PERSONALISTIC NORM AND COMMUNITY RELATIONS

PERSON AND COMMON GOOD: THE PERSONALISTIC NORM
IN WE- RELATION IN ST. KAROL WOJTYLAS CHRISTIAN PERSONALISM
A Thesis
presented to the
Department of Philosophy
Immaculate Conception Major Seminary
Tabe, Guiguinto, Bulacan
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
BACHELOR OF ARTS MAJOR IN PHILOSOPHY
by
Francis Edward Araez Baasis

February 1, 2015
Chapter 1
Introduction
A. Background of the Study:

What is a community? Community is often defined through its etymology. It is
said that community comes from the words communis, which means common, and
unitas, which means unity. Therefore, community is normally defined as common
unity. With this definition, it seems that, when a group of people is united towards a
common goal it is already a community. This definition is good but it actually lacks
something very important. Community does not only mean of doing something towards a
goal with others. They must also create a special bond that will give an authentic mutual
or reciprocal relationship for the good of every member. That is why; a group of people
cannot already be called a community. Though they may have common actions towards a
common end, but does not have special bond that relates them with one another, they will
be just a group of people acting with same end and not really a community. Without this,
the relationship inside the community may fall in utilitarianism. They will just use one
another to attain their end. This using of persons denies the dignity of man given by God.
People nowadays use the word community as if it is just simply a word to
identify a group of people without knowing the authentic meaning of it. During the
Second Vatican Council, the real meaning of community is rediscovered through the help
of many Christian philosophers and theologians. They found out that the word
community has its theological roots. It is rooted in the sacred relationship of the Trinity
which is a (koinonia). This was used by the early Christians to express their
mutual relationship with God. Then later, they also used this to express their relationship
with one another as a community of believers who partake in the one body of Christ,
which is the Church. It is said that as The Church is the image of the triune God, and, as
such, is to be characterized in terms of its relationships: relationships so constructed that
each individual is focussed towards the others.1 As , the members of the
community express their reciprocal relationship with God and with one another. They
define this as the reciprocity with God, with Christ, with the Spirit: in particular, that
special communio which God founds, with human beings through the Word and through
the Lord's Supper.2
This shows that a community does not simply mean a group people who are being
united. There must be a reciprocal relationship with one another. This reciprocal
relationship is actually a basic human need. There is no human person who can live
without this kind of relationship. No one can live without someone who can mutually
provide them their basic needs such as food and shelter. No one can live without someone
who can mutually listen and speak to them. No one can live without other people who
will mutually show them the standards for judging: what is good and evil, what is right
and wrong, what is beautiful and what is not.
Reciprocal relationship is important in a community. Only with this kind of
relationship, the human persons can be treated properly. As the Trinity relates with each
other as Persons, so as the human persons relate with one another and form this kind of
Peter Neuner, The Church as Koinonia: A Central Theme of Vatican II, The Way (1990), 177.
Ibid., 176-7.
community. Community must properly treat each other as human person, so they can be
authentically called a community of persons. This kind of relationship must be present in
every community of persons. Actually, we all belong to only one human family, one
human community. Therefore, this is what should every human person must aim. This
can actually answer the task of many thinkers nowadays. According to Ramon Reyes, the
task of the philosopher today is:
keeping alive and vibrant that ideal yet implied ultimate goal of all human
striving and actionthe Truth. Indeed, the whole Truth. Such task would involve,
among other things, the formation of a final, full consensus that binds together all
persons and all nations, as members and co-participants in one global human
community of meaningful word, meaningful labor, meaningful action, and
meaningful belief.3
In line with this, the researcher will seek the truth of the human person relating
and participating with one another inside an authentic community. This theoretical
research aims to explicate what is the real meaning of community of persons. This will be
in the light of the Christian Personalism of the philosopher-Pope, Karol Wojtyla. The
researcher decided to choose his philosophy because of the way it values the dignity of
the human person and his thinking is in line with the Christian thinking of community.
As a personalist, Karol Wojtyla defends the value of every human person.
Wojtyla believes that every unique human subject, though incommunicable, needs to
participate with other personal supposita to achieve his self-fulfillment in the process of
becoming a human person. As human persons relate with one another, they are forming a
Ramon C. Reyes, The Role of the Philosophers as Social Thinker and Critic, Revisited, Suri Vol. 2.
No. 2 (2014): 18.
3
community. There are actually two dimensions of community, the I-You relation and the
We-Relation. The I-You relation is simply the interpersonal relationship with other human
person. The we-Relation is the communal relationship towards a common good. Wojtyla
calls a community that is authentically participating and acting with one another by the
virtue of common good a we.
We, as a plural form of I, expresses a kind of unity that inhibits any inauthentic
relationship of many Is. Therefore, the researcher believes that every member of this we
are practicing the appropriate relationship with one another. This proper relationship is
under the personalistic norm which aims to make persons participate properly and
authentically with other persons. It aims to form a mutual relationship of persons through
love. Love opposes any inappropriate attitude towards other person which is using.
Only through love, the person can be properly realized because it is based on the dignity
of the human person.
In this opus, the researcher will explicate how to eliminate any violation of
persons inside the community in the light of the Christian Personalism of Karol Wojtyla.
B. Statement of the Problem:

A group of people having same end does not already form a we. There must be an
authentic relationship with every member who is submitting themselves on a common
good. It is not good to see a group of people using others just to attain their end in the
group. The intention of the researcher is to answer this major problem: How does the
community participating in a we-relation becomes free from any utilitarian attitude on

person through the personalistic norm? This problem will be answered through the
philosophy of St. Karol Wojtyla focusing on his notion of human person and community.
Related to the major problem, these are the sub-problems that will also be
answered by the researcher:
1. How to relate properly with other human persons without violating their dignity
inside the community?
2. How do the common good and the personalistic norm go hand in hand in werelation?
3. How does love fulfill and tighten up the participation in the community?
4. How does the use of goods affect the relationship inside the community?
C. Significance of the Study:

John Paul II, in his Solicitudo Rei Socialis, worried in the lack of giving
importance on the mutual relationship of individuals rooted on the dignity of the human
person. He said: When individuals and communities do not see a rigorous respect for the
moral, cultural and spiritual requirements, based on the dignity of the person and on the
proper identity of each community, beginning with the family and religious societies,
then all the rest - availability of goods, abundance of technical resources applied to daily
life, a certain level of material well-being - will prove unsatisfying and in the end
contemptible.4
John Paul II, Solicitudo Rei Socialis, 33.
It is very visible in the society nowadays that there are many communities in
political, economical, and social sphere that are being formed like a mushroom. Many
people are joining and giving themselves to different communities. Despite this, it is also
very evident that there are many communities formed for the sake of selfish profit.
Members of those communities are being used as a mean toward an end. This study is
significant with this issue in the society. People need to rediscover that there must be a
reciprocal and mutual relationship among themselves inside the community. Their
relationship must be rooted in the dignity of the human person.
This research is also an addition of further interpretation of the Christian
Personalism of St. Karol Wojtyla. This research will focus on his notion of the human
person and community. This will give emphasis on the relation of the personalistic norm
to his notion of we. The researcher believes that the we is not simply a participation of
group of people towards the common good. Through the personalistic norm, the relation
as a we is being realized as it is. This research will prove that we is not just a mere
gathering of people having a same end rather it is more about the relationship of the
members of the community that partake on the common good which is not just a good of
many but a good of all.
In the future ministry of the researcher, this also has significance. As future leader
of a community of believers, he can encourage the submission of individual goods of
every parishioner for the good of the Church without violating any dignity of persons
through applying what his thesis in the light of philosophy of Karol Wojtyla.
D. Review of Related Literature:

To prove that the claimed significance of the study is true, the following review of
related literature is being provided. The following books, articles and theses that are
related in this study were conducted by different scholars. These will guide the researcher
to come up on the relation of the personalistic norm to the common good of a we.
Books
Aguas, Jove Jim S. Person, Action and Love: The Philosophical Thoughts of
Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II). Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing
House, 2014.
This book of Aguas is about the entire philosophy of Karol Wojtyla. He discusses
almost everything about the philosopher and his thoughts. Aguas, being one of the top
Filipino Wojtylan scholar, gives the researcher a simple but substantial presentation of
Wojtylas philosophy. He has taken the challenge to broaden and enrich the awareness
and understanding to this very historic philosopher in the present era. This is a rich
expository synthesis on the philosophy of Wojtyla.
This book has eight chapters. The first chapter is about the biography and
influences of Karol Wojtyla. In this chapter, Aguas shows how the experiences of
Wojtyla forms his thinking on the human person. The second chapter is about Person
and Subjectivity. He presents the ontological and the personalistic value of the human
person as a subject. The third chapter is about Person and Human Act. This is about the
action of man on how it reveals him as a person. The fourth chapter is about the Person
and Psychosomatic Integrity. This is about the totality of the human person and the
integration of the body and psyche. The fifth chapter is about the Intersubjectivity and
Participation. The human person as a subject need to be with others to make him more a
person. The sixth chapter is about the Person, Love and Human Sexuality. This is the
exposition of the work of Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility. The seventh chapter is about
Ethics and Moral Philosophy. This is the search of Wojtyla on the perfectionism in
Ethics.
This book is a great help for the researcher. He will use this book to support his
arguments and interpretations in the philosophy of Karol Wojtyla. The difference of this
book to this research is that, this gives more emphasis on the community, specifically on
the we-relation of Wojtyla. Then, the researcher will relate this on the personalistic norm
of Wojtyla.
Curry, Agnes B., Nancy Mardas, George F. McLean, eds. Karol Wojtyla's
Philosophical Legacy. Washington: Council for Research in Values and
Philosophy, 2008.
This volume of the Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change of the Council
for Research in Values and Philosophy is a collection of talks of wide-range scholars of
those who are intimately knowledgeable with the thought of Karol Wojtyla prior to his
election as the supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church. The scholars was asked of what
might Wojtyla have continued to contribute to phenomenology in particular, and
philosophy in general, if he had not been elected Pope. They also discern the streams of
phenomenological thinking in the letters, other writings and speeches of this philosopherturned-Pope.
This book has three parts: the part one is about Thomism, Phenomenology and
Personalism; the part two is dedicated to the Social Philosophy, and the part three is on
the Metaphysical Question: What Is a Human Being. The researcher is concern only on
the part two which is about the Social Philosophy of Karol Wojtyla. The part two is
compose of chapters 7, 8, 9, and 10 of the book. The related topics in this research are the
chapter 7 and chapter 9 of this part of the book.
In chapter 7, the contributor Hans Kchler talks about Karol Wojtylas Notion of
the Irreducible in Man and the Quest for a Just World Order. Kchler is actually a
companion of then-Cardinal Wojtyla on giving lectures on phenomenology and
philosophical anthropology at an intellectual colloquium in Fribourg. Kchler outlines in
his paper the philosophical understanding of the human person of Wojtyla. The emphasis
is on the uniqueness and irreducible quality of each person. He examines the
philosophical implications of this focus, especially for the person as the moral subject and
explores the relationship of that such definition implies between the person and society.
On one hand, this is related in the researchers work on Wojtyla. The researcher
also wants to examine the relationship of man as a subject of his actions to his or her
relationship to others in the society, particularly in relating with them as a we. On the
other hand, the researcher wants to give emphasis on the relationship of the proper
actions of man towards the other members of the community who are partaking on a
common good. The researcher believes that man, as a moral agent, must relate properly
10
with others who are submitting themselves to the common good following the
personalistic norm of Karol Wojtyla. They must respect the dignity of the other person
and avoid using them just to achieve their individual good.
In chapter 9, the scholar Deborah Savage talks about the Subjective Dimension
of Human Work: The Conversion of the Acting Person in Laborem Exercens. Savage
argues that the Laborem Exercens is grounded on Wojtylas magnum opus, The Acting
Person. Savage discusses the personal structures of self-determination, self-possession,
and self-governance in light of Wojtylas theory of consciousness and also addresses his
use of the categories of potency and act in light of an expanded understanding of the
notion of suppositum. Savage also notes that the normative claim that worldly conditions
must the respect for the human dignity. It is grasped fully only in terms of the concrete
reality of human personhood. Savage believes that the principle of participation is
ontologically grounded in Wojtylas theory of person and moral order. This means that
every human person is subjected into it.
On one hand, this part of the book is related to the work of the researcher on
proper acting of person as person inside the community. The action towards the common
good must be rooted on the truth of the good that transcends the person to become fully a
person. The person must realize himself in his actions. On the other hand, the researcher
gives more emphasis in the relation of the common good and the personalistic norm that
must goes hand in hand to attain the authentic community which is the we. Also, Savage
focuses only on the action of the person. The researcher also gives emphasis on the action
of the community that they must realize themselves as a community of persons.
11
Francisco, Rolyn B. Karol Wojtylas Theory of Participation: Based on his

Christian Personalism. Makati: St. Pauls Philippines, 1995.
This book of Francisco presents the summary and critical evaluation of the
Christian Personalism of Karol Wojtyla. This gives emphasis in the human community
where participation is realized presupposes a proper view of human persons who
constitutes it. This study is about the person as revealed by acts, then the person as
revealed by acting together with others, and finally the person as revealed by his or her
relationship to God.
The chapter III of the book, Towards a Theory of Participation, deals with the
man-acts insofar as it is an act of communion with others. The human person is fulfilled
through acting together with others. Participation is viewed in terms of the relation of
person with and to other person. It is both property and ability of every human person
who are social beings. Participation then, is the mutual relation between a human person
with other human person where each of their dignity are being respected and valued. This
presents also the two kinds of relationship in participation: the I-You and the we
relationships. He or she is so revealed as I to you; the you as the other I to me; and
persons reveal themselves in the We.5 The person is represented by the personal
Rolyn B. Francisco, Karol Wojtylas Theory of Participation: Based on his Christian Personalism
(Metro Manila: St. Pauls, 1995), 109.
5
12
pronouns I, you and we, and their conscious relation to one another constitutes a human
community.
This book will guide the researcher towards the proper understanding of the
Christian Personalism of Karol Wojtyla especially on his Theory of Participation.
Francisco interprets the notion of we of Wojtyla as a multiplicity of interpersonal
relationship or there are many I-thou relationship in a we-relationship. This means that
there are many reciprocal relationships inside the social dimension of community.
Schmitz, Kenneth L. At the Center of the Human Drama: The Philosophical

Anthropology of Karol Wojtyla/ Pope John Paul II. Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1993.
This book of Schmitz is the synthesis of the philosophy of Karol Wojtyla and his
life. Schmitz relates how Karol Wojtyla sees the human person through his stages of his
life. This book is composed of five chapters. The first chapter is entitled On Stage: New
Word for Ancient Truths. This chapter is about the early life of Wojtyla as theater artist.
Wojtyla is both an actor and a playwright during his time. His plays are often about the
relationship of man with God and about the human love connecting it to the divine love.
These plays are connected on how he sees the human person who is dignified by God and
the proper way to relate with him is only through love. The second chapter is entitled At
the Lublin Workshop: Retrieving the Tradition. This is more on the study of the
philosophy of Wojtyla. Schmitz shows that the interest of Wojtyla in philosophy is in
ethics. But this interest is worked out in the larger context of nature, condition, and
13
destiny of the human person. The third chapter is entitled In the Cracow Study: A
Philosophy Matures. In this chapter, Schmitz shows how Wojtyla provides his analysis
with a more articulated attention to human subjectivity and to the interior life of the
person as moral agent. The fourth chapter is entitled From Peters Chair: A Christian
Anthropology. This is about the writings of Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II. Schmitz
focuses on how John Paul II uses his philosophy in his writings as the supreme pontiff of
the Catholic Church especially on the significant interpretation of the scriptures
particularly in Genesis 1 and 2 that gives emphasis on the notion of the nature of the
human person. The last chapter is entitled Taking the Measure of the Philosophical
Project: Modernity Meets Tradition. This is about the implementation of the Second
Vatican Council rooting in his philosophy. In the philosophy of Wojtyla, he grounded his
contemporary phenomenology in the traditional Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy.
Because of this, John Paul II, find it not so difficult to implement the Second Vatican
Council, where the traditional view of the Church is updated and reflected in the modern
era.
This synthesis done by Schmitz is a great help for the researcher to understand
more the philosophy of Karol Wojtyla. Also, Schmitz shows a wider interpretation on the
thought of the philosopher seen in his life. The researcher will utilize some of the
interpretation of Schmitz to prove his research. The difference of this book to this
research is the discussion of the community as a we.
Simpson, Peter. On Karol Wojtyla. California: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning,

