Karol Wojtyla
The Acting Person

CHAPTER FOUR: SELF-DETERMINATION AND FULFILLMENT

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7

END NOTES

THE PERFORMING AN ACTION BRINGS PERSONAL FULFILLMENT

The Crucial Significance of Fulfillment in Action

When we assert that the performance of an action brings fulfillment and then look at the content of this assertion, we can glimpse the wealth of meanings it carries and also notice the bearing it has on our previous discussion of the person's transcendence in the doing of an action. It is this fulfillment in performing an action, the performer's fulfillment of himself, that we must now consider.

All the essential problems considered in this study seem to be focused and condensed in the simple assertion of fulfillment in an action. Indeed, we are here concerned with the person and the action not as two separate and self-sufficient entities but - and we have emphasized this from the start - as a single, deeply cohesive reality. Insofar as this cohesion has real existence, it must be reflected in comprehension or interpretation. If so, then undoubtedly the existential and essential cohesion of the person and the action is best and most adequately expressed by the fulfillment resulting from performance of an action. This is the reason why it is necessary to include this fact in the philosophical interpretation of the acting person. We shall consider it here as a continuation of our earlier analysis of the personal structure of self-determination, and supplement it with an analysis of this structure from the point of view of the fulfillment that in the action corresponds to self-determination, which we already know to be deeply rooted in the dynamic structure of the person.

The Inner and Intransitive Effects of an Action

The fact that every performance of an action means fulfillment makes "to fulfill" almost synonymous with "to perform." This is why fulfillment seems to be the best homologue of the term "act," indicating the fullness which corresponds to a definite possibility or potentiality. In our approach we are looking for what could be an adequate manner of expressing the person as the subject and the agent of an action and at the same time of expressing an action as the authentic act of a person. When we speak of "performing an action" we see the person as the subject and the agent while the action itself appears as a consequence of the efficacy of the agent. This consequence is external with regard to the person, but it is also internal to, or immanent in, the person. Moreover, it is both transitive and intransitive with regard to the person.⁵¹ In either case it is most strictly connected with the will, which we already saw in the preceding chapter to consist in both self-determination and intentionality. Self-determination is something more basic for the will, and it is to it that the fundamental significance of freedom is related. Intentionality, on the other hand, is in a way secondary to and integrated by self-determination. It is this intentionality that reveals the expanded significance of freedom.

Self-Fulfillment in Action Is Presupposed in Morality

It seems necessary to stress at this stage in our discussion that we are here primarily, if not exclusively, concerned with action as the inner and intransitive consequence of a person's efficacy. In taking this standpoint we intend to analyze the whole dynamism of the fulfillment which comes from performing an action, beginning with the personal structure of self-determination. What was said previously about the dynamism of the will explains why actions which are the effect of the person's efficacy, namely those actions "proceeding" from actual existing, have simultaneously the traits of outerness and innerness, of transitiveness and intransitiveness; for every action contains within itself an intentional orientation; each action is directed toward definite objects or sets of objects, and is aimed outward and beyond itself. On the other hand, because of self-determination, an action reaches and penetrates into the subject, into the ego, which is its primary and principal object. Parallel with this there comes the transitiveness and intransitiveness of the human action.

Every action has in some respects the existential status of a transitory reality, which has a beginning and an end in either of its dimensions, the external and the internal. The latter of these dimensions is of special interest for us inasmuch as we are primarily concerned with the relation itself between the action and the person rather than with the effect man's activities have on the outer world. In the inner dimension of the person, human action is at once both transitory and relatively lasting, inasmuch as its effects, which are to be viewed in relation to efficacy and self-determination, that is to say, to the person's engagement in freedom, last longer than the action itself. The engagement in freedom is objectified - because of its lastingly repetitive effects, and conformably to the structure of self-determination - in the person and not only in the action, which is the transitive effect. It is in the modality of morality that this objectification becomes clearly apparent, when through an action that is either morally good or morally bad, man, as the person, himself becomes either morally good or morally evil.

