Destined for Liberty: The Human Person in the Philosophy of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II

5. Transcendence and Integration

CHAPTER 5 Transcendence and Integration ETYMOLOGICALLY, TRANSCENDENCE MEANS to go beyond a threshold or boundary (transcendere). Wojtyla points out that in the domain of human action, transcendence has two different dimensions, horizontal and vertical. The former refers to a situation in which, in the intentional acts of cognition and volition , the subject steps out of his limits toward an object. The latter kind of transcendence points to the person's self-determination and freedom.! SELF-DETERMINATION Wojtyla begins his theory of self-determination with some reflections about human freedom.2 The subject's freedom is most visible in human actions (agere) by which the person becomes morally good or morally evil. The specific experience that points to human freedom can be described as "I may but 1do not have to:' Also, the existence of human freedom, Wojtyla continues, points to a potentiality of the subject (potentia) which the philosophical tradition calls "the will." 1. Osoba, 164-65 (119). 2. A good summary of Wojtyla's theory of self-determination can be found in his article "The Structure of Self-Determination as the Core of the Theory of the Person:' in Tommaso D'Aquino nel suo Settimo Centenario: Atti del Congresso Internazionale (RomaNapoli -17124 Aprile 1974) (Napoli: Edizioni Domenicane Italiane, 1978), vol. 7, 37-45. 113 114 Transcendence and Integration Self-determination he then defines as the relation between the agent and his will. "Every action confirms and at the same time makes more concrete the relation, in which the will manifests itself as a feature of the person and the person manifests himself as a reality with regard to his dynamism that is properly constituted by the will. It is this relation that we call "'self-determination."'} Wojtyla indicates that personal self-determination has to be seen in the light of the process of the subject's becoming (fieri).4 Also, he continues , self-determination points to the two other aspects of the human action, self-possession and self-governance. "Because 'I will' is an act of self-determination at a particular moment, it presupposes structural self-possession. For only the things that are man's actual possession can be determined by him; they can be determined only by the one who actually possesses them. Being in the possession of himself , man can determine himself."5 Ever since he wrote The Acting Person, the concept of selfpossession has been an important part of Wojtyla's anthropology. In his 1974 article "Rodzina jako communio personarum" (The family as communio personarum), while commenting on the thesis of Gaudium et Spes that "man ... can attain his full identity only in sincere selfgiving ;' Wojtyla emphasizes that the ability to become a gift for others is rooted in the subject's self-possession.6 Also, the concept of self3 . Osoba, 151 (105). In The Acting Person, Wojtyla's theory of the human will draws heavily upon his conclusions from the first Lublin Lecture, "Ethical Act and Ethical Experience ," where he acknowledged three significant contributions to his theory: Thomas Aquinas's theory of rational will, Max Scheler's ethics of values, and twentieth-century experimental psychology of will. 4. Cf. above, 111. 5. Osoba, 152 (106). 6. Ateneum Kaplafzskie 66, no. 3 (1974),351. See also Wojtyla's "The Structure of Selfdetermination ;' 43- 44· Transcendence and Integration 115 possession and self-governance was integrated by Wojtyla into his theology. In the 1975 article "Rozwazania pastoralne 0 rodzinie" (Pastoral reflections about the family), Wojtyla writes that self-governance is the way in which Christian couples participate in the kingly dignity (munus regale) of Jesus Christ.? Both self-possession and self-governance reveal a certain complexity of the subject. The person possesses himself but is also that which is possessed. Similarly, the person governs himself while also being that which is actually governed. Therefore, both self-possession and self-governance reveal two fundamental dimensions of the person, his subjectiveness and his objectiveness. The objectiveness we are now considering is realized by and also manifested in self-determination. In this sense we may speak of an "objectification" that is introduced together with self-determination into the specific dynamism of the person. This objectification means that in every actual act of selfdetermination -in every "I will"-the self is the object, indeed the primary and nearest object.8 Wojtyla insists that the objectification of the subject is unique because it does not possess an intentional character. He writes...