In this essay, I try to advance the reception of Karol Wojtyła’s seminal essay “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in Man.” In particular I try to understand and to think through the distinction that he makes between the “personalist” and the “cosmological” image of man. I unpack Wojtyła’s concept of subjectivity, which underlies all that he says about the personalist image of man. I give particular attention to all that he says about the unity formed by the two images. I then (...) proceed to apply Wojtyła’s analysis to a certain cosmological challenge to a personalist understanding of man: it is the challenge that comes from looking at the immensity of the cosmos and at the infinitesimal smallness of man in it and of thinking that man is swallowed up in this immensity and obliterated in his importance. I argue that precisely the subjectivity of the person implies that there is in each person an “infinite abyss of existence” so that each person is in reality his or her own whole and is no mere part of the cosmic whole but is incommensurable with it. (shrink)

an has been the concern of various philosophical schools of thought and can be said as the center of philosophical inquiry. However, not all of the concerns of philosophy points to defend man in his external and internal dimensions. In Karol Wojtyla’s philosophy of the Human Person, he interprets man as not being solely as a “rational animal.” He offers instead an understanding of man viewing his innerness as a person manifested not only by his existence, but more importantly (...) through his actions. In this paper, the fundamental concepts of Wojtyla’s Human Person are precisely enumerated for a clear understanding of who a Human Person is. This paper aims to interpret man in his two-fold character, as a Person and as a Subject using Karol Wojtyla’s Personalism. In this task, one must be noted that Wojtyla employs Thomism and Phenomenology in his thought. In the discussion, I will lay down the primary distinction between these two concepts for a better understanding of the anthropological structure of man, his innerness and exteriority. The discussion has three divisions, the first part discusses the two different ways of understanding Human Being; the second part discusses the concept of Person; and the third part discusses the Human Subject. (shrink)

an has been the concern of various philosophical schools of thought and can be said as the center of philosophical inquiry. However, not all of the concerns of philosophy points to defend man in his external and internal dimensions. In Karol Wojtyla’s philosophy of the Human Person, he interprets man as not being solely as a “rational animal.” He offers instead an understanding of man viewing his innerness as a person manifested not only by his existence, but more importantly (...) through his actions. In this paper, the fundamental concepts of Wojtyla’s Human Person are precisely enumerated for a clear understanding of who a Human Person is. This paper aims to interpret man in his two-fold character, as a Person and as a Subject using Karol Wojtyla’s Personalism. In this task, one must be noted that Wojtyla employs Thomism and Phenomenology in his thought. In the discussion, I will lay down the primary distinction between these two concepts for a better understanding of the anthropological structure of man, his innerness and exteriority. The discussion has three divisions, the first part discusses the two different ways of understanding Human Being; the second part discusses the concept of Person; and the third part discusses the Human Subject. (shrink)

이 글은 『칠극』의 맥락에서 현대 의과학 기술의 하나인 보조생식술을 고찰하였다. 초기 가톨릭신자의 윤리지침서인 『칠극』이 현대인의 생활과 유의미한 연관을 가지기 위해서는, 『칠극』의 맥락에서 현대 의과학 기술의 하나인 보조생식술의 시술과정에 수반되는 배아의 생명 침해 문제는 어떻게 설명될 수 있는지 고찰할 필요가 있다. 『칠극』 ‘해탐’(解貪)편이 제시하는 원리와 지침에 의거해보조생식술을 고찰한 결과, 『칠극』의 맥락에서 보조생식술은 인간의 탐욕에 해당하여 허용될 수 없는 기술이다. 그 근거는 첫째, 보조생식술은 인간이 알 수 있는 이치의 범위를 벗어난 지탐(智貪) 과 관련되며, 둘째, 탐욕을 푸는 ‘해탐’의 방안인 ‘평등’의 원리가보조생식술 시술과정에 적용될 (...) 수 없다는데 있었다. 이러한 고찰결과는 회칙 ｢인간 생명｣(Humanae vitae)과 인간 생명의 기원과출산의 존엄성에 관한 훈령 ｢생명의 선물｣(Donum Vitae)의 가르침과 상통하며, 인격주의 생명윤리체계의 인간 생명 보호 원리와도 상통하였다. 『칠극』이 제시하는 ‘해탐’의 방안으로서 ‘평등’원리는 배아의 생명 침해가 부당하다는 인격주의 생명윤리체계의 주장에 정당성을 더해준다. 그리고 ‘평등’원리는 입장과 이해의 대립에서 기인하는 인간 생명침해문제의 정당성을 판단하는 기준으로유용할 것이므로, 인격주의 생명윤리 측면에서 『칠극』이 제시하는실천덕목은 연구될 필요가 있다. (shrink)

