Andrzej Wierciński
In 1990, he took his doctorate in philosophy with Stanisław Wielgus at the Catholic University of Lublin with a dissertation, The scholastic prerequisites of Gustav Siewerth's metaphysics: A historical-critical study with reference to Martin Heidegger's theory of forgetfulness of being.
Wierciński unrivaled work of scholarship on our being in the world with others explores the multifarious ways in which philosophy, theology, and poetry meaningfully interweave.
Recognizing the empowerment of thinking that arises from Differenzdenken, existentia hermeneutica powerfully rejuvenates philosophical hermeneutics' inimitable contribution to the Humanities.
[3] Addressing a vast range of themes, the belonging-together of language and understanding, forgetfulness of Being, self-understanding, metaphysics, Trinity, a-theology,[4] and the pivotal Incarnation as the empowerment of thinking-the-difference, Wierciński draws on insights from impressively dexterous readings of the whole host of thinkers: Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Ignatius of Antioch, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, and Richard of St. Victor, Hans Urs von Balthasar, as well as the less known Gustav Siewerth and Bernhard Welte.
Wierciński's captivating explication of the relationship between language and understanding comes to its climax in a superb gloss on Gadamer's revalidation of Augustine's verbum interius.
[5] Acknowledging the importance of Gadamer's appropriation of Augustine, Wierciński sensitizes us, at the same time, to hermeneutics' vital concern of reaching out for understanding as both rooted in and transcending Tradition.
In the overwhelming struggle to make sense of our being-in-the-world, we incessantly attempt to describe, re-describe, and interpret reality as profoundly stranded between finitude and infinity.
Locating understanding in the practical dimension of life, in our situatedness, Wierciński potently revives the significance of phronesis for hermeneutics, sensitizing us to the intimate connections between the unique unrepeatability of the self, his/her existential situation, and radical responsibility (re-spondeo).
[6] Pondering the endeavor of hermeneutic to position us in the horizon of thinking about what happens to us and in us when we understand, Wierciński makes an enticing recourse to poetry which he deems "a zealous search for a 'magic formula' in which the whole truth about our existence could be accommodated and shine out brightly."
His splendid interpretations of poetry by Hölderlin, Celan, Rilke, and Miłosz that both intersperse and are an integral part of his philosophical-theological discourse aptly show that the poetic word is the portentous locus of the disclosures of Being.
[3] Integrating the miscellaneous insights afforded by a stunningly meticulous interrogation of the pregnant but often overlooked and underrated intersections of philosophy, theology, and poetry, the hermeneutics of facticity of being in the world with others is a superb achievement that remains attuned to its momentous, interdisciplinary, and far-reaching character.
Instead of offering one more examination of some voguish teaching methodologies or treating us to a purely theoretical stance, Wierciński places hermeneutic hospitality and the prodigy of our being a gift to one another in the very center of educational endeavor, sensitizing us thus to its dialogical, reciprocal, and phronetic dimension.
[7] Advocating for the relevance of the hermeneutic triad of understanding, explaining, and applying (subtilitas intelligendi, explicandi et applicandi) for the educational enterprise, Wierciński focuses on application (An-wendung, turning toward something) that results from a dialogic encounter in the teaching environment, in its fundamental and compelling openness to the inexorable μετάνοια.
In the fusion of the horizons of the teacher and the student (Horizontverschmelzung), education happens as a hermeneutic conversation and opens a unique possibility to discover the otherwise unfeasible.
In its nourishing and strengthening of our need to understand and interpret, education cannot be narrowed down to an instrumental multiplication of the possible and versatile answers to a given question or a facile accumulation of data.
[9] Hermeneutic education shifts the accent from a mere quest for knowledge to persistent but also life-affirming and life-changing cultivation of a willingness to understand, which calls on us to welcome unpredictability and risk.
Instead of eliminating and suffocating different and complicated voices, hermeneutic education stimulates and fosters patient encounters with what needs to be understood without shortcuts and cutoffs.
Fostering Heidegger's crucial distinction between calculative and contemplative modes of thinking (berechnendes and besinnliches Denken), Wierciński encourages us to follow the path of vita contemplativa.
Eliot, Hölderlin, Szymborska, and Rilke enhance our imaginative response to Being disclosing itself to us, as well as help preclude our falling prey to the narcissistic and complacent apprehension of the self.
This "hermeneutics of between" of philosophy and theology wants to let the abundance of diverse voices come to speech to be able to address the drama of human existence with the acuteness that it deserves.
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.
Not only are two disciplines colliding, but two alternative ways of being a human being are also 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.
