Taken from the Italian translation of “Persona e Atto” (“Person and Act“) from the original Polish by Giuseppe Girgenti and Patrycja Mikulska, contained in the Italian language compendium of all Wojtyla’s philosophical works Metafisica della Persona, Giovanni Reale and Tadeusz Styczen, eds. (Bompiani, 2003).

Wojtyla opens the forth section of the introduction with a startling claim: that one person can reproduce, in an “adequate” if not complete manner, the subjectivity of another person.  While fully admitting that the incommensurability of the other poses certain difficulties, he nonetheless argues this point on the basis of one’s observation of oneself as an integrated subjective/objective, inner/outer whole.  That is, since in observing oneself acting the experience is at once from within and from without, in observing the external act of another it is also possible to adequately recreate the subjectivity of the other.  This claim is foundational to the development of his view of person and of act.

This is essentially a restatement of what he has already said in the second section of the introduction.  There he notes that we can know nothing of the subjectivity of animals, apart from individual cases in which a dog or a horse recognizes its owner from another.  When observing another human that changes.  We simultaneously know ourselves from within and without, as subject and as object; this opens the possibility for partially understanding another human because our perceptions by which the other is given to us pass through the categories and distinctions we have through our experience of ourselves as subject and object.

The second point in the fourth section develops this further along the lines of consciousness.  Again Wojtyla points out that this is not a study of the person as constituted by the consciousness of the perceiver.  Yes, the perception of the other happens through consciousness, but Wojtyla is clear on this point: the reason by which the action of another is a conscious action is not simply because it is constituted as such by the perceiver.  Rather, in the perception of another person something adequate of the person as conscious agent is already given in the experience itself, and it is the phenomenological, intellectual engagement of these perceptions that reveals the acting person.

In chapters I and II of the work proper this relationship between consciousness and the person as actor will be explored.  In so doing the transcendency of the person will emerge through his or her actions, and chapters III and IV will explore a “possibly accurate” analysis of the person as transcendent agent.  Chapters V and VI will examine the complexity of the person not only as revealed as transcendent in the act, but also through its complement of the person as integrated in the act.

The final chapter of the work is entitled simply “Participation”.  Wojtyla notes that most of our efforts go into understanding the external world; relatively little goes into understanding ourselves.  Yet, this understanding of ourselves is critical to how we act and what we accomplish.  Because we are constantly exposed to ourselves as subject/object, we run the great risk of becoming commonplace or accustomed to ourselves.  We must constantly be recalled to marvel at ourselves, because in that we can begin a process of discovery of who we are through questions and responses.  The importance of this seems to sum up in a single sentence, emphasized in the original: “humanity cannot lose its proper place in the world that we ourselves have configured” (“l’uomo non puo perdere il posto che gli è proprio in quel mondo che egli stesso ha configurato”, p. 856). The implication that I draw from this is that unless we understand ourselves and how we act, we stand to lose that place.

Taken from the Italian translation of “Persona e Atto” (Person and Act) from the original Polish by Giuseppe Girgenti and Patrycja Mikulska, contained in the Italian language compendium of all Wojtyla’s philosophical works Metafisica della Persona, Giovanni Reale and Tadeusz Styczen, eds. (Bompiani, 2003)

In the third section of the introduction, Wojtyla discusses two stages in the comprehension of the person, intuition and reduction.

In observing a person acting, at the phenomenal level we gather an innumerable set of facts regarding specific acts by a person.  These facts source both externally from the actions of others and internally from our own acts.  This set of facts is processed by the intellect in a sort of pre-theoretic stage in which a quantitative multiplicity of facts about a particular human are distilled into a qualitative identity of a single person as the source of the actions; this process is an intuitive induction in the Aristotelian sense (see for example http://www.friesian.com/arch.htm).  It is not necessary to first prove that a human is a person and then that what that human does is an act; in each experience the person and the act are both given in some manner.

Wojtyla specifically rejects the later, more analytic, sense of a form of argumentation or reasoning as the generalization of a set of specific cases to other yet unobserved cases (“all the ravens I have ever observed are black, therefore it must be the case that all ravens are black”).

