This article reconstructs and interprets the evolution of the Minoan myth’s reception in literature, fine arts, and urban development during the twentieth century. The author’s understanding of this evolution is based on three assumptions: a) myth is a polysemantic symbol of metaphysical and historical origins and function; b) myth reflects the relationship of the cognitive vs. creative mechanisms of human activity; and c) as symbolic, myth’s form must be treated as an image as much as it is a (discursive) narrative. As a motif in literature and the arts, the Minoan myth in particular has displayed all three of these aspects by allowing first its heroic narrative and, more recently, its formal structure (i.e., the tragic maze of moral and intellectual values) and visual setting (i.e., the actual labyrinth) to serve as porte-paroles of ongoing social and civilisational transformations: aestheticisation, deconstruction of cognitive and political hierarchies, technicisation, and intensive urbanisation. The displacement of the narrative and of the figure of the Minotaur is interpreted from the perspectives of psychoanalysis and post-structuralism.

The subject of my analyses is the concept of melancholy developed by Alicja Kuczyńska. I am interested in the connection between the creative aspect of melancholy—understood as a certain kind of philosophical attitude—and the concept of a whole. Taking a whole to be an “ideal model in the evaluation of the world and of things” gives us an insight into the meaning of being provided by the philosophical attitude of melancholy. Kuczyńska believes the application of this model is connected both with the possibility of harmonising the parts of this whole and with the search for what varies within the same whole. As a result, melancholy comes to the fore as a state of suspension between repetition and originality—an essential requirement for creativity.

Garden and melancholy have been analysed by Alicja Kuczyńska from the standpoint of Renaissance Neoplatonism. I try to work out a common denominator for them, and attempt to compare Renaissance and Romantic melancholy—in the garden space. I see a positive moment in the notions developed by Kuczyńska, namely in that melancholy, as an expectation, acquires a positive dimension, approaching hope.

The paper examines some rare specific features of Alicja Kuczyńska’s aesthetics. It is demonstrated that Kuczyńska connects the field of aesthetics to the realm of philosophical anthropology and social philosophy. Her interdisciplinary approach is based on postulated bonds between art, society, aesthetics and sociology.

While there are many stories of man, one moment seems to recur in all of them. This is the belief that we need to be able, and want, to look in the mirror of something that is qualitatively larger than us. This is the intention of the tradition whose philosophic patron is Plato. This need for unreality—the need for another world—presumably manifests itself in every area of human activity. One can therefore talk about a specific need for unreality that every real life satiates itself with. I provide examples of this need: science, religion, love, past and future. In the light of eternal life, we would be continually beset by the values for which we would be obliged to sacrifice our lives. In the light of earthly life, such values are inconceivably less frequent. We learn the difficult art of living in a consumer world where we do not have to die.

Aristotle’s concept of justice as an areté of logos is pinpointed in his main ideas. It serves as an introduction to the part of Pico’s philosophy. One of the main goals of his activity was to unify the ideas of Plato and Aristotle. The category of pax philosophica can be seen then as a test for the practical realisation of these ideas. Finally there are questions important for today’s man in the context of his present and future life. The most important, however, is the question of justice, which inevitably sends us to the question of logos as it is understood today.

In this essay, I trace different motives in Alicja Kuczyńska’s thought that are linked together in her philosophy of image. According to Kuczyńska, the creative power of forming artistic images is deeply rooted in existential experience that can be described in terms of finitude, fragmentality, evanescence. The desire to find a way out of such a state is the origin of philosophical as well as artistic creation. It is hope which joins together the individual wish or desire and culture. Hope can be treated as yearning for indeterminacy that is characteristic of existence, as longing for the state of lost totality.