Božidar Knežević

Božidar Knežević, born in Ub, Serbia in 1862, was a multifaceted figure who straddled the disciplines of philosophy, literature, and social critique.

Though initially educated for the Serbian Orthodox priesthood, he deviated from this path, drawn instead to the allure of science and issues of social reform.

Here he found a coterie of admirers; a change in fortune and reputation came with the publication of "Principi istorije" (Principles of history) in 1898.

Knežević speculated on the nature of the universe and wondered about the meaning, purpose, and ultimate destiny of humankind within the cosmos.

However, he believed that history demonstrated that the growth of civilization leads to increasing social justice and the elimination of irrationality in human life.

It consists in the liberation from all external forces and presupposes the overcoming of ordinary motives for human behavior.

In his major works, Knežević presented an original world-view that synthesizes both historicism and positivism with a cosmic scheme of things.

The result is a vast, dynamic, and unique vision of mankind's place and destiny within the determining laws of an evolving then devolving universe.

Once elements achieve proportion and balance with each other, "they live simultaneously" in a great organic whole in which one can ultimately arrive at "complete morality, freedom, justice and truth".

[8] Whereas academic philosophers repudiated this system as incoherent, many Serb avant-garde poets and writers found in it a congenial vision of the universe in which everything, including poetry and beauty, had its own rightful place in a world striving after proportion.

Today's Serbia does not look like the dark and hopeless "Stradija" (Land of Tribulation) as it seemed to Radoje Domanović and Knežević when he was writing his doleful "Misli" (Thoughts).

Knežević acknowledged Auguste Comte and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel as well as Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and Herbert Spencer as inspirational for his own work.