Henry Hiż

Henryk Hiż (Polish: [xiʂ]; 8 October 1917 – 19 December 2006) was a Polish analytical philosopher specializing in linguistics, philosophy of language, logic, mathematics and ethics, active for most of his life in the United States, one of the youngest representatives of the Lwów–Warsaw school. A disciple of Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Hiż studied at the University of Warsaw. During the German occupation of Poland in World War II, he participated in the Polish resistance movement as a cryptographer in the Home Army. In 1944 he took part in the Warsaw Uprising. In 1948, he defended his Ph.D. at Harvard University under W.V.O. Quine. In 1950, he permanently emigrated to the United States. He kept in touch with the American logical environment, including with Alfred Tarski, and maintained lively contact with the Polish academic community. He lectured at the University of Pennsylvania between 1960 and 1988. In 1976 he was a Guggenheim Fellow and a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge. In 1982 he received the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Award. He was a member of the Warsaw Scientific Society. He published about one hundred original papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Strongly influenced by the Lwów–Warsaw school, initially in his research he…Citește mai mult

Early life and German occupation He was born on October 8, 1917, in Petrograd as the son of Tadeusz Hiż and Emilia née Elżanowska. He had an older brother, Stanisław Hiż (1915–1999). In 1920, the family came to Poland, settling in Warsaw. Henryk's mother, Emilia, was an architect, while his father Tadeusz Hiż was a journalist, who kept in touch with the Warsaw's bohemian circles. Franciszek Fiszer was, among others, a frequent guest in their house. Years later, Henryk Hiż said that “he obtained a lot from his parental home”. He attended the Mikołaj Rej High School in Warsaw, where he passed the matriculation examination in 1937. For two years he was an actor at the School Theater of the Reduta Institute. In 1938, he performed in the play Kościuszko near Racławice (Kościuszko pod Racławicami) directed by Maria Dulęba, portraying historical figure Bartosz Głowacki. In the theater, he also met Ewa Kunina, Juliusz Osterwa and Iwo Gall. In the late 1930s he associated with the so-called “democratic youth”, becoming one of the founding members of the anti-fascist Democratic Club in Warsaw. In 1937 he enrolled at the University of Warsaw to study philosophy. He attended lectures and seminars in logic…Citește mai mult

Permanent emigration to the United States Between 1950 and 1951 he was a lecturer at Brooklyn College at New York University and at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In the years 1951–1953 he was an assistant professor of philosophy of mathematics at the University of Utah. In 1953–1954 he returned to work at the University of Pennsylvania, where he lectured in philosophy. In 1954–1960 he was an assistant professor and associate professor of mathematics at Pennsylvania State University. In 1962, Henryk Hiż and his wife obtained American citizenship. From 1960, Hiż was an associate professor, and between 1964 and 1988 he was a full professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. In the years 1958–1981 he was the Deputy Head of the research group on transformation and text analysis, subsidized by the National Science Foundation. Occasionally, he was also a member of the Faculty of Computer Science and the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Pennsylvania. He kept in touch with Alfred Tarski, who helped Hiż get employment in the U.S. In Philadelphia, Hiż made a close acquaintance with philosopher Charles H. Kahn, who dedicated his book The Verb “be” in Ancient Greek to Henryk and Danuta…Citește mai mult

Work and thought He specialized in logic and theoretical linguistics. Jan Woleński called him “an outstanding representative of Polish and American analytical philosophy”, “the youngest disciple of the Lwów–Warsaw school”, whose death resulted in the “real end” of this school. Hiż did not publish any book, but he authored about a hundred original papers, including in The Journal of Philosophy, The Journal of Symbolic Logic, Methods, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, The Monist, Synthese, The Philosophical Forum and Studia Logica. At the beginning of his career, he was interested in issues specific to the Lwów–Warsaw school: semantics, formal logic and methodology of the sciences. During this period, he appealed mostly to the philosophy of nominalism of Stanisław Leśniewski and reism of Tadeusz Kotarbiński. Kotarbiński had the greatest impact on the formation of his views (in particular with his work Elements of the Theory of Knowledge, Formal Logic and Methodology of the Sciences, 1929). With time, especially under the influence of American philosophers, Hiż began to abandon the absolutism of his professors in favor of pragmatism and pluralistic eclecticism. From the late 1950s, “he mainly dealt with linguistics and its logical and philosophical foundations”, focusing his research program on the grammar theory…Citește mai mult

Commemoration In 1992, on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of his birth, disciples and friends of Henryk Hiż contributed to the book Philosophical Excerpts (Fragmenty filozoficzne ofiarowane Henrykowi Hiżowi w siedemdziesiątą piątą rocznicę urodzin), edited by Jerzy Pelc. In 2010, the Polish Semiotics Society established the Henryk and Danuta Hiż Award as “an individual cash prize awarded in a competition for the best work on language philosophy and sign theory”. The Prize Fund is financial resources offered by Henryk and Danuta Hiż to a befriended Polish marriage, who then transferred the funds to the Polish Semiotic Society.