The dispute about the vision of man in the research and didactic activity of prof. Zofia Józefa Zdybicka USAHJ. An attempt to reconstruct the pedagogical dimension of the philosopher’s life and work as a voice in the discussion on the issue of conservative pedagogy

The article is devoted to reconstruct the pedagogical dimension of the life and work of Zofia Józefa Zdybicka USAHJ. This is done by revealing the values that guided the researcher in her life, her commitment to work for the community, but above all by her contribution to reading the issue of the philosophical foundations of pedagogy, in particular the relationship between theses in the field of philosophical anthropology and the direction of educational practice. Hence, in the content of the article, elements of the biography and memories of the philosopher were recalled, showing her as a person devoted to the upbringing of young generations and a leading Polish Thomist associated with the academic community of the Faculty of Christian Philosophy of the Catholic University of Lublin, involved in disputes about the vision of man. The subject of the analysis is her research activity in two periods of modern Polish history: (1) when the communists were in power and (2) nowadays, when we see a strong influence of liberal currents on the intellectual formation of young people. We put forward the thesis that an attitude towards religion determined, and continues to determine, the axis of the dispute both in the times of the dominance of Marxist anthropology in pedagogy and in the vision of man, which is the backbone of the culture of late modernity. Is Zdybicka a conservative educator? You would have to ask the Professor about that. In the article, we indicate that a conservative value found in the philosopher’s works can be seen as her statements for the need to secure the spiritual and transcendent dimension of human existence in upbringing. Analyses in the article are based on several selected texts of the scholar, including Participation of being. Attempt to explain the relation between the world and God (1972); Person and Religion. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (in Polish 1977; in English: New York 1991); Religion and The Religion Sciences (1988); God or Sacred? (2007); Atheism Trap (2012). The article consists of two parts. Part 1 presents the essence of the dispute about the vision of man from the perspective of Zdybicka’s metaphysical research on religion. Part 2 presents a comparison of the two models of humanism: theocentric (which the scholar supports) and anthropocentric (in the Marxist and postmodern version) in the context of the criticism of atheism that the scholar conducted when Marxism prevailed in Polish educational systems (Part 2.1) and after the political transformation in Poland since the 1990s (Part 2.2), when the possibility of changing anthropological foundations in education opened up.