Inc., 2001.
14
This book is about the life, writings and philosophy of Karol Wojtyla. The author
of this book thoroughly explains the main works of Wojtyla, The Acting Person and Love
and Responsibility. This book is divided into five chapters: Life and Works of Karol
Wojtyla; The Philosophical Prise de Position; The Acting Person; Love and
Responsibility; and Philosophical Theology.
The first part of this book focuses on how Karol Wojtyla came up on his thought
on the human person in line with his life. The second part is about the philosophical
development of Karol Wojtyla in his Personalism. There he gives the position of Karol
Wojtyla from classical definition of man to the contemporary philosophy focusing on
phenomenology of Max Scheler. In the next chapter, the author acknowledges how
Karol Wojtyla grounded his work The Acting Person on the premise that operari
sequitur esse. For a being to act, it must exist first. There is also a discussion on selfdetermination, self-possession and self-governance which shows the freedom of the
person to act and be responsible to it. It also highlights the other relevant factors of the I
Act moment which are fulfillment, duty, conscience, responsibility and felicity. In the
last part, it discusses the integration of the person in action and his theory of
participation. This concept of participation is very optimistic that it can create a
community of acting persons. Then, in his interpretation of Love and Responsibility,
Simpson discusses how Karol Wojtyla, in his thought on Human Dignity, believes that a
person must not be an object of using. The proper approach on Human Person is only
15
through love. He also discusses the sexual ethics of Karol Wojtyla on marriage. The book
concludes on the discussion of the connection of his concept on human person in Trinity.
As the researcher review this book, he sees connection of his research to the
interpretation of Simpson. A community is not just a mere union of people. This
discussion of Simpson on the community is closely similar to the interpretation of the
researcher. The researcher then will utilize the discussion of Simpson on community.
Moreover, Simpson gives the connection of the personalistic norm in the Acting Person.
Personalistic norm can only be found in the book Love and Responsibility. Similar to this,
the researcher will also give the connection of the personalistic norm to the
Intersubjectivity by Participation in the Acting Person. The difference of this research to
Simpsons interpretation is that the researcher will also show the connection of the
personalistic norm to the notion of we and common good of Wojtyla.
Articles
Coughlin, John J. "Pope John Paul II and the Dignity of the Human Being."
Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy Vol. 27 (2003): 65-80. In Scholarly
Works Paper 494. http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/494.
(Accessed May 18, 2014).
Coughlin presented in this article the philosophical foundation of the pontifical

teachings of Pope John Paul II. He presented especially how the Philosopher-Pope
defended the dignity of the human person which has metaphysical, existential, and moral
16
dimensions. John Paul II sees the human being as created in the image and likeness of
God and conflicted as a consequence of freedom to choose between good and evil.
The philosophical foundation of John Paul II for the defense of the dignity of the
human person begins with two ancient truths according to the author. First, it posits the
universality of one human nature that transcends the limits of history and culture6 and
the classical metaphysical view, which understands the human person as characterized
by the intellect and free will7 which are in accordance with the modern standpoint. The
philosophical understanding of John Paul II refuses to limit the person to mere genetic
factors as being determinative of who the person is and what the person may become. He
rejects the schools of thought of determinism, empiricism, and idealism.
As a philosopher and bishop in communist Poland, Karol Wojtyla developed a
theory of the human being that stressed solidarity and participation in subsidiary
structures such as the family, church and labor unions in order to offset the alienation
yielded by the communist system of law. 8 This eventually developed into a profound
insight about the human dignity of the philosopher Pope.
This article will guide the researcher on understanding the philosophical
underpinnings of the papal writings of John Paul II connecting it in his early works as a
philosopher. This article also gives the importance of the understanding of theological
6
John J. Coughlin, "Pope John Paul II and the Dignity of the Human Being," Harvard Journal of Law &
Public Policy Vol. 27, (2003), in Scholarly Works Paper 494. http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_
scholarship/494 (accessed May 18, 2014): 66.

7
Ibid., 67.
Ibid., 75.
17
foundations of his philosophy. Though this article shows how the philosophical
underpinnings of the works of John Paul II greatly helps his theological view, the
researcher will deal more on how the papal writings of John Paul II support the idea of
his philosophy on participating with other human persons.
Mejos, Edward Dean A. Against Alienation: Karol Wojtylas Theory of

Participation. Kritike Vol. 1. No. 1 (2007): 71-85.
This article discusses the problem in our society today which is alienation. There
are many people who are being alienated by their fellow human person. The concept of
alienation negates the person as a subject. It deprives man the value of a human person.
Alienation is in contrast with the common good of a community. It rejects the person to
relate himself to other people. With alienation, one cannot experience entering into a we
relationship.
Mejos presented two systems that foster alienation: individualism and
totalitarianism. Individualism isolates the person from others as an individual who
concentrates on himself and his own goods. Since the individual good is valued the most,
it follows that every individual must act to protect himself from another. Totalitarianism,
on the other hand, is characterized as the need to find protection from the individual, who
is seen as the chief enemy of the society and the common good. The concept of person in
alienation denies the capability of a person to enter into a community. With this problem
of alienation, man cannot fulfill himself as a human person. Mans fulfillment is
something which requires an active interaction with the world because it is through his
18
interaction with the world that he is called upon to perform specific actions which
inevitably form him as a person.9
The researcher believes that alienation will only be present if the person inside the
community does not relate with others as human person. The members of a community
must relate properly so that everyone inside the community can attain their fulfillment as
a human person.
Waldstein, Michael. The Common Good in St. Thomas and John Paull II. Nova
et Vetera Vol. 3, No. 3 (2005): 569-578.
This article is about the comparison of the concept of communion and community
of Thomas Aquinas and John Paul II. On one hand, in the thought of St. Thomas, the
common good plays an important role but apparently not on John Paul II. On the other
hand, John Paul II gives importance on the concept of Gift of Self which St. Thomas
apparently not give in to. However, Waldstein gives the connection of these ideas of St.
John Paul and St. Thomas which according to him is a suggestive unity.
On his introductory remarks, Waldstein defines common good as a good in
which many persons can share at the same time without in any way lessening or splitting
it.10 The common error of many people on their notion of common good is that, it is
others good and not really the personal good. John Paul II said that The common good,
Edward Dean A. Mejos, Against Alienation: Karol Wojtylas Theory of Participation, Kritike Vol. 1.
No. 1 (2007): 71.
9
Michael Waldstein, The Common Good in St. Thomas and John Paull II, Nova et Vetera Vol. 3, No.
3 (2005): 569.
10
19
by its very nature, both unites individual persons and ensures the true good of each
There is a shortage of people with whom to create and share the common good; and yet
that good, by its nature, demands to be created and shared with others: Bonum est
diffusivum sui [good pours itself out].11 In this line, lies the connection on the concept
of St. Thomas and John Paul II as Waldstein says: the good, which means preeminently
the common good, and self-communication or, in the realm of persons, self-gift.12
This article will be the aid of the researcher in understanding the common good of
the Philosopher-Pope in light of his papal writings. This will guide the researcher to give
a better understanding of what common good really is. In the common good, there is a
need of gift of self. This gift of self is an act of love of the human person. This is where
the addition of the researcher in this interpretation comes in. The personalistic norm must
be there so that those who partakes in the common good is being related by everyone
properly as human person.
Williams, Thomas D. The One and the Many: Unity, Plurality and the Free
Society. Alpha Omega Vol. X, No. 3 (2007): 387-98.
This article is about the problems on the socio-political organizations and cultures
which are having tensions with each other. This paper examines the relationship between
the one and the many in the context of the free society towards the right ordering of
human society. The article elaborates the problem of individualism and collectivism, the
11
John Paul II, Letter to Families, 10.
12
Waldstein, The Common Good in St. Thomas and John Paul II, 571.
20
principle of common good, the contribution of the school of thought of Personalism, and
the role of human rights. This is done in light of Pope John Paul IIs social thought.
In the Thomistic Personalism, Karol Wojtyla characterized the two extreme
positions in the society, the individualism and totalitarianism:
On the one hand, persons may easily place their own individual good above the
common good of the collectivity, attempting to subordinate the collectivity to
themselves and use it for their individual good. This is the error of individualism,
which gave rise to liberalism in modern history and to capitalism in economics.
On the other hand, society, in aiming at the alleged good of the whole, may
attempt to subordinate persons to itself in such a way that the true good of persons
is excluded and they themselves fall prey to the collectivity. This is the error of
totalitarianism, which in modern times has borne the worst possible fruit.13
The problem with this evil political system is that it denies the objective truth
which also denies the dignity of the human person which no one must violate even by an
individual, a group, a class, a nation or even a state. The protection of human freedoms,
the satisfaction of human needs and rights and the stability and security of a just social
order give the common good a solid foundation of non-negotiable human goods.14
Diversity must also contribute to the common good. Amidst the diversity of many
different people, the dignity and the moral truths of every human person must be
recognized in order to promote the good for everyone. It is therefore urgently necessary,
for the future of society and the development of a sound democracy, to rediscover those
essential and innate human and moral values which flow from the very truth of the
human being and express and safeguard the dignity of the person: values which no
Karol Wojtyla, Thomistic Personalism, Person and Community: Selected Essays, ed. Theresa
Sandok (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 174.
13
Thomas D. Williams, The One and the Many: Unity, Plurality and the Free Society, Alpha Omega
Vol. X, No. 3 (2007): 393.
14
21
individual, no majority and no State can ever create, modify or destroy, but must only
acknowledge, respect and promote.15 This is the contribution of the personalism in the
understanding of the common good for it derives from its understanding of the person
himself. It prohibits the absolute subordination of the individual to the collectivity and it
demands respect for the inviolability and hence the radical equality of all persons.
It is said that the common good does not stand in opposition to the particular good
of persons, but rather comprises it, as well as the good of families and other mediating
social institutions and associations.16 This is related to the researchers work in a sense
that this researcher also wants to prove that the common good does not oppose the
individual good of the human person. As a person, who is also good, the common good
must not damage it nor commit injustice on the human person. The difference of this is
that, the researcher believes that the personalistic norm is needed, so that, the common
good is rooted in the truth of the good and it will be a good for everyone. The common
good must respect the dignity of the human person.
Williams, Thomas D. What is Thomistic Personalism? Alpha Omega, Vol. VII,

No. 2 (2004): 163-97.
This article proves that Karol Wojtyla does not just expose the writing of Thomas
Aquinas in his essay, Thomistic Personalism. Wojtyla completed the philosophy of
man of Thomas Aquinas through the insights from the 20 th century personalism
15
John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, no. 71.
16
Williams, The One and the Many: Unity, Plurality and the Free Society, 394.
22
especially with regards of the subjectivity of the person. This article by Williams offers
the notion of personalism in general, on its historical and ideological roots and of the
distinctive characteristics of a personalism grounded on the metaphysics and
anthropology of Thomas Aquinas.
What is important in this article is that the person does not justify metaphysics
rather metaphysics justifies the person and his various operation in the thought of Karol
Wojtyla. Being grounded in Thomistic metaphysics, a personalistic philosophy of
Wojtyla is rooted on a fertile soil and avoids too much subjectivism that many
personalisms are prone to.
The importance of the uniqueness of a human person can be discovered in this
article. The uniqueness of the human person plays an important role in the Thomistic
personalism of Wojtyla. Though the person is unique, he never exists in isolation. Human
person finds the perfection of his uniqueness in communion with other persons. Though
the persons vocation to interpersonal communion is discernible to human reason, it finds
its deepest explanation in revelation and especially in mans being created to the image
and likeness of God, who is himself communio personarum.17
Theses:
Santiago, Alma S. Self-Fulfilment and Participation in and through the Conjugal

Act in the Light of Karol Wojtylas Philosophy of the Person. Masters
Thesis, University of Santo Tomas Graduate School, September 1992.
17
Thomas D. Williams, What is Thomistic Personalism? Alpha Omega, Vol. VII, No. 2, (2004): 195.
23
This research of Santiago is an expository synthesis of the philosophy of Karol

Wojtyla on his notion of the acting person and sexual ethics. Santiago conducts a
philosophical study on how man and woman fulfills themselves, by way of participation,
in their intimate union expressed in and through the conjugal act according to the thought
of Karol Wojtyla.
This thesis has three chapters. The first chapter is entitled Self-Fulfillment and
Participation. This is about the notion of Human Person and Participation of Wojtyla.
This discusses the self-fulfillment of man through participating with others. The second
chapter is entitled, Natural Complementarity of Man and Woman. This is about the
sexual ethics of Wojtyla. Santiago discusses how man and woman, through their bodies,
participate with each other by following the commandment of love. The third chapter is
entitled Self-Fulfillment in and through Conjugal Act. Santiago presents here the
importance of subjectivity of man in the conjugal act. There is a need of reciprocal
relationship that helps both man and woman to attain their self-fulfillment in conjugal act.
This thesis helps the researcher to interpret the philosophy of Wojtyla thoroughly
especially on her discussion on the common good, and the notion of we as a social
dimension of participation. The difference of this research to Santiagos opus is that the
research done by Santiago focuses specifically on the conjugal act between man and
woman inside the marital life. The researcher will focus his research on the social and
communal aspect of participation which is the relationship between the multiplicity of
Is. The husband and wife is a we and there is a need for them to attain their selffulfillment through each other in their conjugal act. In the researchers work, he believes
24
that every members of the we-community can attain self-fulfillment in whatever action
they are doing as long as it follows the personalistic norm.
Klopfenstein, Mitchell Leon. Towards an Ethical Community Response to

Pandemic Influenza: The Values of Solidarity, Loyalty, and Participation.
Masters Thesis, Indiana University Graduate School, July 2008. In
IUPUI Scholar Works Repository, https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/bitstream/
handle/1805/1673/Towards%20an%20Ethical%20Community%20Response%
20to%20Pandemic%20Influenza,%20The%20Values%20of%20Solidarity,%
20Loyalty,%20and%20Participation.pdf?sequence=1 (accessed June 15,
2014).
Klopfenstein uses the notion of solidarity and participation of Karol Wojtyla to

show the proper action done by the community in times of pandemic threat. Klopfenstein
chooses the notion of community of Wojtyla because of its emphasis on the value of
personal action in developing the attitude of solidarity in the community. He believes that
through this philosophy of Wojtyla, he can prove that the sense of solidarity is a virtue
and a desirable social characteristic.
The research of Klopfenstein has three chapters. The first chapter is about the
Pandemic threat. He presents different infectious disease that is a great threat on a
community in the course of history. One of this is the influenza which is a virus that
emerges to which the human population has little or no immunity and a pandemic causing
widespread illness possible. Klopfenstein believes that the potential of a pandemic to
severely disrupt social life demands community planning, which requires a broad
discussion of shared values to organize a collective response. His response to this is to
have the community values of participation, loyalty, and solidarity which is in chapter
25
two of his research. Because this is a discussion about the health of human persons, it
presupposes that in the public health policy, there must be ethical values, principles,
norms, interests and preferences. Ethical discussion must be done as he believes that the
philosophy of Wojtyla is a good foundation for the discussion in this case. He wants that
every members must submit themselves in every decision-making that they will be doing
to attain the good of everyone under the virtue of solidarity and loyalty to the community.
He wants the community to be one for all. They must act, especially in with this
pandemic threat, together with others in the community. Klopfenstein says, Wojtyla
understands participation to express the personal value of our actions as we exist and act
together with others in different systems of social life.18 In the third chapter of his thesis
which is the Towards and Ethical Approach to Pandemic Influenza Preparedness,
Klopfenstein presents different actions that can be done by the community: the duty to
care, willingness, and ability to provide care. He also presents the duty of the physicians,
the risk and the duty of the society during the pandemic threat.
Klopfenstein uses the philosophy of Wojtyla to response on the problem of the
community planning in times of a pandemic threat. Klopfenstein believes that there must
be a proper action of the community during those times. The researcher thoroughly
understands this work of Klopfenstein thoroughly. The researcher believes that this is
related to his research in a sense that he is also searching for the proper relationship of the
18
Mitchell Leon Klopfenstein, Towards an Ethical Community Response to Pandemic Influenza: The
Values of Solidarity, Loyalty, and Participation,(Masters Thesis Indiana University Graduate School, July
2008) in IUPUI Scholar Works Repository, https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/bitstream/handle/1805/1673
/Towards%20an%20Ethical%20Community%20Response%20to%20Pandemic%20Influenza,%20The%20
Values%20of%20Solidarity,%20Loyalty,%20and%20Participation.pdf?sequence=1 (accessed June 15,
2014): 41.
26
community members. The difference of this research to that of Klopfensteins opus is

that, Klopfenstein deals on the pandemic threat through the participative attitude of
solidarity. In the researchers work, he believes that the community during the
submission of goods, they must think of the good of others. The action towards other
members of the community must be personalistic.
E. Methodology:
Research materials such as books and journals that are found in the Immaculate
Conception Major Seminary Library, Rizal Library of Ateneo De Manila University, and
Ecclesiastical Library of the University of Santo Thomas are utilized. This researcher
also utilized the World Wide Web for the development of his work.
The analysis of Wojtylas personalistic norm and notion of we shall use the
methodological hermeneutics framework:
a. Methodological Hermeneutics Framework (also called exegetical or
explanatory interpretation [Rescher 1999:117] and formal interpretation [Almazan
1997:56])
The philosopher as author is considered the creator of the text. The text is
the life expression (Dilthey 1977:123) of the philosopher. As life expression of
the philosopher, the text is a group of signs selected, arranged, and intended by a
philosopher in a certain context to convey some specific meaning to an audience
(Garcia 1992:178). The text is the effect and the cause is the lived experience of
the philosopher. This is not mechanical cause and effect but dynamic causation
(Quito 1990:45).
The text of philosopher is a finished fact. The locus of the text is in the
mind of the philosopher. The meaning of text is also in the mind of the
philosopher. This is the original meaning of the text.
27
The interpretative act is a reconstruction of the philosophers theory which

involves the following analyses (Schleiermacher 1998:xxviii-xxx):
1) Analysis of the grammatical construction of the language of the
philosophers text. (In this analysis, the philosophers person disappears and only
appears as an organ of language.) This form of analysis is a generic form of
analysis. More specific forms of analysis could focus on the analysis of the
original text or the most accurate text by comparing all available materials
(Almazan 1997:40); analysis of the sources of a text in terms of authorship,
collaboration, revision and chronology of text (Ibid.:56); analysis of the
redaction of the text or how the written sources were used by an editor or
redactorand what this interpretative editing says about the [philosophical]
interests by the redactor (Ibid.:78)
Analysis of the technical construction of the language of the philosophers
text in the context of his life situation. (In this analysis, language with its
customary power disappears as the organ of the philosopher as person.) an
example of a study that uses the methodological hermeneutics framework is the
work of Castillo (1973). Castillo traced the development of Thomas theory of
natural law through St. Thomas works like the Questiones Disputate De Veritate,
De Potentia, De Unione Hypostatica, Summa Contra Gentiles and Summa
Theologiae in the context of St. Thomas life situation and variation in linguistic
expression.19
This thesis is composed of five chapters. The first chapter is entitled

