Professor Ryszard Legutko is a Polish philosopher, political thinker, and former Minister of Education. He is a professor of philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and a former MEP representing Poland’s conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party. An expert in ancient philosophy and political theory, Legutko is known for his critical stance on liberal democracy and progressive ideology. He is the author of The Demon in Democracy and The Cunning of Freedom, in which he analyses the parallels between liberalism and communism in modern Europe.
In a conversation with europeanconservative.com, Professor Legutko traces the delicate thread between manners and civilisation, recalling how communism dismantled the codes of civility, how commerce briefly restored them, and how a new wave of militant egalitarianism now threatens to erase them again. From the collapse of hierarchy in classrooms to the decline of formality in public life, he warns that true diversity—rooted in cultural hierarchy—is being replaced by a grotesque parody of individualism, uniform in its vulgarity and barren of depth.
What, in your view, is the connection between good manners and the level of civilisation? Is there one at all?
A direct one. The transition from barbarism to civilisation rests, in part, on the adoption of specific rules—the mark of what in Latin is called civilitas. These rules give human relations predictability, stability, and, not least, a degree of subtlety. Civilisation is not simply the absence of war or the presence of peace. It allows for a spectrum of relationships, with many shades of intimacy, all expressed in recognisable cultural codes. Those codes are the grammar of a civilised life.
How did that principle fare under communism in Poland?
I recall that period vividly. Communism, imposed by force after the war, dismantled the social fabric. Relationships became atomised, taking us, in some respects, back to the state of nature. In public life, one encountered rudeness, harsh language, and hostility, all of which indicated a low level of social trust. In private life, within families and circles of friends, fragments of civility survived. But civility is the offspring of culture, and once culture is stripped away, civility dies with it.
What brought that back after 1989?
Free commerce, among other things. Trade and economic life depend on trust and rules. After the fall of communism, one could watch the change almost week by week: in shops, in government offices, in institutions. Rudeness began to recede, replaced by the commercial culture of service—superficial, to be sure, but containing an undeniable element of politeness and improving public manners.
Yet you suggest there is a reverse process underway now?
Indeed. On the one hand, the routine visit to an office or shop is no longer an ordeal. People are polite, helpful, and responsive. On the other hand, we see, outside commerce and public services, a shocking decline in manners and even a weariness with civility. Aggression reappears in language and in human conduct, but this time with a clear ideological intent—egalitarianism. Today’s world feeds on the notion that equality is not only natural but universally desirable. Which is false on both counts. The first victim of the egalitarian revolution is authority. And we could see how over the last decades the notion of authority has dwindled in families, schools, universities, and culture in general, and how in this supercivilised society of ours, new forms of barbarism have appeared.
Could you give examples?
It started—symbolically speaking—with the revolution of 1968, which set the young against the old. Or the so-called free speech movement on American campuses, which was not in fact a defense of the freedom to pursue the truth and beauty but a campaign for the right to use foul language in public. Since that time, vulgarity, once socially unthinkable, has spread by leaps and bounds, eroding manners and dismantling hierarchies. If a young person can use foul language to address parents or teachers with impunity, and this is hailed as a laudable form of self-expression, then a traditional culture of respect collapses.
It is no different in religious life. Christianity shaped conduct over centuries: in church, one speaks softly, removes one’s hat, and addresses a priest with due form. The priest, in persona Christi; the church as a consecrated place—these things demanded a certain reverence. Today it is perfectly possible for someone to say simply “Mister” to a priest—or worse—and in so doing to destroy an entire cultural code. It is a deliberate levelling down of what was once recognised as having a higher status. Vulgarity has become an effective weapon to debunk and downgrade everything that had a higher status based on respect and deference.
You have spoken of hierarchy—why is it so difficult to justify now?
Because we have adopted the curious belief in the presumption of equality, which means every hierarchy must be proved in the dock. In reality, many hierarchies arise naturally from experience transmitted through generations. Plato, in the eighth book of The Republic, observed that those placed higher in the order often succumb to egalitarianism themselves, persuading themselves they are no better. The result is the teacher who prefers to be the students’ “pal” rather than their mentor.
Universities and schools, which for centuries preserved hierarchy and its attendant forms of language and conduct, now adapt more readily to vulgarity than resist it. Egalitarianism in education is, by its nature, anti-educational. One can learn only when one accepts that there are superior minds from whose knowledge one can benefit. This belief in the existence of superior minds has been ebbing because it clashed too much with the alleged self-evidence of equality.
You also see this in outward appearance?
Most certainly. The way people dress is also significant. I was in New York not long ago—both at the opera and at a Broadway theatre. At the opera, there were a few dozen men in suits and ties; at the theatre, I was probably the only one. The rest wore jeans, shorts, t-shirts. That, too, is a symptom of egalitarianism: the absence of any sense that some places and occasions require a different form of dress. Our clothing, gestures, and manner of speaking ought to reflect with whom and where we are speaking.
So you would say we now have a kind of false diversity?
Precisely. Tattoos, piercings, hair dyed in improbable shades—these are not true expressions of individuality but a cry from people culturally adrift and, in fact, indistinguishable from one another. Different tattoos and piercings do not make people different. The diversity that is genuine must spring from the acceptance of the richness of culture. No matter how loud our rhetoric of diversity, individualism, self-expression, etc., our societies have become more and more homogenous. Therefore, in increasingly numerous places, vulgarity is a form of conformity, while civility—a mark of dissent.
(This interview was originally published on europeanconservative.com and is republished here with permission.)
