In this paper, I wish not only to discuss a question that seems to me to be crucial for the concept of the human person and for the creative continuation of St. Thomas' thought in this area in relation to different schools of contemporary thought, especially phenomenology, but also to inform you of the state of this question among Catholic philosophers in Poland today. My point of departure here will be a discussion that arose following the publication of my book The Acting Person. This discussion began with a meeting of philosophy professors at the Catholic University of Lublin in December 1970; it continued on, however, through a number of written responses (about twenty in all), which are to be published in the 1973 volume of Analecta Cracoviensia. Taking part in this discussion were representatives of several Catholic scholarly circles, principally from Lublin, Warsaw, and Krakow, reflecting somewhat different philosophical orientations. The discussion placed a heavy emphasis on the methodological side of the question, although there was no lack of comments on the theory of the person itself, and even on the application of this theory to contemporary ministry, pedagogy, and psychiatry. Simplifying the matter somewhat, I would say that the philosophers from Lublin were chiefly interested in the methodological precision of my presentation of St. Thomas' thought, in this case in my attempt to translate this thought into contemporary language, while those from Krakow were more interested in the possibility itself of a contemporary interpretation of St. Thomas' thought by means of a properly understood phenomenology. (My book The Acting Person also elicited some interest among Marxist writers, who have commented on it from time to time, although they did not take part in the discussion mentioned above.)

The preceding information may also serve as a certain introduction to the problem I wish to present here, for the problem of the personal structure of self-determination lies at the very heart of my study The Acting Person. In presenting this problem here, I also wish at the outset to emphasize its connection with my native Polish philosophical milieu, with its interests and creative inquiries, which are distinctly connected with overall trends in European thought. While participating in those trends, Polish scholarship has its own native profile, which from time to time makes itself known on the wider "market" of philosophical productivity (as was true, for example, of the work of the logicians of the Lwow-Warsaw School and of the Krakow phenomenologist Roman Ingarden), but more often in some way daily shapes Polish intellectual culture at home.

II

With these introductory remarks, I will get straight to the topic. In order to grasp the personal structure of self-determination, we must start from the experience of the human being. This experience obviously cannot be understood phenomenalistically, for such an understanding presupposes a theory of cognition that accepts an inner division between the functions of the senses and the intellect and also between sensory and intellectual contents. While not denying that these functions and their respective contents differ, I must insist that human cognition forms an organic (not just an organizational) whole. Experience is always the first and most basic stage of human cognition, and this experience, in keeping with the dual structure of the cognizing subject, contains not only a sensory but also an intellectual element. For this reason, one could say that human experience is already always a kind of understanding. It is thus also the origin of the whole process of understanding, which develops in ways proper to itself, but always in relation to this first stage, namely, experience. Otherwise I see no possibility of a consistent realism in philosophy and science. The image of the world that we produce in them could then be basically at odds with reality.

This also applies to the human being as the object of philosophical anthropology. The basis for understanding the human being must be sought in experience—in experience that is complete and comprehensive and free of all systemic a priories. The point of departure for an analysis of the personal structure of self-determination is the kind of experience of human action that includes the lived experience of moral good and evil as an essential and especially important element; this experience can be separately defined as the experience of morality. These two experiences—the experience of the human being and the experience of morality—can really never be completely separated, although we can, in the context of the overall process of reflection, focus more on one or the other. In the case of the former, philosophical reflection will lead us in the direction of anthropology; in the case of the latter, in the direction of ethics.

The experience of human action refers to the lived experience of the fact "I act." This fact is in each instance completely original, unique, and unrepeatable. And yet all facts of the type "I act" have a certain similarity both in the lived experience of the same person and in intersubjective dimensions. The lived experience of the fact "I act" differs from all facts that merely "happen" in a personal subject. This clear difference between something that "happens" in the subject and an "activity" or action of the subject allows us, in turn, to identify an element in the comprehensive experience of the human being that decisively distinguishes the activity or action of a person from all that merely happens in the person. I define this element as self-determination.

This first definition of self-determination in the experience of human action involves a sense of efficacy on the part of the personal self: "I act" means "I am the efficient cause" of my action and of my self-actualization as a subject, which is not the case when something merely "happens" in me, for then I do not experience the efficacy of my personal self. My sense of efficacy as an acting subject in relation to my activity is intimately connected with a sense of responsibility for that activity; the latter refers mainly to the axiological and ethical content of the act. All of this in some way enters organically into the experience of self-determination, although it is disclosed in this experience in varying degrees, depending to some extent on the personal maturity of the action. The greater this maturity, the more vividly I experience self-determination. And the more vividly I experience self-determination, the more pronounced in my experience and awareness become my efficacy and responsibility.

Self-determination as a property of human action that comes to light in experience directs the attention of one who analyzes such action to the will. The will is the person's power of the self-determination. This becomes evident upon closer examination of the person's acts, both the simple act of will, "I will," and the complex act, or the process of will (as it is called by psychologists such as Ach, Michotte, and, in Poland, Dybowski). Self-determination manifests itself both in elementary willing ("I will") and in choice and decision, which arise from an awareness of values, a weighing of motives, and also not infrequently a struggle and conflict of motives within an individual. If one compares the works of the above psychologists with St. Thomas' view of the complex and mature act of will, one will detect a rather significant convergence in their positions.

