The Problem of Moral Rearmament: Poland, the European Union, and the War in Ukraine

This book looks at Poland at the time of the war in Ukraine with an emphasis on the pertinent political philosophical reflection of its public scholars regarding the problem of the country’s moral rearmament—a major axiological challenge for the West and its member states in dangerous times. After initially looking at the sociopolitical context of the question in Poland, that is, the country’s response to the early phase of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as presenting the aggressive Russian empire together with the European Union as a normative empire, the main question is examined in the context of the Polish national community. Thus Poland is studied from several aspects of cultural and political philosophy, augmented by political theology, which provide potentially relevant resources to confront the challenge. From this perspective reflection on existing historical memory in Poland is presented that explains the survival of a tragic sensibility and can act as a counter to the historical amnesia that has been determined as a deterrent of the axiological task of moral rearmament, and plays an important part in a deeper reflection of the present dangerous times.

Christopher Garbowski is a professor emeritus at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland. He has been primarily interested in values and religion in literature and popular culture and is the author and co-editor of a number of books. He is also on the editorial board of Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe and was formerly a book review editor at The Polish Review.