BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE: BOŽIDAR KNEŽEVIĆ AND HIS THOUGHTS
BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE: BOŽIDAR KNEŽEVIĆ AND HIS THOUGHTS

Summary/Abstract: What secured Božidar Knežević, a Serbian philosopher from the end of the 19th century into the early years of the 20th century, a wider audience and a permanent place in the cultural memory of the nation, were not his extensive historiosophical studies, to which he dedicated most of his creative energy and ambition, but rather a later subsequent, from the standpoint of the author’s intentions perhaps, even a subordinate book. Though he was indisputably a pioneer in the field of philosophy of history in our country, Knežević gained full recognition and reader response only with his Misli (Thoughts), which appeared in serial form in The Serbian Literary Herald, and later as a separate book (1902). It consists of textual fragments that border between philosophy and literature, whose genre or affiliation and predecessors are difficult to pinpoint. Thoughts cannot be compared to anything in earlier Serbian literature, and in the European context, these fragments are somewhat similar to the aphorisms of French moralists and Friedrich Nietzsche. According to the testimony of Knežević’s daughter Milka,1 the book was written at the incentive of philosopher Brana Petronijević, Knežević’s fellow countryman (both are from Tamnava), to whom the latter once complained that his Principles of History was poorly received and read. “Petronijević replied that very few people in our country can understand these things, but to expand the circle of readers, he recommends that he take all his thoughts and observations from Principles and Proportions and publish them separately. This is how father’s Thoughts came to be, which met with a wide response.

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