Individual moral formation

In phenomenological analysis, this differentiation of human action tends to divide the human. So Wojtyla utilised the metaphysical field of man's ontological structure (as the source of human personhood) to synthesise the efficacy and the subjectiveness of man.Footnote ¹⁹ These two aspects of human action prove to be of pivotal importance for Wojtyla's ethics.

First, analysing the experience of efficacy provided vital insight into human freedom in action. He identified freedom as the decisive moment of the experience of efficacy. Freedom constitutes the structure of ‘man-acts’.Footnote ²⁰

Second, human experience of subjectiveness served to explain the formative nature of human action. Wojtyla wrote, ‘It is man's actions, his conscious acting, that make of him what and who he actually is. This form of human becoming thus presupposes the efficacy or causation proper to man.’Footnote ²¹ Thus, for Wojtyla this phenomenological approach clarifies the structures in which the choice of a good action serves to both create a good and to form the person as good.

These two aspects of human action, efficacy and subjectiveness, result in self-determination. He writes, ‘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 constituted by the will’.Footnote ²² He calls this relation self-determination. Only through a structure of self-possession in which the person fully possesses and governs himself is self-determination possible.Footnote ²³

The structure of self-determination provides greater insight into Wojtyla's concept of freedom for ‘in every “I will” – the self is the object, indeed the primary and nearest object’.Footnote ²⁴ Thus, the structure of self-determination in each genuine ‘I will’ reveals the person's transcendence in action.Footnote ²⁵ Wojtyla explained this assertion by defining transcendence as going over and beyond a threshold or boundary. ‘In every action, the person transcends his structural boundaries, his nature and its drives, by making himself a somebody through the action.’Footnote ²⁶ Wojtyla named this indicator of human freedom vertical transcendence.Footnote ²⁷ Because the person is free and determines himself, he ascends over his own dynamism in vertical transcendence.Footnote ²⁸

For Wojtyla, freedom indicated a special self-reliance that goes together with self-determination. Wojtyla wrote, ‘To say that man “is free” means that he depends chiefly on himself for the dynamisation of his own subject’.Footnote ²⁹ Free will manifests itself in the ability to choose.Footnote ³⁰ However, Wojtyla differentiated this freedom from Kant's autonomy by describing the intrinsic relation between human freedom and an objective order of the good and the true. Wojtyla's free will has the freedom for objects or values but dependent upon truth.Footnote ³¹ The freedom of the will presupposes a reference to truth for ‘it is the essential surrender of the will to truth that seems finally to account for the person's transcendence in action, ultimately for his ascendancy to his own dynamism’.Footnote ³² A ‘moment of truth’ is contained in every authentic choice of decision-making for ‘if choice and decision were to be without their inherent moment of truth, if they were to be performed apart from that specific reference to truth, moral conduct most characteristic for the man-person would become incomprehensible’.Footnote ³³ However, despite this moment of truth, humans too often fail to choose the ‘real good’, and this choice of the will leads to the experience of guilt or sin.Footnote ³⁴ Thus, the freedom Wojtyla describes is a freedom in reference to truth and good because truth is the basis for the person's transcendence in action.Footnote ³⁵

Such a moral structure answers the questions that Wojtyla pursued since the jarring experiences of his youth, when he witnessed people act heroically in the midst of extreme oppression and fear. Why would someone choose to act heroically? Wojtyla answered, because the good inherent in her nature called her to freely transcend the emotions of fear and to act in accordance with truth and the good, and to further shape herself as a moral and courageous person. In this manner, Wojtyla's structure of self-possession, of human willing and acting, serves as the basis for morality. The roots of morality grow out of the person while also fulfilling the person. Only in such a cycle can morality be concretised. Thus, through responsible and good action informed by truth, the human fulfils himself.

Intersubjective formation

The reality that humans exist with others raised a second question for Wojtyla. In the case of the woman who has acted courageously, how does she retain the value of her action while sharing in the realisation and results of communal acting? Wojtyla argued that, in and through such an act of courage on behalf of another, she achieves her own moral development in addition to furthering the good of the community. In other words, persons achieve their development through participation, having a share or taking part in the community.

