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Originally entitled Osoba i Czyn and published in Poland in 1969, TheActing Person is the official English translation and has been thoroughly edited and revised with the collaboration of the author.
The book stresses that Man must ceaselessly unravel his mysteries and strive for a new and more mature expression of his nature. The author sees this expression as an emphasis on the significance of the individual living in community and on the person in the process of performing an action. The author states in his preface that he has tried to face the major issues concerning life, nature, and the existence of Man directly as they present themselves to Man in his struggles to survive while maintaining the dignity of a human being, but who is torn apart between his all too limited condition and his highest aspirations to set himself free.
The author hopes that his book "contributes to this disentangling of the conflicting issues facing Man, which are crucial for Man's own clarification of his existence and direction of his conduct".
The author's analysis of the human being is a dynamic counter to the materialistic and positivistic tendencies in various schools of modern philosophy. Ever since Descartes, the knowledge of Man and his world has been identified through cognition. This book is a reversal of the post-Cartesian attitude toward Man in that it characterises him as the person in action.
Audience: The Acting Person will be of great interest to philosophers, anthropologists, and scholars specializing in phenomenology. It will also be of deep concern to theologians, priests, seminarians, and members of religious orders who wish to gain an insight into Pope John Paul II's philosophy of life.
List of contents
1. The Experience of Man.- 2. Cognition of the Person Rests on the Experience of Man.- 3. The Stages of Comprehending and the Lines of Interpretation.- 4. The Conception of Person and Action to Be Presented in This Study.- One: Consciousness and Efficacy.- One / The Acting Person in the Aspect of Consciousness.- Two / An Analysis of Efficacy in the Light of Human Dynamism.- Two: The Transcendence of the Person in the Action.- Three / The Personal Structure of Self-Determination.- Four / Self-Determination and Fulfillment.- Three: The Integration of the Person in the Action.- Five / Integration and the Soma.- Six / Personal Integration and the Psyche.- Four: Participation.- Seven / Intersubjectivity By Participation.- Postscript.- Notes.- Appendix: the unrevised translation of Chapter seven.- Index of names.- Analytical table of contents.
About the author
Karol Wojtyla, geb. 18. Mai 1920 in Wadowice, Polen;1948 promoviert zum Doktor der Philosophie§1949 promoviert zum Doktor der Theologie; 1953 Professor für Moraltheologie in Krakau; 1954 Lehrauftrag für Philosophie und Sozialethik an der Katholischen Universität von Lublin; 1955 Habilitation in Lublin§1958 Weihbischof in Krakau; 1964 Erzbischof von Krakau, seit 1967 als Kardinal; Okt 1978 Wahl zum Papst Johannes Paul II. 2. April 2005
Report
From the Reviews: "The Acting Person represents a major effort to rethink the human reality in the face of the many frozen assumptions which dominate contemporary thought."
(Professor Benjamin Schwartz, Harvard University)
"This powerful phenomenological study will have lasting impact on those concerned with the contemporary conception of Man."
(Professor Joseph Kockelmans, Pennsylvania State University)
"A masterly critical edition ... its publication is an historical event"
(Professor Kamil Dziewanowski, Boson State University)
