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Karol Wojtyla's Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change Series I, Culture and Value, Volume 35 General Editor George F. McLean Karol Wojtyla’s Philosophical Legacy Edited by Nancy Mardas Billias Agnes B. Curry George F. McLean The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Copyright © 2008 by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Box 261 Cardinal Station Washington, D.C. 20064 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Karol Wojtylas philosophical legacy / edited by Nancy Mardas��������� Billias, Agnes B. Curry, George F. McLean. p. cm. -- (Cultural heritage and contemporary change, series I, Culture and value ; v. 35) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. John Paul II, Pope, 1920-2005. 2. Catholic Church and philosophy. I. McLean, George F. II. ���������������Billias, Nancy. III. Curry, Agnes B. IV. Title. V. Series. BX1378.5.K37 2007 2007012240 199’.438--dc22 CIP ISBN-13: 978-1-56518-247-9 (pbk.) Table of Contents Introduction 1 Nancy Mardas Billias and Agnes B. Curry Prologue: Karol Wojtyla’s Mutual Enrichment 15 of the Philosophies of Being and Consciousness George F. McLean, O.M.I. Part I: Thomism, Phenomenology and Personalism Chapter 1. Philosophy and Anti-Philosophy: 33 The Ambiguous Legacy of John Paul II John J. Conley, S.J. Chapter 2. Pope John Paul II’s ‘Participation’ 45 in the ‘Neighborhood’ of Phenomenology Peter Costello Chapter 3. The Uniqueness of Persons in the Life and 61 Thought of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II, with Emphasis on His Indebtedness to Max Scheler Peter J. Colosi Chapter 4. The Travels of Pope John Paul II: 101 A Phenomenology of Place John E. Allard, O.P. Chapter 5. Pope John Paul II and the Natural Law 111 Paul Kucharski Chapter 6. Dives in Misericordia: 125 The Pivotal Significance of a Forgotten Encyclical Richard H. Bulzacchelli Part II: Social Philosophy Chapter 7. Karol Wojtyła’s Notion of the Irreducible in 165 Man and the Quest for a Just World Order Hans Köchler iv Table of Contents Chapter 8. John Paul II: On the Solidarity of Praxis in 183 His Political Philosophy John C. Carney Chapter 9. The Subjective Dimension of Human Work: 199 The Conversion of the Acting Person in Laborem Exercens Deborah Savage Chapter 10. Person, Encounter, Communion: 221 The Legacy and Vision of Pope John Paul Stephen M. Matuszak Part III: On the Metaphysical Question: What Is a Human Being? Chapter 11. Action at the Moral Core of Personhood: 243 Transcendence, Self-Determination and Integration in the Anthropology of John Paul II Thomas Ryba Chapter 12. Edith Stein and John Paul II on Women 265 Sarah Borden Sharkey Chapter 13. A Mimetic Reading of Veritatis Splendor 277 Tyler Graham Chapter 14. On the “Proper Weight of a Man”: 297 Re-Examining the Poetic Foundations of Wojtyla’s Theory of Participation Joseph Rice Contributors 325 Index 329 Introduction In August 2005 the World Phenomenology Institute held its 54th meeting in Nijmegen, Holland. Scholars from around the world met to discuss the problems of the day from a phenomenological standpoint. The theme of the conference was “Phenomenology of Life: From the Animal Soul to the Human Mind – The Sensible, Sentient, Felt, Intellective.” One evening, after a long day of thought-provoking papers, several of us were musing on the history of the Institute. Some who had been members for decades brought to mind the heady days of the 1970s, when the speakers had included such philosophical and theological luminaries as Hans Georg Gadamer, Emmanuel Levinas, and Paul Ricoeur. “And,” someone mentioned, “don’t forget John Paul II.” Karol Wojtyla never attended an Institute session – he had been scheduled to do so, but was precluded from attending by his elevation to the College of Cardinals. Nevertheless, he was well represented: the first (and to this date only) English translation of his doctoral dissertation – The Acting Person – was published by the Institute in 1979 as volume 10 of the Analecta Husserliana. This raised the question: What might Wojtyla have continued to contribute to phenomenology in particular, and philosophy in general, had he not been elected Pope? What might his impact have been on our field? What, really, had been his place in the philosophical world? And what streams of phenomenological thinking might we discern in the writings of this philosopher-turned-pope? That was the genesis of the present volume. A wide range of scholars were invited to the conference – from philosophy, theology, Catholic studies, and literature – people who were intimately knowledgeable with the thought of Wojtyla prior to his election as well as people who had no knowledge of his phenomenological background, but rather knew him primarily through his encyclicals. We were fortunate to have two keynote speakers who had known Wojtyla personally, both before and after he became John Paul II. As you will read in the following essays, Hans Köchler had extensive correspondence with Cardinal Wojtyla prior to commenting