Introduction. The researcher will discuss the background of the study, statement of the
problem, significance of the study, review of related literature, methodology, and
definition of terms. The second chapter is Christian Personalism: Man as a Person
Together with Others. The discussion about the notion of human person and the theory
of participation of Karol Wojtyla will be exposed in this chapter. It will be discussed in
the third chapter of this research the We as the Social Dimension of Person in
Participation. The notion of community, the interpersonal relationship, the concept of
common good and the participative attitudes will be present in this chapter. The
19
Emmanuel D. Batoon, A Guide to Thesis Writing in Philosophy, Part I, Proposal Writing (Philippines:
REJN Publishing: 2005), 61-62.
28
discussion about the Personalistic Norm in Relation to the Common Good of We is in the
fourth chapter of this research. The researcher will show here the importance of the
personalistic norm in realizing the common good of the we. The Researcher will explicate
in this chapter that every human person must be respected in accordance to the dignity
inherent in them. It will show that the we is free from any utilitarian attitude. It will give
importance on love, as the proper way to relate with one another, even with the nonacting persons inside the community. Also, through the personalistic norm, nature must
also be given importance, because it can affect the life of every human person in the
community. This research will be concluded in the fifth chapter which is about the
summary, conclusion, and recommendation of this research.
e.1. Scope
This philosophical work will endeavor on presenting an intercommunal
dimension of participation rooted in the philosophy of Karol Wojtyla. This will be aided
by the philosophical writings of Wojtyla such as The Acting Person, Love and
Responsibility, and Person and Community: Selected Essays. The researcher will also
utilize his works during his Pontificate which has philosophical insights closely related
on the subject of this research. These works are supplemented by secondary sources such
as journals and theses of those who studied the philosophers thought which have a great
significant for this opus to help the researcher understand more the Philosophy of Karol
Wojtyla.
29
e.2. Limitation
The researcher failed to read the original works of Karol Wojtyla in Polish and
Latin Language. However, he used the authentic translations of the works in English
language that appeared authoritative because they contain extended and critical notes
regarding the original texts.
Though the researcher will be using the personalistic norm which can be found in
the book Love and Responsibility which deals on the sexual ethics, he will not discuss the
person and sexuality. He will be using the personalistic norm in its general and social
sense, which is looking on a person not as an object to be use.
G. Definition of Terms:
1. Acting Person- This term was used by Wojtyla for those human persons who
experience their actions. This means that they are conscious in every action that they are
doing. The researcher believes that the members of the community must be acting
persons so that the community can be fully a community of persons.
2. Common Good- Wojtyla says that the common good corresponds to the
transcendence of the persons and forms the objective basis for their constitution as a
social community or a we.20 The researcher will use this in the same manner. Through
the virtue of the common good, the members of the community will submit themselves to
it and will the good of all.
20
Wojtyla, Person: Subject and Community, 246.
30
3. Group of People- The researcher will use this phrase to differentiate from it the
word community which has a greater meaning than just a mere group of people who
does not participate on a common good or does not have any interpersonal relationship
with each other.
4. Love- The researcher will use this word to indicate the proper acting towards a
person. Wojtyla believes that only through love, the dignity of the person is being
affirmed and realized. This is also the willingness to do the good of others. Wojtyla says,
Mans capacity for love depends on his willingness consciously to seek a good together
with others, and to subordinate himself to that good for the sake of others, or to others for
the sake of that good.21 That is why, the researcher believes that through love, the
common good which is the good of all can be attain.
5. Non-Acting Person- The researcher will be using this term to represent the
people who are not able to act for themselves. They are not acting persons in the sense
that they do not have any capacity to fully become an acting person. The actions that they
can make do not have a moment of efficacy unlike of those who have a capacity to be an
acting person. Wojtyla does not have proper term for them so the researcher produced
this term for his research. The researcher believes that they may not be fully a person but
they are still human beings who have the dignity of being a human person. Ontologically,
they are a human person.
6. Personalistic Norm- According to Wojtyla, Strictly speaking, the
commandment says: Love persons, and the personalistic norm says: A person is an
21
Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, trans. H.T. Willets (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 29.
31
entity of a sort to which the only proper and adequate way to relate is love. 22 This is the
proper way of relating with other person. The researcher will use this not on the sexual
ethics, as Wojtyla does in his work Love and Responsibility, rather in the communal
sense. No one should use another person inside the community.
7. Using- in relating with persons, this is the opposite of loving. It is treating the
person as something useful. Useful is whatever gives pleasure and minimizes pain or
discomfort. In utilitarianism, this becomes the standard of moral action. It is relating with
other person as long as it is pleasurable. Wojtyla says that pleasure is in contradiction
with the proper structure of human action.23 The researcher will utilize this word as any
action which treats the person a mere object towards an end. It is any action that devalues
the dignity of the human person. It seeking only the good of the self and not of others.
8. We- This pronoun is the plural form of I. This shows the multiplicity of Is
which can be conceived and understood through activity where the different Is are acting
in common with one another towards a particular good. The we is formed through the
virtue of common good.
22
Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 41.
23
Ibid., 37.
32
Chapter 2
Christian Personalism: Man as a Person Together With Others
This chapter will focus on the truth about being a human person. Man is not just
merely a human being rather man is a person. People nowadays are confused on the
difference of being a man and being a person. Many people are using this terms
interchangeably as if they are in the same meaning and same usage. In philosophy, there
is a distinction between the two words. Every man is a person but not all persons are
man. Person is an entity who can be a subject, who can say I. There are three entities
who are persons: God, angels and man. This shows that man is above from other
creatures in this world. Man is not just simply a being, but he is also a person who has
dignity.
In this chapter, the researcher will present on how a human being can be fully a
human person. As a person, he must be in control of himself, knows, and experiences
himself in everything he acts. For it only through that way that a human being can say he
is fully a person. But as a person, he is not alone acting in this world; he co-exists
together with other human beings.
The term person is actually rooted from the Christian Theology. This is coined
to explain the relationship of the Trinity. The Christian Theology holds that God is a
being in three persons: According to Augustine and late patristic theology, the three
persons that exist in God are in their nature relations. They are, therefore, not substances
that stand next to each other, but they are real existing relations, and noting
besidesRelation, being related, is not something superadded to the person, but it is the
33
person itself.24 For that reason, man as a person is also must be in relation with other
persons. Man as a person, therefore, is always together with others.
Man, as a social being, is in constant participation with other human beings. The
researcher will also present in this chapter that a person has a need and property to
participate. Man can fully realize himself that he is a person if he is participating with
other human beings. Therefore, there is a great need for man to be with other persons.
But in participation, man must not forget the value of others. His actions towards other
human beings must be proper to him as a subject and proper to the object who is the other
person. The other is also a human person like him.
A. The Human Person:

What is man? There are many series of investigations and studies conducted
concerning this question. There are many empirical data that give inadequate answers, for
they did not give the totality of what man really is. It is ironic because man does not
know the whole of him despite of being a man. This inadequacy can be the reason why
man does not act properly in accordance to his nature. It is also the reason why many
people, nowadays, does not act properly towards other persons.
For Wojtyla, man is not just a mere object of this world. Man is above all other
creatures in this world. Man is unique. Man is created in the image of God. That is why,
man has a dignity that no one can take it away from him. There is something which is in
him that is very personal. The person is not an individualized humanness; it actually
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology, Communio: International
Catholic Review, 17 (Fall, 1990), 444.
24
34
consists rather in the mode of individual being that pertains to mankind alone. This mode
of being stems from the fact that the peculiar type of being proper to mankind is
personal.25
Man is both a subject and an object. Wojtyla is against in the reduction of man.
There must be a proper way of looking of man who is not just a being but as a subject, as
a person. Today more than ever before we feel the needand also see a greater
possibilityof objectifying the problem of the subjectivity of the human being. 26 That is
why Wojtyla introduces his concept of Acting Person to provide a proper way of
understanding the human person rooted in the metaphysics through the methods of
phenomenology.
a.1. Proper Understanding of Man as Person

Karol Wojtyla is aware of this great struggle of appreciation and understanding of
the wholeness of human being. Todays era, he observes, is a time of great
controversy about the human being, controversy about the meaning of human existence,
and thus about the nature and significance of the human being. 27 If man does not
understand of what it to be a truly human being is, many problems arise. With this, Karol
25
Karol Wojtyla, The Acting Person, trans. Andrzej Potocki, ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (Dordrecht,
Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1979), 83.
26
Wojtyla, Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being, 209.
27
Wojtyla, Person, Subject and Community, 220.
35
Wojtyla gives a notion of human person which has its roots in the traditional AristotelianThomistic and the methodology of phenomenology.
28 is the traditional and classical Aristotelian
definition of man. It fulfills the requirement of knowing according to Aristotle. The
species is man. The genus is animal or living being. That distinguishes the given species
in genus is being endowed with reason. For Wojtyla, this definition of man is
unquestionable. It became the dominant view in metaphysical anthropology and
spawned a variety of particular sciences, which likewise understood the human being as
an animal with the distinguishing feature of reason.29 Wojtyla sees this definition of man
as cosmological type of understanding man. In the philosophical and scientific tradition
homo est animal rationale, the human being was mainly an object, one of the objects in
the world to which the human being visibly and physically belongs. 30 This belief stands
as the basis of understanding human being as a person.
In the medieval era, there is this well-known and widely used definition
formulated by Boethius: persona est rationalis nature individual substantia. Person is an
individual substance of a rational nature. The person is a concrete entity which is
tantamount to the unique or to the individualized. The concept of the person is broader
and more comprehensive than the concept of individual, just as the person is more than
28
Man is a rational animal.
29
Wojtyla, Subjectivity and the Irreducible on the Human Being, 211.
30
Wojtyla, Subjectivity and the Irreducible on the Human Being, 211.
36
individualized nature.31 This view only shows that a rational nature does not possess its
own subsistence as a nature because it subsists in the person. The person then is a
subsistent subject of existence and action.32 But this definition is too limited. Individuals
seem to be parts of a generic whole.33 Hence, it inadequately describes the human person
who is seen more completely as suppositum or subject.
Wojtyla understands the person as irreducible to a mere essence. Following the
thought of Thomas Aquinas, he believes that the person is a totality.
He is the possessor of a nature that uniquely mirrors God. He possesses an
intelligence that is, in principle, capable of knowing and intentionality becoming
all things; he has a will, an ability to love and relate himself to each person and to
everything of worth in ways that bind together in his boundless subjectivity the
whole world in a special way. 34
He further asserts the Thomistic position that takes precisely this occasion to assert that
in the created world the person is the highest perfection: the person is perfectissimum
ens.35 Man as an entity, who is a person, also has this perfection. Wojtyla explains that
the Thomistic view man as a person is objective interpretation of man. But he also points
out the limitation of such interpretation as far as analyzing more deeply consciousness
and self-consciousness.36
31
Wojtyla, The Acting Person, 73.
32
Jove Jim S. Aguas, Person, Action and Love: The Philosophical Thoughts of Karol Wojtyla (John Paul
II), (Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2014), 27.
33
Ronald D. Lawler, Christian Personalism of Pope John Paul II, (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press,
1982), 33.
34
Ibid.
35
Wojtyla, Thomistic Personalism, 167.
36
Aguas, Person, Action and Love, 33.
37
To understand the totality or the wholeness of the human person, the inadequacy
of the traditional concept of man is complemented with the modern phenomenological
method. In phenomenology, consciousness is always consciousness of something other
than consciousness. In this method, person is irreducible and a subject which is unique.
But there is a danger in this, the extreme subjectivism. It is an absolutization of the
experiential aspect. Wojtyla said that when consciousness is absolutized, it at once cease
to account for the subjectivity of man, that is to say, his being the subject, or for his
actions; it becomes a substitute for the subject.37 The experiences and values lose their
status in the reality. Now, when we begin to accept the pure consciousness or the pure
subject, we no longer are interpreting the real subjectivity of man. 38 That is why
phenomenology must be grounded in the metaphysical terrain of the traditional notion of
person. Phenomenology is important because of its personalistic approach that
understands man in his innerness, his uniqueness and his irreducible character.
There are two contrasting conception on man: the objective type, which is from
the traditional notion of human person, makes man as an object of this world; and the
subjective type, which is based on pure consciousness, makes man a pure subject. For
Wojtyla, both are inadequate but when put together, they can arrive in the totality of the
human person. Thus, with the combination of traditional metaphysics and the modern
phenomenological analysis, Wojtyla came on understanding of man as person is subject
of both existence and action:
37
38
38
the person, the human being as the personseen in its ontological basic
structureis the subject of both existence and acting, though it is important to
note that the existence proper to him is personal and not merely individual
unlike that of an ontologically founded merely individual type of being.
Consequently, the action - whereby is meant all the dynamisms of man including
his acting as well as what happens in him - is also personal. The person is
identifiable with an ontological basic structure (suppositum) in which a provision
is to be made: the ontological structure of somebody manifests not only its
similarities to but also its differences and detachment from the ontological
structure of something.39
Man is a personal suppositum, a fundamental expression of the whole experience of man.
Metaphysical subjectivity, or the suppositum, as the trasphenomenal and therefore
fundamental expression of the experience of the human being, is also the guarantor of the
identity of this human being in existence and activity. 40
Wojtyla endeavored this because of his concern for the human person. He
believes that man is not just an object or just a pure subject. Man for him is a person, a
personal supposit who is both subject and object of existence and action. However it is
not yet complete, because this will actually lead us to the spiritual nature in man, his
dignity as a human person which is the heart of his philosophy.
a.2. Dignity of the Human Person

