TOWIANSKI, ANDRZEJ. - Polish heterodox reformer, b. 1 January 1799 at Antoszavince (Vilna), d. in Switzerland on 13 May 1878. He carried on a doctrinal-moral "mystical" activity, first in his homeland, then, from 1840, in Belgium (where he published the fundamental metaphysical writing: Biesiada ["Banquet"], placed on the Index by Pius IX), in France (where he founded the "Circle of Paris" and exerted influence on A. Mickiewicz) and in Switzerland (where he carried on pedagogical activity).
He had followers mainly in France, in Poland, in Italy; in Turin there flourished a circle of admirers of T., headed by Tancredi Canonico. A. Fogazzaro also adhered in part to A. T. Even today he has followers. T. called the moral-social reform promoted by him the "Work of God." His metaphysical and moral system, antirationalist and antiauthoritarian, underwent the influences of St-Martin, Swedenborg, T. Grabianka. T.'s metaphysics, the speculative foundation of the "Work of God," was heteronomous and progressivist. The spirits, pre-existing and migrating, in the form of homogeneous layers ("columns") surround the earth. The starting point of the conversion of the soul, imprisoned in matter, is "the right of the abyss" (consciousness of evil); from it is born "the groaning of the soul" and through the "columns" of the spirits one reaches God and Grace. Peoples too, rising from the abyss of evil through the desire for the great renewal, accomplish the successive degrees of progress, which will be 7 after Christ. The 2nd epoch is inaugurated by T. himself. Once the cycle of perfection is completed, hell will no longer exist. In T.'s ethical system there dominate, alongside heroism, human solidarity and a harmonistic anti-ascetic tendency, beyond the doctrine of the "triple sacrifice." T.'s works, in French and in Polish (Pisma A. T.) came out in 3 vols. (Turin 1884).