An important milestone of 20th Century philosophy was the rise of personalism. After the crimes and atrocities against millions of human beings in two World Wars, especially the Second, some philosophers and other thinkers began to seek arguments showing the value of each human being, to expose and denounce the folly of political structures that violate the inalienable rights of the individual person. -/- Karol Wojtyla appeals to the ancient concept of 'person' to emphasize the particular value of each human (...) being. The person is unique because of their subjectivity by which they possesses an unrepeatable interior world in the history of humanity. Their rational nature grants them a special character among living beings, among which is the transcendence to the infinite. Wojtyla magisterially shows how each human being's personhood is rooted in a conscious and free subjectivity, which is marked also by personal and social responsibility. Wojtyla's original philosophical analysis takes for its starting point the human act, in which consciousness and experience consolidate voluntary choices, which are objectively efficacious. By their acts, the person determines their own personhood. This self-dominion manifests the person and enables them to live together in a community in which one's neighbor can be a companion on the voyage of life. -/- This work provides a clear guide to Karol Wojtyla's principal philosophical work, Person and Act, rigorously analyzing the meaning that the author intended in his exposition. An important feature of the work is that the authors rely on the original Polish text, Osoba i czyn, as well as the best translations into Italian and Spanish, rather than on a flawed and sometimes misleading English edition of the work. -/- Besides the analysis of Wojtyla's masterwork, this volume offers three chapters examining the impact of Wojtyla's anthropology on the relationship between faith and reason. (shrink)

This article has a twofold purpose: first, it explores how Leonardo Polo's personalist anthropology enriches and enhances neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics and second, it highlights how this specific personalist approach brings new perspectives to servant leadership. The recently revived neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics tradition finds that MacIntyre's scholarship significantly contributes to virtue ethics in business—particularly his conception of practices, institutions, and internal/external goods. However, we argue that some of his latest insights about the virtues of acknowledged dependence and human vulnerability remain underdeveloped (...) because of the underlying anthropology that neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics relies on. To overcome this limitation, we introduce Polo's transcendental anthropology as a possible foundation of a personalist approach that enriches virtue ethics. To do so, we address how transcendental anthropology can enrich two central aspects of virtue ethics, namely (1) the understanding of human beings and their flourishing and (2) the relationship of virtue to praxis and human work. Finally, to address the practical implications for business leadership and work that can derive from assuming transcendental anthropology, we address how servant leadership acquires a new perspective in light of this personalism and its logic of gift, highlighting interpersonal self-giving as a way of service. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction European Personalism American Personalism Conclusion Works cited.

The purpose of this article is to make visible Max Scheler's great contribution to philosophical research on virtues and values, and to re-integrate it into the current discourse. Christoph Halbig's marginal reference to Scheler provides a good opportunity for this. Since both authors pursue completely different objectives, the question arises as to how much of Halbig's approach to a theory of action can be reconciled with Scheler's personalist understanding of virtue. While Halbig seeks criteria for assessing the actions of (...) others, Scheler points to the empowerment supplied by virtue itself. The author argues that Scheler already anticipated some ideas, which has led to a new awareness of virtues in contemporary psychology. (shrink)

Abraham Maslow’s needs theory is one of the most influential motivation theories in management and organizational behavior. What are its anthropological and ethical presuppositions? Are they consistent with sound business philosophy and ethics? This paper analyzes and assesses the anthropological and ethical underpinnings of Maslow’s needs theory from a personalistic framework, and concludes that they are flawed. Built on materialistic naturalism, the theory’s “humanistic” claims are subverted by its reductionist, individualistic approach to the human being, which ends up in (...) a needs-based ethics that understands goodness, virtue, and rights in instinctual, subjectivistic, and relativistic terms. Its moral imperative, “Be yourself!,” is either the materialistic fiat of genetic drives or the voluntaristic command of unbridled will. Significant implications for business educators, managers, and organizations are discussed, along with recommendations. Managerial theories and approaches that reduce personality to individuality are inconsistent with proper anthropological and ethical business principles. Adopting those individualistic theories may ultimately undermine organizational effectiveness, and the very essence of business as human activity and of management as human calling. Instead, personalistic anthropology and virtue ethics, rooted in Aristotelian–Thomistic thought, soundly account for properly human nature and the good life. Business educators and practitioners are encouraged to embrace this integral, truly humanistic framework for motivation, and management theory and practice. (shrink)

Historical study has traditionally been built around the placement of the human at the center of inquiry. The de-stabilized concepts of the human in contemporary thought challenge this configuration. However, the ways in which these challenges provoke new historical perspectives both expand and enrich historical study but are also weak and vulnerable in their concept of the human, lacking or omitting something valuable in our self-understanding. A Personalist Philosophy of History argues for a robust concept of personhood in our (...) experience of the past as a way to resolve this conflict. -/- Focused on those who know history, rather than on the abstract properties of knowledge, it extends the moral agency of persons into non-human, trans-human, and deep history domains. It describes an approach to moral life through historical experience and study, rather than through abstractions. And it describes a kind of historiography that matches factual accuracy to both the constructed nature of understanding and to unavoidable moral purpose. -/- Table of Contents: Introduction Chapter 1. Receiving the Past Chapter 2. Moral Agency Personalism Chapter 3. Shaping Up Time Chapter 4. The Long Experience of Moral Obligation Chapter 5. From Moral Force Ethics to Personalist Philosophy of History . (shrink)