As a personalist, Wojtyla is not only concerned about human person but intensely
concerned also to the human dignity. He is intensely concerned about this because he
experienced in his early years the problematic condition of the human person. He
39
40
Wojtyla, Person: Subject and Community, 233.
39
becomes a victim of barbaric regimes, Nazism and Communism, which molded him to
search for what is proper to man. He endeavored to a philosophy of man which regards
every human person with dignity, regardless of race, religious beliefs or political
orientation that opposed these systems:
The two totalitarian systems which tragically marked our century Nazism on the
one hand, marked by the horrors of the war and the concentration camps, and
communism on the other, with its regime of oppression and terror I came to
know, so to speak, from within. And so it is easy to understand my deep concern
for the dignity of every human person and the need to respect human rights,
beginning with the right to life. This concern was shaped in the first two years of
my priesthood and has grown stronger with time. It is also easy to understand my
concern for the family and young people. These concerns are all interwoven; they
developed precisely as are result of those tragic experiences.41
The term dignity was taken from the Latin term dignus which means worthy of
esteem and honor, due a certain respect, of weighty importance. In ordinary discourse,
dignity is used only in reference to human persons. The early Greeks held that not all
human beings have worth and dignity. Most humans are by nature slavish and suitable
only to be slaves. Most men do not have natures worthy of freedom and nature proper to
free men, hence they never used the term dignity for all human beings but only to a few.
While other traditions have limited dignity to some kinds of men, the Judeo-Christian
tradition made human dignity a concept of universal application.
In the created world, the human person is ontologically or objectively the most
perfect being and such perfection is the result of the rational and thus spiritual nature
which subsist in the person. 42 Reason and freedom are the two properties concretized in
41
John Paul II, Gift and Mystery: On the Fiftieth Anniversary of My Priestly Ordination, (New York:
Doubleday, 1996), 66-67.
Jove Jim S. Aguas, The Notions of Human Person and Human Dignity in Aquinas and Wojtyla.
Kritike Vol. III, No. 1 (2009), 51.
42
40
the person. Wojtyla, therefore, says that the human person is always rational and free
concrete being, capable of all those activities that reason and freedom alone make
possible.43 It is the rational soul that gives man his spiritual capacities or faculties of
intelligence and will and makes him a person.44 This is the most obvious and basic reason
that shows that man is dignified above other created beings. These is cannot be said to
other entities in the world. The person is distinguished from all other entities even from
the most advanced animals because of his specific inner self, an inner life that is
characteristic only of person. 45 This characteristic sets him apart from other entities.
However, it is also such spiritual life that allows him to be involved and related to the
world of objective entities: A person is an objective entity, which as a definite subject
has the closest contact with the whole (external) world and is most intimately involved
with it, precisely because of his inwardness, its interior life. 46 As a distinctly defined
subject, he establishes contact with all other entities through his inner self. Because of
this spiritual and rational nature, he does not react to them in a purely spontaneous or
mechanical manner. This solidified that man is really above all creature because of his
capacity to relate with them through his spiritual nature.
The dignity of man, though grounded in his essence as a person, acquires a greater
significance because it came from a divine source. Mans personal essence is a
participation of the divine personal essence hence his dignity is a participation of the
43
Wojtyla, Thomistic Personalism, 167.
44
Aguas, The Notions of the Human Person and Human Dignity in Aquinas and Wojtyla, 51.
45
Ibid., 52.
46
41
divine dignity.47 The basic dignity comes directly from Gods creative act.48 It is because
of God who created man in His image and became a human being. God, who is a Person,
created man also a person. Despite this, man reduced himself because of sin.
Nevertheless, God redeems the dignity of man by sending His son in the world. For that
reason, man has a dignity which is always because of God:
The dignity of the human person finds its full confirmation in the very fact of
revelation, for this fact signifies the establishment of contact with God and human
being. To the human being, created in the image and likeness of God, God
communicates Gods own thoughts and plansGod also becomes a human
being; God enters into the dram of human existence through the redemption and
permeates the human being with divine grace.49
The dignity of the human person must also be observed and preserved. That is
why, as a human person dignified by God, he must act in accordance to this dignity.
Otherwise, as Wojtyla said, we shall find ourselves in conflict with the very purpose of
human existence.50 The dignity of the human person must always be acknowledge.
Wojtyla further wrote: To acknowledge the dignity of the human being means to place
people higher than anything derived from them in the visible world. All the human works
and products crystallized in civilizations and cultures are only a means employed by
people in the pursuit of their own proper end. Human beings do not live for the sake of
Jove Jim S. Aguas, Affirming the Human Person and Human Dignity: A Rereading of Aquinas,
Unitas, 75:4 (December 2002), 571.
47
48
Aguas, The Notions of the Human Person and Human Dignity in Aquinas and Wojtyla, 41.
49
Wojtyla, Dignity of the Human Person, 179.
50
Ibid., 180.
42
technology, civilization or even culture; they live by means of these things, always
preserving their own purpose.51
a.3. Acting Person

According to St. Thomas Aquinas:
Of actions done by man those alone are properly called human, which are proper
to man as man. Now man differs from irrational animals in this, that he, is master
of his actions. Wherefore those actions alone are properly called human of which
man is master. Now man is master of his actions through his reason and will;
whence, too, the free will is defined as the faculty and the will of reason.
Therefore those actions are properly called which proceed from a deliberate will.
And if any other actions are found in man, they can be called actions of a man,
but not properly human actions, since they are not proper to man as man.52
Following this line of thinking, Wojtyla considers action as a deliberate human action.
Man as subject freely acts. However, Wojtyla goes beyond that of St. Thomas. Action,
for him, is not just proper only to man as man, but as a person. Action is conceived as a
specific moment of revealing man as a person, a personal supposit, a subject. Action
serves as a particular moment of apprehendingthat is, of experiencingthe person.53
It allows understanding the person fully. For Wojtyla said,
action reveals the person, and we look at the person through his action. For it
lies in the correlation inherent in experience, in the very nature of mans acting,
that action constitutes the specific moment whereby person is revealed. Action
51
Wojtyla, Dignity of the Human Person, 178-9.
52
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1-2.q1.a1 trans. by English Dominican Fathers (New York:
Benzinger Brothers, Inc., 1947).
53
43
gives us the best insight into the inherent essence of the person and allows us to
understand the person most fully. 54
Operari sequitur esse. Wojtyla believes that it is in and through the human acts
that we are given access to the very dynamic reality of the person because the act is the
fullest manifestation of man-person in the dynamism proper only to him.55 There are two
structures of action for Wojtyla: the man-acts and something-happens-in-man. The
difference between these two structures is the so-called moment of efficacy. Somethinghappen-to-man are those passive actions happens in him. Man-act is not just a deliberate
kind of action but it reveals man as subject. In the action of man, there is a moment of
efficacy: experience of myself as the agent responsible for this particular form of
dynamization of myself as the subject.56 Man, thus in a wholly experiential way is the
cause of his acting.57 Man-acts are the focus of Karol Wojtyla in his philosophy of Acting
Person because it is a conscious action that reveals him as a person. Being conscious in
his action also means that he is the subject of his actions. As a subject of his action, he is
fully free. The person must determine himself that represents the deeper, more
fundamental dimension of human authorship. In his acting, because a human beinga
personpossesses free will, he is his own masterNo one else can want for me. No one
can substitute his act of will for mineI am, and I must be, independent in my actions. 58
54
Alma S. Santiago, Self-Fulfilment and Participation in and through the Conjugal Act in the Light of
Karol Wojtylas Philosophy of the Person. (Masters Thesis, University of Santo Tomas Graduate School,
September 1992): 19.
55
56
57
Ibid., 67.
58
44
As a free conscious acting person, it presupposes attitude of responsibility. 59 In

this sense, he must accept his actions as his own property and also, primarily because of
their moral nature, as the domain of his responsibility. 60 That is why, as an acting
person, he must follow what is proper to his conscience and norms. He has an obligation
to bind the conscience and bring it to act in compliance with the precepts of the norm.61
Through this, the transcendence of an acting person is revealed through desiring and
choosing the moral good which is proper to his conscience. With this, man is being
fulfilled as a person: man as the person, lives and fulfills himself within the perspective
of his transcendence.62 Through doing moral good actions, man fulfills himself: I fulfill
myself through doing good, whereas evil brings me unfulfillment.63
Acting Person then is not someone who is just merely doing actions. With selfdetermination, man is free and conscious in his own action. That is why, as an Acting
Person, he is responsible and has obligations in his actions through following properly his
conscience and moral norms.
59
It should be clear that not every human being has realized his full personhood that is why not everyone
can have this attitude of responsibility on their actions. On the first place, they are not conscious and
determined in their actions. Secondly, they always need other persons to decide for them. This does not
mean that they are not human person, they are just unable to act fully as persons. Williams gives the
following example of those kind of persons: Young children, senile adults, and mentally incompetent are
not able to act fully as persons. In George Huntston Williams, The Mind of John Paul II: Origins of his
Thought and Action (New York: The Seabury Press, 1987), 207. This will be discussed in the Chapter 4 of
this research. The term that the researcher will use for these kind of person is non-acting person.
60
61
Ibid., 164.
62
Ibid., 181.
63
Wojtyla, The Person: Subject and Community, 235.
45
a.4. Notion of the Other

If the I is a personal supposit, so as the other. If the I has a dignity of being a
human person, so as the other. If the I is a self-determined, conscious and free acting
person, so as the other. If the I is unique, irreducible, incommunicable human being, so as
the other. The other is always one of those Is, another individual I, related
experientially in some way to my own I.64 The other as another I also experiences
elements that is in I. There must be a proper understanding of the other to avoid any
conflict. Acting towards the other must be in accordance to the nature of human person.
Otherwise, the other will become just a mere object of the I which in the end, the dignity
of the I and the other will be violated.
As an acting person, the actions are not just towards the self but also towards the
neighbor who is also a human person. The other may not be like exactly of the I, the I is
existing and acting always with an other. The consciousness that the other is a different I
points out the capacity of the I to participate in the humanity of the other, and to make
participation possible. Understanding the other as different I does not mean a separation
but the need to participate with, to make contact with, and to be with. The notion of the
other includes all human beings so that everyone is not just an I but also an other. The
other who could either be a he or a she is always someone who is experientially and
actually in relation with the I.65
The other does not just signify that the being existing next to me or even acting in
common with me in some systems of activities is the same kind of being as I am.
64
Wojtyla, Participation or Alienation? 200.
65
Ibid., 198.
46
Within the context of this real situation, the other also signifies my no less
realthough primarily subjectiveparticipation in that beings humanity, a
participation arising from my awareness that this being is another I which means
also an I.66
Because the other is also an I, it is through the other that the person and action would be
correlated that results participation.
B. Participation:
Man as a social being is living and existing together with others. Man, therefore,
must always be in participation. In the general sense, participation means taking part in
something.67 It is like a basketball player taking part in his team on a basketball game.
But this is not the core of the phenomenon of participation of Karol Wojtyla.
Participation must be understand in a twofold manner: First, it is conceived as property
of the person, which is expressed by the ability to give a personalistic dimension to his
own existence and action while existing and acting together with others. Second it is
conceived as an ability to share in the humanity of others. 68
Participation is better understood on the basis of the persons transcendence and
integration in action, when this action is performed together with other persons. 69 When
the persons participate with one another, they perform an action and at the same time
fulfill themselves as a person together with others. Participation signifies a basic
66
67
Francisco, 44.
68
Ibid.
Francisco, 45. Transcendence manifests mans self-determination and self-possession. Integration

manifests the unity of the human person.
69
47
personalization of the relationship of one human being to another.70 Participation is one

trait of the experience of existing and acting together with others. However, Wojtyla
asserts that it is not simply a trait of mans acting together with others; equally important
is the fact that it is an experience by which the very structure of the person engaged in the
acting with others is revealed.71 This only shows that it is not just in acting that the person
is being revealed because in participation, the person is being revealed more. Through
participation, the person is able to assert himself and determine his actions in accordance
with the actions of other persons.72 Wojtyla says:
Acting together with others thus corresponds to the persons transcendence and
integration in the action, when man chooses what is chosen by others or even
because it is chosen by othershe then identifies the object of his choice with a
value that he sees as in one way or another homogeneous and his own. This is
connected with self-determination, for self-determination in the case of acting
together with others contains and expresses participation.73
That is why the self-determination of man is important in participation because even
when he chooses the object chosen by others, he identifies the object of his choice with a
value that he sees as his own. This also shows that in participation, it is the person who is
the subject himself. He is a conscious, efficacious, self-determining, and self-fulfilling
subject who exists and acts together with others.
70
71
Aguas, Person, Action, and Love, 164.
72
Ibid.
73
48
Participation is a dynamic correlation of person and action. In participation, it

includes both the ability of acting together with others and the realization of the
personalistic value of action and the fulfillment of the person himself. Wojtyla says:
In this correlation participation signifies, on the one hand, that ability of acting
together with others which allows the realization of all that results from
communal acting and simultaneously enables the one who is acting to realize
thereby the personalistic value of his action. However, this ability is followed by
its actualization. Thus the notion of participation includes here both ability and
realization.74
b.1. Participation as Task and Property

The nature of man is supposed to be rational and he is the person in virtue of the
function of reason; but as the same time he has a social nature. 75 The traditional
philosophers say that man, by nature, is social. In Wojtylas personalism, the point is that
man is a personhis self-becoming is a real processprecisely in relating with other
persons.76 Participation is a potentiality of a person that needs to be actualized to fulfill
himself. It is to say that participation is a property potential of man and a task to actualize
it fulfill himself as a person. The person has his specific attribute the right to perform
actions and the obligation to fulfill himself in the action. 77 As Wojtyla says, For if in
acting together with others man can fulfill himself according to this principle, then, on
74
75
Ibid.
76
Santiago, 55.
77
49
the other hand, everyone ought to strive for that kind of participation which would allow
him in acting together with others to realize the personalistic value of his own action. 78
The first sense of participation refers to the fact that persons, while existing and
acting together with his fellow human persons, are capable of fulfilling themselves in
such activity. For that reason, participation is a property of man. Wojtyla says: I view it
as a property of the person, a property that express itself in the ability of human beings to
endow their own existence and activity with a personal (personalistic) dimension when
they exist and act together with others.79 The second sense of participation is that it is a
task of man to participate, to act and exist with his fellow human person because he
cannot attain the fulfillment of himself as a person if he will not participate. It is a task
because it is prescribed by the commandment of love: that each of us must continually
set ourselves the task of actually participating in the humanity of others, of experiencing
the other as an I, as a person.80 Participation as a task must be axiological. This task can
and should be placed at the basis of the strictly ethical order and strictly ethical
appraisal.81
78
79
80
81
Ibid.
50
b.2. Limitations of Participation

