Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, December 2005

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka ( February 28, 1923 in Marianowo - June 7, 2014 ) was a Polish - American philosopher , phenomenologist , president of the World Phenomenology Institute, and editor (since its inception in the late 1960s) of the Analecta Husserliana book series . More than thirty years of friendship and scientific collaboration linked her with Karol Wojtyła, Archbishop of Kraków and Pope John Paul II.

Education and teaching

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka was born in Marianowo near Mława in an aristocratic Polish-French family. Her contact with philosophy began at a young age by reading the fundamental works of Kazimierz Twardowski , the founder of the Lviv-Warsaw School . She also read works by Plato and Henri Bergson , in whose works she was introduced by her mother, Maria-Ludwika de Lanval Tymieniecka.

After the end of World War II , she began studying philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Her teachers were Roman Ingarden , students of Kazimierz Twardowski and Edmund Husserl . At the same time she studied at the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts .

After graduating from university within two years, she continued her studies in Switzerland with the Polish philosopher and logician Joseph Maria Bocheński at the University of Friborg . Her doctoral thesis, which examined the foundations of phenomenology in the philosophical works of Nicolai Hartmann and Roman Ingarden , was published in 1957 as Essence and Existence ("Wesen und Dasein"). She received her second PhD in French Philosophy and Literature from the Sorbonne in 1951 .

She undertook further research in the years 1952–1953 in the field of social and political sciences at the Collège d'Europe in Bruges, Belgium . From then on, Tymieniecka began her own path in philosophy by developing a special phenomenological attitude.

In 1956 she married Hendrik Houthakker , professor of economics at Stanford University (1954-1960) and Harvard University (since 1960) and a member of President Nixon's Council of Economic Advisers 1969-1971.

She served as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Oregon State College (1955-1956) and Assistant Professor at Pennsylvania State University (1957). She spent the years 1961–1966 at the Institute of Independent Study at Radcliffe College . 1972–1973 she was professor of philosophy at New York's St. John's University .

In 1979, in collaboration with Karol Wojtyła , who became Pope John Paul II in 1978, she published an English translation of Wojtyła's book Osoba i czyn (“Person and Deed”). Pope John Paul II originally wrote this book in Polish; it has been translated into French, Italian, German, Spanish, English and other languages.

Friendship with Karol Wojtyła

A friendship began between Tymieniecka and Wojtyła, later Pope John Paul II, in 1973 when he was Archbishop of Krakow . The friendship lasted until his death. Tymieniecka was his host when he visited New England in 1976. Photos show them skiing and camping together. Letters he wrote to her were part of a collection of documents that were sold from Tymieniecka's estate to the Polish National Library in 2008 . According to the BBC, the library initially withheld the documents from the public because the canonization process had begun. In February 2016, the library officially announced that the letters would be made public. In February 2016, a BBC documentary was released that said John Paul II had a close relationship with Tymieniecka. The two had exchanged very personal letters for over 30 years. The Vatican commented on the documentary with the words "more smoke than fire". Carl Bernstein , the veteran journalist of the Watergate scandal, and the Vatican expert Marco Politi were the first journalists to speak to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka about their importance in the life of John Paul II in the 1990s. They dedicated 20 pages to her in their 1996 book His Holiness . When asked if she had ever “developed a romantic relationship with John Paul II, which could also have been one-sided”, she replied: “No, I never fell in love with the cardinal. How could I have fallen in love with a middle-aged clergyman? I am also a married woman. "

Tymieniecka last visited the Pope the day before his death. The importance of this relationship both for the Pope and for her is clear from the documented intensive correspondence. Nevertheless, both the existence of the relationship and the person Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka were ignored by the Vatican.

Establishment of the Phenomenological Societies and the World Phenomenology Institute

In 1969 Tymieniecka founded the International Husserl and Phenomenological Research Society , in 1974 the International Society for Phenomenology and Literature , the International Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences in 1976, and in 1993 the International Society of Phenomenology, Aesthetics, and Fine Arts (1993) and in 1995 the Sociedad Ibero-Americana de Fenomenologia . The first three societies laid the foundation for the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning in 1976, later reorganized as The World Phenomenology Institute .

The initiative for this institute was supported by Roman Ingarden , Emmanuel Levinas , Paul Ricoeur , and Hans-Georg Gadamer as well as by Herman Leo Van Breda , director of the Husserl archive in Leuven (Belgium). Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka has been President of the Institute for many years since it was founded. In this role at The World Phenomenology Institute , she organized numerous phenomenological congresses, conferences and symposia.

Analecta Husserliana

Since it was founded in 1968 (although the first book in the series was officially published in 1971), Tymieniecka has been the editor of the Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research , which focuses on the development of and dissemination of Edmund Husserl's ideas and phenomenological approach. The series was the continuation of the yearbook for philosophy and phenomenological research that Husserl himself had published.

Selected Works

• Essence et existence: Étude à propos de la philosophy de Roman Ingarden et Nicolai Hartmann; Aubier, Editions Montaigne, Paris 1957
• For Roman Ingarden; nine essays in phenomenology M. Nijhoff, 's-Gravenhage 1959
• Phenomenology and science in contemporary European thought. Foreword by IM Bochenski ; Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, New York 1962
• Leibniz 'cosmological synthesis ; Van Gorcum, Assen 1964
• Why is there something rather than nothing? Prolegomena to the phenomenology of cosmic creation ; Van Gorcum & Comp., Assen 1966
• Eros et Logos ; Beatrice-Nauwelaerts, Paris 1972
• Logos and Life ; Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht / Boston 1987-2000; Four volumes

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Annette Langer : John Paul II and the philosopher: "More than friends, less than lovers". Spiegel Online, accessed February 17, 2016 . 
2. ↑ BBC documentation arte-tv, broadcast February 16, 2016 ( Memento from February 17, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ Viktoria Bolmer: The Pope's girlfriend. Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 15, 2016, accessed on February 17, 2016 . 
4. ↑ Viktoria Bolmer: The Pope's girlfriend. Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 15, 2016, accessed on February 17, 2016 . 
5. ↑ Annette Langer: John Paul II and the philosopher: "More than friends, less than lovers". Spiegel Online, accessed February 17, 2016 .