Juan Manuel Burgos presents his own version of personalism, which is nevertheless well rooted in the personalist tradition. He has been developing his project for years and is among a group of world-renowned personalists who study the complexity and mystery of the human person. His new book deals with the relationship between personalism and metaphysics. He poses the question of whether personalism can be considered a first philosophy. The answer is positive: it is indeed a sectorial first philosophy, which may (...) or may not be supported by traditional metaphysical projects, especially Thomistic ones. Not every personalist has to agree with its final thesis, although its position is well-founded and deserves much scholarly attention. It provokes further questions and opens up new areas of personalist discussion. This book confirms that personalism is a dynamic and growing school of thought that goes beyond describing the mere phenomena of the person and seeks deeper reasons for his being. I highly recommend this book as a new step to help us better understand the reality of the human person. (shrink)

This essay will examine an illuminating convergence in the thoughts of Pope John Paul II and the cultural anthropologist René Girard. It will be seen that this convergence is a consequence of the shared concern of both to understand the human person in terms of its relation to other persons. So while not a personalist philosopher in the strict sense, René Girard’s concern for the interpersonal brings him close to the personalism of John Paul II, who likewise understands human subjectivity (...) in terms of the relations by which it is constituted. Both practice what might be called an “interpersonalist” personalism, which this essay will argue ought to characterize the practice of personalism in a Christian context. The essay will make this observation the basis for further reflections on the nature of personalism and its relation to the Christian intellectual tradition. (shrink)

A simple but valuable experience that all humans have in common is that their life and their actions, the things they do and the things they omit to do, their reflection and their praxis are always marked by the tension which exists between what is factual and what is appropriate. Ethics can be described in simple terms as the systematic reflection on this tension, an endeavour to explicate how notions such as ‘appropriateness’ can be translated into categories such as ‘goodness’ (...) and ‘rightness’ in such a way that we do not remain bogged down in this experience but can develop some kind of assessment. One can also say, therefore, that ethics has a critical approach: the aforementioned tension is not merely noted and left at that, it is scrutinised, studied and assessed on the basis of a particular measure or criterion, thus making it possible, for example, to distinguish between the acknowledgement of changes and the appreciation of improvements .Every theory of ethics which consistently aspires to such a critical reflection, therefore, will have to deal with the question how the aforementioned criterion can be put into words. I already pointed to our common experience of the tension between the actual and the appropriate. In an effort to pin down the criterion in question, a useful point of departure might be to reflect for a moment on what is meant by appropriate. The term itself hints at some kind of relation or belonging to. If, then, the appropriate can be formulated in terms of belonging to ‘the human’ then an understanding of what it is to be human will always constitute the point of departure of any critical ethical reflection. For those who might be tempted to view this as too deductive, the whole approach can be turned on its head: the specific sort of reflection in which people engage with respect to the tension between the actual and the appropriate and in which the appropriate can be formulated in terms of the human, is ethics.[...]In the present article I intend to focus on the image of the human person which is compatible with such a notion of ethical obedience as responsibility to-be-taken-up. The fact that people speak today of a ‘changing of the guard’ when it comes to fundamental ethics is certainly no exaggeration. An ethics founded on natural law has been evolving towards the use of the notion personalism as a designation for an inclusive anthropology which is the expression of the appropriate. Experience teaches that a substantive explanation of personalism — which I provide in the third part of this article — is best preceded by a methodical sketch concerning the ‘status’ of personalism as a fundamental ethical category. In the fourth part of the article I will endeavour to outline the contours of a personalist theory of action. (shrink)

A simple but valuable experience that all humans have in common is that their life and their actions, the things they do and the things they omit to do, their reflection and their praxis are always marked by the tension which exists between what is factual and what is appropriate. Ethics can be described in simple terms as the systematic reflection on this tension, an endeavour to explicate how notions such as ‘appropriateness’ can be translated into categories such as ‘goodness’ (...) and ‘rightness’ in such a way that we do not remain bogged down in this experience but can develop some kind of assessment. One can also say, therefore, that ethics has a critical approach: the aforementioned tension is not merely noted and left at that, it is scrutinised, studied and assessed on the basis of a particular measure or criterion, thus making it possible, for example, to distinguish between the acknowledgement of changes and the appreciation of improvements .Every theory of ethics which consistently aspires to such a critical reflection, therefore, will have to deal with the question how the aforementioned criterion can be put into words. I already pointed to our common experience of the tension between the actual and the appropriate. In an effort to pin down the criterion in question, a useful point of departure might be to reflect for a moment on what is meant by appropriate. The term itself hints at some kind of relation or belonging to. If, then, the appropriate can be formulated in terms of belonging to ‘the human’ then an understanding of what it is to be human will always constitute the point of departure of any critical ethical reflection. For those who might be tempted to view this as too deductive, the whole approach can be turned on its head: the specific sort of reflection in which people engage with respect to the tension between the actual and the appropriate and in which the appropriate can be formulated in terms of the human, is ethics.[...]In the present article I intend to focus on the image of the human person which is compatible with such a notion of ethical obedience as responsibility to-be-taken-up. The fact that people speak today of a ‘changing of the guard’ when it comes to fundamental ethics is certainly no exaggeration. An ethics founded on natural law has been evolving towards the use of the notion personalism as a designation for an inclusive anthropology which is the expression of the appropriate. Experience teaches that a substantive explanation of personalism — which I provide in the third part of this article — is best preceded by a methodical sketch concerning the ‘status’ of personalism as a fundamental ethical category. In the fourth part of the article I will endeavour to outline the contours of a personalist theory of action. (shrink)

