Zbigniew Jordan (1911–1977) – an outline to philosophical biography The 100th anniversary of Zbigniew Jordan’s birthday, which is coming soon, is an opportunity to remind this forgotten philosopher, classified in the second generation of Lvov and Warsaw School. His complex fortune reflects dilemmas and perplexities of Polish intelligence in the war and post-war times. Jordan, after defending his doctoral thesis in philosophy at Poznań University, continued his studies at Paris Sorbonne. At that time the prepared his postdoctoral thesis on the (...) notion of infinity. His work on this theme was interrupted by the outbreak of the WWII and Jordan participated in operations of Polish Army in the west. After the end of the war he started working in Radio Free Europe, Paris “Culture” and then in the centres of sovietology research in Europe and the United Stated. He has never come back to philosophy and only in the 1960s he undertook research work at English Universities at first as a lecturer and then as a professor of sociology. He died in the USA in 1977. Although Zbigniew Antoni Jordan did not accomplish any crucial discoveries in science, his life story is nearly a symbol of the historical turbulence and dilemmas, which were experienced by Polish intelligence at emigration. (shrink)

From the European point of view Zbigniew Antoni Jordan as a historian of the newest Polish philosophy In his article, the author presents Zbigniew Jordan’s works in the area of the history of philosophy, which are not well known in Poland. This representative of Lvov and Warsaw School was abroad, writing his habilitation thesis, when the World War II broke out. The war did not prevent him from active participation in the political life of Polish emigrants in Great Britain. For (...) the needs of current political activity he accomplished a lot of reliable and objective analyses of some geopolitical phenomena, which were a consequence of just finished war. Such kind of works made him take up serious historical studies and he started to use obtained experience to analyze the state and works of modern Polish philosophy, and especially the works of Lvov and Warsaw School. Furthermore, the article is an attempt to show the significance of Jordan’s works in propagating the history of Polish philosophy abroad. (shrink)