In this way we begin to glimpse the proper meaning of the assertion that "to perform the action brings fulfillment." Neither performing nor fulfillment is identifiable with efficacy. The performing of an action, through the fulfillment it brings, is coordinate with self-determination. It runs parallel to self-determination but as if it were directed in the opposite sense; for being the performer of an action man also fulfills himself in it. To fulfill oneself means to actualize, and in a way to bring to the proper fullness, that structure in man which is characteristic for him because of his personality and also because of his being somebody and not merely something; it is the structure of self-governance and self-possession. Implied in the intentionality of willing and acting, in man's reacting outside of himself toward objects that he is presented with as different goods - and thus values - there is his simultaneous moving back into his ego, the closest and the most essential object of self-determination. This structure serves as the basis of morality - or of moral value as an existential reality - and it is owing to it that morality as a modality of conduct participates in the innerness of man and achieves a measure of durability in him. It is connected with the intransitiveness of actions but it also in a special manner itself constitutes the intransitiveness. Human actions once performed do not vanish without trace: they leave their moral value, which constitutes an objective reality intrinsically cohesive with the person, and thus a reality also profoundly subjective. Being a person man is "somebody" and being somebody he may be either good or bad.

Morality as the modality of conduct is to a certain extent extricable from the interwoven existential whole that it forms together with the person. In a way this distinction becomes unavoidable because the whole is too intricate to admit of an evenly balanced interpretation simultaneously of the person-action structure and of morality, not to mention the whole normative sphere that includes the problems belonging to ethics. This is why the usual method of ethics is to treat the existential moral reality more or less separately, that is, to bracket it. Nevertheless, as an existential reality morality is always strictly connected with man as a person. Its vital roots grow out of the person. Indeed, it has no existence apart from man's performance of actions and his fulfillment through actions. This fulfillment is equivalent to the implementation of self-governance and self-possession as the result of self-determination. It is only in such a dynamic cycle that morality can be concretized in the actual performance of action, as, so to speak, into an "actual reality." In its axiological nature morality means the division between, or even the contraposition of, good and evil - a specific differentiation of moral values - with respect to man; from this point of view it is studied by philosophy and presupposed in ethics. But it shows also an ontological status, namely, an existential reality, the reality of fulfillment in an action, that is appropriate solely to the person. In its axiological nature morality is anchored and rooted in the ontological reality - but at the same time it inversely unfolds its ontological reality and helps to understand it. This is precisely the reason why the experience of moral features of action and of the person are so strongly emphasized in this study.

2. THE RELIANCE OF SELF-FULFILLMENT ON THE CONSCIENCE

The Moral Dimension of the Person's Fulfillment in an Action

We may see at present how action - as well as the fulfillment it bnngs about - is connected not only with the outer and transitive effect of acting but also with its inner intransitive effect, and has a fundamental significance for the interpretation of the person. It also simultaneously opens an approach to an interpretation of the conscience, which again only seems possible on the assumption that to act stays in a necessary dynamic relation to the fulfillment of the person in the action. There seems to be no other possible road to an understanding of that specific progress expressing the vitality of the conscience, of its purely personalistic sense. Obviously it does not consist in a more or less abstract dialectic of the moral values of good and evil but reaches with its roots to the ontological status of the personal fulfillment of the ego in the action. Man fulfills himself as the person, as "somebody," and as such he may become either good or bad, which means that he may or may not achieve self-fulfillment.

With this contraposition we come to view morality as an "axiological reality"; for in this perspective existentially every action is some kind of fulfillment of the person. Axiologically, however, this fulfillment is reached only through the good, while moral evil leads or amounts to, so to speak, nonfulfillment. This approach appears somewhat convergent with the view that all evil, including moral evil, is a defect. The defect occurs in the moral order and thus in the axiological order from which it is instilled into the existential-ontological order; for the significance of moral values for the person is such that the true fulfillment of the person is accomplished by the positive moral virtuality of the action and not by the mere performance of the action itself. Morally evil virtualities of action, on the other hand, lead to nonfulfillment even though the person is acting. When performing an action the person fulfills himself also from the ontological point of view. Thus we come to the conclusion that the deepest significance with respect to the real existence of morality can be grasped as man's fulfillment, whereas his allegiance to evil means in fact nonfulfillment.