The Thomistic revival initiated by Leo XIII was late in having an effect on political philosophy. Many have charged Thomism with being inapt to contribute to political philosophy, either because it is at odds with modern political institutions and practices or because it is inflexibly moralistic. I address the former issue by way of an examination of Jacques Maritain’s Thomistic personalism, which provides distinctive and valuable resources for understanding modern politics. This requires examining the development of Maritain’s political thought (...) in reaction to controversies over integralism in the 1920s and the rise of totalitarianism in the 1930s and ’40s. Throughout this period, Maritain was clear about the theological aspects of his personalism, and so I conclude by discussing contemporary pluralism as a challenge to Maritain’s project. (shrink)

Personalism is understood today as the name of an important current in twentieth-century thought which, inspired by the Christian and humanistic traditions of the West, has sought to deepen our understanding of the meaning and value of human personhood. Opposing both individualism and collectivism, personalism has stressed the uniqueness of each person, the meaning and value of interpersonal relations, and the unity that holds persons together and is, ultimately, also personal in itself: the person of God. Personalism's insights into (...) the nature of personhood have broad implications for our view of ethics, politics, education, and religion. The history of personalism has, however, been poorly understood. Jan Olof Bengtsson shows that personalism began as early as the eighteenth century and was a central, international current of thought throughout the nineteenth century - that it was, in fact, more characteristic of the nineteenth century than of the twentieth. (shrink)

Książka Grzegorza Hołuba Understanding the Person. Essays on the Personalism of Karol Wojtyła zawiera próbę rekonstrukcji filozofii osoby w ujęciu Karola Wojtyły. Zawiera omówienie następujących zagadnień: geneza filozofii osoby u K. Wojtyły, jego epistemologia i metafizyka osoby, stanowisko w kwestiach świadomości, emocji, działania i godności osoby. Wieloaspektowość i wszechstronność opracowanych zagadnień pozwalają nie tylko zrekonstruować personalistyczną teorię K. Wojtyły, ale również wytyczyć kierunki jej dalszego rozwoju – metafizykę osoby, analizę fenomenologiczną, osoba w kontekście neuronauk. Do tych kierunków można dodać (...) teorię sieci społecznych. Narzędzie to pozwoliłoby na poszerzenie teorii personalistycznej o społeczny, praktyczny wymiar relacji międzyludzkich i praktyczną analizę fenomenów takich, jak np. wolność, odpowiedzialność, solidarność, miłość czy sprawiedliwość. Wyniki tych badań mogłyby uzupełnić filozofię osoby o płaszczyznę społeczną. ------------------------- Zgłoszono: 19/09/2022. Zrecenzowano: 29/10/2022. Zaakceptowano do publikacji: 13/12/2022. (shrink)

Peter Spader has written a magisterial study on Max Scheler, one of phenomenology’s earliest and greatest figures, whose theory of ethical personalism has become a major voice in the formulation of phenomenological ethics today. Spader follows Scheler’s use of the classic phenomenological approach, by means of which he presented a fresh view of values, feelings, and the person, and thereby staked out a new approach in ethics. Spader recreates the logic of Scheler’s quest, revealing the basis of his thought and (...) the reasons for his dramatic changes of direction. This remarkable study provides a framework that allows us to understand Scheler’s insights in the context of their dynamic evolution of his thought. It corrects imbalances in the presentation of his ideas and defends Scheler against key misunderstandings and criticisms. In short, Spader’s work continues the process of developing Scheler’s pioneering theory of ethical personalism. (shrink)

In this article, I propose a philosophical reading of Max Schelers work centered on the theme of metaphysics. This is in order to understand what the unique contribution offered by the author is, in an open debate towards contemporary philosophical reflection. The argument will be divided into four main steps : 1) to show how the theme of metaphysics emerges within Scheler's philosophy ; 2) to examine the model proposed by the author, especially highlighting how Scheler here attempts to draw (...) a new "way" of development for the metaphysical discourse, linked to the figures of Geist and spiritual act; 3) highlight the development of a central difficulty in Schelers model; 4) outline a possible in depth study of the authors philosophical work, in my view, capable of providing an appropriate key to start understanding where the difficulty inside Schelers model originates from. Precisely, the development of the last two steps give me the opportunity to show how Scheler conceives the profound connection between metaphysics and philosophy of life that represent the common object in the ideas proposed here. (shrink)

