Izvorni znanstveni članak
https://doi.org/10.52685/pihfb.51.2(102).6
“Let Us Together Leave this Site of Shame and Misery”: Nature in August Cesarec’s Short Stories
Mladen Domazet
orcid.org/0000-0002-9870-9485
; Institut za filozofiju, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
The contemporary “polycrisis,” which intertwines the materiality of the living world with unsustainable social injustice, necessitates a comprehensive transformation of anthropogenic material processes and social relations. The works of August Cesarec offer examples of the “revolutionary” transformative role of non-human (more-than-human) nature within Croatian philosophy in the 1871 to 1945 period. This paper presents the main tenets of Cesarec’s environmental philosophy (distinct in Croatian from “philosophy of nature,” a term reserved for natural sciences) from the perspective of contemporary calls for eco-social transformation. Although not a professional philosopher, Cesarec was an influential intellectual and author in literature and journalism, connected to broader European philosophical and intellectual movements. While a clear proponent of historical materialism in his journalistic and philosophical essays, Cesarec also explored alternative imaginaries in his literary works, including the role of more-than-human “nature” in material development, justice, and the meaning of human action. Striving to make certain topics accessible to a wider readership, his philosophy incorporates elements of pre-modern conceptualizations of “nature’s” active role present in popular imaginaries. In selected stories published in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the role of more-than-human “natural” actors in socio-transformative (and potentially political) messages clearly deviates from the classical Promethean vision of human dominance over all other life on the planet.
Ključne riječi
August Cesarec; growth; environment; political ontology; revolution
Hrčak ID:
340881
URI
Datum izdavanja:
15.12.2025.
Posjeta: 330 *