“1. That reason is a gift of God and that we should believe in its ability to comprehend the world.
2. That they have been wrong who undermined confidence in reason by enumerating the forces that want to usurp it: class struggle, libido, will to power.
3. That we should be aware that our being is enclosed within the circle of its perceptions, but not reduce reality to dreams and the phantoms of the mind.
4. That truth is a proof of freedom and that the sign of slavery is the lie.
5. That the proper attitude toward being is respect and that we must, therefore, avoid the company of people who debase being with their sarcasm, and praise nothingness.
6. That, even if we are accused of arrogance, it is the case that in the life of the mind a strict hierarchy is necessary.
7. That intellectuals in the twentieth century were afflicted with the habit of baratin, i.e., irresponsible jabber.
8. That in the hierarchy of human activities the arts stand higher than philosophy, and yet bad philosophy can spoil art.
9. That the objective truth exists; namely, out of two contrary assertions, one is true, one false, except in strictly defined cases when maintaining contradiction is legitimate.
10. That quite independently of the fate of religious denominations we should preserve a "philosophical faith," i.e., a belief in transcendence as a measure of humanity.
11. That time excludes and sentences to oblivion only those works of our hands and minds which prove worthless in raising up, century after century, the huge edifice of civilization.
12. That in our lives we should not succumb to despair because of our errors and our sins, for the past is never closed down and receives the meaning we give it by our subsequent acts.”
―
Czesław Miłosz,
New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001
