HPP Talk: 12th February, Zofia Rosinska

On the 12th of February, Professor Zofia Rosinska spoke on the topic 'The Place of Questioning in Fidelity' at the ongoing seminar series organised by the Humane Philosophy Project and the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion.

Video footage of this talk is availble at the media page.

In this talk I will focus on the notion of fidelity, which I will examine in two contexts: the place of fidelity in friendship, and in the human relation to God. I will discuss the place of fidelity in friendship as a model for understanding fidelity in the broader context of human relations beginning with its ancient idea, as expressed by Aristotle, and how this idea is preserved, and developed in more recent conceptualisations. I will then look at the question of fidelity in the human relation to God and compare this to fidelity in human relations. In this second part of my talk I will refer to Ricoeur’s thought and the wider tradition of philosophy of culture to compare and contrast these two contexts. Through this comparison I will try to show that the notion of fidelity is only properly understood when it is taken to be founded on an inherently ‘questioning attitude’, which can be characterised as that opposing stagnation, dogmatisation, and idleness.

Zofia Rosińska is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warsaw, was a student of Professor Stefan Morawski, and for many years the director of the Philosophy of Culture Department which she took over after Professor Morawski. She engages with problems that arise at the meeting point between Psychology and Philosophy. She introduced Psychoanalysis to the Polish philosophical scene as a method of reflecting on culture and the human person. She is the author of many books including Freud (1993), Jung (1982), Psychoanalytic Thinking about Art (1985), Psychotherapy and Culture (1997), and recently Movement of Thought (2012).