Participation as an attribute of every human person where the I fulfills himself by
existing and acting together with others has this antithesis: the alienation. Alienation is
essentially a personalistic problem which is ethical problem as well. Alienation creates
an occasion for depriving people in some respect of the possibility of fulfilling
themselves in community. 82 There are two limitations of participation which are forms
of alienation, namely, the individualism and objective totalism.
Individualism, which implies a denial of participation, sees an individual as a
supreme and fundamental good to which all the goods of the community must be
subordinated. Individualism limits participation, since it isolates the person from others
by conceiving him solely as an individual who concentrates on himself and on his own
good; this latter is also regarded in isolation from the good of others and of the
community.83 The individual good is valued most in the society. Being together with
others becomes a mere necessity of an individual. For that individual, others are the
source of limitation to achieve the good. Other people become his enemy that causes him
to protect his own good from them. It is a denial and rejection of participation. In
individualism, the property of human being to participate that allows to fulfill himself in
acting together with others does not really exist.
Totalism, on the other hand, is the reversed individualism. In individualism, the
enemy to achieve the goal of an individual is the community, while in objective totalism,
82
83
Wojtyla, The Acting Person, 273-4.
51
it is the good of an individual who is the chief enemy. It is a belief that in attaining the
common good, the individual good must be limited: totalism assumes that inherent in
the individual there is only the striving for individual good, that any tendency toward
participation or fulfillment in acting and living together with others is totally alien to him,
it follows that the common good can be attained only by limiting the individual.84
In both of these alienating systems, man is inhibited from participating in the
community. The ability and property of man to participate is being denied. Thus, Wojtyla
rejects both of these limitations of participation that deprives man to fulfill himself.
Wojtyla believes that every human being must have the right to act which means
freedom in the action, so that the person can fulfill himself in performing the action. 85
In the next chapter, the notion of community will be discussed.
84
85
Ibid., 275.
52
Chapter 3
We: Social Dimension of Person in Participation
In the previous chapter, the researcher exposed that man is not just merely an
object of this world but also, more importantly, a person. Wojtyla shows that in
understanding man, it is not similar with analyzing other beings in this world. Wojtyla
explains that there are two inadequate understanding of man: the objective and subjective
understanding of man. The objective understanding man is the traditional conception of
man. Traditional philosophers such as Aristotle, Boethius and St. Thomas Aquinas define
man as an individual substance in a rational nature. Man as a person is an ontological
supposit. It made man as mere object of this world that can be understood through
classifying, like other beings. In the contemporary philosophy, Max Schelers
phenomenology defines man as person who is a pure subject, a pure consciousness,
irreducible and incommunicable. Wojtyla combined these two notions of man to come up
with the proper understanding of man who is personal supposit in a rational nature,
capable of experiencing himself in his action as a person. Wojtyla believes that this
shows man as not just a mere being but as one having dignity above other beings. This
dignity is not gained but given by God by creating him as an Imago Dei. God is a person
and He made man a person.
As a person, he is a subject. As a subject, he is acting towards another person. As
a relational personal being, man is always in relation with others. Therefore, he must
participate with other persons to achieve his fulfillment. In that way, he realizes himself
53
as a person acting together with others. As a person, who always in relation, belongs to a
social dimension. This dimension is in the form of we.
Actually, the structure of we is a part of Christianity. It is a relationship of the
community of believers to God. When an individual believes in God, it must be in a
communal act. Cardinal-then Joseph Ratzinger said: The believer, as such, never stands
alone: to become a believer means to emerge from isolation into the we of the children
of God; the act of turning to the God revealed in Christ is always a turning also to those
who have already been called.86 The community of believers submit themselves in one
profession of faith. This ecclesial act of the community of believers has this social
structure of we. Ratzinger further said: Hence initiation into Christianity has always
been socialization into the community of believers as well, becoming we, which
surpasses the mere I.87
In this chapter, the researcher will present the social dimension of being a person
who is acting and living together with others toward a common good. The virtue of
common good must not eliminate the individual good rather it must perfect it. In this
dimension of participation, the good of an individual person becomes the good of all. The
multiplicity of Is, though they are all incommunicable, willingly and consciously submit
themselves in this common good and form a We. They become then a community acting
with a purpose of achieving the good which is for all. This goal is not easy to achieve but
86
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, The Primacy of the Pope and the Unity of the People of God,
Communio: International Catholic Review 41 (Spring, 2014), 113. This text originally presented at a 1977
academic symposium on the theme of Service to Unity: On the Nature and Commission of the Petrine
Ministry, is taken from the book Fundamental Speeches from Five Decades, ed. Florian Schuller, trans.
Michael J. Miller, J.R. Foster, and Adrian Walker (San Franciscan: Ignatius Press, 2012), 13-33.
87
Ibid., 114.
54
this will make every human person achieve their fulfilment personalisticaly and
axiologicaly.
A. Notion of Community:
Community, in a general sense, is a group of people composed of different
individuals, living and acting together as a group. But this sense of community is just a
material fact, which says nothing about community in the thinking of Wojtyla because
it is only a mere multiplicity of beings. Wojtyla understands the community not as this
multiplicity of subjects itself, but always the specific unity of this multiplicity. According
to Wojtyla, this unity is accidental with respect to each subject individually and to all of
them together.88 Wojtylas notion of community therefore introduces a new subjectivity
in the process of acting. This new subjectivity is the contribution of all members of the
community. It is quasi-subjectivity. Wojtyla says: In fact, it is but a quasisubjectiveness, because even when the being and acting is realized together with others it
is the man-person who is always its proper subject.89 However, this does not mean that a
community is a new person: What Wojtyla means by this is that the only proper subjects
are individual persons The community is not a new person or suppositum alongside
individual personsIt belongs, rather, to the accidental order and it is a matter of new
relations existing among real subjects, real acting persons.90
88
89
90
Peter Simpson, On Karol Wojtyla (California: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, Inc., 2001), 38.
55
There are two kinds of community that Wojtyla gives distinction: the community
of being and the community of acting. The members of the community of being have
been grouped together because of the natural bonds that exist among the members.91 The
examples of this kind of community are the family, the nation, and the state. These are
examples of community of being because the members inside those communities never
choose their family or their nationality. The Filipino nation, thus, is a community of
being that qualifies every Filipino citizen as a member of this community. The other kind
is the community of acting. This means that the members of this community are grouped
together and the common goal of the group provides the bond of union.92 The examples
of this kind of community given by Wojtyla are the workers digging together a trench,
and students cooperating in memorizing lectures. It can be found in this kind of
community the common action towards a common end. There is an accidental union
among the members of this kind of community.
Wojtyla is interested in the community of acting for it has something to do with
the dimensions of participation. In this kind of community, not only the objective unity
towards a goal can be analyzed. Wojtyla becomes interested here because the personal
subjectivity of each individual in this kind of community can be examined and
investigated. Also, in this kind of community, interpersonal and social relations are
occurring. Wojtyla further elaborates:
By analyzing only the multiplicity of human supposita and the unity of objective
interpersonal and social relations that corresponds to them, we obtain a somewhat
91
Santiago, 58.
92
Ibid.
56
different picture from the one we get when we focus on personal subjectivity, and
thus on the consciousness and lived experience of interpersonal and social
relations in a particular human multiplicity. 93
Actually, the community of being can also be a community of acting if the
community of being acts together with each other towards a certain goal. A good
example is the family. As community of being, they are bonded naturally, but when they
act towards a certain goal, example is to have a good livelihood, then each of the family
members do something to attain it. Thus, they become a community of acting.
The community of acting must realize themselves as a we for them to become an
authentic community. If a community of acting just remains on attaining a certain goal
without realizing themselves as we, there would be a conflict. As a community which
unites, there must be an authentic interpersonal relationship with the members of the
community that realize the value of each member. In the end, this will result to acting
towards the common good of the community. These will be elaborated on the succeeding
topics in this chapter.
B. Dimensions of Participation:
Wojtyla distinguishes two mutually irreducible dimensions of participation: the
interpersonal which is the one-to-one interpersonal relationship which is signified by the
I-You Relation; and the social dimension which is communal and signified by werelation. According to Wojtyla, in the life of the human person, from his beginning and
through his long development, his whole existence is immersed in these two dimensions
93
57
of community.94 The entire life of a human person is lived within these dimensions of
participation. These are not reducible to each other as Williams interprets it:
These two kinds of togetherness are not reducible to each other or derivative one
from another, although they interpenetrate in their profiles. Although the
privileged interpersonal communities of I-thou are friendship and marriage, this
modality, or patter, permits of considerable extension in the direction of plurality
and can eventually take on some of the characteristics of a We-Community.95
b.1. I-You: Interpersonal Dimension of Participation

As it was presented in the previous chapter, there is a need for a human person to
participate in attaining his fulfillment as a person. It was also showed how an I is a
concrete human person, a human subject, unique, irreducible, rational, and selfdetermined subject and object of his actions. It was also discussed how the other is a
different I, though like the I, is a someone who is a concrete human person also. And
there is a need for the I to participate with his fellow human persons properly which
reveals himself more of a person. This is actually the very starting point of the first
dimension of participation: the I-You Relation. It must be noted that the you is always in
the singular form that is why it is an interpersonal relationship. Wojtyla explains:
A thou [you] is another I, one different from my own I. In thinking or speaking of
a thou, I express a relation that somehow proceeds from me, but also returns to
me. Thou is a term that expresses not only separation, but also a connection.
This term always contains a clear separation of one from many
othersNevertheless, in thinking or speaking of a thou, I always have some sense
that the concrete human being who I thus describe is one of many whom I could
94
95
Williams, The Mind of John Paul II: Origins of his Thought and Action, 217.
58
so describe, that at other times or in other situations I also describe (and

experience) various other people in the same way, and that I could describe each
of them in this way.96
The I-You relationship points to the plurality or multiplicity of subjects and the
fact that the you is another I. In the I-You relationship, the need of the I to participate
with the you, to constitute oneself and achieve the fulfillment of both I and you, is being
emphasized by Wojtyla. Both the I and the you experiences a mutual revelation of both as
subjects. The self-revelatory act of both is manifested through consciousness. In this kind
of relation, there is a reflexivity because it demonstrates the ability of the I to return from
which it proceeds, to the I itself. Despite this, it does not mean a counter-relation or a
reciprocal relation. As Wojtyla elaborates: I am referring to the very same relation that
proceeds from my I to the thou for this relation has a complementary function, which
consists in returning to the I from which it proceed.97 In other words, even if the
relationship is reciprocated or not, it does not matter because it will always return to the
subject.
So by reflexivity, Wojtyla means a unidirectional, unilateral relation that
proceeds from the I to the thou and returns to the I. Through this relation, the I gains a
fuller experience, maybe a better perspective of himself through the other self. 98 It is, in a
sense, a verification of the self in the light of another self. Wojtyla stresses:
in the normal course of event, the thou assists me in more fully discovering and
even confirming my own I: the thou contributes to my self-affirmation. In its
basic form, the I-thou relationship, far from leading me away from my
96
97
Ibid., 242.
98
59
subjectivity, in some sense more firmly grounds me in it. The structure of the
subject and of the subjects priority with respect to the relation.99
As the subjectivity of the I is being confirmed in the I-You relation, the subject as
a subject in itself represents a personal subjectivity peculiar to himself and the person
because his self-transcendence and integration is able to affirm his own personal
subjectivity. 100 As the I is being revealed and being confirmed in this kind of relation,
the spiritual nature also of the person is being revealed and confirmed, his dignity. There
must also be a mutual acceptance and confirmation of the value of the I and the you as a
human person. That is why, if this relationship will be reciprocal, participation forms
essential constituent of an interpersonal relationship: when a thou that for me becomes a
specific other, and thus also another human being, simultaneously makes me its own
thou; when two people mutually become an I and thou for each other and experience their
relationship in this manner. Only then, it seems to me, do we observe the full character of
the community proper to an interpersonal I-thou relationship.101
The reciprocal revelation in the I-You relation also has an axiological significance.
In this relation, the I and the you should reveal themselves in their tendency towards selffulfillment manifested in the acts of the conscience, thereby revealing the transcendence
proper to man as person understood as the dignity of man as person. Therefore, both
subjects must accept and confirm it. Moreover, this serves as moral ground of the
relationship. This shows that they must be responsible to each other. Wojtyla asserts:
99
Wojtyla, The Person: Subject and Community, 242-3.
100
Agua, Person, Action and Love, 175.
101
60
In interpersonal I-thou relationships, the partners should not only unveil

themselves before one another in truth of their personal reality, but they should
also accept and affirm one another in that truth. Such an acceptance and
affirmation is an expression of the moral (ethical) meaning of interpersonal
community.102
If the I-You relation refers directly to person-to-person themselves and indirectly
to the multiplicity of person joined by relation. When it refers directly to the multiplicity
or plurality of persons and indirectly to the persons belonging to that plurality, it is now
called we-relation. This is what Wojtyla means when he says, Communio, which is
essentially an I-other relationship, should be clearly distinguished from communitas,
which embraces a larger number of persons. 103 The we-relation signifies several people
who are coexisting as a result of accidental relations. Wojtyla calls this group as social
group or society. It is accidental because society itself is a complex of relations. Though
this is an accidental relation, people inside it are personal subjects who are substantial
beings.
b.2. We: Social Dimension of Participation

We-relation signifies not only a plurality of people but also a community existing
and acting together in common actions. By common actions, it does not mean that person
have same actions. The meaning of the common action for Wojtyla is activities, along
with the existence of those many Is, are related to a single value, which, therefore,
102
103
61
deserves to be called the common good.104 People, who engage in a we relationship,

experience themselves existing and acting together with others but they experience this in
a whole new dimension.105 Through the we-relation, the person discovers acceptance and
confirmations of his or her concrete personal subjectivity in relation to the common good.
The transcendence of the human person is being expressed in we-relation. In fact, the
common good actualizes the transcendence of each I, of each person: the common
relation of may Is to a common good, by virtue of which this multiplicity of subjects
appears to itself (and to others as well) as a specific we and is that we, is a particular
expression of the transcendence proper to the human being as a person.106
The we relationship not only allows a person to form a new kind of relationship
with others but he is also able to experience his humanity as well as the humanity of
others more fully.107 Inside the we-relation, the I-You relation is not being eliminated. The
I-You relation inside the we-relation makes the participation more authentic. When each
members of the we-relation is having interpersonal relation with one another, there the
we-relation is being more actualized. That is why the I-You relation is always there and
never ceases in a we-relation. Wojtyla believes that marriage is the best example of
interpersonal relationship that takes a social dimension without eliminating the
interpersonal relationship. The participation of the man and a woman started in an I-You
relation, accepting into their relationship a set of values. They are mutually and
104
105
Mejos, Against Alienation, 75.
106
107
Mejos, Against Alienation, 75.
62
exclusively revealing themselves to each other that transcends their action to do what is
proper for the other. Then, having a common good, to form a family, they are also
forming a we. Despite this, the husband and wife do not cease as I and You to each other:
they still continue to have an interpersonal relationship.
The we-relation will be thoroughly explicated in the following parts of this
chapter as the focus of this study. It must be noted that a group of people must have, first
and foremost, a common action. They must be a community of acting. This common
action is realized as the common good of the community which the proper term is we.
C. We-Relation and Common Good:

The notion of common good is important in the we-relation because it is the
fundamental value of the relationship that each member is called to participate with. By
virtue of the common good, the different Is in the we relation come to realize that they
are definite we, and therefore are able to focus their actions towards this value. 108 From
the interpersonal relationship, though it still remains, the direction of the relation is
fundamentally changed as they are being determined by the common good. This also
forms a mutual relationship between the members. They are being united because of this
common good. They are not just merely acting together but they have common actions
towards that common good.
108
63
There are many errors on the notion of common good. Many people conceive
common good as something material that the community is attaining, e.g. money, fame,
awards, records, etc. But common good for Wojtyla is not an alien good to the person.
Therefore, it is not just a mere material. Common good is also not just a good of the
many. If this will be the basis of common good, there is a possibility that it is not true.
Common good must be understood as something which unites every individuals that
ensures the true good of each. It is a good which is truly and fully common to every
member of the community. Wojtyla emphasizes common good as the good of the many
but in its fuller dimension; it is the good of all. To elaborate this proper notion of
common good, the following subparts will give a thorough explanation of it.
c.1. Conceptions of Common Good

The teleological conception of the common good is about the common good as
the end of the community. A community is just merely participating towards an objective
and material end. They can be possibly called a community of acting who is not yet in the
we-relation. They are coexisting and acting together but lack an interpersonal relation
with the members of the community. When this is the conception of common good of a
community, they are acting like mere machines or robots. In this conception, the
subjective moment of common good for the individuals is being disregarded.
Wojtyla explains common good in two senses: the objective sense which refers to
the good which is the goal of the common action performed by the community; and the
subjective sense which refers to the conditions and somehow initiates from the persons
64
acting together. The conception of common good must be both subjective and objective
to arrive on a personalistic conception of common good. The objective conception, which
is towards an end, is present together with the subjective conception. The subjective
conception of common good is strictly related to participation as property of the acting
person. As Wojtyla says, our concern is therefore with the genuinely personalistic
structure of human existence in a community, that is, in every community that man
belongs to.109
Thus, common good is not just an end of the community. There is this subjective
sense of common good that seeks the good of each subject and just of the community
itself. It must also not be purely subjective sense. There will be a conflict if it will be
purely subjective. Community is a multiplicity of subjects, of different subjects who has
different individual goods. That is why; there is the precedence of the common good to
the individual good. The subjects must submit their individual good for the common
good.
c.2. Submission of Individual Goods for the Common Good

As the superiority of the common good must be observed in a we-relation, the
individual good must be submitted. The superior value of the common good is based on
the fact that the good of every subject of the we community gains fuller expression and
realization.110 It must be noted that this is not to block or repress the good of an
109
110
Francisco, 59.
65
individual. This is not actually contrary to the acting person who has a self-determination,
self-possession, and self-governance because the free and conscious subject cannot be
possessed by anyone. Otherwise, it is the free and conscious subject who submits his own
good for the good of the community with self-determination.
To realize the common good, the individuals must be ready to submit their
individual good willingly. It is in a sense very difficult but it has a significant value to
achieve the fuller sense of common good. It is not actually taking away the individual
good of the personal subjects in the community. Rather, the individual good is being
conditioned for the sake of the common good. Wojtyla reflects on this:
The common good is often a difficult good; perhaps it is even so in principle. We
Poles know from our own history how much the common good we call Poland
or our homeland has at times cost particular individuals and even whole
generations of our countrymen and women. The amount of effort expended in
achieving the common good, the amount of sacrifice of individual goodsto the
point of exile, imprisonment and deathtestifies to the greatness and superiority
of this good. The situation mentioned here by way of example (and very telling
ones indeed, especially the extreme situations) are convincing proof of the truth
that the common good conditions the individual goods of the members of the
community, the human we.111
Readily and willingly sacrificing the individual good and sacrificing it for the
good of the community corresponds to the ability inherent in every individual to
participate. This capacity to participate enables man to fulfill himself without acting
contrary to his nature. As Wojtyla says, since such a sacrifice corresponds to the ability
of participation inherent in man, and because this ability allows him to fulfill himself, it is
not contrary to nature.112 This action of man is not simply doing for the sake of just
111
112
66
doing it. It must be rooted in the axiological pattern. It must be through the ability of
human person to transcend in his actions. It must be rooted in the truth of the good and
the truth of conscience inherent in the nature of man.
c.3. Transcendence of the Subject in and through Common Good

As it was said in the preceding part of this chapter, the common good actualizes
the transcendence of the human person. It is the transcendence of every human person
which allows each member to relate with one another and connect to a common value.
The meaning and significance of transcendence, particularly in relation to the fulfillment
of the person and the conscience, is an important element of the self-fulfillment of the
subjective self.113
Hence, the relation to the common good, a relation that unites the
many Is, must be grounded on an axiological value of their action towards their
fulfilment. As Wojtyla says, transcendence is realized in relation to truth and to the good
as true.114 The common good that unites the multiplicity of subjects must be a true good.
The common good becomes the good of the community inasmuch as it creates in the
axiological sense the conditions for the common existence, which is followed by
acting.115
When the good of individuals have been realized for the common good, it will
provide a basis of new unity which will lead to the realization of this transcendence of the
113
114
115
67
human person inside the community in participation. As it is said that the transcendence
of the human person is realized in the conscience, the actions formed is rooted in the truth
and in the true good. The social community is essentially free from any form of
utilitarianism because it is based on the realm of the objective and authentically
experienced truth of the good and truth of the conscience.116 In the we community, each
member, in the name of this truth, embraces hardships and sacrifices connected with the
realization of the true and authentic common good. And in behalf of the same truth, they
also achieve all those values that go to make up the true and inviolable good of the
persons.117
Thus, the common good realizes the transcendence of the human being in a sense
that it actualizes the nature of man towards the truth and the good. In this way, the
participation in the we community becomes authentic. All members must realize their
transcendence to achieve the true common good of the community. This must be
common in every member of the community. Though they act in a different way, it is still
towards the common good. The we, as have been mentioned, does not simply signify
multiplicity or plurality of subject; it refers more importantly to the subjectivity y of this
multiplicity, or at least to the achievement of such subjectivity though, of course, there
will be diversity in terms of the realization of this subjectivity, in terms of the proportion
116
117
68
and nature of each social community. 118 The subject is realizing what is essential for the
we community. In this context, Wojtyla says:
they also display a readiness to realize the subjectivity of the many, and, in the
universal dimension, the subjectivity of allfor this is what a complete
realization of the human we entails. It seems that only on the basis of this kind of
social community, one is which a factual multi-subjectivity develops in the
direction of the subjectivity of the many, can we perceive in the human we an
authentic communio personarum.119
Speaking of the authentic communion of persons, Wojtyla also discussed the
different participative attitudes in a We Community. In these attitudes, there are authentic
and inauthentic attitudes in participation in a We Community. Of course, Wojtyla desires
the authentic attitudes in a communal relationship.
D. Participative Attitudes in We-Relation:

