Person and Act as an Open Work
Abstract
The paper points to three themes that were not included or were only briefly mentioned in Karol Wojtyła’s work Person and Act, and which are worth developing further. The first of these themes is an analysis of the interpersonal dimension of a person’s existence, which Wojtyła analyzes as a social dimension in the fourth chapter of the work in question. It is symbolized by the pronoun “we,” but it is not strictly the same interpersonal dimension, which is expressed by the pronouns ‘I’ and “you.” Wojtyła develops this theme in his later essay, Person: Subject and Community. The second theme not addressed in Wojtyła’s work is the sexual dimension of the human person, the fact that persons exist as women and men, which is undoubtedly fundamental to the proper understanding of the human person. This fact was analyzed by John Paul II in a series of catechesis entitled Man and Woman He Created Them, where he developed a doctrine also known as “a theology of the body;” in the catecheses Wojtyła “crosses the threshold of theology.” This is the third theme absent from Person and Act due to the philosophical nature of this work. In the introduction to the first edition of this treatise, however, Wojtyła expressed his hope that he would one day be able to do so, and he fulfills this hope in his “theology of the body.”
Keywords:
Karol Wojtyła, interpersonal dimension of the person, sexual dimension of the person, John Paul II, “theology of the body”References
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Lateran University, Vatican City https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8457-2935
