Ancient Greece in view of the 20th century culture. A reflection on the “Greek essays” by Staniaław Vincenz

Abstract

The article raises the problem of the role of antiquity in the “Greek essays” of S. Vincenz, placing a thesis of a “mediumistic” role of the writer as a mediator between ancient Greece and the present, it also introduces the definition of “anthropological imagination.” An issue of a “vision of Vincenz’s culture” brings to the forefront here, asking for a role of Hellenic culture in the writer’s outlook on life. It is the revelation of polemics between Vincenz and Hegel as well as Freud whose lectures the writer once used to listen to, explanation of the primacy of ethics over aesthetics and the role of tradition in the world endangered by the 20th century totalitarianisms, that is crucial here.