Following the pre-theoretic intuitive induction of a person as the source of a set of (f)acts, we then want to explore that process, examining and explaining more deeply; this move to a theoretical understanding of the person is reduction.  This process is the intellectual analysis of how myriad facts and experiences are reduced to the identity of a single acting person; through deepening this understanding process the person emerges in more clear relief against the background of the variety of observed acts.

Again Wojtyla rejects the understanding that reduction is somehow limiting or diminishing the person as an entity, as can sometimes occur in analytic philosophy.  Rather than reductively diminishing the person through (for example) behaviorist or dispositional tendencies as observed in acts, Wojtyla argues for just the opposite; the acting person emerges even more clearly as a result of these analyses.

Wojtyla notes several things that follow from this approach.  One is that the proposed study of the person by means of acts is grounded in praxis; that is, it is not a study in how to act consciously, rather a study of conscious action itself and how it reveals the person.  Nor is it a study grounded so much in the person as an object as known intersubjectively, partly through our own knowledge of ourselves intrasubjectively.  Further, it is not the derivation of the person by abstracting from observed (f)acts; it is rather a penetration into and beyond the acts to the reality of the person behind them.

The object of the study then is to move from the initial inductive intuition of the person to a full explanation of the same such that the experienced reality corresponds to the theory.  The task is challenged by the incommensurability of the experienced person-act.  We proceed from the basis of our own interior knowledge of ourselves, but the experience of ourselves and of others is beyond complete comprehension.  Wojtyla sees as one of the principals tasks of his study the attempt to come to a correct integration of theory and experience.

Taken from the Italian translation of “Persona e Atto” (Person and Act) from the original Polish by Giuseppe Girgenti and Patrycja Mikulska, contained in the Italian language compendium of all Wojtyla’s philosophical works Metafisica della Persona, Giovanni Reale and Tadeusz Styczen, eds. (Bompiani, 2003)

In the second half of the second section of the introduction to Person and Act, Wojtyla considers that the intellectual vision of the person formed in the observation of acts derives not only from the acts themselves, but also from the moral value of those acts.  The acts of a person are different than actions in general in that persons are presupposed to be agents.  The acts of an agent have an intrinsic moral property which cannot be separated from the act without artificially reducing the full dynamic experience of the act.

For Wojtyla the morality of the person is existential in nature.  Not only do we come to understand a person through the experience of moral acts, the person him- or herself becomes good or evil through the moral nature of the acts chosen through one’s agency.  Thus the person is found both at the point of departure, i.e. in the experience of a moral act as performed, as well as the end point, i.e. the person that one becomes as a result of a moral act.

Again Wojtyla notes that ethics typically considers moral values per se, in the light of which individual acts are then considered.  Neither is it an anthropological approach that sets out to discover, without valuation, the moral values of a person.  Wojtyla’s study, in difference with ethics, will reverse this to consider how we come to understand something of the person, either of self or other, through acts and their intrinsic morality.  Wojtyla notes that both ethics and anthropology are based on the unity in the experience of human acts and the experience of their morality.  By considering the morality of acts we arrive at a much fuller comprehension of the person than through acts alone; in a fully integrated phenomenology of the person morality cannot be set aside.

In concluding the second section of the introduction, to better define the methodology in this study to contrast the relationship between ethics and anthropology, Wojtyla gives the analogy of factoring common terms in a mathematical equation outside of enclosing parentheses.  In this study ethical considerations will be “placed outside the parentheses” in order to better highlight the unique qualities of the experiences which remain inside the parentheses, now unentangled from ethical considerations per se.  In so doing Wojtyla chooses to set aside essential ethical considerations in favor of essential anthropological considerations, without however altogether ignoring ethical considerations.

Attingendo al saggio del dott. Carlo Lottieri, Dall’ontologia della cosa all’etica dell’altro, vorrei proporre una breve riflessione riguardo una differenza tra Emanuel Lévinas e Karol Wojtyla sul rapporto con l’altro.

