Polish critic and novelist who is considered a major force in shaping the idiom of 20th-century Polish literature.

Brzozowski was educated in Lublin and Warsaw, where he enrolled in university studies. He was arrested by the Russian authorities for political activities and briefly incarcerated in a high-security prison. Afterward, some members of the left-wing opposition accused him of compromising his coconspirators and said that he was being blackmailed by the Russian secret police. He had many supporters, among the intelligentsia in general and writers in particular, who denounced his accusers. In prison he had contracted tuberculosis, and even a cure in Italy could not help him. He died at age 33.

Brzozowski's first novel, Płomienie (1908; “Flames”), is a fictional account of the Russian revolutionary movements connected with the secret organization Zemlya i Volya (“Land and Freedom”). His novel Sam wśród ludzi (1911; “Alone Among Men”) is the first volume of what was intended to be a series of examinations of “the philosophical and political transformation of European consciousness.” A third novel was incomplete at his death.

Brzozowski's philosophy was a complex synthesis of philosophical and literary influences, including Romanticism, Marxism, and Roman Catholic modernism. His major philosophical achievement is his so-called philosophy of work, his belief that the foundation of freedom lies in the power of human hands over nature. He uses this thesis in his incisive analyses of the connections between culture and society, perhaps best noted in his critical work Legenda Młodej Polski (1910; “The Legend of Young Poland”).