Published: 2025-12-29

Amid anti-Buddhist projections. A study on Filozofia nicości (‘Philosophy of nothingness’) by rev. Władysław Dębicki

Piotr Sebastian Ślusarczyk
Zeszyty Łużyckie
Section: Articles
DOI https://doi.org/10.32798/zl.1756

Abstract

Filozofia nicości, published in 1896, is one of the first Polish discursive texts discussing Buddhism. The now-forgotten author of this work, Fr Władysław Michał Dębicki (1853–1911), was regarded as an influential and widely read publicist, active in Catholic and conservative circles at the end of the 19th century and in the first decade of the 20th century. This article employs a historical discourse analysis to identify the scientistic discourse, colonialism, the strategy of medicalization, as well as the anti-insurgent rhetoric rooted in the Polish tradition. In terms of genre, Filozofia nicości is an example of a journalistic treatise with distictive elements of a sermon, in which the clergyman sees Buddhism as a threat to Catholicism. In Dębicki’s view, Buddhism is pessimistic, decadent, and anti-civilisational.

Keywords:

Buddhism, Wladyslaw Michal Debicki, critical discourse analysis, preaching, modernism

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Ślusarczyk, P. S. (2025). Amid anti-Buddhist projections. A study on Filozofia nicości (‘Philosophy of nothingness’) by rev. Władysław Dębicki. Zeszyty Łużyckie, 62(1), 137–157. https://doi.org/10.32798/zl.1756

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