Andrzej Wierciński

Andrzej Wiercinski (born March 10, 1961 in Białystok, Poland) is a Philosopher, Theologian, and a Poet. He is Professor of General Education and Philosophy of Education, Department of Education, University of Warsaw, Professor extra numerum (ausserplanmäßiger Professor) of Philosophy of Religion at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany and President-Founder (2001) of the International Institute for Hermeneutics.

Andrzej Wiercinski

Life

Wiercinski completed his M.A. with distinction in Theology (Catholic University of Lublin, 1984), and was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Lublin April 4, 1985. In 1990 he took his doctorate in philosophy with Stanisław Wielgus at the Catholic University of Lublin with a dissertation, Die scholastischen Vorbedingungen der Metaphysik Gustav Siewerths: Eine historisch-kritische Studie mit Bezug auf die Seinsvergessenheitstheorie von Martin Heidegger. His second doctorate was in Theology with Gerhard-Ludwig Müller at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich with a dissertation, Der Dichter in seinem Dichtersein: Versuch einer philosophisch- theologischen Deutung des Dichterseins am Beispiel von Czesław Miłosz. In 2007, Wiercinski took his Habilitation in Philosophy of Religion at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg i.Br. with a monograph, Hermeneutics Between Philosophy and Theology: The Imperative to Think the Incommensurable. After obtaining a venia legendi in Philosophy of Religion, Wiercinski was 2007-2012 Privatdozent before becoming in 2012 ausserplanmäßiger Professor (Professor extra numerum) of Philosophy of Religion at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany.

Work

Wiercinski has generated research accomplishments in his subject areas that demonstrate his scholarly expertise both in the range of his works as well as in their broad, contentful composition. He understands hermeneutics as a specific mind-set of openness that admits of neither a priori nor apodictic demarcations between domains of knowledge, but instead sits decidedly between them in order to overcome the compartmentalization of knowledge forms from each other. Despite the postmodern format of this hermeneutic in-between — which of course will not be raised to a trans-regional, conceptually achievable absolutism — Wiercinski positions hermeneutics within the horizon of man’s unmistakable ability to attain truth, which actualizes itself in the history of knowledge and its forms. He understands philosophy of religion as the hermeneutic mediation between the incommensurable knowledge forms of religion/theology and philosophy, which are not separated off from one another but rather allude to one another both genealogically and constitutively.

In order to bring theology and philosophy into conversation with each other, Wiercinski has edited an entire row of anthologies, organized conferences, and taken part in many himself with talks. The hermeneutical in-between, which he takes up under numerous titles in lectures and publications, emblematically indicates not only a theoretical form, but also his marked talent for organizing and facilitating scholarly endeavor.

In teaching and research, Wiercinski is especially concerned with philosophical and theological hermeneutics, with the approaches of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur and the hermeneutic reappropriation of the metaphysics of the Middle-Ages, in conversation with Martin Heidegger and Gustav Siewerth; with German Idealism — especially Schelling — as well as with the hermeneutics of education, communication, medicine, and psychoanalysis. A main focus of his writing has been the hermeneutic retrieval of medieval metaphysics. His hermeneutics of education and hermenutics of medicine contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between human social sciences and natural sciences and their impact on contemporary society. As a prolific author, an accomplished manager and knowledge facilitator, he serves on the advisory boards of many international societies and on the editorial boards of international academic journals.

Wiercinski's hermeneutic philosophy of religion

Wiercinski situates the contemporary debate regarding the relationship between philosophy and theology beyond Athens and Jerusalem. The original antinomy of Tertullian collapsed in light of the undeniably theological development of modern Western philosophy. The intellectual legacies of the Middle-Ages, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment demonstrate that philosophy and theology are inseparably entrenched. Wiercinski observantly reveals that the representative theologians of the twentieth century were strongly philosophically informed. The theological profundity of Bultmann, Barth, Rahner, and von Balthasar, each in his own way, was a profundity of classical German philosophy. On the other hand, philosophy has theology to thank for its unmistakable radiance. Modern philosophers like Kant, Hegel, and Schelling are unthinkable without a theological background, not to mention postmoderns like Heidegger or Levinas. The necessity to pose philosophical questions and contemplate natural theology became a dominating concern not only for Christianity, but also for Western philosophy.

