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Life — The Outburst of Life in the Human Sphere pp 137–154Cite as

The Ideals of Life in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s Thought

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Part of the book series: Analecta Husserliana ((ANHU,volume 60))

Abstract

Professor Tymieniecka in her phenomenology of life pays attention to the individual’s progress as it creates and establishes new forms that are re-constructive of reality. In order to establish the meaningfulness of humanity, according to the phenomenologist, the human being must undertake an effort to find oneself and one’s ideals. Then, he may become a “vortex” for having a sense of the Universum. But, it has its source behind the established schemas. “It comes out of season as the spring day in the middle of winter, having gained access behind the stage, behind the cycle of nature, where, according to Heraclitus, birth and death are united. In order to reach it we have to seek not a specific way to the real, but must embrace the totality of the given and, in the synthesis of the creative act, delve into ‘consuming contact’ with life itself so as to find ourselves face to face with it”.1

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Notes

  1. A-T. Tymieniecka, Logos and Life, Book 1: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason. Analecta Husserliana, Vol. 24 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), p. 145.s

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  2. Ibid., p. 173.

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  3. Ibid., p. 173.

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  4. G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers. A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (London: Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 193 (Frag. 51).

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  5. Op. cit., p. 173.

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  7. Op. cit., p. 43.

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  8. Logos and Life, Vol. 1, op. cit., p. 186.

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  9. Ibid., p. 172.

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  10. Ibid., p. 172.

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  11. Kirk and Raven, op. cit., p. 205 (Frag. 45).

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  12. Ibid., p. 206.

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  13. Ibid., p. 204 (Frag. 41).

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  14. Ibid., p. 188 (Frag. 50).

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  15. Ibid., p. 205.

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  16. Ibid., p. 193 (Frag. 102).

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  17. Ibid., p. 191 (Frag. 67). `Strife’ or `war’ is Heraclitus’ metaphor for the dominance of change in the world.

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  18. Copleston, Vol., 1, op. cit., p. 40 (Frag. 51).

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  19. Op. cit., p. 193 (Frag. 123).

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  20. Ibid., p. 213 (Frag. 119).

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  21. Cf. Werner Jaeger, Paideia. Die Formung des griechischen Menschen, Bd. 1 ( Berlin: Walter de Gruyter and Co., 1959 ).

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  22. Cf. Ibid. and Zofia J. Zdybicka, “Person and Religion. An Outline of Philosophy of Religion” in Czlowiek i religia. Zarys Filozofii Religii, Rozprawy Wydziaiu Filozocznego

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  27. Ibid., p. 199 (Frag. 31).

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  29. Heraclitus like Xenophanes of Colophon and Empedocles of Acragas differentiated two types of being: (1) being as extensible (the world of phenomena); (2) being as inextensible (the Heraclitean world-creative power or tension). While Democritus of Abdera like Anaxagoras of Clazomenae treated the phenomena as the vision of the secret things and he linked them to his theory of cognition. Expressis verbis, what is most important with phenomena is movement and change, in general. Since understanding follows precise investigations, it will be decided exactly what the human knowledge is. Bear in mind that Heraclitus was interested not only in what the world “looks” like, but all the more in what it “becomes”. That is why the “Power” remains, abiding by movement and creating all.

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  30. A-T. Tymieniecka, Logos and Life, Book 3: The Passions of the Soul and the Elements in the Onto-Poiesis of Culture. Analecta Husserliana, Vol. 28 ( Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990 ), p. 84.

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  34. Logos and Life, Vol. 3, op. cit., p. 82.

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  35. The arrival of Elea (in Plato’ s Sophist): two pairs of ideas are introduced which stand unconditionally in opposition to each other. They take part in the idea of being in the sense of its having many entities as the “power” or the Heraclitean tension. Obviously, it here appears as the question of effect of the inextensible ideas on each other. They “bring to the light” in a multiplicity of extensible bodies and in the “glimpse” of the phenomenal world, but also in their advancing and declining. Now, for Plato, the world of phenomena is the product of the “power” of an idea and it holds its “being” and “non-being”, and this remains for their beautiful (sensorial) picture. And so, Plato referred to Heraclitus’ doctrine in the intelligent, inextensible, world-relative Principle or the “tension” which comprehended also the “back stretch” to the unity with multliplicity (Frag. B 10, 30, 32, 41, 50 n, 60, 64, 168), when he said that the being “participating” in the two pairs of ideas is opposed and called this its common “power” (Cf. Plato, Philebus).

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  36. A-T. Tymieniecka: Logos and Life, Book 2: The Three Movements of the Soul, Analecta Husserliana, Vol. 25 ( Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988 ), p. 6.

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  37. Logos and Life, Vol. 1, op. cit., p. 144.

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  38. Ibid., p. 147.

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  39. Ibid., p. 150.

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  40. Ibid., p. 159.

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  41. Ibid., p. 161.

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  46. Op. cit., p. 188.

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  47. Ibid., p. 195.

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  48. Tymieniecka, “The Initial Spontaneity,” op. cit., p. 17.

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  49. Ibid., p. 17.

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  51. Ibid., p. 13.

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  53. Ibid., p. 82.

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  54. Ibid., p. 26.

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  57. Logos and Life, Vol. 3, op. cit., p. 137.

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  58. Ibid., p. 139.

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  59. Ibid., p. 139.

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  60. The Moral Sense…,“ op. cit., p. 44.

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  61. See my paper “The Notion of `The Person’ in A-T. Tymieniecka’s Thought,” in A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Reason, Life, Culture, Analecta Husserliana, Vol. 39 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), pp. 107–116.

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  1. Technical University of Gdańsk, Poland

    Mieczysław Paweł Migoń

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  1. The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, Belmont, Massachusetts, USA

    Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

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Migoń, M.P. (1999). The Ideals of Life in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s Thought. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Life — The Outburst of Life in the Human Sphere. Analecta Husserliana, vol 60. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2083-0_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2083-0_8

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