Andrzej Wierciński

Andrzej Wierciński studied at John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. The recorded working language is Polish. The field of work recorded is philosophy, theology and religious studies. Places of work recorded in the authority are Freiburg im Breisgau. Employment is recorded with University of Freiburg and University of Warsaw.

Since 2022 he is Professor of Liberal Arts, Faculty of Artes Liberales, at the University of Warsaw.

Wierciński has edited a row of anthologies, organized conferences, and taken part in public talks. In teaching and research, Wierciński is primarily concerned with lingually oriented phenomenological hermeneutics, with the approaches of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, and the hermeneutic reappropriation of the metaphysics of the Middle Ages.

Wierciński’s scholarly work examines human existence in relation to others, exploring connections between philosophy, theology, and poetry. His writings address themes related to the human condition and emphasize the role of hermeneutics in understanding human experience. He has also engaged with concepts such as Differenzdenken (“thinking difference”) and existentia hermeneutica, discussing their relevance to philosophical hermeneutics and its role within the humanities. Addressing a vast range of themes, the belonging-together of language and understanding, forgetfulness of Being, self-understanding, metaphysics, Trinity, a-theology. Following Heidegger, he asserts that language and human understanding belong together: "Human Dasein resides within language: 'Language is the house of Being.'" Wierciński's explication of the relationship between language and understanding comes to its climax in a gloss on Gadamer's revalidation of Augustine's verbum interius. Arguing that Gadamer commences an original engagement with the nature of language as situated in the onto-theological perspective, Wierciński makes a new foray into our apprehension of language, providing a great stimulus for contemporary hermeneutics to rediscover and rearticulate the deep-seated connections between philosophical and theological discourses. Locating understanding in the practical dimension of life, in our situatedness, Wierciński attempts to revive the significance of phronesis for hermeneutics, highlighting the intimate connections between the unique unrepeatability of the self, his/her existential situation, and radical responsibility (re-spondeo). 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 a 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 interpretations of poetry by Hölderlin, Celan, Rilke, and Miłosz that both intersperse and are an integral part of his philosophical-theological discourse claim that the poetic word is the portentous locus of the disclosures of Being.

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. 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. Education in its conversational character allows us to unravel those areas of meaning and unknot those problems that we would not be able to solve on our own. Therefore, hermeneutic education is the time of a momentous unveiling (revelatio), in which a given phenomenon speaks to us differently each time we undertake the invaluable task of understanding in the true spirit of Gadamer's oft-quoted dictum of immer-anders-verstehen. 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. Fostering Heidegger's distinction between calculative and contemplative modes of thinking (berechnendes and besinnliches Denken), Wierciński invites readers to follow the path of vita contemplativa.

• Hermeneutics of Education: Exploring and Experiencing the Unpredictability of Education (Zürich: LIT Verlag, 2019). • Existentia Hermeneutica: Understanding as the Mode of Being in the World (Zürich: LIT Verlag, 2019). • 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).