J. M. Bocheński, the teacher
a personal reminiscence
pp. 3-8
in: James J. O'Rourke, Thomas J. Blakeley, Friedrich Rapp (eds), Contemporary Marxism, Berlin, Springer, 1984Abstract
Thinking about the teachers who contributed to our academic development opens up a treasury of memories. The first university at which I studied philosophy was Erlangen, where I enrolled in the Fall of 1950. I was spellbound by Professor Helmut Kuhn's immense wealth of knowledge and the special aesthetic touch he lent to the presentation of his ideas. But Erlangen was not to be my principal place of study. At the end of the Winter semester my mother wrote me that she had visited the Dean of Philosophy at the University of Fribourg, in Switzerland, and that he had promised to look after me if I wanted to study there. Being Catholic, I had always wanted to study philosophy at a Catholic university. Since the only languages I had mastered besides my mother tongue — Czech — were French and German, only two universities could be considered, Louvain and Fribourg. In this way I came to Fribourg. The dean to whom I was introduced turned out to be the man from whom I was to learn more than from any of my other teachers, the Doctor philosophiae et theologiae J. M. Bochenski.
