O wyobraźni autora traktatu Ojcze nasz
On the Imagination of the Author of the Treatise Our Father

Summary/Abstract: Polish Romantic philosopher August Cieszkowski wrote an exegesis and historiosophical treatise Our Father, a commentary on the Lord's Prayer, based on the interpretation of hundreds of Bible verses. Polish linguists pointed to the literary values of this text, and this implies a question of the author's imagination. The article takes into account the view of imagination explicably expressed by the philosopher and implied by his text. The final part of the article describes some features of imagination reflected in the treatise. Cieszkowski's work has a lot in common with the poetry of the great Polish national romantic poets: the author treats them as prophets (he also considers scholars to be such). Still, statements in the text about imagination, which is fundamental in the case of poetry, are rather rare. There are even sporadic remarks that marginalize this spiritual power. Instead, there are assertions about the value of statements that lead man to God by moving his feelings. These are sermons and church songs. Many fragments of Our Father's rhetoric come close to such preaching paradigms. The category of theological imagination contained in the analysis of Our Father allows us to consider the type of the author's imagination as clearly theological. It confirms the perceptive function of imagination based on faith: history is a reading of God's Revelation. The interpretative ability aims at proclaiming the “Holy Spirit, the Eternal King.” The ethical commitment marks the cognitive role of imagination. The discourse constantly oscillates between “already” and “not yet” of the era of the Holy Spirit.

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