Phenomenology of the Encounter According to Józef Tischner

Abstract

The general crisis of individualism is reflected in the conflicts generated by human beings themselves in different parts of the planet: fundamentalism, xenophobia, gender violence, wars, genocide, and exploitation of human beings. Politically, individualism is presented under the form of extreme Manichean positions: left or right, capitalism or socialism, liberalism or communism. However, human society is much more complex; these simplifications are no longer possible. Neither the left nor the right will provide paradise, even less if their exponents think themselves to be possessors of absolute truth. On the other hand, respect for the diversity of the other view is not exhausted in the development of critical thinking. The purpose of this review is to schematically describe the viewpoint of Tischner, based on the notion of encounter to refer to the original experience with another human being where the other takes the highest level of persuasion. The encounter with another is the agathologic horizon of the interpersonal experience, and opens up the possibility of meeting with oneself in a new way. By impotence or ignorance many tragedies are possible, and in fact they have taken place in the darkest periods of mankind, when evil apparently killed good, resulting in the most sadistic forms of selfishness. Finally, the present review tends to demonstrate that on the agathologic horizon, the manifestations of the other and oneself are developed in a true sense of the good and the bad, the different logos that fit the drama or tragedy in interpersonal relationships.