Dialogue and Universalism

Volume 17, Issue 3/4, 2007

Universalism In Polish Thought

Roads and Roadless Tracts of the Interwar Literary Criticism. About Jan Nepomucen Miller’s Universalism

In this paper I present Jan Nepomucen Miller’s universalism, i.e. his own conception of literature, which pursues the right to compete with its Romantic model. Universalism, whose elaboration of the philosophical premises took place in the years 1923-1925, never received a complete and finite form; it only indicated a certain option for which the whole, universality and universum was more important than a part. Although this conception proved to be a Utopian project, without its driving force, being too far from the reality to support the spiritual values of the Polish culture, it constitutes (especially in our interwar thought) one of unique attempts to create a culture based on a non-Romantic canon of values.