Humanistyka – pomiędzy profesją a misją

The thesis of this paper is that Polish humanities exists and is doing well in institutional sense but at the same time it has no social impact. That being so, on one hand we have dozens if not hundreds of units in which thousands of academics work. On the other hand we observe a limited external influence of these institutions and their employees. This impressive institutional and at the same time personal development seems to ignore external goals and functions or undervalue them in comparison to the institutions’ own development and functioning. There are many reasons for this, and not only academic institutions themselves should be blamed for it. It can be claimed that the modern world seems to see humanities as something inimportant, and it happens due to various conditions. One can see a parallel between the satae of the humanities and the state of the culture in general with the whole socio-cultural context, including the humanities. The article consists of five parts. The first one is about the reasons of the humanities institutional development. In the second part, I refer to the character of social sciences and humanities. In the third part, I mention the motivation to practice them. The fourth part deals with external conditions of practicing social sciences and humanities, and the fifth with their important tasks.