For Wiercinski, hermeneutics thoughtfully pursues a degree of mediation between the two poles of opposed misunderstandings of religion and the secular world. Hermeneutics comes to the aid of a strained relationship like a middleman and becomes ever more conscious of the finitude and historicity of understanding. The divide between theology and philosophy in the Western tradition is simply not a problem that must be overcome. In fact, this divide gave rise to a fruitful legacy that provoked both philosophy and theology to pose hermeneutical questions. On the basis of hermeneutics, Wiercinski invites a rejection of Heidegger’s call for a radical separation between philosophy and theology. Such a separation is hermeneutically untenable. Independently of how strictly the disciplines attempt to maintain their distance from one another, the opposing influence cannot be avoided. It is already a historical fact. Hermeneutics calls for new and renewed consideration of the problematic connections of theology and philosophy, and even at different levels. Philosophy and theology are not simply static disciplines that must somehow become methodologically associated, but historical disciplines with their own distinctive intellectual histories. They are fertilized by very the individuals that they nourish. The hermeneutico-critical apparatus, narrative identity in particular, is necessary in order to reclaim, in a constructive articulation, the tradition of respect and connection between philosophy and theology. The space that is to be established anew between philosophy and theology thanks to the contemplation of the incommensurable is an invitation to hermeneutics. That which happens in the no-man’s land between the two disciplines is hermeneutics and can only be hermeneutics. It is a hermeneutics between the courage to inquire and the humility to listen. Wiercinski claims no final judgment regarding the single proper connection of philosophy and theology, but attempts rather to show another way, a way that is to negotiate between the two disciplines. The sole possibility of disclosing this way lies in actually practicing hermeneutics. The incommensurability of philosophy and theology yearns for a myriad of interpretations. Philosophy and theology cannot eliminate such an open space for the manifold of interpretations, not even with reference to the distance between the two. Neither can one forbid the other from understanding and interpreting their connection differently.

The belonging-together of philosophy and theology discloses that Western philosophy and the theological tradition have developed, historically, with and alongside one and another. Throughout intellectual history there were movements that would be interpreted as philosophically autonomous, but were nonetheless entangled with theological background. On the other hand, we can also ask the theological side what would have become of Christianity without the encounter with Greek metaphysics. Surely something completely other, perhaps unthinkably other. Luther would not have been able to rediscover original Christianity without metaphysics because, to put it hermeneutically, this would have passed over the historical facticity of the matter. Hermeneutic philosophy must incorporate theology because can do nothing else. The reverse also applies. The object of hermeneutics, the matter itself, is theological in such a way that it incorporates voices that the tradition that we are generates. Hermeneutics is not theology, but must remain open for it.

A hermeneutics which finds itself “between” the divine and the human can reveal a modus existendi for the people of the age of interpretation. This “hermeneutics of between” of philosophy and theology wants to let the plenitude of diverse voices come to speech in order to be able to address the drama of human existence with the acuteness that it deserves. In the hermeneutic age, philosophy has lost its claim to speak from an absolute perspective. Many of the arguments against the integration of theology into philosophy draw the false conclusion that if philosophy as “pure reason” is free from cultural entanglement, then it is also not subject to theology, since this latter is always culturally conditioned with respect to its particular and historical belief community. Hermeneutics helps to recognize that Western philosophy is just as much a cultural phenomenon as Western theology. It is a kind of confession of faith in critical thinking, founded by Socrates, refined in the Middle-Ages, and fully developed in the rational triumph of the Enlightenment. That this creed strives toward antinomy does not change the fact that it is anchored in culturally and theologically conditioned situations. Actually, philosophy in the West is just as much a form of life or art of living as theology. This is an idea that existentialism rediscovered from the Greeks. If philosophy and theology are both forms of living (as Wittgenstein opined) neither of the two has any a priori primacy over the other. Theology thus loses this privilege along with philosophy, and yet one can speak with reference to the relation between them from a philosophical and a theological perspective. Two forms of living are speaking with one another. However, theology has something of which no philosophy can assure itself, namely, the authority of God. Philosophy has yet something that theology cannot have: skeptical freedom from authority. In our conversations we must thus clearly distinguish between the theological and philosophical perspective and recognize that the other view, theological or philosophical, remains ever possible. Such an understanding gives theology and philosophy freedom to continue to develop themselves in dialogical independence from one another and to liberate themselves from the idealism of a synthesis of the two disciplines. Only in becoming conscious of their differences can one retain a firm foundation for conversation between them. Like every other hermeneutical conversation, it comes to be a recognition of opposing indebtedness that has a transformative character.

As the art of understanding, hermeneutics stipulates that an undertaking like this integrates the theoretical dimension of the question with the factical. Theology is no mere academic discipline. It is a mode of our being-in-the-world. With certain reservations, the same can be said of philosophy. Not only are two disciplines colliding, two alternative ways of being human are observing each other with a suspicious eye so that the other constitutes a provocation and a threat of its peculiar belief and conception of reality. An important contribution of hermeneutics consists in that it precludes any rash problem-solving, independent of whether it concerns itself with a liberal synthesis of two different discourses or a post-liberal burial of antagonism between them. This perpetual dialogue admits of no ultimate conclusion. Indeed, it would bad hermeneutician who would think that he has the last word, must have the last word, or even could have the last word.

