Kazimierz Filip Wize (1873 – 1953) – a psychiatrist, a biologist, and a philosopher

Kazimierz Filip Wize (1873-1953) was a Polish multidisciplinary scholar, a microbiologist, a lepidopterologist, a psychiatrist, and a philosopher. He was an avid promoter of care of the mentally ill. After defending a Ph.D. in medicine in Munich (Germany) in 1899, Wize specialized in bacteriology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. In 1907 he defended his second Ph.D. in philosophy in Leipzig. Soon, Wize became an internationally active scholar and a prolific writer, working especially on esthetics and the philosophy of medicine. For Wize, philosophy of action was a bridge between abstract academic philosophy, practical ethics, and the philosophy of medicine understood as an art and a science. Later in his life, Wize moved back to practicing medicine, and in the 1930s he specialized in psychiatry. The new field enabled him to apply his esthetic concepts to the treatment of patients and become a pioneer of art therapy. Music, painting, and dance, Wize argued, are a means to achieve serenity and freedom and play an important part in the process of recovery. Much later, Wize witnessed the extermination of psychiatric patients in Poland during a Nazi T4 action.