At the moment, however, I am not concerned with a comparative analysis of the act of will. When I say that the will is the power of self-determination, I do not have in mind the will all alone, in some sort of methodical isolation intended to disclose the will's own dynamism. Rather, I necessarily have in mind here the whole person. Self-determination takes place through acts of will, through this central power of the human soul. And yet self-determination is not identical with these acts in any of their forms, since it is a property of the person as such. Although my whole discussion here takes place on the phenomenological plane of experience, still, in the light of this discussion, St. Thomas' distinction between substance and accident and between the soul and its powers (in this case, the will), becomes especially apparent. My analysis, however brief, shows that self-determination is a property of the person, who, as the familiar definition says, is a naturae rationalis individua substantia. This property is realized through the will, which is an accident. Self-determination—or, in other words, freedom—is not limited to the accidental dimension, but belongs to the substantial dimension of the person: it is the person's freedom, and not just the will's freedom, although it is undeniably the person's freedom through the will.

III

In connection with my observation that the self-determination given in the complete experience of the human being directs one's analysis toward the act of will, I should also note that an analysis that conceives this reality in the phenomenological categories of intentional act is inadequate. To conceive the wil1 merely as a "wanting" that is directed toward a corresponding object (i.e., toward a va1ue that is a1so an end) does not fu11y explain its dynamism. Such an analysis points to only one aspect of the will and one aspect of the transcendence proper to it. An act of wil1 is an act of a subject directed toward an object; more precisely, it is an act of a facu1ty of the subject directed toward a va1ue that is willed as an end and that is also, therefore, an object of endeavor. Such an active directing (which, it should be noted, distinguishes an act of will from the various "wantings" or "wishings" that arise in the subject) also implies the transcendence of this subject toward the value and end: the subject actively "goes out" beyond itself toward this value. This transcendence may be described as horizontal. In psychology, the analysis of the act of will seems to be somehow exhausted in the aspect of intentionality and "horizontal" transcendence. This aspect is often emphasized in a somewhat one-sided way in the presentation of St. Thomas' teaching on the act of will.

I believe, however, that, with the aid of the comprehensive experience of the human being and human action, we can more fully apprehend the dynamism of the will and in this way come closer to the complete view handed down by St. Thomas. It is precisely the reality of self-determination that brings this to light. Self-determination reveals that what takes place in an act of will is not just an active directing of the subject toward a value. Something more takes place as well: when I am directed by an act of will toward a particular value, I myself not only determine this directing, but through it I simultaneously determine myself as well. The concept of self-determination involves more than just the concept of efficacy: I am not only the efficient cause of my acts, but through them I am also in some sense the "creator of myself." Action accompanies becoming; moreover, action is organically linked to becoming. Self-determination, therefore, and not just the efficacy of the personal self, explains the reality of moral values: it explains the reality that by my actions I become "good" or "bad," and that then I am also "good" or "bad" as a human being—as St. Thomas so eminently perceived. If we were to stop at an analysis of the will as an intentional act, acknowledging only its horizontal transcendence, then this realism of moral values, this good and evil in the human being, would be completely inexplicable.

We must, therefore, acknowledge the personal structure of self-determination. This self-determination, which expresses itself in particular willings, transcends the pure intentionality of those willings (regardless of whether they are simple willings or complex processes of the will). Intentionality points as though outward—toward an object, which, by being a value, attracts the will to itself. Self-determination, on the other hand, points as though inward—toward the subject, which, by willing this value, by choosing it, simultaneously defines itself as a value: the subject becomes "good" or "bad." Human beings not only determine their own activity but also determine themselves in terms of a most essential quality. Self-determination thus corresponds to the becoming of a human being as a human being. Through self-determination, the human being becomes increasingly more of a "someone" in the ethical sense, although in the ontological sense the human being is a "someone" from the very beginning. I might add here that the pronoun "someone" as the antonym of the pronoun "something" very succinctly captures the uniquely personal character of the human being.

The experience of self-determination—with its basically phenomenological character—would seem to lead us to an increasingly deeper understanding of the reality that St. Thomas defined as actus humanus or, alternately, as voluntarium. If we acknowledge, as Thomas did, the full reaiity of moral value in the subject "human being," we must also acknowledge that this subject, in the act of self-determination, becomes a particular object. Self-determination objectifies the acting subject in the subject's own activity. This objectification of the person is in no sense a "reification" of the person: I cannot become a thing for myself, although I myself am the first and most basic object that I determine. In this determination of myself, my subjectivity is revealed in its deepest possibilities, in the essential qualifications that testify to what is both human (humanum) and personal.

