Humanities and the human existence or why do we deal with literature?

 The article tries to answer the question concerning the causes and reasons why we deal with literature at all and it also tries to defi ne the status of literary studies themselves (including Polish studies); at the same time, the author of the article argues that literary studies as an autonomous discipline of knowledge, possessing its own, separate language and isolated, precisely defi ned subject-matter of research, does not really exist. He points out to the relativity and arbitrariness of the boundaries marking out the division of the total area of human knowledge into individual disciplines, and draws attention to the institutional division of the university into subject areas, faculties or departments. According to the author, the real goal of Polish studies should be the “shaping of human sensitivity and imagination”, “renewing existence through broadening the space of our own life” and constructing refreshing cognitive fictions that allow us to understand the world and ourselves anew.

 The article tries to answer the question concerning the causes and reasons why we deal with literature at all and it also tries to defi ne the status of literary studies themselves (including Polish studies); at the same time, the author of the article argues that literary studies as an autonomous discipline of knowledge, possessing its own, separate language and isolated, precisely defi ned subject-matter of research, does not really exist. He points out to the relativity and arbitrariness of the boundaries marking out the division of the total area of human knowledge into individual disciplines, and draws attention to the institutional division of the university into subject areas, faculties or departments. According to the author, the real goal of Polish studies should be the “shaping of human sensitivity and imagination”, “renewing existence through broadening the space of our own life” and constructing refreshing cognitive fictions that allow us to understand the world and ourselves anew.