The Dialectical Conception of Self-Determination

Abstract

In his book The Acting Person (Osoba i czyn), as well as in his lecture ‘The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,’ Cardinal Karol Wojtyła arrived at a systematical conception of human acting in society by starting from a genuine phenomenological viewpoint (in the line also of Thomistic tradition). In his work the idea of ‘self-determination’ takes on a fundamentally dialectic character as a consequence of differentiated view concerning the intentionality of the act of self-realization. The classical idea of ‘personalism’ here assumed a special, distinct meaning.