Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński

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    • 2004-2024

Philosophical Books for Our Times: Essays by Montaigne

7 February 2021 by Krzysztof Skowroński Leave a Comment

Essays by Montaigne and Me

I am lucky. My native culture has had wonderful translators of classic French literature. I could read them when I was much younger. One of them was Michel de Montaigne’s Essays. I took from him the idea of humanism and how to perform culture. Also, I got interested in what we call today cultural diversity. By humanism, I understand focus upon the lot of individual living in society. The individual is important. By writing his essays he showed us his unique way of seeing things. And it is no phantasy. Rather an interpretation of the real issues that happen around and inside of you. And this is, at the same time, cultural life. Because you take inspiration from the world outside. And you create your interpretation of the world. And you are careful about the difference between reality and illusion. It must have influenced me by setting to write text on different things to express myself. From the present perspective, I can see how therapeutic for me was such writing.

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Filed Under: Blog on Santayana

Philosophical Books for Our Times: Analects by Confucius

30 January 2021 by Krzysztof Skowroński Leave a Comment

My Personal Reasons to Talk about Confucius

I remember well that I read The Analects first when I was thirteen. I found a translation into my native language in my sister’s library. I liked it so much that I would rewrite some of its fragments and learnt them by heart. The fascination lasted for some time until started to read Greek philosophers. The second reason is a bit strange, given my professional interest in American pragmatism. What’s the connection between American pragmatism and Chinese Confucianism? Namely, one of its most eminent representatives, John Dewey, visited China in 1919-1920 and earned popularity to such an extent that some called him ‘Second Confucius’. It is interesting to read many materials that compare these two, on moral education for example. And I was even a reviewer of a PhD dissertation on it at the university of Malaga, Spain. And the fourth reason refers to my Chinese students. I give university courses to Continental Chinese students in English. Rhetoric and Persuasion most often. It is interesting to see the cultural difference between the Chinese and the Western way of communicating. English is an issue, but it is not that problematic as a different mentality. To reduce the cultural shock, I turn to the Confucian tradition. It helps understand many things.

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Filed Under: Blog on Santayana

Philosophical Books for Our Times: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

20 January 2021 by Krzysztof Skowroński Leave a Comment

Books that Stand the Test of Time

I talk about books that have stood the test of time. Books that can be useful for people living in the 21st century. I do not talk to experts, professors, historian of philosophy. My target audiences are those who look for some practical pieces of advice. Or for some refection from such books. The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is such a book. For example, many contemporary books, texts, podcasts, blogs, and vlogs refer to it. Even a contemporary movement, Modern Stoicism, has appeared and gains popularity.

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Filed Under: Blog on Santayana

Philosophical Books for Our Times: Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke

11 January 2021 by Krzysztof Skowroński Leave a Comment

Through a somewhat surrealistic literary language, Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke (a title that means practically nothing) presents a concept of human life; secular, social, intellectually creative and also existentially disoriented. It places it among the dominant cultural powers according to a mechanism of formation and deformation. What does that mean? Every structure of human life, individual or corporeal, both established and developing, manifests itself with the help of speech, the use of symbols, in reference to the values it respects, that is, through its Form, according to Gombrowicz’s vocabulary. By maintaining his Form, he fights for a position in the socio-political hierarchy for recognition, also for fame and for the power to influence others.

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Filed Under: Blog on Santayana

Sábato sobre Ferdydurke

4 October 2020 by Krzysztof Skowroński Leave a Comment

Ernesto Sábato (1911-2011), un famoso escritor argentino, encontró a Gombrowicz personalmente en los años cincuenta del siglo veinte. Después, escribió un prefacio a la segunda edición argentina de Ferdydurke. La primera edición castellana, se publicó en una editorial porteña, Argos, en 1947 y la segunda se publicó en otra editorial porteña, Sudamericana, en 1964. Fue cuando ambos, es decir Gombrowicz y Sábato, ya eran escritores reconocidos por los círculos artísticos franceses, y puntos axiales de orientación para la cultura polaca y para la argentina en esa época. Exactamente este punto fue discutido, entre otras cosas, por Sábato en su prefacio, porque estuvo de acuerdo con el propio Gombrowicz en que la dependencia cultural de estos países de Francia (o del Occidente en general) era, quizás ha sido hasta ahora, una característica mutual de estas culturas tan lejanas, las culturas de segunda clase en relación con el mundo que dictaba los estándares de la excelencia literaria y artística en general. Muy significativo es que, en la solapa de la primera edición de Ferdydurke, uno de los co-traductores del libro, el escritor cubano Virgilio Piñera, escribió que “Resulta difícil prever la suerte de este mensaje, sobre todo cuando no nos llega de París¨.

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Filed Under: Gombrowicz Argentino

Gombrowicz y un encuentro cultural

21 July 2020 by Krzysztof Skowroński Leave a Comment

La frase “un encuentro cultural” carece de un sentido fijo. Sin embargo, se utiliza muy frecuentemente en situaciones cuando los miembros de dos (o más) culturas distintas se encuentran en un lugar geográfico o un lugar virtual y se enfrentan las diferencias entre sus costumbres, sus lenguajes, sus historias, sus religiones, sus maneras de pensar, los estilos arquitectónicos de sus países y muchas otras cosas. Este encuentro puede ser muy superficial, como tiene lugar predominantemente en caso del turismo masivo, cuando los turistas están dedicados a hacer una serie de fotos de los sitios más populares sin estudiar la historia del sitio, su idioma local y las opiniones de los habitantes.

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Filed Under: Gombrowicz Argentino

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