Dyletant, amator, błazen – postacie pojęciowe humanisty

The article presents three „conceptual personae” (Giles Deleuze, Félix Guattari) of the contemporary humanist: dilettante, amateur and jester. The first two are discussed on the basis of texts of such Polish essayists as Krzysztof Czyżewski, Marcin Król and Leopold Tyrmand, who used to emphasize not only the cultural history of these figures but also their own autobiographical experiences. In order to develop our understanding of the contemporary humanistic modus operandi, the author juxtaposes the dilettante and amateur personae with the jester figure. The article underlines three dimensions of such an „intellectual clowning dialectic”: 1) the necessity of adopting a new peculiar media strategy, 2) the ambiguous relationship with an authority, 3) the exceptional „foolish” way of thinking related to deconstruction and crucial to Jacques Derrida’s L’Universite’ sans condition (discussed by such Polish authors as Michał Paweł Markowski, Tadeusz Sławek).