Struggling with the Reality of the Person and Its Interpretation

Abstract

This article is about the method of philosophizing employed by Karol Wojtyła. He worked out his main ideas concerning the human person within a Thomistic framework, but at the same time made extensive use of the method typical of phenomenology. The article sets out to demonstrate that these two approaches do not exclude each other, but can instead be considered complementary. Phenomenology, in the version employed by Wojtyła, aims to do justice to the experience of the person, and its analysis helps us understand the richness of the latter. At the same time, all of the phenomena that pertain to the person demand further explanation, and this can be supplied by Thomistic metaphysics. The method devised by Wojtyła can be expressed in the formula “from phenomenon to foundation.”