Karol Toeplitz – „The Kinsman from the confraternity of lovers of lunacy maniacallity”

Abstract

Professor Karol Toeplitz (a full professor) was born in Sopot, a Baltic seaside resort-town, on the 20th of March in 1936, studied philosophy and graduated from the University of Warsaw in 1957. His dissertation, entitled Faith and Moral Choice in S. Kierkegaard, was written under the supervision of the well-known Polish philosopher, profesor Leszek Kolakowski, and defended at the University of Warsaw in 1967. Later this dissertation became the basis for the development and publication of the first Polish monograph on the philosophical and theological thought of S. Kierkegaard, supplemented by the translations of some passages chosen from the original writings. This precursory text contributed to the increased arousal of interest in the Danish thinker.

Continuing the course of his academic career and achieving more degrees, Professor Karol Toeplitz was, inter alia, a lecturer at the Christian Theological Academy in Warsaw, The Stanislaw Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdansk, and the Pomeranian Academy in Slupsk. He also gave guest lectures in several European countries, including Denmark. He supervised the processes of preparing and finishing five PhD theses and was a reviewer of two honoris causa doctorates: the one that resulted in granting this honorary title to his former supervisor, Leszek Kolakowski, at the University of Gdansk, and with the other PhD h.c. degree H.Em. the Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew was awarded at the Christian Theological Academy in Warsaw.

Professor Karol Toeplitz wrote the total of 13 books, accumulated to his credit. They make up the totality of texts of different forms: some of them are the translations of some crucial works of authorship, written by Kierkegaard. The translated texts include: the second volume of Either/Or (Enten-Eller), Concluding the Unscientific Postscript to “Philosophical Crumbs” (Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift til de Philosophiske Smuler), Philosophical Crumbs (Philosophiske Smuler), a set of articles published in the magazine “Moment” (Øieblikket), and a wide range of other pieces of Kierkegaard’s writings entitled The smaller, the node of which contains the essay “De omnibus dubitandum est”, where he took the pseudonym Johannes Climacus and “About the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle” (Om Forskjellen Mellem et Genie og en Apostel).

Professor Karol Toeplitz also published 130 scientific articles in Poland, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He is the author of about 250 articles of popular science, journalistic literary texts (worked on over 10 years in Cracow, overlooking the literary weekly “Literary Life”). For two decades he was a member of the Committee of Philosophical Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He belongs to the advisory editorial council of the English-language scientific journal “Dialogue and Universalism”. He was with offered with many prizes and honors for his scientific and translator’s work. In 1988 he received the Individual Award of the Minister of Culture and Art. The translations of the Philosophical Crumbs and the Moment were awarded in 1988.