The we community is composed of different subjects having common actions
towards the common good. Because of the multiplicity of Is, there are different attitudes
that are acted by different members of the community. It is said that there is a difficulty
in achieving the common good because every individual good must be submitted for the
common good of the community. Through this, the transcendence of the acting person
must also be realized. As the person acts together with others inside the community, there
is still possibility of having a different attitude towards the good. This is not actually a
118
Aguas, Person, Action and Love, 183-4.
119
Wojtyla, The Person: Subject and Community, 251-2.
69
problem, if it is authentic. The problem will be in the inauthentic attitude of different

members of the social community, or we community.
Wojtyla mentions certain attitudes that would either contribute or hinder the
realization of participation. Those who can contribute are those authentic attitudes,
namely, solidarity and opposition. Those attitudes that can hinder the realization of
participation are those of inauthentic attitudes, namely, conformism and noninvolvement. There are also other factors or attitudes that may or may not enhance the
participation but only these attitudes are discussed by Wojtyla in his notion of
participation.
d.1. Authentic Attitudes

Wojtyla presented two attitudes that can enhance and contribute to an authentic
we-relation: solidarity and opposition. They may perceive them as contrary to each other
but for Wojtyla, these attitudes confirms the common good: We propose that the proper
meaning of both solidarity and opposition emerges from the investigation of the
community of acting or being and by reference to the common good specific for this
community.120
The first authentic attitude discussed by Wojtyla is the attitude of solidarity. It is
the natural consequence of the fact that human beings live and act together; it is the
attitude of a community, in which the common good properly conditions and initiates
120
70
participation, and participation in turn properly serves the common good, fosters it, and
furthers its realization.121 It is a constant readiness to accept and to realize the share of
each member of the community. Individual man acts always for the benefit of the
whole for the common good. Man, in accepting this attitude, transcends his own needs,
his own good, in view of the common good. He looks beyond his own share because of
the common good. This intentional reference allows him to realize essentially his own
share.122 With this attitude, the person prevents himself from violating the rights and the
good of other members of the community and he promotes the good of everyone. It
allows the person to find fulfilment of himself through complementing others in the
community. In this sense, solidarity is in harmony with the principle of participation. 123
But solidarity does not mean to keep strictly to ones own share. Wojtyla says that it is
lack of solidarity: Such possibility indicates that in the attitude of solidarity the
reference to the common good must always remain alive: it must dominate to the extent
that it allows one to know when it is necessary to take over more than ones usual share
in acting and responsibility.124 Through the attitude of solidarity in the community, any
tendency toward particularism or divisions must be spurned. He asserted that there must
be a mutual complementariness in a solidaristic we community: every member of a
community has to be ready to complement by his action what is done by other members
of the community. 125 But this does not mean that they will just agree with each other,
121
122
Ibid., 285.
123
124
71
according to Wojtyla, the attitude of solidarity necessarily includes the attitude of

opposition.
The attitude of opposition is not a contradiction of solidarity, for a person who
truly pursues a common good may even oppose some means toward achieving it. 126 The
notion of opposition of Wojtyla is far from rejecting the common good and the principle
of participation. Wojtyla says: The one who voices his opposition to the general or
particular rules or regulations of the community does not thereby reject his membership:
he does not withdraw his readiness to act and to work for the common good. 127 There
are many different interpretations of opposition and some really devoid the element of
common good. That is why, it should be clear that Wojtyla interprets opposition as
aiming more adequate understanding and, to an even greater degree, the means
employed to achieve the common good.128 It seeks as its purpose a constitutive role
within the community. They seek for that participation and that attitude to the common
good which would allow them a better, a fuller, and a more effective share of the
community life.129 Opposition appears to be constructive in a sense that it confirms the
correctness of the community. The structure of a human community is correct only if it
125
126
Francisco, 64.
127
128
Ibid., 286.
129
Ibid., 286.
72
admits not just the presence of a justified opposition, but also that practical effectiveness
of opposition required by the common good and the right of participation.130
The meeting point of solidarity and opposition is dialogue. Dialogue is the
proper attitude that will reinforce solidarity and promote participation among members
who are in opposition to one another.131 Dialogue brings out issues to promote active
participation that eliminates any partial or subjective views which are the source of
conflicts and misunderstandings among the members of the community. But this is still
towards the common good: the principle of dialogue, far from avoiding tensions,
conflicts, or fights among people, brings into light what is right and real in these
controverted issues, for the good of the people.132
Solidarity and opposition are authentic attitudes because they allow the realization
of participation and the transcendence of the person in action inside the community. The
opposite of these attitudes are conformism and non-involvement or avoidance.
d.2. Inauthentic Attitudes

The attitudes of solidarity and opposition are authentic because there is a
realization of the personalistic value of action and participation. The attitudes
conformism and non-involvement are not authentic because it is impossible with these
attitudes to have a realization of personalistic value of action and participation. The loss
130
131
Santiago, 74-5.
132
Francisco, 69-70.
73
or rejection of these elements, which is accidental, would gradually change solidarity into
conformity, and opposition into avoidance or non-involvement.133 That is why the
inauthentic attitudes are, in a sense, relative to authentic attitudes.
To conform, according to Wojtyla, denotes tendency to comply with the
accepted custom and to resemble others, a tendency that is in itself natural, in many
respects positive and constructive or even creative.134 The community is swayed towards
servility which is highly negative. It is a specific form of passiveness which results to his
actions just something-happens-to-him without being responsible and committed in the
community. It is a mere compliancy, inactive even though acting. Wojtyla elaborates:
conformism consist primarily in an attitude of compliance or resignation, in a specific
form of passiveness that make the man-person to be but the subject of what happens
instead of being the actor or agent responsible for building his own attitudes and his own
commitment in the community. 135 The individual who is a conformist does not accept
his share in constructing the community because he is just allowing himself to be carried
away by unanimous decision. Conformism is tantamount to a definite renunciation of
seeking the fulfillment of oneself.136 It is an indication of personal weakness because the
individual does not transcend his becoming a person and he does not make any choice
and decision for the community. It only shows that the conforming man does not really
133
Francisco, 70.
134
Wojtyla, The Acting Person, 345. This is the literal translation found in the Appendix of The Acting
Person.
135
Ibid., 289.
136
Williams, The Mind of John Paul II: Origins of his Thought and Action, 214.
74
care about the common good of the community. On the surface, servile conformism
shows mans confirmation and manifestation of solidarity, underneath, it denies solidarity
and evades opposition.137 Wojtyla observes, Beneath the uniform surface, there lies
latent differentiation, and it is the task of the community to provide for the necessary
conditions for turning into personal participation.138 In short, conformism leads to a
mere uniformity rather than unity of the community.
Together with conformism, the attitude of avoidance is characterized by
purposelessness to the common good. Though avoidance is more authentic than
conformism, still, it is an inauthentic attitude. As the attitude of conformism evades
solidarity, that attitude of avoidance evades opposition.139 Avoidance or non-involvement
is nothing but a withdrawal from acting together with others in the community. The
avoiding individual does not commit himself on a share or responsibility inside the
community. The individual isolates himself from other people. This may be a sign of
protest or opposition but Wojtyla means here of avoidance or non-involvement is that: a
kind of substitute or compensatory attitude for those who find solidarity too difficult and
who do not believe in the sense of opposition.140 It may be acknowledged as a form of
protest but still it is an act lacking of participation. It is characterized by a persons
absence from participating in his community. 141 The attitude of avoidance or non137
Santiago, 75.
138
139
Ibid.,
140
Ibid., 291.
141
Francisco, 72.
75
involvement is actually an act with a personalistic value in a sense that it is deliberately

and consciously chosen by the member. But Wojtyla says, even if these reasons to
justify its being adopted by the individual these same reasons become an accusation of
the community insofar as it has caused it. 142 If the avoidance or non-involvement is the
only solution seen by the individual to solve the personal problems, the problem is in the
community. There is a wrong notion of common good inside the community. That is
why, though it is more authentic than conformism for that action has a personalistic
value, it is still inauthentic attitude.
Conformism and avoidance or non-involvement are both inauthentic attitude.
There is also this conformist non-involvement which is the combination of these two
attitudes. These two attitudes causes man to abandon his striving for fulfillment in his
prerogatives to be himself by the community and thus tries to save it in isolation. 143
The conformist maintains appearance in the community while the no-involvement
disappears in the community but both does not care about the common good of the
community. Wojtyla says that these attitudes deprive something very important: of that
dynamic strain of participation unique to the person from which stem actions leading to
his authentic fulfillment in the community of being and acting together with others. 144
With these inauthentic attitudes, the we community cannot achieve because it is really
being an acting person participating with other acting person. Therefore, the we
community must participate with an authentic attitude towards each other. Only through
142
143
Ibid.
144
Ibid.
76
then, will the community be authentic and rooted in truth of being a human person acting
and existing together with others.
In the succeeding chapter, the relation of the personalistic norm to the common
good of werelation will be explicated. Personalistic norm can eliminate every
inauthentic attitudes inside the community. It can make the community free from the
utilitarian attitude of members.
77
Chapter 4
Personalistic Norm in Relation to the Common Good of We
The researcher exposed in the preceding chapters of this research how man, as a
person, who is a subject and object of his action, exists and acts together with other
human persons. The previous chapter elaborates the need of every human person to
participate with each other to achieve their fulfilment. In existing and acting together with
others, they are being bonded of the virtue of the common good. With this, the
multiplicity of Is can fully say that they are a we. We is formed through the submission
of individual good of many Is towards their goal, the common good of the community. It
is also a multiplicity of interpersonal dimension of participation. The individual person is
not just merely participating with one person but in every I in the social dimension. As it
bonds individual person, the common good must be rooted in the truth of conscience and
of freedom. This common good is difficult to achieve but it is the only way that a group
of people can say that they are a We as such. Authentic and inauthentic attitudes may be
present in participation. To avoid the inauthentic attitude, every member must freely
submit themselves with self-determination and self-consciousness so that every
individual person experiences themselves in their acting together with others. In this
chapter, the researcher will explicate how participation in we-relation is perfected only
through following the personalistic norm and the commandment to love. Every member
of the community shares their humanness to one another by the virtue of common good
and respecting the dignity of every human person inside the community.
78
In chapter 2 of this research, the notion of the human person is discussed. Man is
not just mere object of this world but man is also a subject. He is not just a mere
suppositum, rather a personal supposit who is a subject and object of his action. Man is,
therefore, above other creatures. In his spiritual nature, the human person has a sublime
dignity because he is created in the image and likeness of God. His dignity as a human
person is not acquired nor gained. Rather, the dignity of the human person is from God.
Because of this, man must be properly understood. Also, every action that man would
take reveals himself as a person. Therefore, man must act in accordance to his nature.
Man must act with dignity. He is the subject of his actions.
Man, as a subject, uses various means to attain his end. Man in his various
activities makes use of the whole created universe, takes advantage of all its resources for
ends which he sets himself, for he alone understands them.145 The whole created universe
is ordained for the utilization of man in order to serve his end. He can make food out of
animals, fruits and vegetables if he is hungry. He can make a shelter out of trees, rocks
and metals. He can make everything he wants out of this natural world. A problem arises
in his relation to other human beings. There is this possibility that man, as a subject,
makes other human beings an object of his action to attain his end. The question here is
that: is it really permissible to make use of other human person to attain ones end?
In a community, using a person is possible. Their relationship with each other
may fall on seeking the pleasure with each other. Some members of a community are just
remaining in the community as long as it is pleasurable to them. With this kind of attitude
145
Wojtyla, Love and responsibility, 25.
79
inside a community, there is no authentic participation. Moreover, this community cannot

constitute a we-relation. As it was discussed in the Chapter 3 of this research, the we has
a common good which is rooted in the truth of the good and the truth of conscience
inherent in the nature of man. The human person transcends in his actions towards others.
Using is not possible in constituting an authentic we. There is a personalistic relation
inside this dimension of participation. Every member of the community must relate to
each other properly as person. This not must be present inside the communal relationship.
To relate properly to others inside the community, because of their dignity of the human
person, there is a demand for them to be loved.
The demand to love is to oppose the utilitarian principle of using persons. In his
Christian Personalism, Wojtyla gives the significance of the Commandment to love in the
Gospel in his personalistic norm. Though commandment of love is not same as the
personalistic norm, taking in a broader view, commandment of love is the personalistic
norm.146 The commandment of love is to love God, the Perfect Personal Being, and to
love neighbors, the other human persons. According to Wojtyla, Strictly speaking, the
commandment says: Love persons, and the personalistic norm says: A person is an
entity of a sort to which the only proper and adequate way to relate is love. 147
As every person submits themselves for the good together with others, they are
also forming this we-relation. This is the social dimension of participating and relating
with other persons through love. Every member of the we must willingly submit
146
147
Ibid.
80
themselves for the common good, the good of all. The individuals will submit their own
personal good to relate properly and adequately with one another. This kind of action is
love, a self-giving for the good of others. Therefore, as a community, the we fulfills the
personalistic norm and also follows the commandment to love. Love is present in relating
with one another in we-relation. That is why, everyone and everything is being treated
properly in this dimension of participation. All members of the we is the object of love
even the non-acting person who cannot participate fully as person. Also, the common
good of we aims the good of everyone even those who are ordained to serve the
humanity, the other creatures.
A. Non-Utilitarian Attitude of We:

