Ancients and Shakespeare on Time : Some Remarks on the War of Generations

In The Ancients and Shakespeare on Time Piotr Nowak depicts a world where tradition – devoid of gravity, “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything” – attempts to curb the young and new, while youth resists with all its power, vitality and characteristic insolence. The wars of generations, which Nowak explores in the works of Plato, Aristophanes and Shakespeare, pertain to the essence and meaning of time. They make up the dramatic tensions in the transgenerational dialogue between the old and the young.

Piotr Nowak is an unusual phenomenon of both Polish and world philosophy; one can only wish that for the sake of philosophy itself and our sake as well, since we are its recipients and beneficiaries, there would be more people like him. Nowak does not follow paved and crowded paths. He does not submit to canons defined by the logic of academic life, but rather to dynamics of the inquiry into the sense of the world and of being-in-the-world. He is looking for the answers too seldom asked, yet essential questions in regions which a typical philosopher rarely visits, and from each of his thought ventures Nowak brings precious trophies that he generously shares with his readers. His essays are always an unforgettable intellectual adventure, and never a disappointment for all of those hungry of understanding. His writing is usually a reproach: in all my knowledge I am still ignorant of so many things; and an invitation: so many virgin lands, omitted on my map of knowledge, are still there to be explored Zygmunt Bauman"

"Piotr Nowak is an unusual phenomenon of both Polish and world philosophy; one can only wish that for the sake of philosophy itself and our sake as well, since we are its recipients and beneficiaries, there would be more people like him. Nowak does not follow paved and crowded paths. He does not submit to canons defined by the logic of academic life, but rather to dynamics of the inquiry into the sense of the world and of being-in-the-world. He is looking for the answers too seldom asked, yet essential questions in regions which a typical philosopher rarely visits, and from each of his thought ventures Nowak brings precious trophies that he generously shares with his readers. His essays are always an unforgettable intellectual adventure, and never a disappointment for all of those hungry of understanding. His writing is usually a reproach: in all my knowledge I am still ignorant of so many things; and an invitation: so many virgin lands, omitted on my map of knowledge, are still there to be explored..." - Zygmunt Bauman