Nell’introduzione di «Persona e atto» di Karol Wojtyla (dall’antologia Metafisica della persona, a cura di G. Reale e T. Styczen, Bompiani, Milano 2003) Wojtyla considera come si viene a conoscere qualcosa dell’altro come uomo, come persona.  Nella prima sezione dell’introduzione considera cosa vuol dire «sperimentare l’uomo» ovvero «l’esperienza dell’uomo», e nota che nello sperimentare l’altro si sperimenta pure se stessi.  Cioè, nell’atto conoscitivo dello sperimentare l’altro come uomo, come esteriorità, si sperimenta se stessi simultaneamente sia come interiorità sia come esteriorità.

Per Wotyla allora, nella fenomenologia dell’altro si sperimenta pure se stessi fenomenologicamente, almeno in parte, come «altro». È da questa prospettiva dell’osservatore su di sé, sia come «uomo» che come «altro», che si può capire l’altro come «uomo». È poi da questo punto di vista che si viene ad intendere qualcosa dell’altro come «persona», dagli atti che l’altro compie.  Questa conoscenza deriva da un rapporto intrinsecamente simmetrico con l’altro, simmetrico nel senso che in un certo modo si sperimenta sia l’altro sia se stessi nella stessa maniera.

Mentre consideravo quest’argomento ho pensato al saggio di Lottieri proprio su come Lévinas considera l’altro come trascendente in modo asimmetrico rispetto a se stessi.  L’altro eccede sempre la mia capacità conoscitiva e quindi ci rimane sempre un rapporto asimmetrico (in modo reciproco, s’intende) con l’altro.  Da quando ho letto e tradotto il saggio sono rimasto un po’ perplesso come si possa mai avere un rapporto sociale più o meno uguale con l’altro, se in ogni modo l’altro sempre mi trascende.  Purtroppo non ho ancora avuto il tempo di leggere Lévinas per capire come risolva la domanda.

(In un breve scambio di mail col dott. Lottieri m’ha indicato che in Lévinas l’uguaglianza e la giustizia entrano con il terzo, cioè l’altro dell’altro.  Quindi dai suoi commenti pare che l’uguaglianza sia un rapporto non tanto interpersonale quanto societario.  Qui c’è da approfondire senza dubbio.)

Riflettendo sull’argomento di Wojtyla, mi domando se il suo approccio non preservi qualcosa d’un uguaglianza essenziale del rapporto con l’altro, basato proprio sul modo di sperimentarlo. Cioè, conoscere l’altro significa conoscere me stesso, e senza l’altro non posso neanche conoscere me stesso.  Sì, è vero che l’altro m’eccede sempre, ma è anche vero che in qualche modo io m’eccedo sempre a me stesso in quanto mi sperimento come «altro».

Mantenere una tale simmetria nei rapporti altrui non mi sembra problematico in quanto non credo che ci voglia necessariamente una trascendente asimmetria levinasiana perché non si sfrutti l’altro.  Mi pare che non è tanto la simmetria stessa il problema quanto una simmetria che possa divenire asimmetrica nell’diminuire l’altro.

È appunto perché il rapporto con l’altro è essenzialmente allo stesso tempo simmetrico, trascendente e auto-riflessivo nel modo di conoscerci l’un l’altro che non sono libero di negare l’altro, di definirlo inferiore.  Ne segue appunto che negando l’altro nego me stesso.  Nel definire inferiore l’altro, mi definisco inferiore.

Questa qualità auto-riferente del mio rapporto con l’altro nel pensiero di Wojtyla mi pare un punto cardinale della sua etica.  Insomma non credo che cambii la conclusione del saggio di Lottieri in quanto l’altro, in contrasto alla visione della persona sotto l’ottica moderna, rimane sempre trascendente.  Volevo però mettere in rilievo questa distinzione tra Wojtyla e Lévinas per meglio riflettere sugli eventuali esiti diversi dei loro sistemi etici.

Am I myself when, by an act of free choice, I deny the truth that I have established as such, having ascertained it as an eyewitness?

