Wojciech Daszkiewicz

The term civilisation initially had a legal meaning but gradually expanded to include social refinement, cultural progress, and historical development. The Enlightenment was crucial in shaping its modern connotations, with philosophers like Voltaire, Rousseau, and Turgot linking it to intellectual and moral advancement. By the late 18th century, civilisation had acquired both a neutral descriptive meaning and an evaluative one, leading to ambiguity. In the early 19th century, the plural form civilisations emerged, reflecting an increasing awareness of cultural pluralism. While often associated with progress and refinement, the term was also used to establish cultural hierarchies, particularly in colonial contexts. By the late 19th century, civilisation had become both a descriptive and normative concept in understanding societies, demonstrating its adaptability to shifting historical and ideological contexts.

Philosophy of culture as a discipline exploring the way of human existence in the world is based on general metaphysics and philosophical anthropology. Taking into account the formal subject and the method, philosophy of culture is a type of metaphysical explanation that aims to indicate the final ontological reasons for the existence of culture, and therefore it is called the “metaphysics of culture.” The metaphysical perspective of explaining the phenomenon of culture is an original contribution to the contemporary discourse on culture. The understanding of culture requires solving the dispute about the understanding of the world, and above all about the understanding of human being. It is only in such a broad perspective that a fact of culture can be justified by pointing to its causative, exemplary and deliberate cause. In this context, the special attractiveness of the metaphysics of culture is revealed, which, paradoxically, manifests itself in the lack of autonomy in relation to general metaphysics and philosophical anthropology. Thanks to this, explanation of a fact of culture is placed in the field of cognitive realism, pluralism and in the context of understanding human being as a person. In this way, the metaphysics of culture provides a final justification (in the ontic order) of a fact of culture, while culture, as an intellectualization of nature, can form the basis for the particular aspects present in such rich forms in the area of the particular sciences.

European countries share certain features, roots and, to a large extent, history. In the present article attention is paid to the Greek and Roman influence on European civilisation, or “Western Civilisation.” To this day Europeans refer to broadly understood models of ancient culture contained in the concept of polis as a community of equal citizens, in promoting representative bodies, appreciation of elements of merchant culture, rationality and emancipation, the concept of Roman Law that together represent the signa specifica of the Western civilisation. If one adds to this the contribution of Christianity and barbarian tribes, one may reconstruct an adequate representation of the “roots of Europe.”