One’s understanding of compassionate care and one’s response to suffering depend on one’s bioethical framework. This paper contrasts the principlist bioethical model with the personalist bioethical model. These emphasize different principles, definitions, and understandings of concepts such as autonomy, compassion, suffering, harm, and help. The principlist model regards euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide as acts of autonomy and compassion that eradicate suffering. This perspective fails to keep in mind that autonomous patients do not always act for their own good. Conversely, (...) the personalist perspective emphasizes the integral good of the person, not just his or her autonomous choice, which is important but not unlimited. Since support for euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide often is motivated by a fear of suffering, being a burden, or depending on others, addressing the underlying factors that drive people to contemplate a hastened death is a more genuinely compassionate response than merely respecting people’s autonomous choice for a hastened death. (shrink)

Personalism is understood today as the name of an important current in twentieth-century thought which, inspired by the Christian and humanistic traditions of the West, has sought to deepen our understanding of the meaning and value of human personhood. Opposing both individualism and collectivism, personalism has stressed the uniqueness of each person, the meaning and value of interpersonal relations, and the unity that holds persons together and is, ultimately, also personal in itself: the person of God. Personalism's insights into (...) the nature of personhood have broad implications for our view of ethics, politics, education, and religion. The history of personalism has, however, been poorly understood. Jan Olof Bengtsson shows that personalism began as early as the eighteenth century and was a central, international current of thought throughout the nineteenth century - that it was, in fact, more characteristic of the nineteenth century than of the twentieth. (shrink)

This analysis of Austin Farrer's philosophical theology joins the distinguished work by contemporary personalists, Embers and the Stars by Erazim Kohak and Being and Value by Frederick Ferré. Conti's work is more than an analysis of Farrer's understanding of the relation of faith and reason, the nature of God, and God's relation to other persons. Through a detailed, rigorous investigation of the changes in Farrer's thought from Finite and Infinite through Freedom of the Will to Faith and Speculation, Conti (...) provides us not only a clear, well-argued defense of personalist metaphysics but also insight into central currents in mid-century thinking in philosophical theology. (shrink)

Inspired by a discussion about whether John Paul II grounded human dignity in a Kantian way, viz., emphasizing the person as an end unto itself, the author considers: (1) the relations between Kant and Aquinas on the topic of the philosophical basis of human dignity, and (2) John Paul II’s remarks on Kant’s ethics. He concludes that: (1) both Kant and Aquinas ground human dignity upon human freedom, but both understand the human freedom differently; (2) for Kant, human freedom is (...) self-legislating and so exercised without rational direction; (3) the Thomistic notion of freedom is compatible with rational direction which consists, e.g., in the human understood as an intellector of being or as a willer of the good, though neither seem to be exploited by Wojtyla. (shrink)

In his recent paper, Page (International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 85, 297–317, 2019) raised the question of what, if anything, is it that distinguishes an account of a personal God, i.e., an account to which classical theists are committed, from an account of God as a person, i.e., an account of deity to which personal theists are committed. Page himself proposed ‘a criterial approach’ to understanding what is for God to be a person, according to which God is (...) a person iff God meets some criteria of personhood, for example, having self-consciousness and being rational. In the paper, first, I argue that the criterial approach doesn’t allow us to draw a clear distinction between classical theism and theistic personalism. Then I provide my own proposal how this distinction could be made, according to which classical theism and theistic personalism are instantiated by two different ontological models. The classical theist thinks of deity as a self-sustaining (substance-like) virtue that is the efficient and final cause of all beings that are different from it, whereas the theistic personalism understands deity as an underlying subject for some properties which exist independently of it. (shrink)

A clear understanding of the concept of health plays a key role in defining what health care should comprise and in developing adequate strategies for overcoming the current "health care crisis". This volume is the result of an international and interdisciplinary cooperation between medicine and philosophy on the current debate on the concept of health.Besides offering a critical analysis of the WHO definition and a review of both ancient and contemporary conceptions of health, the cooperative effort of physicians and (...) philosophers presented in this book works through the challenges which any definition of health faces, if it is to be both truly personalist, and at the same time operational.The overall purpose of this book is to capture the essentials of human health and to propose the outlines for a personalist understanding of this concept, i.e., a conception that does justice to the personal nature of human beings by introducing dimensions that are essential to personal life and well-being, such as the realms of rationality, affectivity and freedom, the realms of meaning, values, morality, and spirituality, the realms of social and interpersonal relations. To grasp the uniqueness of the human person is not yet to grasp the specific nature of personal health. But it is certainly a first step, and it becomes evident that every theory of human health presupposes a theory of the person. Accordingly, the debate presented in this book is no less a debate about the nature of the human person than it is a debate about the nature of health.The investigations offered in this volume intend to provide an impetus for new conceptions of personhood and human health. The phenomenological approach has the advantage of advocating a systematic conception of the total person which combines surface experiences (subjective experiences of well-being) with deeper dimensions of the person (value and being). An adequate conception of the human person has enormous implications not only for our understanding of what constitutes the health and well-being of the person, but also for our conception of what health care should comprise. Hence, answering the philosophical questions, such as those raised in this volume about health, is crucial for the solution of political problems such as how to legislate health care policy. (shrink)

Self-Knowledge: An Essay in Social Personalism proposes that social Personalism can best provide for self-knowledge. Thomas O. Buford offers a social personalist understanding of self-knowledge which focuses on the relation of persons to each other and to the Personal, and avoids the impersonalisms that erode the dignity of persons and their moral life which characterize modern life.

