WŁADYSŁAW TATARKIEWICZ: ON HAPPINESS [1947].

Description

This is the first edition of one of the most important Polish philosophical books of the 20th century, devoted to one of the key issues of ethics – the concept of happiness. The author is a prominent historian of philosophy, aesthetician and ethicist, professor at the University of Warsaw, one of the leading representatives of the Lviv-Warsaw school – Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz (1886-1980).

The work, which the author had been working on since 1918 and took its final shape during the war, has an unusually dramatic history. The manuscript, prepared in the fall of 1939, was enriched with a new chapter , “Suffering” during the occupation. Fragments of the dissertation were read at secret meetings of the University of Warsaw . During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, the author managed to rescue the manuscript from a burning house. In October 1944, on his way to the Pruszkow camp, a German officer threw the manuscript into the gutter, saying: “Scientific work? It’s no longer needed – there is no more Polish culture.” . Tatarkiewicz risked his life to get it back.

The book, published in Krakow in 1947 by the Wiedza-Zawód-Kultura publishing house, reviews the basic concepts of happiness and the ways to achieve it – from antiquity to the author’s contemporary times. According to Tatarkiewicz’s biographer, Marek Jaworski, it is “a profound reflection on one of the fundamental ethical categories,” which “most fully presents the ‘ethical optimism’ of the Lviv-Warsaw school.”

4911-21-B-W