The photo above, of Reverend Professor Józef Tischner (1930 – 2000), in the room of his parents’ house in Stary Sącz, was taken at the Regional Museum in Stary Sącz, where the original furnishings from the room are on display.
Stary Sącz, where Professor Tischner was born, is very proud of its famous native son. Established in 1257, Stary Sącz, population 9,000, has everything which a tourist wants to encounter: interesting historic monuments (an old, charming main square with wooden architecture and the Poor Clare Nuns Monastery; the order was founded there in 1280), lots of beautiful nature nearby, with mountains, parks, well-developed hiking trails, the St. Kinga’s spring with miraculous water, a beaver dam, and rivers and ponds, where during summertime one can go for a swim. At the same time, it is not a very popular vacation destination, so when you go there, you can feel that you discovered this little gem of a town all by yourself.
Professor Tischner was declared by the Polish Senate one of the patrons of Poland in 2025.
He was an extraordinary man, a philosopher specializing in phenomenology, with a monumental body of works, but at the same time, somebody who was able to explain, or rather “translate” very complex philosophical concepts into a language comprehensible to almost anybody. Especially his book (available also as a recording) “Historia filozofii po góralsku” (“History of philosophy according to the mountaineers”) written in the “górale” dialect, has been entertaining and teaching readers, and listeners, since 1997.
Tischner loved the górale language and culture, and was a huge promotor of both, hence according to the book – for starters – all the Greek philosophers were really “górale”, only disguised as Greeks. The father of philosophy, Thales of Miletus was really, Stasek Nędza, not from Miletus, but from “Pardałówka” (a part of Zakopane), and Professor Tischner even introduces “the origins” of Thales’s theorem. For anybody who enjoys humor and is a little bit familiar with the “górale” dialect (and their sense of humor!), the book is a sheer pleasure to read, or even better, to listen to, as Tischner himself recorded the audiobook. The first part about Thales of Miletus or rather Stasek of Pardałówka ends with: “And that’s what Stasek of Pardałówka, who invented thinking out of boredom, was.”
If you want to listen to Professor Tischner reading his “History of philosophy according to the mountaineers”, the audiobook is available here:
As we read in the official proclamation: “The resolution on declaring 2025 the year of Rev. Prof. Józef Tischner was adopted by the Senate in appreciation of the outstanding achievements of one of the most important Polish philosophers, clergy and intellectuals, in connection with the 25th anniversary of his death.” (https://nck.pl/aktualnosci/patroni-roku-2025)
More about the 2025 patrons at: https://polishweekly.com/poland-designates-2025-to-honor-icons-in-culture-and-history/
Photos (taken in 2023) by Alina Klin
