Education and teaching career Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka was born into a noble
Polish-Jewish family. She was daughter of Władysław Tymieniecki and Maria Ludwika Loewenstein. Her acquaintance with
philosophy started at an early age with reading of the fundamental work of
Kazimierz Twardowski, the founder of the
Lwów–Warsaw Philosophical School,
Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen (
On the content and object of presentations), as well as works by
Plato and
Bergson. To the philosophy of the latter she was introduced by her mother, Maria-Ludwika de Lanval Tymieniecka. After the end of
World War II she began systematic studies of philosophy at the
Jagiellonian University in
Kraków under the guidance of
Roman Ingarden, student of the famous teachers
Kazimierz Twardowski and
Edmund Husserl. Simultaneously she studied at the
Kraków Academy of Fine Arts. After completing the entire university course within two years she moved to
Switzerland to continue studies under another important
Polish philosopher and
logician,
Józef Maria Bocheński, at the
University of Fribourg. Her doctoral study, dedicated to explorations of the fundamentals of phenomenology in
Nicolai Hartmann and Roman Ingarden's philosophies, was later published as "Essence and Existence" (1957). She obtained her second Ph.D., this time in French philosophy and literature, at the
Sorbonne in 1951. In the years 1952–1953 she did postdoctoral researches in the field of social and political sciences at the
College d'Europe in
Brugge,
Belgium. From that moment on Tymieniecka started her own way in philosophy by developing a special phenomenological attitude that was neither entirely Husserlian, nor entirely Ingardenian. Her first husband was the Kraków art painter Leszek Dutka (1921–2014). In 1956 she married
Hendrik S. Houthakker (1924–2008), Professor of Economy at
Stanford University (1954–1960) and
Harvard University (from 1960) and member of President
Nixon's
Council of Economic Advisers from 1969 to 1971. In 1979 she published, in collaboration with
Karol Wojtyła, who had become Pope John Paul II in 1978, an English translation of Wojtyla's book "Osoba i czyn" (Person and Act).
Person and Act, one of Pope John Paul II's foremost literary works, was initially written in Polish; it has been translated into French, Italian, German, Spanish, English and other languages. Tymieniecka's English translation is widely criticized. Critics of this work claim that Tymieniecka "changed the Polish translation, confusing its technical language and bending the text to her own philosophical concerns." It is also said that John Paul II did not agree with this translation. Besides, it was published before the definitive edition of the Polish version, which shows that it was not the final version that the author desired. Her critics suggest that the English title used by Tymieniecka, "The Acting Person" is indicative of the problems involved with the work, as the author's title was meant to convey the tension between subjective consciousness (person) and objective reality (act), an idea central to the written work and the message the author tried to convey. Despite widespread disagreement, Tymieniecka insisted in 2001 that her work is the "definitive" English edition of "Osoba i czyn". She served as assistant professor in mathematics at the
Oregon State College (1955–1956) and assistant professor at the
Pennsylvania State University (from 1957). She spent the years 1961–1966 at the Institute for Independent Study at
Radcliffe College. In 1972–1973 she was Professor of Philosophy at
St. John's University.
Relationship with Pope John Paul II Tymieniecka and Wojtyla, later
Pope John Paul II, began a friendship in 1973 while he was the archbishop of Kraków. The friendship lasted thirty-two years until his death. She served as his host when he visited New England in 1976, and photos show them together on skiing and camping trips. Letters that he wrote to her were part of a collection of documents sold by Tymieniecka's estate in 2008 to the
National Library of Poland. According to the
BBC the library had initially kept the letters from public view, partly because of John Paul's path to sainthood, but a library official announced in February 2016 the letters would be made public. In February 2016 the BBC documentary programme
Panorama 'revealed' that John Paul II had had a close relationship with Polish-born philosopher Tymieniecka. The Vatican described the documentary as "more smoke than fire", and Tymieniecka had earlier denied being involved with John Paul II. Writers
Carl Bernstein, the veteran investigative journalist of the
Watergate scandal, and Vatican expert Marco Politi, were the first journalists to talk to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka in the 1990s about her importance in John Paul's life. They interviewed her and dedicated 20 pages to her in their 1996 book
His Holiness. Bernstein and Politi even asked her if she had ever developed any romantic relationship with John Paul II, "however one-sided it might have been." She responded, "No, I never fell in love with the cardinal. How could I fall in love with a middle-aged clergyman? Besides, I'm a married woman." The secret letters of Pope John Paul programme was aired on UK's BBC One on Monday, 15 February 2016, at 20:30. == Foundation of phenomenological societies and the World Phenomenology Institute ==