Janusz Korczak’s Epistolary “Contemplative Life” as a Form of Pedagogical Activity

Abstract

This article builds on an earlier publication that examined the relationship between the epistolary pedagogy consistently practiced throughout their lives by Janusz Korczak and Joanna Kulmowa and Aristotle’s ethics of moderation and justice, the ethics of kindness and friendship, and the ethics of the contemplative life. According to the author, Korczak’s epistolary pedagogy is particularly closely connected with the ethics of contemplative life, which is reflected in the author’s capacity for self-formation, as well as in the independence of his pedagogical imagination, thought, views, and reasoning.

The aim of this article is therefore to substantiate the thesis that Korczak’s pedagogy, rooted in the need to understand and interpret his own autobiographical mentality, and in the epistolary practice of “education through cultural goods,” which he cultivated from an early stage of his work, is closely linked to contemplation in the traditions of both Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. In his letters, Korczak emerges as a witness to truth who, through contemplation, brings profound and balanced pedagogical reflection into social life. According to the author, Korczak’s familiarity with the philosophical works of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, combined with the richness of his own contemplative life, contributed to the development of his moral consciousness and to a process of intellectual elaboration that supported his critical thinking. All of this undoubtedly shaped the contemplative form of “living with dignity” that Korczak addressed in a distinctive way, as a writer, physician, and above all educator, to child readers.