Foundations of Economic Personalism is a series of three book-length monographs, each closely examining a significant dimension of the Center for Economic Personalism's unique synthesis of Christian personalism and free-economic market theory. In the aftermath of the momentous geo-political and economic changes of the late 1980s, a small group of Christian social ethicists began to converse with free-market economists over the morality of market activity. This interdisciplinary exchange eventually led to the founding of a new academic subdiscipline under the rubric (...) of economic personalism. These scholars attempt to integrate economic theory, history, and methodology with Christian personalism's stress upon human dignity, humane social structures, and social justice. This second volume in the series surveys the anthropological foundations to the disciplines of economics and moral theology. The first part of the book presents an overview of the German, French, and Polish branches of personalist thought. Particular attention is given to theological anthropology, especially as it is developed by such thinkers as Emmanuel Mounier, Max Scheler, Gabriel Marcel, Karol Wojtyla, and Emil Brunner. Part two surveys models of human nature that have been espoused by various schools of free-market thought—including mainstream neoclassical economics. In conclusion, the authors demonstrate how an expanded understanding of human nature can augment the ability of economic science to model and predict human behavior. (shrink)

What can an economist and agnostic tell a theologian about man? In contrast to mainstream economics, which today dominate all universities in the world, Ludwig von Mises (+1973) is interested in real man in action, not a fictitious homo oeconomicus. At one time Gregory M. A. Gronbacher (1998), an American philosopher, proposed a synthesis of Christian personalism with the free market economy developed by the Austrian School of Economics. His idea prompted me to use Mises’s praxeology to understand and describe (...) human action in the socio-economic sphere from the perspective of Catholic Social Teaching. At that time I understood how important were economic laws for the proper moral evaluation of human action. Mises in his treaty on economics Human Action developed his own anthropological concept of man. The Austrian economist never used the expression “person” to describe and analyze human action, but analyzing his economic system I was able to discover that he did not understand the free market economy as an abstract being composed of mechanical elements. According to him, the prerequisite for human activity is the desire to replace a less satisfactory state of affairs with a more satisfying one. Mises’s man is guided by his own scale of values and builds it up on the basis of a goal he freely chooses. Mises also takes into account that the market is only a part of reality and human activity. (shrink)

According to the traditional Christian understanding, being devoted to God is partly constitutive of human welfare. I explicate this tradition view, in three stages. First, I sketch a general theory of well-being which I call ‘Platonic Personalist Perfectionism.’ Second, I show how being devoted to God is uniquely perfective. I discuss three different components of the posture of devotion: abnegation (surrender of one’s will to God), adoration (responding to God’s goodness with attention, love and praise), and existential dependence (receiving (...) one’s self-worth as an unmerited gift from God). All three components of devotion are perfective in a dual way: they are salvific (they remediate a great harm) and consummative (they confer a great benefit). Third, I respond to the objection that devotion involves subjugating oneself, and thus amounts to an all-things-considered harm, notwithstanding whatever benefits it confers. I argue that so long as one’s acts of abnegating, adoring, and existentially depending are acts of one’s own, then subjugation is not essential to devotion. However, devotion does diminish one if the object of one’s devotion is unsuitable. I argue that the only suitable object of devotion is the God of traditional theism. (shrink)

The axiological idealism of Georges Bastide, which is itself an attempt to come to grips with basic philosophical problems in a form wholly in accord with the preoccupations of our times, offered a unique opportunity for coming into contact with two new horizons - critical idealism and axiological personalism. An examination of the intimate relationship between these two viewpoints promised to be of special interest and worthy of research. A similar theme is encountered in the philosophy of R. Le Senne (...) and a number of works have been devoted to the study of his philosophy. However, in Bastide's axiological idealism the emphasis is on the relationship between the problem of spiritual conversion and the problem of the transfiguration of values and, as far as I know, no major study has been made of Bastide's philosophy. This study also opened up the possibility of a deeper understanding of the philosophies of Descartes and Kant, as well as the philosophies of Brunsch vicg and Bergson. Bastide's philosophy offers new possibilities for reflection on the past in the light of contemporary problems, just as his own work can be understood only in the light of the philosophies which are the chief inspi ration for his axiological idealism. In this regard we have devoted three chapters of historical background in order to introduce the main influences on Bastide's philosophy. (shrink)

