Tadeusz Różewicz's Philosophy of Folly

The article concerns one of the most essential categories in Tadeusz Różewicz's system of thought, prevalent especially in his later works: stupidity. It identifies the etiology of “philosophy of stupidity” in Różewicz's works and tries to locate the reasons for its increasing prevalence over time. Różewicz's interest in stupidity can be attributed to his sensitivity to the phenomenon of massification and the consequences of the growing density of social life, that is, the accelerating pace of civilizational development and rampant growth in consumption. By tracing and representing the cultural and social consequences of civilizational development in his works, Różewicz became one of the first European artists to analyze the effects of an escalating process of emergence—however, his critical attitude toward postmodernity results from an unjustified reflection of his criticism of modernity. A crucial claim is that Różewicz's “philosophy of stupidity” central to his later works, is the result of his misunderstanding of the principles of liberal capitalism. In assessing the culture of his time with the support of modern critical ideologies, Różewicz—paradoxically—supports the “cultural logic of late capitalism.”