Authors

Discussion

At the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, as well as among those orbiting the Warsaw School of the History of Ideas, emerged scholars who proposed comparative research on Central/Eastern Europe and Latin America. The geographical, thematic, as well as disciplinary scope of this research varied. We can mention figures such as E. Górski, T. Łepkowski or R. Stemplowski. These researchers encouraged a reading of modernity and the process of modernisation in Central/Eastern Europe in comparison with Latin America, seeking in its mirror the answer to the question of the modernisation path that has been taken and its specificities. The aim of the presentation is to consider the validity of comparative research on Latin America and Central/Eastern Europe within the framework of the history of ideas, as an attempt to find an appropriate context and methods for the study of this region. The most important indication is the research of E. Górski, who was searching for originality and dependencies in the philosophy of two regions. The basis for asking this question is, among others, the quotation from the introduction to Essays on Economic Nationalism in East-Central Europe and South America, 1918-1939: “It is a sad paradox that East Europeans and South Americans, living as they do with one structure encompassing the whole world and coming across identical or very similar problems and socio-economic structures in the past, know little if anything at all about each other”.