The crisis of democracy unfolding in the United States was identified by John Paul II as due to misunderstanding the relationship of truth and freedom. This crisis has grown worse due to a libertinism that sees objective moral truths as impositions on both free choice and fulfilling relationships, that identifies self-fulfillment with a self-creation in which one creates one’s own values, that seeks to build democracies apart from moral objectivity, and that dismisses the relevance of God for living well. I (...) argue that democracy cannot survive these libertine errors and that they cannot be successfully countered by utilitarianism, Rawls’s political liberalism, or democratic proceduralism. Survival requires adopting the Thomistic personalism formulated by Aquinas and developed by Karol Wojtyła as indispensable for understanding those lived experiences through which one encounters the ethical moment of self-determination, achieves moral objectivity, avoids loneliness by loving truly, and seeks—via collaboration with women exercising their feminine genius for discerning the welfare of others—the common good, without which democracies collapse into atheistic tyranny. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Legacy of Boston PersonalismJ. Edward Hackett1. IntroductionWhen the question of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philosophical legacy arises in the academy, so far, the question remains open-ended (though, as I will shortly argue, the question has already been answered by King himself). Beyond his presence in public American consciousness, King left behind speeches, sermons, correspondence, and writings that inspire both philosophical (...) and theological reflection. However, King is also interpreted on the merits of the biases and philosophical traditions that we scholars navigate. Such biases and philosophical traditions mediate our experience of encountering King, and this mediation can impact our understanding of what exactly King’s philosophical legacy is.1Accordingly, we should seek to reconstruct King’s thoughts in the philosophical vocabulary King employed rather than displacing King from his own agency and the contexts that shaped him.2 In doing so, we prevent mistakes and misunderstandings that plague the public knowledge of King’s legacy. And yet, serious misunderstanding occurs every January with light fluff pieces in major newspapers and websites from authors who do not read King’s corpus. What’s more, some scholars are guilty of this lack of reading King widely. Consider Martha Nussbaum and her glaring error and omission in her recent contribution to a recent book that purports to look at King as a philosopher: “Although a religious man, [King] did not advance in his political writings a comprehensive and religious doctrine, as Gandhi did” (Nussbaum 123). In an otherwise interesting article about political emotions, Nussbaum completely neglects any historical consideration or development where King describes himself as a personalist.3 Like others, Nussbaum disregards King’s own self-description. This disregard is tantamount to a silent [End Page 45] and implicit racism that results in scholarly efforts that deprive King of his own intellectual agency when interpreting his work. This tendency prevails in both philosophy and theology departments, and this neglect has also been the larger challenge of African American philosophy gaining more acceptance as a field of philosophical inquiry (McClendon and Ferguson 38). My efforts in this article are to put an end to continual misreadings of King. First and foremost, King is a personalist.While this essay defends the personalist interpretation of King, let me lay out briefly those pieces of evidence. The interpretation of King as a personalist rests on four evidential sources: (1) King’s own words, (2) family background, (3) influence of personalist ideas on his writings, and (4) the tradition of King’s reception by other Boston personalists. First, King describes himself in his own words as a personalist. This is perhaps the biggest piece of evidence for why we should read King as a personalist. Second, King was influenced by personalism before studying Brightman’s philosophy with Gregory Davis at Crozers Theological Seminary.4 Before Morehouse College and Crozers Theological Seminary, according to Rufus Burrow, homespun personalism emerges out of King’s upbringing within the Black Church. For this reason, scholars should not doubt that King synthesizes personalist influences with how he was raised (Burrow, God and Human Dignity 17–31). Moreover, given that King chose to go to Boston University to study with Brightman and to be where Boston personalism was known to be strong, all of these facts indicate that King was a personalist (Burrow, God and Human Dignity 24).Homespun personalism gave King a vocabulary to bring together and synthesize many intellectual forces in his life, and this synthesis is recognized by other personalists. Walter Muelder is one such personalist. Muelder was Dean of Boston University’s School of Theology from 1945–1972 when King attended. Muelder and King exchanged correspondence, and Muelder delivered many lectures, some published and others unpublished, on the personalism of King. The most famous of these lectures is one Muelder gave to Morehouse College in 1983, in which Brightman’s moral law system is read into King’s own words. Taking this historical background and also that, to this day, some teachers at Morehouse College, like Lawrence Carter, make their students learn the personalist moral law system from Muelder and Bright-man, the personalist interpretation... (shrink)

This work looks at the ontology of personalism in his major fiction and opens a door to a fresh understanding of Dostoevsky's version of the origin of human evil. In his philosophical novels, Dostoevski's view of original conflict and inevitable evil goes far beyond Augustine, Pelagius, and Luther. The authors are the first to build a case for viewing Dostoevsky as a philosophical personalist whose approach to nature provides insight to ecologists. They offer a radically new analysis of the (...) themes of suffering, incarnation, and atonement that will appeal to both psychologists and students of religion and theology. The section on atonement and its relation to the classical theory of tragedy breaks new ground. (shrink)

An objection has been raised that Karol Wojtyła presents an ethical system heavily centered on actions and deeds. With the exception of his occasional references to the virtue of chastity in Love and Responsibility and his first writing on Saint John, some of the most central themes of ancient and medieval, as well as of contemporary, ethics seem almost entirely absent. In the following article, we will turn to Wojtyła’s most important philosophical work, The Acting Person, to glean from it (...) his understanding of “action.” We will then turn to the writings of Dietrich von Hildebrand, as an example of a classic counterpart for any approach to man primarily through action. After briefly discussing the ethical relevance of aspects such as inner responses, fundamental moral attitudes, and virtues, we will conclude by returning to Wojtyła and re-evaluating the legitimacy of the objection raised against him. (shrink)

