New Books Network: The Philosophy of Drama by Józef Tischner (U Notre Dame Press, 2024)

Date: November 12, 2025
Host: Nathan Phillips
Guest: Artur Sebastian Rossman (University of Notre Dame, Translator of Tischner's The Philosophy of Drama)

Episode Overview

In this episode, host Nathan Phillips engages Artur Sebastian Rossman, translator of Józef Tischner’s The Philosophy of Drama, in an in-depth conversation about one of Poland’s most acclaimed philosophical works, newly available in English. Drawing from the intersection of Catholic thought, postwar Central European experience, phenomenology, and the drama of daily moral life, the discussion explores Tischner’s vision of human existence as played out on a stage—a metaphor that asks what it means to live well, responsibly, and truthfully amid the world’s evils, lies, and possibilities for redemption.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Genesis of the Translation Project (02:29)

• Rossman encountered Tischner indirectly, having studied with Tischner’s nephew. He was invited to take up the translation when the Tischner Institute received funding and needed someone with Polish language and philosophical background.
• The translation took eight years, paralleling the "dramas of life" Rossman personally experienced, making the text’s themes powerfully immediate for him.
• Tischner stands as one of Poland’s top philosophers, alongside figures like Ingarden, Wojtyła, Kolakowski, and was particularly influential as a chaplain of the Solidarity movement.

Quote:
"It's impossible to escape this sort of book once you've been brought into the circle, into the conversation that it inaugurates and the conversation that it actually thematizes in itself..." (04:37, Rossman)

2. Rossman’s Intellectual Background and Encounter with Polish Literature (06:32)

• Rossman’s philosophical path was initiated by a poem—Czesław Miłosz’s “Encounter”—sparking his lifelong focus on Polish poetry, ethics, and dialogue.
• He links his intellectual trajectory to being a refugee from Poland and the moral/emotional impact of literature on discovering responsibility and the structure of meaning.

Quote:
"Once you got pulled into that particular dialogue and set of problems ... it opened a whole world of the intellect and ways of actually being able to think about life in ethically responsible ways." (07:03, Rossman)

3. Catholicism, Conscience, and Ethical Responsibility (14:01)

• Tischner’s work is deeply marked by Polish Catholic experience, especially ethical responsibility and forgiveness in the face of evil and suffering.
• Catholic faith, for Tischner and Rossman, is not abstract but lived amid historical traumas—martyrdom, totalitarian evil, and solidarity with others.

Quote:
"The element of forgiveness and the encounter with evil is something that's powerfully Catholic within it and, well, an ethical responsibility once again, because the life of faith is not something that's lived in the abstract." (15:05, Rossman)

4. Importance and Place of The Philosophy of Drama (17:07)

• The work is compared to Buber’s I and Thou, Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption, Levinas, and even Heidegger, standing as a systematic, dialogical philosophy.
• The third chapter—a long meditation on evil and conscience—is highlighted as pivotal.

Quote:
"If we're talking about salvation, right, we need to be saved from something...with the encounter you have with the other person is either salvation or damnation. So that's a fairly stark formulation..." (17:47, Rossman)

5. Reception, Context, and Relevance to Central European History (19:11, 24:25, 32:44)

• Tischner’s audience spanned the intelligentsia, students, theater-makers, churchgoers, and the general public, serving as a chaplain and public philosopher during the Solidarity movement and communist repression.
• The problem of evil is viscerally “given” for Poles, as philosophical reflection must deal directly with atrocity and historical trauma.
• Tischner’s approach relocates philosophy to lived experience, making it both communal and transformative.

Quote:
"Your life actually does matter and not only your life matters, but what you do with life together with other people." (17:47, Rossman)
"We can talk about the genesis of political reason and of social norms...philosophically, you know, if I'm the one who's in this place of responsibility, how do I discern the good in a, in this horizon of potential lies?" (64:14, Phillips)

6. The Dramatic Metaphor: Stage, Freedom & Necessity (37:00)

• To be human is to be a ‘dramatic being’—living among others, acting freely yet bound by the “stage” (the world). Roles are both given and chosen; the stage is the site of both fate and freedom.
• The "stage" is not just the world as such, but the intersubjective, value-laden context where action, dialogue, morality, and even failure play out.

Quote:
"To be a dramatic being, he writes, means living through a given time surrounded by other people, while having the earth under one's feet as the stage." (36:57, quoted by Phillips)
"It's the interaction of freedom and necessity. Yeah, you're right." (41:51, Rossman)

7. Encounter, Dialogue, and Reciprocity (48:44)

• Tischner modifies Levinas: Rather than a "terrorism of the other" (Levinas’s one-sided demand), true drama is dialogical—responsibility is reciprocal, not infinitely passive.
• Love and the call to goodness arise in the reciprocal responses of persons facing each other on the stage of life.

