Libelt, Karol

Born Apr. 18, 1807, in Poznań; died June 6,1875, in Brdów, near Poznań. Polish public figure and philosopher.

After completing his studies in Berlin and Paris, Libelt taught in Poznań. He participated in the Polish Uprising of 1830–31 and in 1839 joined the first Poznań National Committee, which advocated preparation for a general Polish uprising. He was arrested in 1846 but was released during the Prussian uprising of March 1848. He became a leader of the National Committee, whose conciliatory policy contributed to the defeat of the Poznań Uprising of 1848. From 1848 to 1850 he was active in the liberal Polish League, virtually abandoning the national-liberation struggle.

Libelt was one of Poland’s messianic “national philosophers.” He held that the function of reason was negative, to reject what is false. Accordingly, truth is attained by means of intuition and imagination. He believed in the existence of a faculty beyond reason for apprehending the truth, possessed exclusively by the Slavic peoples, particularly Poles. Libelt formulated the “ten commandments of Slavic philosophy” as a “philosophy of action.”