Abstract.Differences in methods of knowing correlate with differences in concepts about what is known. This is an underlying issue in science and religion. It is seen, first, in Arthur Peacocke's reasoning about God as transcendent and personal, is based on an assumption of correlative thinking that like causes like. This contrasts with a notion of causation in empirical science, which explains the emergence of new phenomena as originating from temporally prior phenomena quite unlike that which emerges. The scientific understanding (...) of causation is compatible with a naturalistic theism that holds a nonpersonal model of God as the creative process. However, focusing on the immanence of God, there is a second correlation between methods of knowing and concepts of God. Classical empiricism, used by science, correlates with God understood nonpersonally as the creative process. Radical empiricism, in which feelings and not only sense perceptions have cognitive import, opens up the possibility that one can experience Peacocke's personal, panentheistic God as pattern‐forming influence. I illustrate this second method‐concept correlation with a personal experience. (shrink)

In the context of European integration, the great French Christian philosopher Jacques Maritain and his influence on the European project in the mid-20th century are mentioned very rarely. This paper seeks to shed some light on his somehow hidden role in this context, especially given the central role of freedom of conscience within the personalist philosophical heritage to which Maritain belonged and the political philosophy he shaped, which had a key impact on the European project and its basic documents. Freedom (...) of conscience is seen here as the cornerstone of all human freedoms despite all the risks and complications that this entails. In all conflicts between the State and the conscience, it is necessary and desirable to always go in favour of the conscience or at least to lean towards political solutions that respect or at least do not despise the conscience of the person. Whenever we face seemingly unsolvable problems in such conflicts, dialogue and negotiation should always be chosen instead of violence and imposition. (shrink)

This paper focuses on what can be said to be the definitive features of the approach to theology by three Russian theologians: Fathers Sergii Bulgakov and Georges Florovsky as well as the Venerable Father Sophrony Sakharov. The article argues that the following common themes characterize the nature of their theology. First, personalism, in other words, the use of the term “person”, which they extensively applied to both God and human and angelic beings. The concept of person is indispensable in the (...) thought of all three theologians. The second common theme is how the authors understood the relationship between theology and experience and what is the significance of religious experience for philosophical theology. Finally, all three theologians agree that when theological truths are expressed in human language the problem of interpretation consequently arises. However, they answer in different ways the question of the number and status of possible theological languages. I conclude that it is St. Sophrony Sakharov who in his life and theology realized Florovsky’s famous call for a neo-patristic synthesis. (shrink)

Euteleology is a metaphysics according to which reality is inherently purposive and the contingent Universe exists ultimately because reality’s overall telos, the supreme good, is realized within it. This book provides an exposition of euteleology and a defence of its coherence. The main aim is to establish that euteleological metaphysics provides a religiously adequate alternative to the ‘personal-omniGod’ understanding of theism prevalent amongst analytic philosophers. The quest for an alternative to understanding the God of the Abrahamic traditions as (...) an omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect personal being is motivated by criticizing the religious adequacy of this conception of God. This criticism deploys a ‘normatively relativized’ version of the ‘logical’ Argument from Evil: it is argued that an omnipotent personal agent would unavoidably be responsible for a morally flawed relationship with human beings caught up in horrendous evils. Reasons are given for preferring a ‘non-personalist’ account of theism, and the religious adequacy of a euteleological theism is then defended against two main objections—first, that it faces a problem of evil that threatens its coherence, and, second, that it cannot make good sense of the practices of prayer and worship that are essential to theist religion. An important theme is that, though God is not a personal being, nor any kind of ‘being amongst beings’ in basic euteleological ontology, God-talk may be understood as resting on a radical analogy that is apt for enabling right human responses to ultimate divine reality. (shrink)

Work on representing women's voices in ethics has produced a vision of moral understanding profoundly subversive of the traditional philosophical conception of moral knowledge. 1 explicate this alternative moral “epistemology,” identify how it challenges the prevailing view, and indicate some of its resources for a liberatory feminist critique of philosophical ethics.

An important part of the mind-brain problem arises because sentience and consciousness seem inherently resistant to scientific explanation and understanding. The solution to this dilemma is to recognize, first, that scientific explanation can only render comprehensible a selected aspect of what there is, and second, that there is a mode of explanation and understanding, the personalistic, quite different from, but just as viable as, scientific explanation. In order to understand the mental aspect of brain processes - that (...) aspect we know about as a result of having relevant neurological processes occur in our own brain - we need to avail ourselves of personalistic explanation, irreducible to scientific explanation. The problem of explaining and understanding why experiential or mental aspects of brain processes or things should be correlated with certain physical processes, things or states of affairs is a non-problem because there is no kind of explanation possible in terms of which an explanation could be couched. A physical theory, amplified to include the experiential, might be predictive but would, necessarily, cease to be explanatory; and an amplified personalistic explanation could not succeed either. There is, in short, an explanation as to why there cannot be an explanation of correlations between physical and mental aspects of processes going on inside our heads. (shrink)