Józef Tischner

Józef Stanisław Tischner (12 March 1931 – 28 June 2000) was a Polish priest and philosopher. The first chaplain of the trade union, "Solidarity" (Polish Solidarność).

Life
Tischner was born in Stary Sącz to a Góral family and grew up in the village Łopuszna in the south east of Poland. He studied at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In the 1970s he became an important writer of the opposition movement against the socialist government of the People's Republic of Poland. In 1980s he was considered the semi-official chaplain of the Solidarity movement, and was praised by Pope John Paul II.

After the fall of communism in 1989, he continued preaching the importance of ethics in the new capitalist Poland. In September 1999, Tischner received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest decoration.

Tischner remains a controversial figure in Poland. He frequently criticized Polish religiousness by calling it as flat (shallow) as a pancake, he also accused the Polish clergy of being extremely conservative, engaged in politics and antisemitism.

Tischner was involved in politics, he supported the Liberal Democratic Congress, then was a member of the program council of the Freedom Union. Tischner also cooperated on scientific ground with Jarosław Gowin.

Józef Tischner was an author of the Catholic Weekly, a liberal Catholic, and Christian democratic newspaper.

Tischner was also member of Związek Podhalański, an organisation of Gorals from Podhale.

Fellow of Collegium Invisibile as a professor of philosophy. He died in Kraków on 28 June 2000.

Philosophy
Tischner, in The Decline of Thomistic Christianity (1970), challenged the philosophical primacy of Thomism, accusing it of closing philosophy in one right direction and thus obscuring Revelation. Tischner believed that philosophy was independent and, although imbued with the spirit of Christianity in many respects, could not be reduced to it.

In articles collected in the books Unhappy Gift of Freedom (1993), In the Land of Ill Imagination (1997) and Priest on the Wanderings (1999), he expressed his views on the issue of building a new social, political and ethical order.

Selected publications
Tischner wrote and published more than 600 articles and books.

His main works, in which he explained his original philosophical concepts, are:


 * The Decline of Thomistic Christianity (Schyłek chrześcijaństwa tomistycznego) (1970)


 * Unhappy Gift of Freedom (Nieszczęsny dar wolności) (1993)
 * Land of Ill Imagination (W krainie schorowanej wyobraźni) (1997)
 * Priest on the Wanderings (Ksiądz na manowcach) (1999)


 * The Philosophy of Drama (Filozofia dramatu) (1998)
 * The Controversy over Human Existence (Spór o istnienie człowieka) (1998)

Most notable among his Góral themed works is:
 * A Goral History of Philosophy (Historia filozofii po góralsku) (1997)