Academic positions
  • 2015 Professor of General Education and Philosophy of Education, Department of Education, University of Warsaw
  • 2012 Visiting Professor, Barrett, the Honors College and The New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University, USA.
  • 2011/12 - Professor for Philosophy of Religion (Lehrstuhlvertretung for Prof. Dr. Dr. Markus Enders (Sabbatical leave)), Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg i.Br.
  • 2009 - Research Professor in Hermeneutics, Instituto de Investigaciones Filologicas, Centro de Estudios Clasicos, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
  • 2007- Privatdozent/Professor for Philosophy of Religion at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg i.Br.
  • 2002–2007- Research Professor in Hermeneutics, University of Toronto, Canada.
  • 2001 - President-Founder of the International Institute for Hermeneutics.
  • 2000–2002 - Research Professor in Hermeneutics, St. Bonaventure University, St. Bonaventure, NY.
  • 1999–2002 - Visiting Scholar at the Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto.
  • 1997–1999 - Visiting Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, and Visiting Scholar at the Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto.
  • 1993–1997 - Researcher at the Department of Philosophy, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in München and Philosophische Hochschule, München.
  • 1992–1993 - Research Fellow at the Department of Philosophy, University of California at Berkeley.
  • 1992 - Researcher at the Department of Philosophy, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in München and Philosophische Hochschule München.
  • 1992 - Visiting Scholar at the Department of Philosophy, Boston College, Boston.
  • 1991 - Researcher at the Department of Philosophy, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in München and Philosophische Hochschule München.
  • 1991 - Visiting Scholar at the Department of Philosophy, Boston College, Boston Spring 1991 - Research at the Department of Philosophy, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg.
  • 1986–1990 Teaching Assistant, Lecturer and Fellow at Gustaw Siewerth Akademie in Bierbronnen.

Selected bibliography

Monographs
  • Hermeneutics between Philosophy and Theology: The Imperative to Think the Incommensurable (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2010).
  • Philosophizing with Gustav Siewerth: A New German Edition with Facing Translation of “Das Sein als Gleichnis Gottes”/“Being as Likeness of God,” And A Study, “From Metaphor and Indication to Icon: The Centrality of the Notion of Verbum in Hans-Georg Gadamer, Bernard Lonergan, and Gustav Siewerth" (Konstanz: Verlag Gustav Siewerth Gesellschaft, 2005).
  • Inspired Metaphysics? Gustav Siewerth’s Hermeneutic Reading of the Onto-Theological Tradition (Toronto: The Hermeneutic Press, 2003).
  • Das Miteinander: Grundzüge einer Sorge um den Menschen in seinem Unterwegssein (Guernsey: Elan & Son, 1997).
  • Der Dichter in seinem Dichtersein: Versuch einer philosophisch-theologischen Deutung des Dichterseins am Beispiel von Czesław Miłosz (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1997).
  • Die scholastischen Vorbedingungen der Metaphysik Gustav Siewerths: Eine historisch-kritische Studie mit Bezug auf die Seinsvergessenheitstheorie von Martin Heidegger (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1991).
  • Scholastyczne uwarunkowania metafizyki Gustawa Siewertha: Studium historyczno-krytyczne w aspekcie teorii “niepamięci bytu” Martina Heideggera (Wadhurst: Elan & Son, 1990).
  • Über die Differenz im Sein: Metaphysische Überlegungen zu Gustav Siewerths Werk (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1989).

Edited books
  • "Hermeneutics-Ethics-Education" (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2015).
  • Dariusz Skórczewski and Andrzej Wierciński, ed., "Melancholia: The Disease of the Soul" (Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL, 2014).
  • Heidegger and Hermeneutics, Studia Philosophiae Christianae 49 (2013) and 1 (2014).
  • Maria Luisa Portocarrero, Luis Umbelino, and Andrzej Wierciński, ed., The Hermeneutic Rationality/La rationalité herméneutique (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2012).
  • Gadamer’s Hermeneutics and the Art of Conversation (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2011).
  • Sean McGrath and Andrzej Wierciński, ed., A Companion to Heidegger’s “Phenomenology of Religious Life” (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010).
  • Edward Fiała, Dariusz Skórczewski, and Andrzej Wierciński, ed., Interpreting the Self: Hermeneutics, Psychoanalysis, and Literary Studies (Lublin: Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski, 2009).
  • Between Description and Interpretation: The Hermeneutic Turn in Phenomenology (Toronto: The Hermeneutic Press, 2005).
  • Between Friends: The Hans Urs von Balthasar and Gustav Siewerth Correspondence (1954-1963): A Bilingual Edition, ed. and trans. Andrzej Wierciński (Konstanz: Verlag Gustav Siewerth Gesellschaft, 2005).
  • Jan Sochoń and Andrzej Wierciński, ed., Studia z Filozofii Boga, religii i człowieka, vol. 3: Filozofia wobec tajemnic wiecznych 3 (2005).
  • Between Suspicion and Sympathy: Paul Ricoeur’s Unstable Equilibrium (Toronto: The Hermeneutic Press, 2003).
  • Between the Human and the Divine: Philosophical and Theological Hermeneutics (Toronto: The Hermeneutic Press, 2002).
  • Zwischen Natur und Kultur. Die Autobiographie eines Diplomaten und Malers: Hans Karl von Zwehl, ed. Andrzej Wierciński and Ella Dunkley, with an Introductory Essay by Andrzej Wierciński (Wadhurst: Elan & Son, 1992).

Interview with Andrzej Wiercinski

"We Must Interpret: The Hermeneutic Retrieval of the Philosophical Tradition, Andrzej Wiercinski in Conversation with Boyd Blundell"

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