The utilitarian principle, according to Wojtyla, preaches the maximum of
pleasure for the greatest possible number of peopleobviously with a minimum number
of discomforts for the same number.148 It may look like a something good, but behind
this principle is an inadequate approach on the value of human person. Utilitarian only
sees the pleasure and not the proper action. It is bounded on what is the good of an
individual in using other person for pleasure. Wojtyla means that it is something that I
put a value on the pleasure of this person only in so far as it gives pleasure to me 149 This
shows that the relationship of this individual is only because of pleasure. And because of
this, they are using one another to attain their pleasure. The utilitarian does not see the
148
149
Ibid.
81
other as a person, but only something that can give him pleasure. He sees the other as an
object that he can be used to attain what he wants. Appropriating this in participation,
people are just relating with one another because it is pleasurable. The authentic and
proper value of person is being ignored. Utilitarian participation is very limited. It is just
for pleasure but not really for the good, the true good. Utilitarianism does not really see
the true essence of participation. Utilitarianism leads to the limitation of participation.
Therefore, in strict sense, utilitarian attitude is not really participation.
As a limitation of participation, Utilitarianism is a form of alienation. It is
alienating other human person by treating them just a mere object of their end. Utilitarian
attitude is very individualistic because those utilitarian subjects are just thinking of their
own good and not of those people who are being used. A good example of this is the
problem of corruption. The corrupt individual is thinking only of his good. Directly, the
corrupt utilitarian makes use of lower class people to manipulate the allocation of funds.
The funds which are actually for all members are just going to his own pocket without the
consent of all members of the community. The corrupt utilitarian does not think of those
other members of the community as a person who also has a right for the funds of the
community. So, indirectly, he treats other members of the community as something
which is not important, something which is not valuable. He is actually using other
person to make him rich. Utilitarian attitude also is totalism because it limits the
individual to participate in accordance to his value as a human person. Examples of those
who are being reduced in their proper participation to the community are those who work
in poor conditions. They are those laborers who are forced to accept this kind of
condition in exchange of unemployment and starvation. There are inadequate physical
82
facilities and occupational safety measures in their working places. They are experiencing
unreasonable working schedule, unjust compensation, inadequate leave benefits, unstable
status, and physical and emotional abuses. After working with these conditions, at the end
of the day, they would just receive very low salary. These people are being reduced to a
thing and being treated as something with no emotions, feelings and experience. These
people do not even feel that they are a subject. They are being treated in this way just to
attain the objective common good of the community. They disregard the subjective sense
of common good which is the proper treatment to the members of the community.
A community that possesses a utilitarian attitude is not an authentic community. If
the community relates with each other in a we-relation, utilitarianism in the community is
eliminated. Wojtyla said that the constitution of a we by many human Is is in itself
essentially free from utilitarianism because it lies within the realm of the objective and
authentically experienced truth of the good, which is also the truth of the conscience. 150 It
does not just embrace the difficulties of attaining the common good of the community. It
also does not achieve all those values that go to make up the true and inviolable good of
the person. This value which is proper to human person is the basis of the norm that
should govern the actions that have the person as the object. This is the personalistic
norm.
The personalistic norm of Wojtyla is being emphasized in his works on the
Catholic sexual ethics. But this norm is not just applicable in the union of man and
woman, but also in participating in every person. The personalistic norm urges every
150
83
human person to act what is proper to other human person. It is a demand to treat persons
as person. In 18th century, a philosopher whose name is Immanuel Kant formulated an
imperative: act always in such a way that the other person is the end and not merely the
instrument of your action.151 This statement is restated by Wojtyla in a more personalistic
way than of Kants. Wojtylas personalistic norm is: whenever a person is the object of
your activity, remember that you may not treat that person as only means to an end, as an
instrument, but must allow the fact that he or she, too, has, or at least should have,
distinct personal ends.152 Different from that of Kant, the personalistic norm of Wojtyla
is based on all forms of human freedoms especially of the conscience. Besides, it is a
norm related to the commandment to love. Love demands to treat other person properly
as person who is an end in himself. In relation to this, Wojtyla describes his personalistic
norm in its negative and positive aspects:
The norm in its negative aspect, states that the person is the kind of good which
does not admit of use and cannot be treated as an object of use and as such the
means to an end. In its positive form the personalistic norm confirms this: the
person is a good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love. 153
Thus, the personalistic norm states that the person must not be merely a means to
an end of someones pleasure or of someones good. In fact, not even God can use a
person merely as a means to an end:
151
Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 27. In the book of Kant, it is written as: Act so that you treat
humanity whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.
In Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. By L.W. Beck (New York: Library of
Liberal Arts, 1959), 428-9.
152
153
Ibid., 41.
84
On the part of God, indeed, it is totally out of question, since, by giving man an
intelligent and free nature, he has thereby ordained that each man alone will
decide for himself the ends of his activity, and not be a blind tool of someone
elses ends. Therefore if God intends to direct man towards certain goals, he
allows him to begin with to know those goals, so that he may make them his own
and strive towards an end, the choice of course, is left to mans free will.154
This means that God only directs human beings in so far as He makes known to them the
goals that are proper to their nature so that they may integrate these goals into their own
person.
The human person, who possesses a particular richness and perfection because of
his dignity, must not be treated as an object to be used. But it seems that in reality, using
a person is inevitable. In his discussion of this, Wojtyla gives instances where this
problem arises: organization in labor in a factory; relationship between a commanding
officer and a ranker in an army; and relations between parents and children in the family.
It would seem that in each case the former directs the latter to ends which the former has
chosen and perhaps alone knows. To solve this dilemma, it must first be understood that
the problem with the utilitarianism is that the capacity of the human person to be selfdetermined is being rejected. That is why, if the latter subordinates themselves willingly
to the former, the latter in not being violated as a person. But it is not just conforming to
what is needed but it must be for the good of both of them. The good of the act must be
desired by the agent acting and the agent being acted upon. Rocco Buttiglione observes
154
85
this in his study on Wojtylas philosophy as, the meeting of the wills which are oriented
toward the good is the ethical substance of love. 155
B. Love as Common Good of the We:

Human person is always in constant participation with other persons. Thus, the
common good and proper way of relating to human person can and must be pursued at
the same time. The full realization of human dignity is always in the context of the
communal relationship. An individual cannot act fully as a person without other persons.
In keeping with the social nature of man, the good of each individual is necessarily
related to the common good, which in turn can be defined only in reference to human
person.156 If the common good and the value of the human person are separated, it will
lead to violence and instability. This is what happened to those groups of people who
wants to achieve their aim, they disregard the value of many people. They did not even
respect the life of their members and of those people around them. There are groups of
people in the society today who are engaging in terrorism, violence, destruction, war, and
other social disputes because they have separated the value of the human person to their
goal.
Common good radically must be personalistic in a sense that it is concerned with
the truly personalistic structure of human life in the community to which the human
155
Rocco Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyla: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II, trans.
Paolo Guietti and Francesca Murphy (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
1997). 89.
156
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1905.
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beings belong. Common good is the good of the community in that it creates in an
axiological sense which is the personalistic norm. It is the good that is being desired by
both the subject and object of the action in the community. It unites them to strive
mutually for the good of all. They choose this good as their end freely and with selfdetermination. Wojtyla says that in people consciously choose common aim, this puts on
a footing of equality, and precludes the possibility that one of them might be
subordinated to the other.157 However, having a common good does not yet actually
love. It will only become love depending on his willingness consciously to seek a good
together with others, and to subordinate himself to that good for the sake of others, or to
others for the sake of that good.158 Nevertheless, without the common good, love is quite
unthinkable. Common good unites the persons involved internally, and so constitutes the
essential core round which any love must grow. 159 To attain the we, which is free from
any utilitarian attitude, love, therefore, must be the common good of the community. It
will gradually eliminate the purely utilitarian or consumer attitude to the person160
With this, treating persons inside the community is proper to persons as persons.
This realization of Wojtyla shows that person is not only capable of participating
in the communal life, and is not just merely existing and acting together with others,
rather, fundamentally, man also has the ability to share in the humanness of every other
human being. The man-person is capable not only of partaking in the life of a
157
158
Ibid., 29.
159
Ibid., 28.
160
Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 29. The Latin word consumere means to use.
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community, to be and to act together with others; he is also capable of participating in the
very humanness of others.161 The membership in the community must reach to the
humanness of every man: Only then can we claim that participation serves not just
fulfilment of some individual being, but that it also serves the fulfilment of every human
person in the community, indeed, because of his membership in the community. 162
Everyone must, therefore, strive for the kind of participation that will enable everyone to
attain fulfillment by realizing the personalistic value of their actions. Moreover, it is a
kind of participation that mutually giving themselves in every member of the community.
This becomes then the foundation of love as the common good of the community.
The commandment to love found in the personalistic norm is present in the
communal participation. The commandment, thou shalt love, has itself a thoroughly
communal character; it tells what is necessary for a community to be formed, but more
than anything else it brings into prominence what is necessary for a community to be a
truly human.163 The personalistic norm must also be the norm in the community. Only
through personalistic norm, the community is sharing the humanness with each other.
Their bond is not just because of the common good or the good that they can get from the
community. Rather, they are participating with each other because they love each other
and they want to attain the good of every one. This goes beyond the existing and acting
together with others. Because of the commandment to love, all the necessary elements
and dimensions of participation is being realized and perfected. The we consists in
161
162
163
Ibid., 296.
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sharing the humanness of every human being, and this ability to share in the humanness
of others is the very core, actually, of all participation and the condition of the
personalistic value of all existing and acting together with others. It is a mutual sharing of
the self which is fulfilling the commandment to love.
The commandment of love is also the measure of the tasks and demands that
have to be faced by all menall persons and all communitiesif the whole good
contained in the acting and being together with others is to become a reality. 164 With
this kind of relationship, members of the community go beyond the differences and
distances between each of them. Everyone seems to be reachable. Everything around the
community is being taken cared of for it aims the good of everyone. No one is being
alienated, for everyone is in participation with one another. With this, the participation
with those human persons who are non-acting persons is possible. Also, the community
would be responsible stewards in utilizing the ordained creatures for the good of every
human person.
C. We Relating to Non-Acting Persons through Love:

During his Pontificate, John Paul II warned every community of the dangers
being imposed to the human dignity by some systems which actually diminish
participation and solidarity. This concerns those people who are powerless in the society
who cannot even possess themselves. Those people are the unborn, young children who
are not yet in the age of reason, disabled persons, senile adults and those who are having
164
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mental incapacities. These people cannot defend themselves and fight for their rights and
dignity as a human person. They seem to be just a burden for other people in the society.
He writes: A person who, because of illness, handicap or, simply just by existing,
compromises the well-being or lifestyle of those who are more favored tends to be looked
upon as the enemy to be resisted or eliminated.165
The researcher called them non-acting persons. These persons do not have any
efficacy in their actions therefore everything that they will be doing are merely
something-happens-to-man actions. The persons inside the womb, the children who are
just starting to know how to act, and those who cannot think right anymore such as those
people who have mental disabilities and senility, those who are not conscious of their
actions and cannot really experience fully what they are doing. They cannot be fully
determined by their actions because they do not possess and govern themselves fully.
Despite this, ontologically in Wojtylan sense, they are still human persons.
The problem in the society nowadays is that these people are being marginalized
as if they are not human person. They are being mistreated, abused, neglected and
harmed. People are not giving them the proper attention that they need to survive. Many
people treat them as useless in the society. They are being alienated in the community
especially if the community is totalitarian because it does not think of the good of all its
members and what is being regarded only is the good of the community. If these people
are not being included in the participation, the participation is limited. Sadly, in the
society, many members of the society are disregarding the value of these poor human
165
John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, no. 43.
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persons. The unborn, if unwanted, are being aborted. There are children who are being
thrown into the streets whose parents do not care what would happen to them there.
Persons with disabilities physically or mentally are not properly being taken cared of
because they are being identified as problem or burden. Those people who have serious
illness are being killed through euthanasia as if there are really no hopes for them to
survive. Adults who cannot act properly, including those who are senile and forgetful are
also being neglected and letting them die without giving any care and attention. They are
being alienated and treated inappropriately. This should not be the case. Though they
cannot act fully as person, they still have a part in the participation. Their part will only
be recognized if the relation is in we-relation.
It is true that those human beings who cannot consciously and determinedly
make an action does not act fully as a person. Despite this, it does not mean that they are
not a human person. Looking on their ontological value, they possess the dignity of the
human person. As been presented in chapter two of this research, the dignity of the
human person does not necessarily be gained by the person; rather it is given by God.
Therefore, human beings who act or do not act fully as persons are still human persons
who need to be respected and to be loved. Their dignities are just being misperceived or
not perceived at all.
If they cannot act fully as persons, the responsibility for them is given to those
who can be an acting person. The acting person must not look at those powerless people
as a burden in attaining the good of everyone; rather they must be seen as human person
who also has a good. Their good must also be respected and recognized. They must also
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be considered in attaining the common good even if they cannot participate fully to
achieve it. Participating with them in a we-relation can encourage every member of the
community to transcend fully in their action because they become more responsible in
every member of the community including the non-acting persons.
Participating with people who are non-acting persons shows how the humanness
of the person acting is being actualized. They go beyond on what the other can give to
them. They relate with them through love. A mother, with self-determination and because
of love, should be willing to sacrifice everything, even her life for the child who is not yet
an acting person, inside her womb. That is her nature as a mother of the child. Then,
when that child is born, the family will be responsible to the child while he or she is
growing up until he can stand on his or her own. The child cannot survive and develop as
an acting person without guidance and assistance from the people around him or her. For
those human persons who have physical or mental incapability, it is good that there are
also many people who are giving themselves in serving them. They are assisting those
human persons and giving them everything that they would need. They are consciously
doing it for the good of those powerless persons. It is also good to see those communities
who are taking care of the elderly and giving them respect even though they could not act
properly anymore. They must not be disregarded; rather, they must be given special
attentions which are proper to them. With these actions above, the we-community is
acting authentically.
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D. We as Steward of Nature:
The researcher believes that when the we is constituted authentically, the
multiplicity of Is who are acting persons will not just be responsible with their members
of the community. The we is also determinedly responsible with other creatures in this
world. It is part of the spiritual nature of man to relate with the other creatures of this
world. Wojtyla says, A person is an objective entity, which as a definite subject has the
closest contact with the whole (external) world and is most intimately involved with it,
precisely because of his inwardness, its interior life. 166 Because he has this spiritual
nature, he is above them. For that reason, man must be responsible to them. In scriptures,
God said to man: fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the
see and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. 167
Moreover, they must be responsible to the nature because it also affect their relationship
with one another. They must be responsible in the world and the use of its goods because
they care for them and for other people. If they will not be good stewards, there will be
negative results that will be faced by the we.
Looking on the phenomenon of the world today, developments and changes are
constantly occurring. The discovery of different empirical experiments, promotion of
technology and control of material goods are always there. Indeed, it is only recently,
with the problems of overdevelopment, overconsumption, pollution, and other threats to
166
167
Genesis 1:28.
93
the environment that the conditional character of mans stewardship has begun once
again to be recognized more widely. 168
The natural world plays an important role in the life of every human person. They
are part of the we in a sense that human persons need them. Reciprocally, they also need
human persons to survive. Other creatures may enter into the human life in many
different ways. Sometimes, they threaten the life of many which made people forced to
fight against it. Sometimes they provide foods and other material needs for human lives.
They are also being used to enhance the lives of man. They also attract the human person
to contemplate in its beauty.
Wojtyla believes that the nature, in a sense, participates in the existence of every
human person. Wojtyla says, There is also in nature, or the world, a kind of readiness to
put itself at our disposal: to serve human needs, to welcome within it the superior scale of
human ends, to enter in some way into the human dimension and participate in human
existence in the world.169 But because man is still in the bondage to corruption, 170
Wojtyla is encouraging everyone to realize themselves, to think what they are doing, to
transcend in their actions, and to act properly towards the natural resources of the world.
It is a call for every we to become stewards of creation for they exist together with other
creatures in this world. Wojtyla wants these questions to be asked by every member of
the community of this world: Does human work, in using the riches of creation, always
168
Kenneth Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Dram: The Philosophical Anthropology of Karol
Wojtyla/ John Paul II (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 97.
169
Wojtyla, The Constitution of Culture Through Human Praxis, 270.
under whichas St. Paul writesall creation has been groaning and sighing until now (Rom.
8:21-22). Ibid.
170
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and in all things bear the stamp of rational order, the stamp of a radiation of humanity?
Does it not at times turn into brute plunderdictated, moreover, primarily by an intent to
mutually destroy and dominate one another? 171
Ecological problems present in the society are also anthropological problems.
John Paul II says, at the root of the senseless destruction of the natural environment lies
an anthropological error.172 Irresponsibility to nature connotes also the irresponsibility to
one another. As the natural resources are being destructed, lives of many people are also
being destructed. Therefore, the way nature is being treated, so as the other human
persons.
Some thinkers give solution in the problem of man in environment which reduces
the newly born human persons as new mouths to be fed or other new rivals of the
nature. They want a population control to attain ecological equilibrium. They do not
regard self-discipline and moderation to the use of natural resources as a solution rather,
to attain biodiversity, the human population needs to be reduced by several billion. 173
This solution does not constitute any participation rather alienation. It limits the
participation in a community which has been exposed in the chapter 2 of this research.
People seem to be opponents of a common good that is why they should be eliminated. It
is opposing to the personalistic norm because human person becomes a means towards an
end. The dignity and life of the human person in this solution is being disregarded.
171
Wojtyla, The Constitution of Culture Through Human Praxis, 270.
172
John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, no. 37.
Lester Embree, The Possibility of a Constitutive Phenomenology. Eco-Phenomenology: Back to the