Quote:
"There's an added level of maybe complexity and that might be missing there in Levinas within Tishner's work." (50:32, Rossman)

8. Evil, Lies, and the Role of Beauty (64:14)

• Evil is a concrete, phenomenological reality—"given" in experience and enacted through broken reciprocity, especially in the form of the lie.
• The liar is the one who, like Satan in the garden, tempts with counterfeit goods, causing the loss of genuine promise.
• Beauty occupies an ambivalent status: an enchanting, self-sufficient good that can seduce as much as uplift; it is both gift and risk.

Quote:
"Beauty with the kind of incandescent light that comes from it both kind of charms and invites us, but at the same time it could also burn us." (69:22, Rossman)

9. Solidarity, Justification, and Failure (72:36)

• Social and interpersonal trust (solidarity) is the basis for community, but is always threatened by inherited evil and the persistent possibility of deceit.
• Tischner’s drama includes the possibility of tragic failure—a risk that defines both philosophy and moral action. The act of faith, or absolute fidelity, is to continually choose the good amidst uncertainty.

Quote:
"There is a risk. Risk. There's also risk of failure and tragedy in all this...he offers his philosophy as an attempt to dramatize drama." (69:22, Rossman)

10. The Christological Horizon and the Sacred Heart (75:53)

• Tischner situates his vision—often implicitly—within the drama of Christ: heroism, tragedy, hope. Martyrdom and radical fidelity in the face of evil are ultimate forms of witness.
• The drama never guarantees success, but testifies to hope and the possibility of ultimate meaning.

Quote:
"I think there's like an undercurrent that's not sufficiently thematized within the book that's Christological because, well, the potential for failure within the aim towards the good...we're not entirely abandoned in our experience of evil..." (75:53, Rossman)

"Continually choosing life according to the good, man rises towards something that is above time. He is convinced that it is as if the eternal heart pulls him toward itself." (73:25, Tischner quoted by Phillips)

11. Literary and Metaphorical Richness (91:29)

• The book is as much literary as philosophical—teeming with references to Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and biblical narrative.
• Tischner uses these metaphors as living examples, anchoring difficult philosophy in everyday and mythic dramas.

Quote:
"It's a fun book, despite being very challenging. And I think for, you know, if you've read some books, even for high school English, you'll recognize some of the examples, especially Shakespeare." (91:29, Rossman)

Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• "It's impossible to escape this sort of book once you've been brought into the circle, into the conversation that it inaugurates..." (04:37, Rossman)
• "The element of forgiveness and the encounter with evil is something that's powerfully Catholic within it." (15:05, Rossman)
• "Your life actually does matter and not only Your life matters, but what you do with life together with other people." (17:47, Rossman)
• "To be a dramatic being ... means living through a given time surrounded by other people, while having the earth under one's feet as the stage." (36:57, quoted by Phillips)
• "Beauty with the kind of incandescent light ... both kind of charms and invites us, but at the same time it could also burn us." (69:22, Rossman)
• "He offers his philosophy as an attempt to dramatize drama. And he says ... part of the drama of the philosophy is that it might fail." (69:22, Rossman)
• "Continually choosing life according to the good, man rises towards something that is above time. He is convinced that it is as if the eternal heart pulls him toward itself." (73:25, Tischner, via Phillips)

Key Timestamps

• 02:29 – Rossman introduces how he became Tischner’s translator; Tischner’s status in Polish philosophy.
• 06:32 – Rossman's intellectual path, Polish identity, and poetry as formative.
• 14:01 – Catholic character of Tischner’s philosophy; responsibility and evil.
• 17:07 – Comparison to Buber, Levinas, Rosenzweig; systematic scope of the work.
• 19:11 – Cyril O’Regan’s preface and Tischner’s connection to JP II and von Balthasar.
• 24:25 – The problem of evil and postwar philosophy’s shift toward lived experience.
• 32:44 – Tischner’s audience: intellectuals, drama students, workers, parishioners.
• 36:57 – Introduction of the “stage” as central metaphor.
• 48:44 – Philosophical dialogue/genuine reciprocity vs. passive Levinasian response.
• 64:14 – Evil, lies, broken reciprocity, and discernment on the moral stage.
• 69:22 – The risk of beauty; the possibility of philosophical and existential failure.
• 75:53 – The Christological/tragic horizon and the book’s closing image of the Sacred Heart.
• 91:29 – Literary dimension: use of Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, and biblical metaphors.
• 96:56 – Final recommendations; the work as both profound and readable.

Final Reflections

This conversation provides listeners with a rich and vivid guide to The Philosophy of Drama, highlighting Tischner’s unique combination of Central European moral urgency, phenomenological method, and Christian hope. The translation, as Rossman emphasizes, is itself a dialogical event—an invitation into Tischner’s world and a call to continue the dramatic, uncertain, but meaningful work of seeking truth and goodness together.

Recommended for:

• Philosophers, theologians, and students of phenomenology
• Those interested in Catholic thought, 20th-century European history, or Polish culture
• Readers drawn to existentialism, literature, and moral thought after tragedy

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