Conrad – Hume

• Authors: Karol Samsel

Title variants

EN

Conrad - Hume

Abstracts

EN

This study is an attempt to reassess the state of research on Joseph Conrad, his life and literary work. This research is strongly subjugated to only one line of anthropological discourse. It was developed around the cultural anthropology paradigm, and only in accordance with this discipline, thus determining not only basic notions of a narrative, but also the concept of cognition which is organising these narratives. It is not the aim of this paper to distinguish any components of Conrad’s philosophical worldview. Instead, the author would like to present Conrad’s work within the framework of, and using tools proffered by, philosophical anthropology, regardless whether they may be ignored by cultural anthropologists. The comparison of Conrad’s protagonists’ ethics (the author here analyses Victory, Chance, Nostromo and Duel) with the philosophical system of David Hume signifies, according to the author, a shifting emphasis in the perception of the role of auxiliary sciences in building knowledge about the world of values of Conrad’s novels and novellas. Not only has a cultural anthropologist working in the field of philosophy, using the classic quotations from Immanuel Kant, the potential to unlock this convoluted universe, but also a philosophical anthropologist is capable of comparison of fictional moral values attributed to the Conrad world with sophisticated texts such as less known Kants’s essay Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. The final conclusion of these explorations is establishing the somewhat blurry attributes of the Scottish School of Common Sense which impacted Conrad’s work.

• Publisher: Narodowe Centrum Kultury
• Journal: Kultura Współczesna. Teoria. Interpretacje. Praktyka
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 96
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 204-217

Contributors

author

Karol Samsel

Identifiers

DOI

10.26112/kw.2017.96.19

Biblioteka Nauki

1848476