Neoteronous
A Modern Man Standing in the Tradition of Catholic Platonism
A Modern Man Standing in the Tradition of Catholic Platonism
Monday, May 15, 2006
In The Acting Person Wojtyla (JPG) distinguishes between a man's experience of himself, which is an inner experience in which the subject and the ego are directly given, and a man's experience of others, which is an outer experience which grasps things as objects. The outer experience of man and inner experience both experience man. The understanding of man is developed by integrating the inner, subjective experience of one's own person with the outer experience of other men. (Only then are all men understood as persons.) After speaking of this, Wojtyla makes a very interesting comment:
"Perhaps we have the right to assume that the divergence of the two great currents in philosophical thought, separating the objective from the subjective and the philosophy of being from the philosophy of consciousness, has at its root the experience of man and that cleavage of its inner aspect from outerness which is characteristic of this experience. Admittedly, to attribute this divergence only to the double aspect of experience or to the duality of the date in this experience would unduly simplify the matter. . . . From the point of view of our subject matter itself, which is the acting person, and which we will try to interpret and understand on the ground of the experience of man (the experience of 'man-acts'), we reach the conclusion that much more important that any attempt to attribute absolute significance to either aspect of human experience is the need to acknowledge their mutual relativeness. If anybody asks why, then the answer is that this relation lies in the very essence of the experience that is the experience of man. We owe the understanding of man precisely to the interrelation of these two aspects of experience, and this interrelation serves as the basis for us to build on the ground of the experience of man (of 'man-acts') our conception of person and action." (The Acting Person, p. 19)
From this it is clear that John Paul the Great believes that both ancient and medieval philosophy, the philosophy of being, and modern philosophy, the philosophy of consciousness, not only have value, but are fundamental to human intellectual endeavours. Neither one can do without the other, and they must be integrated with each other. Wojtyla did precisely this in his philosophical work, using as his main sources the objective philosophies of Aquinas and Aristotle, and the subjective philosophies of phenomenologists like Scheler and Husserl.
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In The Acting Person Wojtyla (JPG) distinguishes between a man's experience of himself, which is an inner experience in which the subject and the ego are directly given, and a man's experience of others, which is an outer experience which grasps things as objects. The outer experience of man and inner experience both experience man. The understanding of man is developed by integrating the inner, subjective experience of one's own person with the outer experience of other men. (Only then are all men understood as persons.) After speaking of this, Wojtyla makes a very interesting comment:
"Perhaps we have the right to assume that the divergence of the two great currents in philosophical thought, separating the objective from the subjective and the philosophy of being from the philosophy of consciousness, has at its root the experience of man and that cleavage of its inner aspect from outerness which is characteristic of this experience. Admittedly, to attribute this divergence only to the double aspect of experience or to the duality of the date in this experience would unduly simplify the matter. . . . From the point of view of our subject matter itself, which is the acting person, and which we will try to interpret and understand on the ground of the experience of man (the experience of 'man-acts'), we reach the conclusion that much more important that any attempt to attribute absolute significance to either aspect of human experience is the need to acknowledge their mutual relativeness. If anybody asks why, then the answer is that this relation lies in the very essence of the experience that is the experience of man. We owe the understanding of man precisely to the interrelation of these two aspects of experience, and this interrelation serves as the basis for us to build on the ground of the experience of man (of 'man-acts') our conception of person and action." (The Acting Person, p. 19)
From this it is clear that John Paul the Great believes that both ancient and medieval philosophy, the philosophy of being, and modern philosophy, the philosophy of consciousness, not only have value, but are fundamental to human intellectual endeavours. Neither one can do without the other, and they must be integrated with each other. Wojtyla did precisely this in his philosophical work, using as his main sources the objective philosophies of Aquinas and Aristotle, and the subjective philosophies of phenomenologists like Scheler and Husserl.
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