The Contingency of the Human Person as Revealed by Self-Fulfillment

In the ontological perspective man's fulfillment of himself - which is achieved every time he acts and concretizes positive moral virtualities - shows us the human person to be a potential and not a fully actual being. If the human person were to be seen as a "pure' consciousness" constituted of a stream of acts, then there would be no possibility whatever of his actualization. It seems obvious, however, that the person, the action, and their dynamic union are more than merely an enactment of consciousness; indeed, they are a reality that exists also apart from consciousness. Since the person acts and fulfills himself in and through action, morality evidences a specific ontological transitoriness or contingency of the individual real being: man is a contingent being. Every being that must strive to attain its own fullness, and that is subjected to actualization, appears indeed to be contingent. This seems to be evidenced also, in a different way, by the modality of action as seen in its axiological status; the possibility of being good or being bad, that is to say, of fulfilling oneself through goodness or of nonfulfilling oneself, shows a special feature of the contingency of the person. The fact that the person can "be" either good or bad is of course the consequence of his freedom, and at the same time it reveals and establishes the existence of this freedom. It reveals, moreover, that the way this freedom is used may be right but may also be wrong. Indeed, man is not unconditionally led to concretize the positive values of the moral good in his action; neither does human action as such contain positive moral virtualities. Thus he cannot be sure of his freedom. It is precisely in this conditionality and this uncertainty that the ethical aspect in the contingency of the person consists, and on it rests the significance of the consclence.

Action's Dependence on the Recognition of Moral Goodness as Revealed by the Conscience

It is also the conscience that reveals the dependence on a specific mode of "truth," as we express it in a colloquial way, inherent in the freedom of man. The dependence is, as we asserted earlier, the basis for the self-dependence of the person, that is to say, for freedom in the fundamental sense of autodetermination. Simultaneously this dependence serves as the basis for the person's transcendence in the action. The transcendence of the person in the action does not consist solely either in the ontological autonomy, or self-centered dependence on the ego. It includes also the indispensable and essential moment of reference to "truth," and it is this moment that ultimately determines freedom. For human freedom is not accomplished nor exercised in bypassing truth but, on the contrary, by the person's realization and surrender to truth. The dependence upon truth marks out the borderlines of the autonomy appropriate to the human person.

But, in addition, the human person has the "right" to freedom, not in the sense of unconditioned existential independence, but insofar as freedom is the core of a person's self-reliance that essentially relates to the surrender to "truth." It is this moral freedom that more than anything else constitutes the spiritual dynamism of the person. Simultaneously it also shows us the fulfilling as well as the nonfulfilling dynamism of the person. The criterion of division and contraposition is simply the truth that the person, as somebody equipped with spiritual dynamism, fulfills himself through reference to, and by concretization within himself of, a real good and not otherwise. The dividing line, the line of separation and contraposition between good as a positive moral value and evil as a negative moral "countervalue," is marked out by "truth," the unique type of truthfulness of the good of which man has the experience in his conscience. It is the dependence on this truth that constitutes the person in his transcendence with respect to the reality of his own existential conditions; thus the transcendence of freedom with respect to the various existential conditions passes into such a transcendence of morality itself.

The Person's Transcendence and its Relation to Truth, Good, Beauty

The notion of the "transcendence of the person" may be broadened and examined in relation to all the traditionally distinguished absolute exponents of values: "truth," "good," and "beauty." Man has access to them through knowledge, and in the wake of knowledge, of the mind, through the will and through action. In this approach the action serves to approach and crystallize the experience of truth, good, and beauty. It is in this perspective that action was often examined in traditional metaphysics. The approach to the problem by Platonic metaphysics is somewhat different from the Aristotelian approach; but for all the differences, some themes remain the common property of the different metaphysics and of the anthropologies constructed on their basis. The vision of the transcendence of the man-person that is formed through his relation to these absolute points of reference does not, however, lose anything of its significance, when reference is made to experience - in particular, to the experience of morality. For the transcendence of the person understood metaphysically is no abstract notion; the evidence of experience tells us that the spiritual life of man essentially refers to, and in its strivings vibrates with, the reverberations with the experientially innermost attempts to reach truth, goodness, and beauty. We may thus safely speak of the role of these absolute modes of values that accompany the experience of the personal transcendence.

