Category of Understanding in Personalistic Hermeneutics of Czeslaw Stanislaw Bartnik

Abstract

In this article, the author provides insight into the concept of understanding as the determinant category of personalistic hermeneutics, developed by our contemporary Czeslaw Stanislaw Bartnik, a Polish philosopher-personalist, professor of Lublin Catholic University. The author finds out that, according to the interpretation of understanding by a Polish researcher, it is not only complicated by structure but has various forms and aspects. Thus, Bartnik distinguishes:

– reestic understanding, based on contemplation of reality through things;

– personal understanding (direct and mediated), that means that a personality is the subject of understanding;

– self-understanding through reflection (understanding of one’s self and ability to think about the process of understanding);

– historical understanding (understanding of history, historical process and its significance);

– understanding rooted in the language as a problem of language understanding;

– pragmatic understanding as capacity of practical application of what the

man understands. Apart from the basic aspects of understanding, the philosopher points out three stages, which precede the process of understanding itself: evolutionistic, psychological and hermeneutical. He considers understanding as an act, process and state. Religious understanding is the main aspect in personalistic hermeneutics of Bartnik, where he lays emphasis on individual and communal. Understanding, in his interpretation, also arises as communication of a man with the world and a man with another man. In the field of understanding, the Polish thinker mentions the definitions of M. Heidegger and H.-G. Gadamer: the world of understanding and horizon of understanding. However, he deviates from the traditional statements of the founders of philosophic hermeneutics, who believe that the world as such is the key horizon of understanding. The Polish thinker considers the personality to be such main perspective: it discovers, determines and uses horizons of understanding. Bartnik asserts that a personality has the opportunity to see reality, understand it and its own place and meaning in the world through understanding, perceiving and exploration of one's own world and its sense.