Earth Itself, ed. Charles S. Brown and Ted Toadvine (Albany: Suny Press, 2003), 47.
173
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This should not be the case. The researcher believes that participating in a werelation is a solution in which the personalistic norm and dignity of the human person is
harmonized in stewarding the creation. As a we, the environment becomes part of the
common good which is also for the good of every individual. That is why, every member
of the we must be responsible in their actions in using the good from the natural
resources. Being responsible to the environment is also being responsible to other people
who also need the environment to survive. Therefore, the we must act together with other
creatures by thinking different programs that will promote good relationship between
human persons and environment. As John Paul II says,
therefore, that all ecological programmes must respect the full dignity and
freedom of whomever might be affected by such programmes. Environment
problems should be seen in relation to the needs of actual men and women, their
families, their values, their unique social and cultural heritage. For the ultimate
purpose of environment programmes is to enhance the quality of human life, to
place creation in the fullest way possible at the service of the human family. 174
The we-relation can form a covenant between human beings and the
environment, which should mirror the creative love of God. 175 Pope Benedict XVI says
to all members of Human Family, Covenantal relations, both with other persons and
with creation, take into account all these structures; requiring the gift of self, they are
deeper than contracts but contain them, as eros can only be fully itself inside of
agape.176 Every member of the we must submit themselves in taking care of the
environment. Taking care of the environment is also a form of participating with one
174
John Paul II, Address to the Members of the Agency of the United Nations, (August 1985).
Benedict XVI, The Human Family, A Community of Peace, Message for the World Day of Peace,
1 January 2008.
175
176
Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, Part One.
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another towards the common good. The we must have solidarity in taking care of the
environment which is part of their existence. The we must form an environmental
solidarity. It is:
the recognition of a common desire for beauty and meaning, the realization that
we share a common destiny with other beings, the apprehension that the
participation of others is necessary for a common good that is deeper than the coincidence of our private goods or our ideology. That ecological issues are
profoundly tied up with the ontological and anthropological tensions of existence
between self and world, nature and freedom, persons and communityis not
unknown to ecological thinkers.177
As a we, human persons must be good stewards of creation. All of them are
coming from God, therefore they are good. Also, they possess an inherent dignity. But
human persons do not possess the absolute sovereignty of creation; they are just being
called to be stewards. That is why the we must not destroy the environment. As Kenneth
Schmitz says,
in the making of the heavens and the earth, God has already declared the
prehuman creation to be good without anticipatory reference to man; and so, it is
safe to assume that earth and sky and all living things possess an inherent dignity
and value cannot be overridden by arbitrary human design, even though other
creatures do not possess the distinctive value conferred upon man by the imagerelationship.178
The we must utilize the ordained creature properly by becoming responsible
stewards of creation. In this way, the we is fulfilling the personalistic norm which is
relating through persons. By being good stewards, the we is showing not a love for
creation but a love for other people. Through caring for nature, people are also being
cared. The natural world is for every human person.
Mary Taylor, A Deeper Ecology: A Catholic Vision of the Person in Nature, Communio:
International Catholic Review, 38 (Winter 2011), 589-90.
177
178
Schmitz, 96.
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Chapter 5
Summary, Conclusion, and Recommendation
A. Summary:
The researcher would like to summarize this humble opus by answering a very
simple question that encompasses the whole study: how does a human person must act in
attaining the common good of the community?
The chapter 2 of this study is about the notion of human person in light of Karol
Wojtyla. As a personalist, Wojtyla has a high regard on the value of the human person.
He wants to show the totality of what it is to be a human being. The truth about man is
that he is not just merely a something in this world. Man is not just an object. Man has
dignity inherent in him. This dignity is not gained through his hardships and work. Man
has a dignity because he is created in the image and likeness of God and also redeemed
by Him. God, who is a person, made man also a person. That is why; man has the dignity
of being a human person who is above all other creatures in this world. Similar to God, as
a person, he can fully say that he is an I. This shows that man is not just an object, but
also a subject.
In the ancient period, man is defined by Aristotle as a rational animal. In the
beginning of the medieval period, a definition of person given by Boethius influenced the
notion of the human person of St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas defines man as a person
possesses the nature that mirrors God. These understandings of man are the generic
definition. They understand man in cosmological sense which is objective. In the
contemporary era, Schelerian phenomenology went into extreme side of understanding
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man. It absolutized the subjectivity of man. Man becomes a pure-consciousness or

consciousness itself. It lacks a metaphysical terrain where this definition can be
grounded. This definition of man can lead to subjectivism. Wojtyla, find all of these
understandings of man as inadequate to see the totality of being a human person.
Nevertheless, he unites all of these definitions and came up to a definition that is
adequate to see the totality of man and his dignity of being a human person. For Wojtyla,
man is a personal supposit who is a subject and object of existence and action.
The human person must not just merely exist in this world. As a person he must
act, he must be an acting person. As an acting person, his actions reveal himself as a
person. That is why, what a man act is what he becomes. As an acting person, he
experiences his actions by being conscious and determined. No one can decide for him.
Only himself, being an I, can choose what to act. With this, he must be careful in every
action that he would take. He must act in accordance to his nature as a human person. He
must always remember that he has a dignity that must be revealed in every action that he
would do. Therefore, man as good must act only what is good. With this, he is fulfilling
himself as a person. He must act what is proper to him as a person. Only good actions can
fulfill him as person. He is responsible in every action that he would do. That is why, he
must follow his conscience and the moral norms that can lead him to act only what are
good. Every action of man affects other human beings.
Because there is an I, there is an other to be with him. Like the I, the other is also
a human person who possesses the dignity of the human person. The other is a kind of
being same as the I. The I exists together with this other. Similar to the I, the other is also
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capable of acting that reveals him as a person. This shows that no man exists alone. Man
is a social being and he is existing together with other human beings. Man has a task and
property of participating with others. That is why, every human being, as a person, is
called to participate with others. In acting together with others, man is fulfilling himself
and realizes the personalistic value of his action. If a human person chooses not to
participate with others, he is alienating not just to other persons but also to himself. It is
because he becomes whatever he chooses to act.
The chapter 3 of this study is about the communal relationship of man in werelation. When man acts together with others, he is submitting himself to the common
good. They now form a community of persons. Because of their purpose, they are a
community of acting. They form an interhuman relationship that reveals themselves with
each other. In Wojtylas theory of participation, there is these two dimensions of
participation: the I-You relation and the we-relation.
The I-You relation expresses a mutual relationship of the I and the you. It is an
interpersonal relationship between two persons that form a community. They are
fulfilling each other in the way they act together. In this kind of relationship, there is a
reflexivity which demonstrates the mutuality and complementarity. Nevertheless, this
reflexivity means unilateral relation that proceeds from the I to the you and returns to the
I. Through this relationship, the I gains a fuller experience of himself. That is why, the
subjectivity of the I is being confirmed in this kind of relationship. There is a mutual
acceptance and confirmation of the value of the I and the you as a human person. This
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leads the I being responsible to the you. As the subjects are accepting and confirming the
value of one another, it becomes the source of the moral ground.
If the I-You relation is the interpersonal dimension of community, the we-relation
is the social dimension of community. It is more complex than the I-You relation because
the I is not just participating with a singular you but on a plural you. There is the
multiplicity of Is in this kind of relationship. What also made this relation different from
the I-You relation is the common good. Through this relationship, the person discovers
acceptance and confirmations of his or her concrete personal subjectivity in relation with
the common good of the community. The person inside this relationship is able to
experience his humanity as well as the humanity of others more fully. Nevertheless, this
relationship does not eliminate the I-you relation rather it makes this relation more
authentic.
In the we-relation, they can only be a we through the virtue of the common good.
With this common good, every individual participating inside this community are
submitting their individual good for the good of the community. This common good is
not actually a material that the community pursues to attain such as money, fame,
territory, etc. Moreover, this common good in not just a good of the many rather it must
be the good of everyone, the good of all. It ensures the good of each individual. Because
of this, the common good must respect the good of every member of the community. On
the other hand, this common good is not easy to attain. Every member of the community
must submit fully themselves willingly and consciously. Submitting the individual good
to the common good is not to eliminate the good of the individual, rather it is to condition
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it to the common good of the community. Every member is encouraged to sacrifice, to

have a gift of self, for the good of the community that fulfills his nature as a human
person. Through this, the human person is transcending in his action through the common
good. It is realized in relation to truth and to the good as true. Every member, then,
embraces the hardship and sacrifices in relation to the true and authentic common good
that they want to attain together with others. It is only then that a community can fully
say that they are a we.
Inside the community, it is composed of many subjects who have different
attitudes towards the common good of the community. There is authentic and inauthentic
attitude of members inside the we. The authentic attitudes are the solidarity and
opposition while the inauthentic attitudes are conformism and avoidance.
The community of persons will only be authentic if the members of the
community promote solidarity towards the common good. The common good properly
conditions and initiates participation of every member of the community. The individual
goods of every member of the community are in turn properly serves, fosters and realizes
the common good further. The individual member of the community acts for the good of
the community. He goes beyond his own good for the common good. He goes beyond his
share to by the virtue of common good. Having this attitude, the individual does not
violate the rights and the good of other members of the community. He finds fulfillment
through complementing others in the community. This attitude of solidarity dominates
the participation in the community to the extent that it allows one to know when it is
necessary to take over more than ones usual share in acting and responsibility. But this
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does not mean that they will just agree with each other, according to Wojtyla, the attitude
of solidarity necessarily includes the attitude of opposition. Opposition, as an authentic
attitude of the community does not mean that it is contradicting the solidarity, rather it
enhances the solidarity. The purpose of opposition is a constitutive role in the
community. There is an opposition because they are seeking a better, fuller and effective
share in the life within the community. It promotes dialogue that eliminates any partial or
subjective views which are the sources of conflicts and misunderstandings among the
members of the community. The opposite of these attitudes are the conformism and the
avoidance.
The inauthentic attitudes of participation made the realization of action and
participation impossible. It changes the solidarity into a servile conformism and
opposition into avoidance. Conformism, as the opposite of solidarity, the individual is
just being swayed towards servility. The individual is merely complying on which is in a
very passive form. The individual merely accepts any decision of the community.
Avoidance, as the opposite of opposition, is the withdrawal of the individual from the
community. It is an indication of lack of active concern for participation by being absent
in the community. These attitudes are denial of participation and indifference to the
common good. It is the indication that the individual does not want the fulfillment of
himself through acting together with others. In this sense, the community does not
constitute an authentic we-relation.
The relationship inside the community may fall in to the evil of seeking pleasure
with or from others. There is a possibility that an individual is relating with others in the
103
community because the individual seeks pleasure for himself while being with others.
This is actually a violation in the dignity and value of man as a human person. For the
community to be free from this wrong attitude, the members of the community must
observe the personalistic norm which urges every member to relate with others in the
community properly. This is presented in the chapter 4 of this study. The personalistic
norm avoids the using inside the community that leads to an authentic we that is free
from any utilitarian attitude on person. Personalistic norm respects the value of the
human person. It is a norm that urges every human person to avoid using another person
as an object, as means for his end. The personalistic norm says that the only proper way
to relate with others is through loving them. Love then is the opposite of using. People
are not meant to be used but to be loved.
The personalistic norm in relation to the we shows that the common good of the
community must be personalistic also. The common good of the community must lead to
loving every member of the community because they are human persons. The common
good of the community must respect the value and dignity of every human person that is
why they must relate with them through love. With this, the community becomes an
authentic we who is free from any utilitarian attitude. Only through the personalistic
norm, the particular richness and perfection of the human person because of his dignity is
revealed in the community of persons. The common good must go hand in hand with the
personalistic norm to avoid the dangers that violate the value of man as a human person.
The personalistic norm in the we can go beyond the common good of the
community through participating in the humanness of others. Their participation is not
104
just on what they can achieve, rather, it is now more on the personal meaning. With this
in participation in we-relation, every member of the community attains fulfillment by
realizing the value of their actions. It becomes a mutual self-giving inside the community.
This enhances the community to become more truly human. No one can be alienated then
in the community because they already realized everyones value. It includes in the
participation those who are powerless to participate. The researcher called them nonacting persons because they are person who cannot act fully as person. Inside the
community, they must also be treated properly because they also have the dignity of
being a human person even though they do not possess themselves fully. Many people
are treating them as an object which is useless. But inside the we, they must not be
treated like that. They must be respected and the proper way to relate with them is
through loving them.
It is said that the only entity that we can use are only those ordained creatures that
serve the human needs to survive. This actually leads the researcher in the thinking of
stewarding properly the nature as a form of loving the persons. Every human person
treats the environment as something good. Human person cannot actually participate with
these goods same as they participate with persons. Nevertheless, what the humanity are
doing in the environment always affect other human person. But because God ordained
the nature to serve the needs of every man, they, in a sense, participate in the existence of
every human person. But the problem is that the humanity destructs the nature that brings
also destruction to the lives of other people. This means that what every human person
does in the nature, it all goes back to them. When the nature is being harmed, the life of
the human beings is also harmed. To avoid this, as a we, the nature must be used
105
properly. The we must be responsible steward of Gods creation. In this way, the Creator
is being respected, being loved. Also, in this way, other human beings are also being
cared and being loved.
The only way to relate with the human person inside the community must only be
through loving every Is inside the community. They must be treated properly to attain
the fulfillment of every person.
B. Conclusion:
How the we community becomes free from any utilitarian attitude on person
through personalistic norm? This is the intention of this study on Christian Personalism
of Karol Wojtyla.
The researcher believes that the personalistic norm of Karol Wojtyla is related to
the we dimension of participation. The personalistic norm plays an important part so that
the relationship in a we does not violate the dignity of the members of the community
who are human persons. As the individuals in the community participate with each other,
there is the danger of using the person to attain their good. There is a possibility that
some human persons only participate inside the community as long as it is pleasurable for
them, as long as they are getting something from it, and as long as they attain their good
which actually violates the good of others. That is why in every communal participation,
the personalistic norm must be regarded so that their community constitutes an authentic
we which is free from any utilitarianism.
106
The common good of the community must also go hand in hand to the
personalistic norm. In this sense, the common good becomes personalistic common good
that is free from any violence that can endanger the life and the rights of different Is
inside the community. Because the personalistic norm says that the proper way to relate
to other human person is through love, the common good must be rooted from love to
avoid harmful actions that can conveys injustices in the dignity of the human person.
Only through love that the participation in a we-relation can fulfill the authentic
participation. Every member who are participating in we that observes the personalistic
norm becomes truly human. They discover the personalistic value of their action towards
the common good. They discover that their action must be always for the good of others.
They realize the importance of their actions in relating with other human person.
Everything that they will act, directly or indirectly, can affect other human person. That is
why; they must always act properly because it is always towards others.
The we must always live in love. Love as the common good unites every human I
into a we. Only through this the community that it fulfills its real meaning: koinonia.
Only if the community fulfills each other through love, they are really living as God
created that is free from brokenness and alienation. Every member of the community is
treated as a person whose only way to relate is through love.
C. Recommendation:
This study shows only a part of the richness of the philosophy of the great saint
and thinker, St. Karol Wojtyla. His Christian Personalism can relate to many things
107
which can be a source of study. It is true that there are now many thinkers who are
studying his philosophy. Despite this, while the researcher is researching and studying his
philosophy, there are many other topics that are good subjects of study. The researcher
recommends the following topics to investigate and to research:
1. A good topic to be pondered upon is the relationship of a we to God. It must
answer the question: How a we can participate with God?
2. In the society nowadays, there is the notion of us against them. It is an
intercommunal conflict. The researcher believes that the philosophy of Karol Wojtyla can
give solution to this issue.
3. Another good topic is the notion of the universal we. The question here is: how
does the human person can act together with every human being in the world?
There are many other topics that can be studied out of the philosophy of Karol
Wojtyla that relates every human person to each other and relates them to the Divine
Person who is God.
108
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Leahy, Brendan. Believe in Love: The Life, Ministry and Teachings of John Paul II. Hyde
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PERSON AND COMMON GOOD: THE PERSONALISTIC NORM

IN WE- RELATION IN ST. KAROL WOJTYLAS CHRISTIAN PERSONALISM

Francis Edward Araez Baasis

A. Background of the Study:

B. Statement of the Problem:

community participating in a we-relation becomes free from any utilitarian attitude on

C. Significance of the Study:

John Paul II, Solicitudo Rei Socialis, 33.

D. Review of Related Literature:

Francisco, Rolyn B. Karol Wojtylas Theory of Participation: Based on his

Schmitz, Kenneth L. At the Center of the Human Drama: The Philosophical

Simpson, Peter. On Karol Wojtyla. California: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning,

Coughlin presented in this article the philosophical foundation of the pontifical

scholarship/494 (accessed May 18, 2014): 66.

Mejos, Edward Dean A. Against Alienation: Karol Wojtylas Theory of

John Paul II, Letter to Families, 10.

Williams, Thomas D. What is Thomistic Personalism? Alpha Omega, Vol. VII,

John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, no. 71.

Santiago, Alma S. Self-Fulfilment and Participation in and through the Conjugal

This research of Santiago is an expository synthesis of the philosophy of Karol

Klopfenstein, Mitchell Leon. Towards an Ethical Community Response to

Klopfenstein uses the notion of solidarity and participation of Karol Wojtyla to

community members. The difference of this research to that of Klopfensteins opus is

The interpretative act is a reconstruction of the philosophers theory which

This thesis is composed of five chapters. The first chapter is entitled

Wojtyla, Person: Subject and Community, 246.

Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 41.

A. The Human Person:

a.1. Proper Understanding of Man as Person

Wojtyla, Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being, 209.

Wojtyla, Person, Subject and Community, 220.

Man is a rational animal.

Wojtyla, Subjectivity and the Irreducible on the Human Being, 211.

Wojtyla, Subjectivity and the Irreducible on the Human Being, 211.

Wojtyla, The Acting Person, 73.

Wojtyla, Thomistic Personalism, 167.

Aguas, Person, Action and Love, 33.

Wojtyla, The Acting Person, 58.

Aguas, Person, Action and Love, 53.

a.2. Dignity of the Human Person

Aguas, Person, Action and Love, 74.

Wojtyla, Person: Subject and Community, 233.

Wojtyla, Thomistic Personalism, 167.

Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 24.

Wojtyla, Dignity of the Human Person, 179.

a.3. Acting Person

Wojtyla, Dignity of the Human Person, 178-9.

Wojtyla, The Acting Person, 10.

Wojtyla, The Acting Person, 10.

Wojtyla, The Acting Person, 66.

Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 24.

As a free conscious acting person, it presupposes attitude of responsibility. 59 In

Wojtyla, The Acting Person, 67.

Wojtyla, The Person: Subject and Community, 235.

a.4. Notion of the Other

Wojtyla, Participation or Alienation? 200.

Wojtyla, Participation or Alienation? 200.

Francisco, 45. Transcendence manifests mans self-determination and self-possession. Integration

personalization of the relationship of one human being to another.70 Participation is one

Wojtyla, Participation or Alienation? 202.

Aguas, Person, Action, and Love, 164.

Wojtyla, The Acting Person, 270.