Filozoficzna biografia Józefa M. Bocheńskiego

Józef Bocheński was born on 30th Au­gust 1902. He graduated from the Se­condary School in 1920 and immedia­tely after the final exam (matura) he joined the 8th Ulhan (light cavalry) Re­giment and took part in a final part of a Polish-Bolshevik war. After the war, in 1922, he joined studies in law at the University of Lwów and after two years he attended the University in Poznań in order to study political economy. These studies were interrupted in 1926 when Bocheński joined the Seminary in Poznań which he left when moving to the Dominican novitiate in Cracow. There he adopted names Innocenty Ma­ria. After one year of a novitiate he was sent to philosophical studies at the University in Fribourg in Swizerland, he graduated in 1934 . Two years ear­lier however, he was ordained a priest and in 1936, along with Jan Salamucha, Franciszek Drewnowski and Bolesław Sobociński, he organised the so called Cracow Circle. After receiving a doc­torate in theology he was appointed a professor of logic at Angelicum, and he officially remained there until 1940. In 1938 he got habilitation in philoso­phy at the Faculty of Theology at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. Along with the Polish Corpus of Gen. Władysław Anders he took part in the Italian campaigne. He fought in the battle at Monte Cassino (May 1944).

After the end of the Second World War he became a professor of philoso­phy at Fribourg University and rema­ined at that position until the retire­ment (1945-1972). He occupied a position of a Dean of Faculty of Philosophy (1950-1952) and a Rector. There he initiated soviet studies which brought him recognition and political significance. He visited Poland in 1987 for the first time since he left in 1939. In the next year he was awarded doc­torates honoris causa at the Jagiellonian University and at the Academy of Catholic Theology (ATK) in Warsaw. Moreover, during his emigration he co­operated regularly with the Polish Uni­versity Abroad established in Londyn. He died in Fribourg on 8th February 1995.

During his lifetime Józef Bocheński was changing philosopical schools and views. In his youth he was a Kantian, next, he „converted” to neo-Thomism in its most traditional (handbook and essential) version, which actually was more Aristotelian than Thomistic. The next step was an attempt to „moderni­se” this sort of Thomism by tools of mathematical logic in order to make Thomas - as Bocheński said himself - no longer his „guru”. In the result, Bo­cheński ceased to explore the problems and style of classical philosophy in favour of analytical mode of philoso­phying.

He himself divided his scientific work into four periods distinguished as follows, according to interest and passions (and views as well) dominated in particular time:

1) neo-Thomistic (1934–1940),

2) historical- logical (1945–1955)

3) sovietological (1955–1970)

4) systematical- logical (1970–1995).