Did Peter, who affirmed “I do not know the man” (Mt. 26:72), deny only the truth?

Did he not also deny himself?

In betraying Christ, did he not also betray himself?

Would he not remain himself only by siding with the truth, by choosing to testify to it, and, in a certain sense, “transcending himself toward it”?

(My translation of the opening lines of Tadeuz Styczen’s Introduction to “Persona e atto” (“Person and Act”) by Karol Wojtyla, in Metafisica della persona, G. Reale e Tadeuz Styczen, eds., Bompiani, Milano, 2003.)

Taken from the Italian translation of “Persona e Atto” (Person and Act) from the original Polish by Giuseppe Girgenti and Patrycja Mikulska, contained in the Italian language compendium of all Wojtyla’s philosophical works Metafisica della Persona, Giovanni Reale and Tadeusz Styczen, eds. (Bompiani, 2003)

In the first half of the second section of the Introduction to Person and Act, having begun from the experience of the human, Wojtyla comes to how we know something of a “person”.  We observe ourselves and others as human, and this empirical experience of the human is the starting point for how we intend, or come to know, something of a person.  In experiencing a human one of the facts which is given is that “a human acts”.  The observation that humans act is the starting point for Wojtyla’s work Person and Act.

Again, Wojtyla explicitly rejects a purely phenomenal empiricism, as the reduction of experience to the function and content of the senses alone results in profound contradictions and equivocations.  In the phenomenal experience of a human only a “surface” is directly given, nothing of the human him- or herself.  In particular what is not given in mere sense data is the human and his or her conscious action, or the act itself.  That knowledge sources from the action of the intellect of the observer in intending, or understanding, that the source of the perceived sense changes when a human acts is that a human has made a conscious decision and has done something as a result.

Nor does Wojtyla accept that the human or the act as understood by the intellect is an object constructed or synthesized by the intellect.  Rather, it is that the intellect of the observer is somehow engaged in the very experience itself, and in that engagement a direct contact with the observed is somehow established, different from but no less direct than the sensible.  In other words, what the intellect engages is not just some assembled bundle of sense data, but somehow, in the very sense experience of the other, the intellect makes a different but equally direct contact with the other.  Thus every experience is also a sort of comprehension of what is experienced.  This direct knowledge of the other will be important for his argument how we intend, or come to know, the other as person.

It is our experience of a human as acting that is the “moment of intuition” into the person of the other.  Since in the experience of another as acting we engage as well in a different but equally direct knowing of the person, the act is that which reveals the person, and the means by which we understand the person.  Wojtyla notes that the general approach is that the act presupposes the person; in ethics, as an example, consideration begins from the person and proceeds to the act.

Wojtyla however proposes to reverse that order.  His will instead be a study of the act as revealing the person, a study of the person by means of his or her actions.  This actually fits with how we experience others; it is in their actions that we understand who they are.  Were we unable to observe the actions of others, we could know nothing of the persons that they are.  We are convinced of the personhood of others because we observe that they act.  Thus it is through the acts of others that we comprehend, intend, them as persons.

In the second half of the second section of the introduction Wojtyla will take up morality as a property of human acts.

Karol Wojtyla, in his life before his election as Pope John Paul II, was a highly regarded philosopher in the Catholic University of Lublin.  His major philosophical work is Person and Act, published in 1969, to which I here begin to set myself.  What follows is drawn from the Italian translation of the original Polish by Giuseppe Girgenti and Patrycja Mikulska, contained in the Italian language compendium of all Wojtyla’s philosophical works Metafisica della Persona, Giovanni Reale and Tadeusz Styczen, eds. (Bompiani, 2003).  This is a fresh and careful translation, done with great care and recognized by John Paul II himself.