By revealing that I am an object of my own subject, self-determination also brings to light the particular composition that is proper to me as a person. St. Thomas, along with the whole subsequent tradition of Christian thought, emphasizes that persona est sui iuris et alteri incommunicabilis. In the light of the experience of the human being, a key element of which is self-determination, the cogency of these traditional descriptions is immediately apparent. Self-determination in some sense points to self-possession and self-governance as the structure proper to a person. If I determine myself, I must possess myself and govern myself. These realities mutually explain one another because they also mutually imply one another. Each of them reveals the unique composition that is proper to a human being as a person. (The Thomistic adage also emphasizes that we are dealing here with a person: persona est sui iuris et alteri incommunicabilis.) This is not the metaphysical composition of body and soul (the composition of prime matter and substantial form) proper to the human being as a being, but a more "phenomenological" composition. In phenomenological experience, I appear as someone who possesses myself and who is simultaneously possessed by myself. I also appear as someone who governs myself and who is simultaneously governed by myself. Both the one and the other are revealed by self-determination; they are implied by self-determination and also enrich its content. Through self-possession and self-governance, the personal structure of self-determination comes to light in its whole proper fullness.

In determining myself—and this takes place through an act of will—I become aware and also testify to others that I possess myself and govern myself. In this way, my acts give me a unique insight into myself as a person. By virtue of self-determination, I experience in the relatively most immediate way that I am a person. Of course, the path from this experience to an understanding that would qualify as a complete theory of the person must lead through metaphysical analysis. Still, experience is the indispensable beginning of this path, and the lived experience of self-determination seems to be the nucleus of this beginning. In any case, if a full affirmation of the personal value of human acts requires a theory of the person as its basis, the construction of this theory seems impossible without an analytic insight into the dynamic reality of action, and above all into the structure of the self-determination essential for action, a structure that from the very beginning presents itself in some sense as a personal structure.

IV

In Vatican II's Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, we read that "the human being, who is the only creature on earth that God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself or herself except through a disinterested gift of himself or herself" (24). The document of the last Council seems in these words to sum up the age-old traditions and inquiries of Christian anthropology, for which divine revelation became a liberating light. The anthropology of St. Thomas Aquinas is deeply rooted in these traditions, while also being open to all the achievements of human thought that in various ways supplement the Thomistic view of the person and confirm its realistic character. The words of Vatican II cited above seem chiefly to accentuate the axiological aspect, speaking of the person as a being of special intrinsic worth, who is, therefore, specially qualified to make a gift of self. Beneath this axiological aspect, however, we can easily discern a deeper, ontological aspect. The ontology of the person suggested by this text seems again to coincide closely with the experience discussed above. In other words, if we wish to accentuate fully the truth concerning the human person brought out by Gaudium et Spes, we must once again look to the personal structure of self-determination.

As I said earlier, in the experience of self-determination the human person stands revealed before us as a distinctive structure of self-possession and self-governance. Neither the one nor the other, however, implies being closed in on oneself. On the contrary, both self-possession and self-governance imply a special disposition to make a "gift of oneself," and this a "disinterested" gift. Only if one possesses oneself can one give oneself and do this in a disinterested way. And only if one governs oneself can one make a gift of oneself, and this again a disinterested gift. The problematic of disinterestedness certainly deserves a separate analysis, which it is not my intention to present here. An understanding of the person in categories of gift, which the teaching of Vatican II reemphasizes, seems to reach even more deeply into those dimensions brought to light by the foregoing analysis. Such an understanding seems to disclose even more fully the personal structure of self-determination.

Only if one can determine oneself—as I attempted to show earlier—can one also become a gift for others. The Council's statement that "the human being...cannot fully find himself or herself except through a disinterested gift of himself or herself" allows us to conclude that it is precisely when one becomes a gift for others that one most fully becomes oneself. This "law of the gift," if it may be so designated, is inscribed deep within the dynamic structure of the person. The text of Vatican II certainly draws its inspiration from revelation, in the light of which it paints this portrait of the human being as a person. One could say that this is a portrait in which the person is depicted as a being willed by God "for itself" and, at the same time, as a being turned "toward" others. This relational portrait of the person, however, necessarily presupposes the immanent (and indirectly "substantial") portrait that unfolds before us from an analysis of the personal structure of self-determination.

As far as this last issue is concerned, I shall have to confine myself here to merely drawing attention to it. In concluding this examination of the personal structure of self-determination, I should add that it was necessarily brief and left out many points that deserve a more extensive analysis (which I present in my book The Acting Person, mentioned at the beginning). I have attempted, however, even in this short presentation, to stress the very real need for a confrontation of the metaphysical view of the person that we find in St. Thomas and in the traditions of Thomistic philosophy with the comprehensive experience of the human being. Such a confrontation will throw more light on the cognitive sources from which the Angelic Doctor derived his metaphysical view. The full richness of those sources will then become visible. At the same time, perhaps we will better be able to perceive points of possible convergence with contemporary thought, as well as points of irrevocable divergence from it in the interests of the truth about reality.

—This paper was presented by then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyla at an international conference on St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome and Naples, 17-24 April 1974. It can be found in the book “Person and Community: Selected Essays” by Karol Wojtyla, published as part of a series “Catholic Thought from Lublin” by Peter Lang.

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