Jan Hartman (philosopher)


Jan Marek Hartman is a Polish philosopher specializing in bioethics, writer, opinion journalist and politician, professor of the humanities.

Biography

He is the son of mathematics professor and a great-great grandson of rabbi Izaak Kramsztyk.
Hartman graduated from the Catholic University of Lublin in 1990. He received his PhD from the Jagiellonian University in 1995, since 1994 he worked at the Philosophy Institute of that university. In years 2005–2008 he was the professor at Pułtusk Academy of Humanities. Since 2009 he is a professor of Jagiellonian University, where he is a philosophy lecturer. In 2008 he received the title of humanities professor. In 2013–2014, he was a member of Polish national ethics committee.
In his philosophical work Hartman focuses on ethics and bioethics, his scientific interests also include especially metaphilosophy and political philosophy.
Hartman is also known as a left-winged publicist, he's been publishing in magazines such as Gazeta Wyborcza, Tygodnik Powszechny, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, Rzeczpospolita, Polityka, Newsweek Polska and Przekrój. In 2009 he was awarded with Grand Press for the best publicist.
He is active in the politics. In 2011 Polish parliamentary election he was a candidate for the MP of Democratic Left Alliance. He received 2209 votes and didn't manage to get to the parliament.
Hartman had been a member of the anti-clerical Your Movement party from its inception in October 2013 to September 2014, having been considered one its key members. 2014 has proved to be very onerous for the party when it received mere 3.6% of the votes in the elections to the European Parliament of 2014, lagging far behind its rivalry Democratic of the Left Alliance. The precarious voting results threatened the very existence of the party when many of its members quit. Despite proving his loyalty, Hartman soon lost his membership after publishing on his blog an article regarding recent debates on the legality of incest in Germany and proposing to open a discussion on this topic in Poland. The public opinion was outraged and went as far as to accuse him of espousing incest, which he denied. Soon, a voting inside the party was held and Hartman was expelled, having lost 7 to 1. Hartman condemned the decision, criticising it as "curtailing freedom of speech in a party whose main precept was in fact freedom".
In 1989 he married Barbara. Their daughter, Zofia, was born in 1998.

Books (selection)