Między pomocą a przemocą. O kilku paradoksach oświeceniowego (i nie tylko) stosunku do Innego (na marginesie Opowiadań albo podróży jednego Kosmopolity)

The attention of the author of this paper is focused on the analysis of the account of a trip to Silesia, written in the last decade of the eighteenth century by an inhabitant of Prussia, referring to himself as “Cosmopolitan”. In his conclusions, the author of this paper remarks that the traveler applies the categories which were in use by the Prussian political discourse in the second half of the eighteenth century, therefore, he likens the borderline Prussia – Silesia (Germanness – Slavness) to the opposition civilization – barbaria. In this way, he creates a message, which – according to the categories drawn from postcolonial criticism – can be described as imperial narrative. It is characterized by the undermining of the value of what is different, and the rhetorical appropriation of otherness. The analysis of the Cosmopolitan account serves the author as the starting point to indicate the aporias present in the Enlightenment colonial discourse. These apories are in some way also present in today’s postcolonial reflection. The most important of them is related to the question: how to behave towards the otherness of the Other, how far should our intentional ethics intervene, when should we act, and when should we recognize otherness in its sometimes moral defiance of peculiarity