Original scientific paper

The Personalistic Value of the Human Act in the Philosophy of Karol Wojtyła

Piotr Maj ; Higher Education School for Theological Studies
Petar Popović ; Diocesan Missionary Seminary »Redemptoris Mater«, Pula, Croatia

Abstract

This article attempts to postulate »the personalistic value of the human act« as a key-concept for a more adequate understanding of the whole of Karol Wojtyła’s pre-pontifical philosophical project. Throughout the article the authors provide a textual, as well as conceptual analysis to this claim, mainly by permitting Wojtyła’s own writings to speak on their own. Having postulated the personalistic value of the human act as a legitimate key-concept –certainly not the only one central to his philosophical project – the authors demonstrate the originality of Wojtyła’s insights as regards the discovery of a distinct personalistic level pertaining to the reality of the human person and its acts. The article shows how Wojtyła’s writings fruitfully interrelate with the traditional methaphysical concepts of St. Thomas Aquinas, especially with the elements of his natural law theory. Using a methodology today known as »thomistic personalism«, Wojtyła discovers the personalistic domain of values as distinct from – though not in any way opposed to – the domain of moral values. He establishes that the personalistic value represents a sort of a structural preamble for the domain of moral values. Given that Wojtyła identifies certain concepts – previously elaborated in his central, 1969 work »The Person and the Act« – namely, self-determination, transcendence and integration – as crucial particular aspects of the correct understanding of the personalistic value of the act, the authors proceed to extrapolate the elements of these concepts that best illuminate the specific content of the personalistic value. On numerous occasions in the article footnoted references are made to possible further developments of the perspectives only roughly outlined in Wojtyła’s own writings, as regards the intersections of his concept of the personalistic value and various traits of the thomistic natural law theory.

Keywords

the personalistic value of the human act; Karol Wojtyła; thomistic personalism

Hrčak ID:

133988

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/133988

Publication date:

6.2.2015.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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