The opening sentences of the first section of the introduction, which is what I will consider in this post, state that the purpose of the work is show the objective aspect of the rich and complex cognitive process which can be defined as, in Italian, “l’esperienza dell’uomo“.  This is accurately translated as the “experience of man”, “man” in this case being clearly understood multi-dimensionally both as an individual “man”, whether myself or others, and in its collective sense of “mankind”.  For that the English “experience of man” is, I think, quite adequate.  Perhaps the best gender neutral translation is however “experience of the human”, as this seems to best capture the multi-dimensionality of the Italian; it can be at once individual of oneself, of another human and of what is common to humanity.  (“Experience of human” is not a well formed English phrase, and “experience of humanity” tends exclusively toward the collective and misses a crucial individual aspect of Wojtyla’s thought.)

A critical point must be made here.  By “experience of the human” Wojtyla does not mean an experience which a human has.  Rather he means the direct, cognitive experience of that which is human, whether of oneself or of another or others.

A brief sketch of what Wojtyla is about might be in order.  He is ultimately working toward how we know something of what a person is, whether oneself or another.  With the very rapidly deepening scientific understanding of how we as humans tick physically, contemporary philosophy has tended to reduce metaphysical entities, in this instance a “person”, to either pure sense data or to a construction of the perceiver.  Working from a phenomenological approach, he will first examine how we experience the human, and from there he will move to the phenomenology of person intended through actions.

For Wojtyla, the primary experience of the human is to be understood as one’s approaching oneself experientially, and thus establish a cognitive contact with oneself.  The experiential nature of one’s contact with oneself is not constant; it is interrupted during sleep, and in waking moments the clarity of one’s experiential self-awareness varies.  Yet, since one is ever oneself, the experience of one’s self persists in some manner.  The experience of oneself as human is constituted as the result of the manifold of experiences of oneself, at once as subject and as object.

In the course of the first section Wojtyla specifically mentions three things that what we experience as human are not.

First, a person does not reduce to a collection of phenomena or, as David Hume would have it, a bundle of perceptions, though Wojtyla does not mention Hume by name.  Wojtyla counters that while each experience is unique and unrepeatable, there exists nonetheless something that can be called the experience of the human that is based on the entire continuity of empirical sense data.  The object of experience is not only the momentary sense phenomenon, but also the human as him- or herself, which emerges from all such experiences and which is present in each one.

Second, a person is not merely an intellectual construct, formed on the basis of the current totality of individually perceived phenomena.  The experience of the human, of the particular human who I am, persists as long as there is the direct cognitive contact with myself, as both subject and object.  The object perceived as a human does not reduce to a construction formed by the intellect from continuous empirical sense data.  While the intellect does form such a construction from sense data, resulting in my understanding of who I am, my experience of myself as human is based upon a cognitive experiential contact with the human that I am, apart from what I have experienced of myself.

Third, without mentioning Kant by name, Wojtyla rejects that ascertaining the identity of a human object entails any proof of an a priori operation of the mind in constructing the object.  Rather, this is simply the proof of the indispensable operation of the intellect in the perception of the objective world and the formation of the objects of experience.  It is precisely to the intellect that we owe the qualitative identity of the object of experience of the human, whether when the subject identifies with the object, as within the same person, or when the subject differs from the object as with others.

Summarizing the first section of the introduction, in experiencing myself it is not that I somehow divide within myself to observe myself; it is rather that I experience myself simultaneously as subject and object, as observer and observed.  What I know of myself is what I have perceived in cognitive experiential contact with myself; for that to be the case, there is something which I experience that does not reduce to sense data or to a construction from sense data.

Furthermore, it is not that I experience myself “interiorly”, and I experience others “exteriorly”; it is rather that I experience myself at once interiorly and exteriorly.  Thus when I experience others as exterior to myself, there is a common aspect with how I experience myself, as part of how I experience myself is exteriorly.  Because of this common aspect of my experience of myself and others as external, I can at times, though never as immediately as in contact with myself, partially come to something of an experience of the interiority of the other.  Thus the experience of the human is the totality of my experience of myself and others, sourcing primarily in cognitive contact with myself, yet inseparably from my contact with all other humans.

For Wojtyla then the “experience of the human” is not just of the other, but both for self and other.  In the second section of the introduction he will approach how we know the person.