Ryszard Legutko

Ryszard Legutko is a philosopher and politician. He studied at the Uniwersytet Jagielloński in Kraków, where he also lectured for many years, specialising in Greek philosophy and political theory. During the communist era, Legutko was a member of the opposition and served as editor of an underground journal on culture and politics. After the fall of communism, he was one of the founders of the conservative think tank Ośrodek Myśli Politycznej (‘Centre for Political Thought’). Legutko is an outspoken critic of classical and contemporary liberalism, which, as he argues in The Demon in Democracy (2012) and The Cunning of Freedom (2021), has totalitarian tendencies because it subjects all spheres of life — politics, culture, education, morality, religion and the family — to a single, all-encompassing emancipatory and egalitarian worldview: all spheres have become politicized and are forced to legitimize themselves according to the standards of liberal democracy. In 2005, Legutko joined the Kaczyńskis’ Law and Justice Party (PiS), after which he successively held the posts of Deputy Speaker of the Senate, Minister of Education and foreign affairs adviser to President Kaczyński. He subsequently served in the European Parliament for fifteen years, where he criticized the undemocratic and intolerant aspects of the Parliament. Legutko recently published an annotated Polish translation of Plato’s Politeia.