Dr Jerzy Szymura, Associate Professor at the Jagiellonian University, was born on 23 February 1946. Prof. Jerzy Szymura's intellectual and professional life was connected with the Jagiellonian University.
He graduated in the Polish Philology in 1970 and in 1972 in Philosophy. He received his doctoral degree in 1979 at the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University on the basis of a dissertation entitled Linguistic Phenomenology of J.L. Austin as a theory of speech acts and a method for solving philosophical problems. The dissertation was supervised by Prof. Michał Hempoliński and reviewed by Prof. Leon Koj and Prof. Zbigniew Kuderowicz. The dissertation was published by the Ossolineum publishing house in 1982 under the title: Język, mowa i prawda w perspektywie fenomenologii linguistycznej J.L. Austina. In 1991, at the Faculty of Philosophy, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy on the basis of the dissertation Relationships in the Perspective of Absolute Monism by F.H. Bradley (published in the series Habilitation Dissertations of the Jagiellonian University). The reviewers of the habilitation were Prof. Michał Hempoliński, Prof. Antoni B. Stępień and Prof. Jan Woleński.
Prof. Jerzy Szymura's research interests focused on issues related to truth and scepticism, which he analysed with pietism in the spirit of rigorous language analysis. His publications, including Is it possible to get rid of the notion of truth? (Semiotic Studies, 21, 1998), On stating facts, (Philosophical Review - New Series, 34 (2), 2000), Theories of truth and the antinomy of a liar (Semiotic Studies, 25, 2004), "Adaequatio intellectus et rei" in the light of the discussion with semantic scepticism (Roczniki Filozoficzne 53 (2), 2005) or The Trouble with the Notion of Correspondence (Philosophy of Science 2, 2006) form a compact series of texts presenting a multifaceted analysis of the notion of truth, with strong reference to sceptical implications. Professor Jerzy Szymura had been working for many years on a monograph that would present his position in this regard in a systematic way. At the same time, Prof. Jerzy Szymura was a translator of one of the eminent Oxford philosophers, Francis Herbert Bradley, whose fragment of his greatest work Phenomenon and Reality was published by the Comer publishing house of Toruń in 1996. He also translated Bronisław Malinowski's work, The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages (B. Malinowski, Jednostka, społeczność, kultura. Works, vol. 8, Warsaw: WN PWN 2000.
Professor Jerzy Szymura was an employee of the Institute of Philosophy at the Jagiellonian University from 1971, including the Departments of Epistemology and Ontology. He headed the latter from 2004, after the retirement of Professor Władysław Stróżewski. In 1986 and 1987, he was a Fellow of the British Council as a Visiting Research Fellow at Merton College, University of Oxford, where he received a Master of Arts degree. He was also a member of the Polish Philosophical Society and chaired the Izydora Dąmbska Methodological and Epistemological Group for many years (1994-1998, 2002-2007 and 2011-2014). Professor Jerzy Szymura was also a member of the editorial board of the journals: Analysis and Existence, Philosophical Quarterly, Organon, Principia and Polish Journal of Philosophy.
Professor Jerzy Szymura's teaching activities included the issues of philosophy of language, contemporary philosophy, epistemology and ontology. For many years, he taught courses in ontology, but also seminars on analytic philosophy, including his own reading of Martin Heidegger's thought with the tools of the philosophy of language.
Professor Jerzy Szymura was the supervisor of six doctorates: Zbigniew Bomert OP, Barbara Głód, Jan Kiełbasa, Krzysztof Posłajka, Paweł Rojek and Piotr Sikora. He was also a multiple reviewer in proceedings for the awarding of doctoral and post-doctoral degrees. He remained intellectually active to the end, working in research, writing reviews and correspondence.
Professor Jerzy Szymura passed away on Saturday, 2 March, at 5.40 p.m. He will remain in our grateful memory!