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The Philadelphia Inquirer Posted on Sun, Apr. 10, 2005
The philosopher Pope
John Paul II studied thinkers who stressed dignity and freedom. He also criticized utilitarianism.
By Frank Wilson
**Inquirer Books Editor **
When the College of Cardinals elected Karol Wojtyla to the Petrine throne in 1978, it elevated to the papacy a man whose vocation was the priesthood but whose profession was philosophy. For 22 years - right up until his election - Wojtyla held the chair of ethics in the faculty of philosophy at the Catholic University of Lublin. He was a central figure in what came to be known as the Lublin Project, whose focus was philosophical anthropology (which has to do with the nature and destiny of man).
Together, the man and his philosophy would navigate the Bark of Peter into the 21st century.
Though best known now for devotional books such as Crossing the Threshold of Hope, in his native Poland the man who became Pope John Paul II was known as a philosopher, his reputation founded on books such as Person and Community, a collection of essays.
Wojtyla earned two doctorates in philosophy, the first from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (called the Angelicum) in Rome, the second from Krakow’s ancient Jagiellonian University, where Copernicus matriculated.
At the Angelicum, he learned Thomism, the philosophy formulated by St. Thomas Aquinas. At Jagiellonian, he was introduced to phenomenology. Together, Thomism and phenomenology would serve as the foundation of his thought.
Aquinas, like other medieval and ancient philosophers, believed that the ideas we form about things, based on our sense impressions of them, correspond in some measure to the actual nature of those things. In other words, our notions about reality are not purely subjective. Modern philosophy, derived from Descartes, sees the matter differently, and posits that what we know are not the things themselves, but the ideas we form about those things. The one school of thought is known as philosophical realism, the other as philosophical idealism.
Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, discovered a way of slipping philosophical realism through the back door of philosophical idealism by emphasizing direct analysis of immediate experience and avoiding explanatory theories and preconceptions. Phenomenology, in other words, offers a plausible complement to Thomism.
The young Wojtyla was especially affected by the work of Max Scheler, for a time a member of Husserl’s Göttingen Circle. Scheler vehemently espoused personalism, which maintains that the basic features of personality - consciousness, free self-determination and purposefulness - form the fundamental pattern of all reality. This outlook profoundly shaped the philosophical and political idea that the Pope was best known for: his insistence on the dignity and freedom of each individual person.
Wojtyla seems to have been particularly taken with Scheler’s concept of solidarity, which Scheler defined as “the unity of independent, spiritual and individual single persons ‘in’ an independent, spiritual and individual collective person.” In other words, individual freedom and dignity can emerge only through active participation in a vital community.
The word solidarity recurs again and again throughout Pope John Paul’s most famous encyclical, Evangelium vitae (The Gospel of Life), most notably in its best-known passage:
"The emergence of a culture that denies solidarity and in many cases takes the form of a veritable ‘culture of death’ [is] actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic and political currents that encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency."
Evangelium vitae encapsulates John Paul’s mature philosophy. Central to it is a critique of utilitarianism. John Paul repeatedly deplores the “excessive preoccupation with efficiency” and “the criterion… of efficiency, functionality and usefulness.” This focus on the qualitative, as opposed to the merely quantitative, has become central to the modern conception of what makes us human.
The Pope declared that, in a utilitarian culture, “the values of being are replaced by those of having.” He added that " ‘quality of life’… interpreted primarily or exclusively as economic efficiency, inordinate consumerism, physical beauty and pleasure [leads] to the neglect of the more profound dimensions - interpersonal, spiritual and religious - of existence."
The philosopher Pope
John Paul II studied thinkers who stressed dignity and freedom. He also criticized utilitarianism.
By Frank Wilson
**Inquirer Books Editor **
When the College of Cardinals elected Karol Wojtyla to the Petrine throne in 1978, it elevated to the papacy a man whose vocation was the priesthood but whose profession was philosophy. For 22 years - right up until his election - Wojtyla held the chair of ethics in the faculty of philosophy at the Catholic University of Lublin. He was a central figure in what came to be known as the Lublin Project, whose focus was philosophical anthropology (which has to do with the nature and destiny of man).
Together, the man and his philosophy would navigate the Bark of Peter into the 21st century.
Though best known now for devotional books such as Crossing the Threshold of Hope, in his native Poland the man who became Pope John Paul II was known as a philosopher, his reputation founded on books such as Person and Community, a collection of essays.
Wojtyla earned two doctorates in philosophy, the first from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (called the Angelicum) in Rome, the second from Krakow’s ancient Jagiellonian University, where Copernicus matriculated.
At the Angelicum, he learned Thomism, the philosophy formulated by St. Thomas Aquinas. At Jagiellonian, he was introduced to phenomenology. Together, Thomism and phenomenology would serve as the foundation of his thought.
Aquinas, like other medieval and ancient philosophers, believed that the ideas we form about things, based on our sense impressions of them, correspond in some measure to the actual nature of those things. In other words, our notions about reality are not purely subjective. Modern philosophy, derived from Descartes, sees the matter differently, and posits that what we know are not the things themselves, but the ideas we form about those things. The one school of thought is known as philosophical realism, the other as philosophical idealism.
Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, discovered a way of slipping philosophical realism through the back door of philosophical idealism by emphasizing direct analysis of immediate experience and avoiding explanatory theories and preconceptions. Phenomenology, in other words, offers a plausible complement to Thomism.
The young Wojtyla was especially affected by the work of Max Scheler, for a time a member of Husserl’s Göttingen Circle. Scheler vehemently espoused personalism, which maintains that the basic features of personality - consciousness, free self-determination and purposefulness - form the fundamental pattern of all reality. This outlook profoundly shaped the philosophical and political idea that the Pope was best known for: his insistence on the dignity and freedom of each individual person.
Wojtyla seems to have been particularly taken with Scheler’s concept of solidarity, which Scheler defined as “the unity of independent, spiritual and individual single persons ‘in’ an independent, spiritual and individual collective person.” In other words, individual freedom and dignity can emerge only through active participation in a vital community.
The word solidarity recurs again and again throughout Pope John Paul’s most famous encyclical, Evangelium vitae (The Gospel of Life), most notably in its best-known passage:
"The emergence of a culture that denies solidarity and in many cases takes the form of a veritable ‘culture of death’ [is] actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic and political currents that encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency."
Evangelium vitae encapsulates John Paul’s mature philosophy. Central to it is a critique of utilitarianism. John Paul repeatedly deplores the “excessive preoccupation with efficiency” and “the criterion… of efficiency, functionality and usefulness.” This focus on the qualitative, as opposed to the merely quantitative, has become central to the modern conception of what makes us human.
The Pope declared that, in a utilitarian culture, “the values of being are replaced by those of having.” He added that " ‘quality of life’… interpreted primarily or exclusively as economic efficiency, inordinate consumerism, physical beauty and pleasure [leads] to the neglect of the more profound dimensions - interpersonal, spiritual and religious - of existence."