If the characterization of avant-garde proposed once by Henri Saint Simon, and later maintained by Daniel Bell as well as Lidia Burska in the book entitled Awangarda i inne złudzenia. O pokoleniu ‘68 w Polsce (“The avant-garde and other illusions. On the ’68 generation in Poland”) is adopted, the philosophical revisionism inside Polish Marxism (the Warsaw school of the history of ideas) may be considered a phenomenon analogous to the artistic avant-garde which gained prominence in the middle of the 1950s. In Burska’s understanding, the significant trait of avant-garde is effective impact on the state of consciousness, stances and choices of the public. This essential factor highlights the connection between avant-garde and revisionism, due to the fact that, as it was commonly believed in Poland, the Warsaw school played a major role in the formation of the Polish post-war humanities. The purpose of the paper is to propose an understanding of the impact exerted by the Warsaw school of the history of ideas. In relation to this problem, the author refers to the testimonies of people who constituted that milieu, and he focuses on some topics from the hermeneutics of H.-G. Gadamer (the concept of the efficacy of history; the concept of application) and from the philosophy of H.R. Jauss (the concept of the horizon of expectations).

Artykuł jest próbą zaprezentowania intelektualnej biografii Henryka Elzenberga. Elzenberg dążył do przezwyciężenia swojego pesymistycznego światopoglądu. Początkowo skłaniał się do filozoficznie uzasadnianego nacjonalizmu, łączonego z arystokratycznym kulturalizmem. Rozczarowany realiami życia i brakiem możliwości realizowania postulowanych idei, zwrócił się ostatecznie w stronę naturalnej, bezwyznaniowej mistyki.