Andrzej Wierciński


Andrzej Wiercinski 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 of Philosophy of Religion at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany and President-Founder of the International Institute for Hermeneutics.

Life

Wiercinski completed his M.A. with distinction in Theology, 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 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 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

Monographs