. Our cooperation became more established within the frames of projects funded by the bilateral programme of the Polish and Hungarian Academies, entitled The Impact of Noble Legacy in Shaping Citizenship in Central Europe (2014–2016, project leaders: Gábor Gángó and Rafał Smoczyński); The Role of Intelligentsia in Shaping Collective Identities of Poles and Hungarians in 19th and 20th Centuries (2017–2019; project leaders: Béla Mester and Rafał Smoczyński); and our ongoing research entitled Westernisers and ‘Narodniks’. Dichotomous Identity-Generating Narratives in the 19th–20th-century Polish and Hungarian Intellectual History (planned for 2020–2022, renewed until 2023 due to the pandemic; project leaders: Béla Mester and Rafał Smoczyński). This volume mirrors the present status of our research based on papers presented during the workshops held in Budapest on 21st February 2019, in Warsaw on 26th October 2019, and in Budapest on 30th July 2020; collected and selected for the 10th anniversary of our cooperation. The editors and authors would like to express their gratitude to the Wacław Felczak Fund, which supported the publication of the present book.