To define the meaning of participation further, Wojtyla contrasted this idea with (a) individualism, in which the individual is the supreme and fundamental good and others’ interests are seen as limitations, and (b) totalism, which subordinates the individual to the community in a coercive fashion. He claimed that the intellectual conception of humanity underlying both systems is impersonal:

Wojtyla argued that the common good is the foundation of authentic human communities. Participation emerges as a property of the human person from the reality constituted by common acting and common being.Footnote ³⁷ Because Wojtyla defines the human person in terms of dynamic substance, he does not make the claim that participation in the other is grounded in human essence.Footnote ³⁸ Rather than grounding participation in the material reality of human persons, the human capacity entails potential for participation in the other, which he may freely choose. In so choosing participation, the human forms himself and contributes to the common good.Footnote ³⁹

Wojtyla named two virtues that promote authentic participation and build up the common good: solidarity and opposition. Solidarity indicates a constant willingness to accept and realise one's share in the community. The attitude of solidarity seeks the benefit of the whole even when the common good requires the sacrifice of one's own share. The attitude of opposition means that one will not withdraw his membership in the community but that he will seek the good of the community by contesting that with which he does not agree. These two attitudes provide the basis for dialogue and social action.

Economic justice

By providing one example of John Paul's practical ethics, the underlying moral theology described in this article thus far will become apparent. In his evaluation of economic systems, John Paul critiqued both socialism and capitalism on the basis of human dignity. He argued that socialism considers the human person as an element, a molecule within a social organism. He critiqued the socialist system for subordinating the human person to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism, reducing the human to a series of social relationships, and removing the concept of the person as the autonomous subject of moral decisions.Footnote ⁴⁴ One can see that John Paul's critique was informed by his prior commitment to the transcendent and moral capacities, arising from the analogia entis, that characterise the dignity of the individual person.

He criticised capitalism because it also fails to recognise, safeguard and promote the primacy of the person.Footnote ⁴⁵ He warned that the present movement toward a consumer-based society carries great dangers because it ensnares people in a ‘web of false and superficial gratifications rather than being helped to experience their personhood in an authentic and concrete way’.Footnote ⁴⁶ The person concerned solely with possessing or enjoying cannot be free but becomes subject to the consumerist drive of society.Footnote ⁴⁷ In such a case, one fails to recognise the transcendent value of the human person, the grandeur given by God. Rather, by viewing others merely as a means to productive and profitable ends, he cuts himself off from a relationship of solidarity and communion with others. ‘Indeed’, John Paul wrote, ‘it is through the free gift of self that man truly finds himself. This gift is made possible by the human person's essential “capacity for transcendence”’.Footnote ⁴⁸ Once again, one may discern in these words John Paul's prior commitment to solidarity that takes place as the individual acts in accordance with the moral good, for the upbuilding of society. Thus, while his writings as John Paul were influenced by the wider community, a continuity of the moral structure he articulated as Karol Wojtyla remains apparent in his later writings.

The seed of goodness

I would also like to address two aspects of Wojtyla's thought that could potentially undermine his ethical appeal: his optimism regarding human capacity and his definition of persons as individual substance. First, Wojtyla's belief in the seed of dignifying goodness inherent within each person raises questions from a Reformed Protestant position.

According to Wojtyla, this seed of goodness established through the analogia entis had two positive repercussions. First, humans have the capacity to choose to do good acts. Second, they have the capacity to know the good, through reason. The reformed context would oppose the first repercussion and, arguably, the second as well. A classical reformed anthropology is far more suspicious of the human capacity for good acts, arguing in line with Calvin that human nature is not merely diminished by sin but depraved. The sin of the human heart, mind and will has destroyed the capacity of the will to choose good apart from God's grace. Karl Barth explained:

Human sin has so damaged humanity that the human is estranged from himself, his neighbour and God; he is now inclined ‘“by nature” to hate God and his neighbour’.Footnote ⁵¹ Barth locates the positive capabilities of human action in the reconciling work of Christ rather than in any appeal to an unredeemed human goodness.

Regarding epistemic optimism, a recent critique of Fides et Ratio by Protestant philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, raises the fundamental concerns. Plantinga wrote that the quest for moral norms ‘is not merely handicapped by the “inherent weakness of human reason”; it is rather that philosophers, like humanity in general, are fallen, and in need of conversio’”.Footnote ⁵² According to reformed doctrine, the fall both separated humans from God and destroyed their capacity to gain knowledge about God apart from God's generous revelation. He writes:

In traditional Protestant ethics, sin impacted both the faculty of the will and the faculty of reason, making necessary the revealing and saving work of Christ as a starting point for moral theology.

A more optimistic view of human capacity will, in practice, be undermined by this inclination towards sin. In his optimism, John Paul found his moral guidance in the heroic acts of common people. Unfortunately, such heroic acts are exceptional and provide a barren terrain for supporting claims of goodness, when human experience points more consistently to the evil inclinations of human hearts. Did Wojtyla's optimism perhaps prevent him from the harder question of why nations would inflict such horrors on the people of other nations? Or why governments would exterminate their own people if indeed the officials had the capacity to know and to do good? How can one explain the current violence in the Sudan or the apathy of the Western response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the developing world? To operate with naïve optimism in the face of human sin creates the potential for another Rwandan genocide. In such a case, the appeals to the unredeemed goodness of human nature prove impotent.

