The article presents Marx’s and Engels’ views on nature and history, as well as the views of the Polish Nobel laureate on Marxism. Miłosz remained under the spell of the Marxist way of understanding the world for quite a long time. The notions that the reality on the move is a constant struggle, that history is the process of human self-fulfilment and extension of nature were very close to him. In the 1930s, the author of The Captive Mind remained “musical” to Marxism. Later, he would consistently analyse it, revealing it as weak and evil. He was never comfortable with leftist totalitarianism. He always rebelled against the “metaphysics” of Marxism-communism and “letting the devil in by the side entrance,” i.e. replacing God with history, with the doctrine of its all-powerfulness, despite being, after all, convinced that history, just as nature, was governed by iron historical necessity and that the universal killed the particular. When analysing the effects of the overwhelming influence of the “snowballing force” of history on the individual, he tried to capture “the eternal moment” in the “movement” and attempted self-definition in the river of time.
The problem of freedom considered in the broad context of self-fulfilment is in my view not merely an intellectual challenge, but also one of the most difficult existential experiences. Dealing with issues concerning the reality of human freedom and self-fulfilment directs us to the anthropological concept of the subjectivity of the individual and the questions it prompts. That is so because if we assume freedom to be a fundamental property of man’s subjectivity, embedded in its extremely complex structure, it then turns out to be among the fundamental conditions for the realisation of his humanity. By capturing more and more closely the specifics of individual subjectivity, we will achieve a deeper insight into what man really is. Karol Wojtyła’s concept of freedom is another voice in the philosophical discourse on man, his nature and the sense of his worldly pilgrimage. As we follow the successive stages and elements of Wojtyła’s phenomenological analyses, we may observe how freedom is constituted in the individual and how it can become the foundation of man’s self-fulfilment; how creative and dynamic was Wojtyła’s personal activity may perhaps also come to light.
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