Towards a Good Life: Personal Documents in the Moral Space (on Dziennik by Jan Józef Szczepański) Cover Image

W stronę dobrego życia. Dokument osobisty w przestrzeni moralnej (o Dzienniku Jana Józefa Szczepańskiego)
Towards a Good Life: Personal Documents in the Moral Space (on Dziennik by Jan Józef Szczepański)

Author(s): Anna Spiechowicz
Subject(s): Ethics / Practical Philosophy, Polish Literature, Hermeneutics, Theory of Literature, Source Material
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: subjectivity; journal; ethics; personal document; secular age; constitutive good; autobiographical narratives; Charles Taylor; David Parker; Jan Józef Szczepański;

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses personal documents through the lens of ethics. The argument focuses on Dziennik [Journal] by Jan Józef Szczepański, which is analyzed primarily with the use of Charles Taylor’s deliberations on ethics and subjectivity and David Parker’s study of ethical interpretations of autobiographical literature. The discussion presented in the article is based on several key concepts, including “constitutive good,” “strong evaluations,” “moral space,” “qualitative differentiations,” “conceptual framework.” The author seeks to answer the question of whether – and if so, how – a journal, in particular Szczepański’s Dziennik, may constitute an act of building identity and establishing subjectivity and how it articulates constitutive good and reveals the roots of morality. The article is also an attempt to demonstrate the necessity to adopt an ethical perspective in literary research (with particular emphasis on autobiographical literature) in the “secular age.”

  • Issue Year: 18/2021
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 107-129
  • Page Count: 23
  • Language: Polish