Abstract

In this article, I point out the hermeneutical implications of the Philosophy of Jósef Tischner, a modern Polish philosopher. In his early writings, the author of the Ethics of Solidarity strongly criticized the claim of the historicity of understanding as developed in Heidegger’s Being and Time and Gadamer’s Truth and Method. Later, however, he dismissed his critical attitude and recognized in both, Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s concepts, an important source of inspiration for a new formulation of the question of the other. At the same time, he tried to stay true to the tradition of the Philosophy of Dialogue as well as to the transcendental method of asking for the last “conditions of possibility” elaborated by Husserl. Thus, in his late work, he took into account some aspects of the hermeneutic concepts of the historicity of understanding and at once fundamentally transformed their meaning. In the last part of my article, I compare his concept of the hierarchy of ideas and values, which determines human relationships, with Gadamer’s notion of prejudices and tradition.