English Site
Copyright © 2013-2024 by Aneta E. Adamczyk
Freedom in the space of the human relations
Józef Tischner is a representative of the philosophy of dialogue and the philosophy of human, called “philosophy of drama”. Among the most important questions of his philosophy are good and freedom; freedom which will become true if realizes good and when it can be defined as “good’s existence mode”.
The freedom we can find in the Tischner’s considerations is not analyzed as an idea separated off the human and its life, but as a value inseparable united with human being, which is called “the dramatic being”. The word „drama” is a one of the most important words in the Tischner’s philosophy. Philosopher from Cracow recalls the Greek significance of this word and refers it to human’s life which calls the drama.
The dramatic human, like a person in the antique theatre has the ground beneath its feet, the ground which Tischner calls “the scene of the drama”; around itself person has the other people (the other dramatic beings). The dramatic human - which Tischner writes about - doesn’t live alone in the world, it’s surrounded by the other people, whom encounters and whom lives with. The encounters which bring good make the human becomes free. Every humane act and every encounter with another person can become the way that leads to freedom.
Free human being is one who is able to love, sacrifice its own body, be faithful and create a home with other person. Love, bodily sacrifice, faithfulness and home are the most important forms of true freedom.
Love – according to Tischner – means: the desire of good for the other person. Love brings about to situation when the other person is conceived as an absolute and irreplaceable value. Nobody else can take place of the loved person, nobody can substitute it. Love allows human being to discover other person and its world of values. Owing to love human can understand that its support is laid in the heart of other person, where it can deposit part of its own heart filled with love.
Author of The Philosophy of Drama convinces that love is the essence of human being and that everything else turns about love. Love is a principal way of participating in good. In Tischner’s thought, like in the Bible, love is stronger than death. The death or the physical absence of beloved person cannot destroy love for it. Love indicates that the human being isn’t just the body, that it’s something more. The bodily sacrifice brings about that the dramatic human can understand that its body is a body for the other person – for wife or for husband, and through her/him for the third subject – for the child. Bodily sacrifice is a capacity to risk own life for creating new one. That kind of attitude is not about egoism – it’s about love.
Free human is a faithful person, faithful to another one and faithful in good created by common effort. It’s a human which is able to create a home with the other person. Home is not a building which somebody can live in, but it’s a space of love, space of the mutual confidence and faithfulness. Home is a space where human creates itself and realizes its freedom. The human creates home and this way it forms and domesticates the land; the creation of home transforms the world into promised land.
In the Tischner’s philosophy true freedom is a “good’s existence mode”. If human wants to be free, it must distinguish good and evil, it must choose good and make good in acting.