on a paper of his at a gathering of the World Phenomenology Institute in Fribourg, Switzerland in 1974. Their collaboration on philosophical matters continued for a further five years, until Wojtyla’s election as pope. And Fr. George McLean, whose gracious guidance and support has made this volume possible, was a close friend and co-worker of Wojtyla. In a sign of the richness, as well as the difficulty, of assessing the relation between diverse philosophical streams running through the Pope’s work, it is interesting to note that Professors Köchler and McLean offer quite divergent readings of his key philosophical commitments. The conference from which these papers were collected was entitled “The Philosophical Legacy of Karol Wojtyla.” It took place from March 21 – 23, 2006 under the auspices of Saint Joseph College, West Hartford, 2 Nancy Mardas Billias and Agnes B. Curry Connecticut. Financial assistance was received from the Mary Munger Fund of Saint Joseph College. Mary Munger was a member of the first graduating class of Saint Joseph College, in 1939. She led an illustrious career in engineering and aeronautical acoustics, a pioneering woman in a primarily male profession. As a result of one of her many generous bequests to her alma mater, each year, the philosophy department is able to host a speaker on ethical issues. The conference on Karol Wojtyla was also underwritten by the Humanities Division of Saint Joseph College, which made available to us funds from a pre-existing National Endowment for the Humanities grant. We are grateful to our Humanities colleagues, in particular Division Chairs Wayne Steely and Susan Ahern, and past Chair Judith Perkins, who originally procured the grant. We also wish to thank our colleague Ewa Callahan for her gracious assistance to us in matters large and small during the crucial days just before the conference, and her correction of a Polish text that became scrambled en route to publication. The papers in the present volume have been organized to reflect some of the conversations that ensued during the conference. It was somewhat challenging to group the papers, as the themes overlapped significantly. The question of freedom, for example, runs through all three groupings. Ultimately, the current structure emerged as most faithful to the spirit of the gathering. That spirit, as it was envisioned and as it took its own form through the two days of shared discussion, worship and meals, was one of conviviality, flexibility and shared purpose. We worked together to foster headway on the questions and sharpen each other’s thinking. Notably, too, there was an atmosphere of humility and appreciation for the vastness of the horizons and heart of Pope John Paul II, and the difficulty of the questions raised by his thought. It is in this same spirit that we collectively offer the papers – as pointers to further conversation on matters beyond the scope of each one of us. Each section begins with a contribution by one of the keynote speakers. In the first section, divergent perspectives can be noted on the relationship between the two key influences on Wojtyla’s philosophical thought: Thomism, developed since the 13th century and offering a unified metaphysical purview stressing the common classification of all reality, including the human, under key categories; and phenomenology, a 20th century perspective stressing the open-endedness of reality, the uniqueness of human being and the centrality of questions of subjectivity. Each author in this collection offers a different interpretation of how these influences might or should be understood together. The keynote speech for this section was delivered by George McLean, who worked with Pope John Paul II on a variety of scholarly projects. McLean makes an architectural analysis of Wojtyla’s philosophical writing through the lens of Heidegger’s understanding of such key concepts as being, subjectivity, and consciousness. Rather than seeing Wojtyla simplistically as neo-Scholastic or Platonic-Christian, McLean explores other important factors that contributed significantly to the texture ofWojtyla’s thought – most notably, the Existential movement of the 1950s and 60s, and the historical Introduction backdrop of Marxism and the Second Vatican Council. McLean encourages us to situate Wojtyla’s thought in the development of the notions of esse and participation by Cornelio Fabro at the time, as well as by the socio-historical movements of the period through which Wojtyla lived. For McLean, the truth of the profound and penetrating insights of Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas was enriched for Wojtyla by means of the phenomenological philosophy of consciousness. Wojtyla’s greatest contribution to the philosophical understanding of the human person was to bring these two ways of thinking together, to show how they complemented and completed one another. Of course, for Wojtyla, this also meant attempting to reconcile the metaphysical split between subjectivity and objectivity.
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