|
- - - -
Kazimerz Lyszczynsky
LISZINSKI Casimir
(04/03/1634 - 30/03/1689)
Thinker and atheist, public figure, author of the first in the world culture treatise on the nonexistence of God
Casimir Liszinski was born in the village Lyschitsy, Brest region. He studied at a Jesuit collegium in Brest. In 1654-1657 Liszinski took part in the wars of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth against Russia, Sweden and Hungary. In 1658-1666 he was a member of the Jesuit Order. After a year's novitiate in the city of Krakow (Poland), in 1660-1664 he studied at the Jesuit Collegium of Kalisz (Poland), where he studied rhetoric, logic, physics and metaphysics, then in Lviv (Ukraine), where he studied theology. In 1666 he returned to the family estate Lyschitsy. Liszinski turned it into a model farm, founded a school for peasant children and taught there. He also practised law. In 1669, 1670, 1672 and 1674 Liszinski was elected spokesman for the gentry of Brest province at the Sejms of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Warsaw. In 1682 King Jan III appointed Liszinski as court assessor of Brest-Lithuanian province.
No later than 1674 Liszinski wrote a 265-page treatise, which was the first work in history with the title "On the nonexistence of God" (in 1689 Liszinski was burned upon court order; there are five fragments maintained, which were discovered and published in 1957). In the treatise he outlined his religious and world views, denied the existence of God, soul immortality, afterlife, all the dogmas and rites of the church. Liszinski argued that people created gods, that God was not a real entity, but the product of mind, a chimerical one therewith, and that faith, which is considered sacred, was mere human imagination. He believed that theologians "extinguished the light of reason" and "overthrew God from the heaven" by attributing to him impossible, contradictory traits and characteristics. Liszinski argued that religion was established by nonbelievers, so that they were bestowed honors, that pseudo sages deceived common people by entangling them with faith in God imposed by atheists. The only reality he acknowledged was material nature; Liszinski argued that all natural changes occur according to the laws of matter, not at God's will. Liszinski considered it necessary to replace a church marriage with a civil one. On the evidence given against him by the person who had stolen a part of his treatise, in 1688 Lyschinski was sent to church prison by the bishop of Vilna and sentenced to faggot by the court of bishops. After a trial held in early 1689 in Warsaw, Lyschinsky was beheaded and commited to the flames, his ashes were dispersed in the field.
Works:
1. Фрагменты из трактата Казимира Лыщинского «О несуществовании бога» // Из истории философской и общественно-политической мысли Белоруссии: Избранные произведения XVI – нач. XIX в. Минск: Изд-во Академии наук БССР, 1962. С. 285–286.
Literature:
1. Seyler G. D. Acta Lysczynskiana, das ist, Ausfu?hrliche Nachricht von dem Leben, Schriften und Schicksalen des beru?cktigten polnischen Atheisten, Casimir Lysczynski. Ko?nigsberg: Martin Eberhard Dorn, 1740.
2. Ammon C. F. Casimir Lysczynski, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des idealistischen Atheismus. Gottingen: Dieterich, 1802.
3. Wielowski J. Sprawa Kazimierza Lyszczynskiego. Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna, 1955.
4. Прокошина Е. С., Шалькевич В. Ф. Казимир Лыщинский: Мыслитель, общественный деятель и педагог XVII в. Мн.: Беларусь, 1986.
5. Nowicki A. Kazimierz Lyszczynski. Lodz: Towarzystwo Krzewienia Kultury Swieckiej, 1989.
© National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 2011
|
|
