The ethics and philosophical anthropology of Karol Wojtyla

Given the a priori conditions of our anthropological concrete totality disclosed through the hermeneutic of action and given the demands of critical philosophy and our concrete realities today, how ought we to act? What universal moral demands arise from the dynamics of the human person? Karol Wojtyla argues that ethical and moral problems are fundamentally anthropological problems. The relationship between ethics and philosophical anthropology is mostly assumed rather than critically confronted. Wojtyla argues that the crisis of the modern world is the result of defective concepts of the human person. Especially with the state of division and confusion in ethics, Wojtyla argues for a retrieval of a comprehensive view of the human person. This is accomplished through a dialectical philosophy of action that reveals the person as a concrete totality. Action provides a multidimensional snapshot of the dynamic interactions of the various differentiated categories within the teleological human totality, as well as the dynamic relationship between the individual and his sociality. The dialectical nature of the hermeneutic of action discloses its interconnected and multi-layered dynamism. Furthermore, this thesis will examine and locate Wojtyla's unpublished ethical writings in light of his overall ethics and philosophical anthropology. After the introduction, the second and third chapters will investigate Wojtyla's establishment of the proper foundation for ethics. Wojtyla's Lectures from Lublin reveals his larger ethical concerns and critically engages Scheler, Kant and Thomas. He concludes by showing the experiential totality of the ethical experience has essentially the structure of an act. Chapter four and five discusses the philosophical anthropology of The Acting Person that systematically exfoliates the person in his concrete totality through the hermeneutic of action. Chapter six discloses Wojtyla's resulting personalistic ethics. Chapter seven discusses Wojtyla's personalistic ethics in the context of the papal encyclicals as Pope John Paul II. The purpose is to show continuity with his earlier philosophical anthropology and ethics. The final chapter will be a critique of Wojtyla's philosophical anthropology and ethics using the category of a dialectical anthropology of a concrete totality.