WARSAW UNIVERSITY

Who and what are we?
The International Interdisciplinary Council of our periodical boasts several laureates of the Nobel prize Leo Esaki (Japan), Edward B. Lewis (USA), Naugib Mahfouz (Egypt), Joseph Rotblat (UK) as well as international leaders of scientific associations, including the chairman, Prof. Leszek Kuźnicki, past-president of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The authors include Venant Cauchy, honorary president of FISP, Juergen Habermas, Vaclav Havel, Leszek Kołakowski, the Dalai Lama, Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Andrzej Walicki.

The Advisory Editorial Board was headed by Prof. Jan Szczepański, former president of the International Sociological Association. The editor-in-chief is Professor Janusz Kuczyński, historian of philosophy from Warsaw University and honorary president of the former International Society for Universalism. The lengthy and history of the periodical is presented in the table of contents from 1995 and in a chronicle from 1973, the year of our founding, in the entry on Dialectics and Humanism to Dialogue and Universalism. Almost from the very beginning of the existence of the periodical the authors and members of the Editorial Board included Tadeusz Kotarbiński and Władysław Tatarkiewicz, the most outstanding representatives of analytical thought, the so-called Lvov-Warsaw School, leading representatives of Catholic philosophy, phenomenology, open Marxism and liberal thought as well as members of the former opposition movements.

Despite numerous prevailing conditions, the periodical always initiated and conducted a dialogue which involved all the most important philosophical trends and formed a point of departure for the revival and radical development of universalism, that great tradition of European thought. Universalism is also the outcome of the sublation (Aufhebung) of heretofore currents of thought and their permanent crisis, and the overcoming of what could be described as the "poverty of philosophy". For this reason, this new Universalism was described also as metaphilosophy.

In the wake of the historical Polish breakthrough of June 1989, in November that year, upon the initiative of the periodical, intensively supported by UNESCO and the United Nations University, Warsaw University witnessed the establishment of the International Society for Universalism, which held its first World Congress only in 1993, and organised a number of international symposia, for instance in Berlin, London and Montreal.
We are aware of the fact that the subtitle and plans for forthcoming years depict a unique, ambitious venture, which in accordance with a celebrated classification could be described as maximalistic. One of the crucial categories accentuated by universalism - alongside a special and radically non-eclectic, dialogue-oriented "multi-world outlook" quality and the complimentariness of sciences, the arts and even world views - is co-creation.

In its capacity as metaphilosophy, universalism has arisen from a striving towards encompassing and even reinforcing the enormous diversity of cultures. It can fulfil its maximalistic tasks and even mission with growing scientific, philosophical, aesthetic and ethical success only its condition of on co-creation by all cultures, cognitive and artistic goals and open social forces.
This is also the reason for our invitation to co-create "Dialogue and Universalism", to become acquainted with volumes containing the best translations of Dialogue and Universalism texts into Polish, issued in BIBLIOTEKA DIALOGU (The Dialogue Library). We openly invite you to symposia and international lecture series. We also extend our invitation to join the International Society for Universal Dialogue.

Dialogue and Universalism is indexing in The Philosopher’s Index.