Published: 2015-12-23

Human and Non-human: Czesław Miłosz’s Anthropology

Małgorzata Roeske Logo ORCID

Abstract

Considerations about the human condition and humankind’s place in nature are a vital part of the works of Czesław Miłosz. Miłosz’s cosmological vision is based on a deeply dualistic structure. On the one hand, we have got the human and civilisation – which is a synonym of purposefulness and divine order; on the other hand, there is the wild, cruel and untameable nature, whose activity is full of chaos and is meaningless from the metaphysical point of view. There is a sort of inconsistency in this seemingly ordered structure of reality, which seems to constitute the principle of Miłosz’s anthropology. The human in his essence is a “paradoxical being”; it is difficult to classify him in an unambiguous way. He is considered as the only creature that is composed of God’s elements – immortal soul, consciousness, and intellect. These properties detach him from nature and bring him closer to God in the hierarchy. Still, he is a biological creature and that disgraceful fact is difficult to accept for Miłosz; therefore, an attempt to draw a clear line between
man and nature is reflected so clearly in Miłosz’s works. The purpose of the article is to analyse a few works of Czesław Miłosz with regard to the issues mentioned above. Undeniably, the ideas presented by Miłosz are deeply rooted in Western philosophy.

Citation rules

Roeske, M. (2015). Human and Non-human: Czesław Miłosz’s Anthropology. Zoophilologica. Polish Journal of Animal Studies, (1), 195–205. Retrieved from https://journals.us.edu.pl/index.php/ZOOPHILOLOGICA/article/view/4814

Zoophilologica – T.1 (2015) – Zwierzęce/Animalis

No. 1 (2015)
Published: 2016-08-14


ISSN: 2719-2687
eISSN: 2451-3849
Ikona DOI 10.31261/ZOOPHILOLOGICA

Publisher
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

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