Abstract
Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka does not consider the human person as the abstract set of features by means of which we “present” ourselves. She seeks his specificity in the so-called “network of functioning” or within the world of life in which it establishes the system of meaningfulness for its existence. Otherwise, the phenomenologist seeks it in the various types of interrelations, of meanings, corresponding “languages” (viz., the moral language, the religious language, the art language, etc.).
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Notes
A-T. Tymieniecka, logos and life, Book 1: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason, Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXIV (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), pp. 397–404. (Hereinafter: LL 1.)
See also her, “The Moral Sense. A Discourse on the Phenomenological Foundation of the Social World and Ethics,” Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XV (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1983), pp. 3–78 and
“The Moral Sense and the Human Person within the Fabric of Communal Life,” Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XX (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1986), pp. 3–100.
LL 1, p. 398; ‘The Moral Sense…”, op. cit., p. 15; “The Moral Sense and the Human Person …”, op. cit., p. 29.
LL 1., p. 398; “The Moral Sense…”, p. 15; “The Moral Sense and the Human Person…”, p. 29.
LL 1, p. 400; “The Moral Sense…”, p. 17; “The Moral Sense and the Human Person…”, p. 31. Tymieniecka has said, “the notion of ‘transaction’ as the knot gathering, in a most significant way, the vital function threads coming from the bio/psychic circuits on the one hand, and from the psychic/moral movements on the other” (“The Moral Sense and the Human Person…”, p. 99).
LL 1, p. 403; “The Moral Sense…”, p. 20; “The Moral Sense and the Human Person…”, p. 33. The terms of “the Moral Sense” and of “the Benevolent Sentiment” are creatively transformed by Professor Tymieniecka. But, they remain substantially in agreement with the British moralists of the eighteenth century.
Cf. Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, “The Moralists” in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Vol. 2 (Birmingham: 1773, 5th ed.) and his “An Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit” in the same.
Cf. also Francis Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy, Vol. 1 (London: 1755).
Cf. Blaise Pascal, Pensées in Pascal, Oeuvres complètes, Texte établi et annoté par Jacques Chavalier (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Librairie Gallimard, 1954), pp. 1081–1358.
LL 1, op. cit., p. 403; “The Moral Sense”; p. 20; “The Moral Sense and the Human Person…”, p. 33.
LL 1, p. 403; “The Moral Sense…”, p. 20; “The Moral Sense and the Human Person…”, p. 34.
LL 1, p. 404; “The Moral Sense…”, p. 21; “The Moral Sense and the Human Person…”, p. 34. I would like to pay attention to a lack of the notion of “the custodian” in Logos and Life, Book 1 as well as in “The Moral Sense”. However, this notion appears in “The Moral Sense and the Human Person…” (pp. 42, 44). According to the phenomenologist, “in the perspective of the human condition the human person emerges in its highest significance as being the custodian of the existential balance of everything-there-is-alive!” (p. 44). I believe that in Tymieniecka’s thought the notion of the “human person” plays the role of the point of reference for understanding the human being (Cf. my paper “The Notion of ‘the Person’ in A-T. Tymieniecka’s Thought,” Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXIV [Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993]). It is important to note, that she seeks to establish the most significant factor in making life “human”. In connection with this Tymieniecka remarks that “benevolence, which is to be identified neither with sensing, feeling, nor emotive experience is an experiential instance ‘sui generis’. Its qualitative complex of interfused and indissociable moments consists of a spontaneous striving, which pervades the already established functional state of the subject. It aims at transforming his appreciation of interaction — or interrelation in feelings, emotions, tendencies — with the Other, by suffusing it with concern for the vital importance of his self-interests. This felt acknowledgment — in a disinterested fashion — of the Other which bears a tendency to value his self-interest over our own, gives benevolence its crucial significance, concern for what we call the ‘good’ of the Other, our own good, or ‘the Good in general’“(“The Moral Sense…”, p. 26). We find that the so-called “subjective double reference context” in man’s source-experience by means of which the living being works out his way of self-interpretation in existence entails experiential or objective standards. Tymieniecka is right when she says, “they measure the role of the benevolent sense in the striving against the opposite tendency of vital self-interest. The meaningfulness of due/undue, honest/dishonest, just/unjust, fair/unfair, proper/improper, rightful/unrightful expresses the standards of balance in both: the objective reference to socially significant facts, on the one hand, and the subjective experience, on the other hand, as a double referential intentionality (the one of social interaction; the other of individual experience). They ultimately contain and transmit a moral quintessence; indeed the modalities of interaction within the social world do not only possess an instrumental significance, but they ultimately express and attain the human individual in his moral conscience” (Ibid., pp. 64–65). That is why the valuableness of the human subject does not lie in what he is, but in how he becomes what he is. Then, she may relate this moral conscience to the so-called “modal axis” of appreciation or valuation or judgement or decision, etc. Moreover, Tymieniecka brings it to our attention that “human rights express the existential significance of the Human Condition…. Their significance does not lie with the aim of improvement or “progress” of societal life: it lies with its virtual conditions — conditions such that man’s meaningfulness of existence may be actualized” (Ibid., p. 71). That is why the custodian appears as the existential balance within the human person. But, first of all, the recognition of the central place of the human condition within the unity-of-everything-there-is-alive allows man to estimate the life-situation. This also is the moral sense.
So, “the moral sense makes the human being custodian of everything there is alive” (A-T. Tymieniecka, “Phenomenology of Life and the New Critique of Reason: From Husserl’s Philosophy to the Phenomenology of Life and of the Human Condition,” Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXIX (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), p. 16)
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Migoǹ, M.P. (1996). Tymieniecka’s Conception of “The Moral Sense” in the Life of the Human Person. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Life in the Glory of Its Radiating Manifestations. Analecta Husserliana, vol 48. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1602-9_28
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