Between Protestant Individual and Social Ethics. On the New Biography of Jerzy Pilch

This article shows an influence of Martin Luther’s understanding of ethics on the ideas concerning these matters presented by Jerzy Pilch — a contemporary Polish writer. Ethical questions and the reflections connected with them are one of the main subjects of his considerations in Dzienniki [Diaries] (2012, 2014). In his approach towards ethical problems you can see on the one hand an individual attitude, which was called by Luther “freedom from” or practical life for God, and on the other hand — a sociable attitude or “freedom to” displayed in a disposition of living for others. Everything that is concerned with morality in Pilch’s diaries, their author comments carrying out a dialogue with Lutheran tradition and provoking its adherents of Lutheranism. These, mainly ironical statements, should nonetheless be treated as the testimony of his inner struggle with the Protestant tradition and the resulting vision of the world. Katarzyna Kubisiowska, in her monograph dedicated to Pilch, puts the reader gently to this track. However, to arrive at the core of envoi of the author of Diaries, it is necessary to employ the work of a scholar, who would be able to combine three skills in his research: literary, theological and ethical