Individual substance

A second area undermining John Paul's social appeal was his definition of human persons as substance. As demonstrated above, John Paul continued to appeal to the substantial and individual nature of humanity, even in his recognition of the dynamic nature of humanity. He embraced the Thomist definition of humanity: An individual substance of a rational nature. For example, he argued that Scheler's phenomenology should have led him to recognise the ontology of persons as substance.Footnote ⁵⁴

Wojtyla was drawing from Aristotle's belief, later embraced by Aquinas, that the category of substance (ousia) takes ontological priority in describing humanity. The category of relation, that describes humanity in terms of being ‘towards something’ (pros ti), takes a lower priority in describing human persons.Footnote ⁵⁵ Kant found it necessary to reverse Aristotle's list of categories, making substance a subset of relation.Footnote ⁵⁶ This important reversal provided the conceptual framework for understanding things in terms of their ‘towardness’, their relationality as primary to their substance. Kant's reversal provided the stimulus for a series of developments in philosophy that have reconceptualised the nature of persons, with relationality taking ontological priority. I will suggest here that, by defining humans in terms of substance, Wojtyla potentially undermines his social appeal.

This potential is further amplified by his emphasis upon the individual. His moral programme rests upon this defining moment: individual substance. The self is morally formed through self-determination, i.e. the acts of the will that constitute personhood. While he then appeals to formation through participation in a community, his ethic remains fundamentally individualist. Relatedness has been reduced to a potential. He writes, ‘The I– other relationship, as I pointed out earlier, does not exist in us as an already accomplished fact; only the potentiality for it exists’.Footnote ⁵⁷ In such a case, persons become neighbours only through act, in accordance with the command of God to love. Their relation as neighbour is only a potential rather than an ontological reality.Footnote ⁵⁸

The potential for community is then dependent upon the moral actions of individuals within that community. Through self-possessed actions, persons form themselves and their communities, whether for good or for evil. He writes, ‘the I and the thou find their mutual relation in the common good, in accordance with the natural law. The core of the social community is this relation of many I's to a common good.’Footnote ⁵⁹ In other words, the manner in which the I's relate to the common good determines the social community. Given the optimism that characterises John Paul's anthropology, social community may become more than a potential and take reality because he assumes that humans will, in fact, relate morally. But a Protestant realism would temper such optimism and raise the question of how social community and obligation could exist if we are fundamentally individual substances. What motivation exists to bind us as communities? And where does our social obligation lie?

I suggest that an anthropology that holds relationality ontologically prior provides a better basis for explaining and appealing for social obligation.Footnote ⁶⁰ While still affirming that humans are substantial in nature, substantiality is not the defining moment. More fundamental to human nature is our relatedness: to God, to others, to ourselves and to creation. In such a case, social community and obligation is not left to the individual act but arises out of our very humanity.

Social community and obligation arises from God's relatedness to us, from his acts of creation and reconciliation. His acts are prior to our own acts; his relatedness to us is prior. Take for example, the people of Israel. God's covenant, his act towards Abraham preceded the creation of the covenant community. His act of salvation preceded their existence as a nation. God's relatedness to Israel preceded their formation as a community. Likewise, the reconciliation forged in Christ preceded the formation of the church, Jew and Gentile. In the same way, God's act of creation and reconciliation, his relation to us, always precedes our acts of solidarity, our relatedness as community. Community is not a potential for us to fulfil. Rather, it is a reality, established by God, that we are created and called to live within.

Human obligation to the other arises from the fact that we are formed as persons-in-community, in the image of God's relatedness. Our very humanity is dependent upon upholding the humanity of the other, through love and self-giving. To act in contradiction to this reality is to sin, to live in contradiction to our own existence as persons. In this relationality lies the motivation for social obligation: in upholding the dignity of the other, one's own dignity is upheld; in diminishing the dignity of another, one's own dignity is diminished. Perhaps the African proverb expresses this reality the best: I am because I belong, I participate.Footnote ⁶¹

As the people's Pope, John Paul demonstrated great concern to uphold the dignity of the common person. His moral theology demonstrated a depth of philosophical and theological reflection that enhanced his impassioned appeals for justice and peace. In this article, I have argued that the force of his appeal was undermined by an anthropology that was too optimistic about the capacity of human persons and that relied upon a substantialist ontology that proved detrimental to his calls for solidarity. In correction, I suggest that the appeal to human dignity arise out of an ontology that prioritises the relatedness of persons as established by God's gracious acts of creation and reconciliation.