A Philosopher of Person and Culture

Jerzy GAŁKOWSKI

Abstract

The author presents a biographical and research profi le of the late Adam Rodziń-ski (1920-2014), a long-standing member of the Editorial Board of Ethos and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lu-blin. Adam Rodziński’s research interests included moral philosophy, axiology, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of culture, and philosophy of history. In his works he combined Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy with the thought of St. Augustine, Christian existentialism and phenomenology. He developed his own version of personalism which held that the essence of personhood consists in being open onto another human being, and that respect for human dignity and human rights is the imperative formed by the voice of conscience. While the ethics of altruism advanced by Adam Rodziński draws fundamentally on the experience of the Christian life, its basis is open to natural, common sense experience. Adam Rodziński postulated that the Thomistic concept of the good be revised and enriched by introducing a distinction between the good and value. He held that the essence of a culture consists in its cultivating specifi c values, both in individual and in social life. He did not conceptually separate morality and culture; rather, he argued that they are two interdependent and intertwined spheres of life.