Człowiek w "Antropologii adekwatnej" Karola Wojtyły

Abstract

The 1960s is the period in which K. Wojtyła wrote and published his most important works within the scope of the philosophy of man. His standard anthropological work Person and act was published in 1969 in Kraków. The very time, with reference to an epistemic condition of a contemporary man Wojtyła defined as the “crisis of self-cognition” caused by a maximum concentration on the outer world and, at the same time, withdrawal from what is most significant for a man as an individual. In the light of the issues perceived in such a way a philosopher from Kraków made an attempt to build such a conception of philosophical anthropology (as a holistic field of philosophy) and within its frame, a defined anthropological- philosophical conceptions, whose aim was to build an experiential, not speculative image of a human being, the image taken out from a conscious experience of a given real “I”, and responding to man standing in the face of challenges of the contemporary world. A man in the “adequate anthropology” by Karol Wojtyła constitutes an attempt to show main assumptions and methodological solutions the author of Person and act accepted in anthropological-philosophical issues. Thus a need to present this way of thinking which led Wojtyła to concentrate on the problem of human cognition and individual being, and, consequently, work out a human experience, is outlined. As a consequence, the analysis of human dynamism, i.e. act which, according to a philosopher from Kraków, is what expresses a personal touch of our existence most adequately is made. Thus, man, as a person, “becomes” and this “becoming” is what differentiates him/her from the remaining world of nature with which he/she is through his/her actions, reveals the truth that his/her internal development happens thanks to him/her and that reality of the person is coterminous with the moral reality, the morality of good and moral evil. Speaking of the conception of the “adequate anthropology” by Karol Wojtyła one cannot conceal the fact of thinker’s relations with Catholic theology. The very fact is fully taken into account in Man in the “adequate anthropology” by Karol Wojtyła but the author of the book tries to concentrate on the issue of his intellectual work which is entirely placed in the philosophical area and does not go beyond it. That is why the focal point here is the analysis of experience constituting the method of cognition of a philosophical science of man which Wojtyła regarded as the “adequate anthropology”. The very analysis seems to lead to the conclusion that experience reveals itself in the conception in question under the umbrella of a phenomenological insight into the nature of the object of cognition on the one hand and as experience worked out by means of a phenomenological method, i.e. combining different types of experiences the subject of which, according to the philosopher from Kraków, is always man. Because the very person is the subject which seems to manifest as the object of cognition to him/herself, each experience, at the same time, enriches the process of cognition by man him/herself and each time forces him/her to raise a fundamental question for the “adequate anthropology”, i.e. In what way is man as a person given him/herself in a cognitive way?, and further on, In what way does man as a person experience him/herself? In order to answer the questions one needs to look at the conception of human awareness and from the perspective of the philosophical and philosophical- theological conception which inspired the author of Person and act to treat the anthropological phenomena thoroughly. In this perspective the originality of the position and contribution to the output of the Polish and European philosophy regarding particularly man and his/her cognition is revealed.