The paper shows that the critical analysis of Max Scheler’s and Immanuel Kant’s concepts of moral philosophy was a starting point of Karol Wojtyła’s own positive project of anthropology presented in the book The Acting Person. Its core lies in the recognition of the significance of human efficacy: human persons express and realize their full subjectivity through their actions. Wojtyła shows that genuine human actions are not motivated only by the emotional power with which particular values are given, but rather by the perception of their being true values. In the last analysis, Wojtyła’s theory might be described as transphenomenology, that is, a synthesis of phenomenology and metaphysics. According to him, what is immediately given to the subject can be fully  explained by categories that transcend direct experience. In this way Wojtyła incorporates his vision of anthropology into a broader metaphysics, at the same  time showing that in philosophy one should move from phenomenon to foundation.

This is the first of a two-part study treating Karol Wojtyła’s Aristotelian methodology. The study shows that Wojtyła’s inductive and reductive methodology is identical with the Aristotelian method of proceeding from what is better-known to us in experience (ἐμπειρία/empeiria) to what is better-known to nature by way of induction (ἐπαγωγή/epagoge) and analysis (ἀνάλῠσις/analusis) or division (διαίρεσις/diairesis). By a rigorous presentation of this Aristotelian methodology here in Part I, the logical form and force of Wojtyła’s method is properly disclosed and appreciated in Part II. Wojtyła’s method utilizes the logical forms of reductio ad impossibile and reasoning on the hypothesis of the end, or effect-cause reasoning, which is special to the life sciences and the power-object model of definition. By this methodology, Wojtyła obtains definitive knowledge of the human person that is necessary and undeniable: he discloses the εἶδος (eidos) or species of the person in the Aristotelian, Thomistic, and Phenomenological sense of the term.

The article presents the analysis of some chosen arguments from Karol Wojtyła’s The Acting Person in consideration of the opposition between the realist and constructivist theoretical standpoints. It ponders the attractiveness of the realist position both for the social and personal dimension of human existence by considering such issues as freedom, autonomy, alienation, truth, receptivity, and community. Finally, it points to the ecological problem of the rightly understood “inactivity,” which is contrasted with the late modern hyperactivity of social constructivism.

The author presents Wojtyła’s views on participation and its connections to the common good. The analysis consists of two parts. The first part outlines the concept of participation (coexistence and action together with other people in relation to the common good) and its various forms (solidarity and opposition, conformism and evasion). The second part presents views of the nature of common good found not only in liberal thought (common good as the expression of deliberation and the rights of the individual), and personalist thought (common good as the development of the person and its natural potentialities), but primarily in the work of Wojtyła himself (common good as personal self-fulfilment through coexistence and cooperation with others in relation to the conscience-discerned truth, elected in a free act). His reference point was also personalism, which stresses the inalienable dignity of the person in both the private and the social spheres of life.

Karol Wojtyła’s Osoba i czyn (in English translation known as The Acting Person) is certainly an extraordinary book having considerable significance for contemporary human philosophy. And because the philosophical or quasi-philosophical concept of the human person, consciously or not, explicitly or implicitly, is always at the root of any sociological, psychological, pedagogical or even economic theory, the importance of this work is even greater. It involves both the humanities and social sciences. The purpose of this article is to point out the benefits of this groundbreaking book. In particular, it allows us to rethink the paradigmatic foundations of these sciences. At the same time, it attempts to show how necessary is a critical revision of their own paradigmatic basis. I would also like to consider the essence of the human concept, especially from the perspective of critical realism. Especially, I deal with the issue of subjectivity and justification for the choice of this concept as the key to understanding individual agency. I am convinced that agency is only one dimension of subjectivity and does not allow us to understand the whole problem of autonomy, human freedom, and the meaning of humanity. Wojtyła’s The Acting Person seems to provide extremely important arguments in favor of my thesis. It also helps, I think, to understand the essence of individual subjectivity, issues of fundamental importance in our time, peculiarly, in the broadly understood human sciences.

We use the term “person” when we want to point out that human existence is unrepeatable and unique. The assumption that man is a person constitutes a basis for the belief in the dignity, efficacy, and responsibility of the human individual. Karol Wojtyla built his conception of the person in the context of theological and philosophical discussions. Even though Wojtyła’s conception has been given a great deal of scholarly attention, it is worthwhile to juxtapose it with contemporary anthropological theories that derive from cognitive sciences. Cognitivists usually base their theories on biological and sociological premises. Some conclusions arrived at in the area of the cognitive sciences lead to mind-brain reductionism, a theory in which the human being is regarded as a body endowed with the function of the brain and as an entity whose individual traits are shaped by its social and cultural environment. This position undermines the ideas of free will and the substantial singularity of the human person. However, debates with this position have worked out a non-reductionist alternative, a theory known as emergentism. This theory treats the human mind as a distinct faculty, one which emerges as a phase in the brain’s development. Emergentists base their reasoning on the assumptions that the body is a unity and that the mind is not identical with it. It is my belief that emergentism can be fruitfully applied to the dynamic understanding of the person put forward by Wojtyła in the middle of the 20th century.

This article considers the problem of the idea of participation as an essential dimension of philosophy of education in the context of Karol Wojtyła’s teachings. It proceeds through the concepts of the person and participation. The paper reflects the need for discussion on philosophy of education due to the treatment of individual freedom in an extremely individualistic way. Wojtyła draws on the philosophies of consciousness and the philosophies of being in order to consider the constitution of our ideas in a manner relevant to the education for being together with all people and creatures, with the universe, with the whole world which gives us our own place.

Janusz Mariański, Godność ludzka—wartość doceniona czy puste słowo? Studium socjopedagogiczne - review.

Karol Jasiński, Relacja między religią i sferą publiczną w filozofii społecznej i politycznej Charlesa Taylora - review

Mariusz Henryk Sztaba, Etyczno-moralne postawy życia społecznego w świetle nauczania Karola Wojtyły – św. Jana Pawła II. Wybrane aspekty - review

Philosophy and Canon Law. 2021, Vol. 7/1: Semicentennial of Karol Wojtyła’s “The Acting Person”: Ideas—Contexts—Inspirations (I)

Philosophy and Canon Law 2021, Vol. 7/1: Semicentennial of Karol Wojtyła’s “The Acting Person”: Ideas—Contexts—Inspirations (I)