Barbara Skarga

Barbara Skarga was a Polish philosophy historian and philosopher who worked mainly in ethics and epistemology. She was born in 1919 in Warsaw to a Calvinist family with gentry roots. Her sister was actress Hanna Skarżanka and brother was Edward Skarga. She studied philosophy at Wilno University. During World War II, she was a member of the resistance movement Armia Krajowa. In 1944, the Soviet NKVD arrested and sentenced her to ten years at the katorga. Afterwards, she was forced to live at a collective farm. After the war, she wrote an anonymous memoir about her time in the gulag. She returned to Poland in 1955 and graduated in 1957 with a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Warsaw. In 1988, she became a full professor of philosophy. Skarga was an editor-in-chief of Etyka. In 1995, she was awarded Order of the White Eagle. Skarga died on September 18, 2009, and was buried on September 25 in Warsaw. In 2022, the Barbara Skarga Foundation was established in Warsaw and offered a scholarship to unpublished philosophers.