The Conscience as the Person's Inner Normative Reality

In this study reference is primarily made to only one dimension and one significance of the person's transcendence in the action, namely, the transcendence of freedom that also finds its realization in the ethical modality of action and person. When man acts, he at once fulfills himself in the action, for as a human being, as a person, he becomes either good or evil. His fulfillment is based on self-determination, that is to say, on freedom. Freedom, on the other hand, carries within itself the surrender to truth, and this fact is most vividly brought into prominence in man's conscience. The function of the conscience consists in distinguishing the element of moral good in the action and in releasing and forming a sense of duty with respect to this good. The sense of duty is the experiential form of the reference to (or dependence on) the moral truth, to which the freedom of the person is subordinate.

The function of the conscience is essentially more than cognitive; it does not consist solely in informing one that "X is good, X is the real good" or that "Y is evil, Y is not the real good." The appropriate and complete function of the conscience consists in relating the actions to the recognition of the truth that has been made known. In this relating by awakening appropriate virtualities in the action, the surrender to the recognition of the moral good means a simultaneous self-determination and surrender of the will to the recognized moral good.

We thus see that this surrender to the good in truth forms in a way a new moral reality within the person. This new reality has also the normative factor and manifests itself in the formulation of norms and in their role in human actions.S² These norms play a specific role in the performance of actions and the simultaneous fulfillment of the person in the action. The study of the normative factor in the moral reality of the person belongs to the sphere of moral philosophy and ethics, but it also extends to other domains. Here it suffices to mention that alongside the norms appertaining to the moral modality of action, which may be defined as the norms of ethics, we find in the integral experience of man the norms of logic, of aesthetics, and, perhaps, of still others. Some are connected with the domain of theoretical knowledge and theoretical truth, others with the domain of beauty and art. We thus see in outline a kind of affiliation of the normative order with, on the one hand, the world of absolute types of values and, on the other, the diversified activities of man.

The Conscience as the Source of Norms of Actions Conditions the Fulfillment of the Person

The norms of ethics, however, differ from the norms of logic and aesthetics, and this difference has always been stressed by traditional philosophy. Only the norms of ethics, which correspond to morality, bear upon man's actions and upon man as a person. It is through them that man himself as a person becomes morally good or evil, with "through" construed as the relation based on a compliance or a noncompliance with norms. The norms of logic as well as those of aesthetics never have such a strong effect on man, for they are not, as Aristotle rightly observed, the norms of acting, of the action, but only of knowing or producing. Within their scope they do not refer to man as the person but to man's products, to his works. These may also be considered from the point of view of the properties of truth or beauty, and they will then prove either true or false (wrong), either beautiful or ugly. All the same, to qualify in this way a work or a product, even if behind the qualification stands the world of norms, is quite a different thing than to qualify - or disqualify - the person himself.

At any rate, it is only in the person that the fulfillment, which ontologically corresponds to the structure itself of the person, can be achieved. The person finds fulfillment in performing the action and thus in attaining his appropriate plenitude or completeness, which in its structure conforms essentially the structural condition of self-governance and self-possession. In the action the person achieves his own accomplishment by becoming "somebody" and the being "somebody" is his manifestation of himself. Together with this individual fulfillment - stress is to be laid on "together" - or indeed in a direct union with it, comes the fulfillment of the self in the axiological and ethical sense, the fulfillment through crystallization of moral value. This fulfillment or nonfulfillment depends directly on the conscience, on the judgment formed in the conscience. The function of the conscience is thus determined by the basic ontological structure of the person and the action - in particular, by that dependence of freedom upon truth which appertains to the person alone; this is the focus in which the person's transcendence in the action and the spirituality of man converge.

3. CONSCIENCE DEPENDS ON TRUTHFULNESS

Why Is the Normative Power of Truth Rooted in the Mind?

The foregoing analysis leads to the conclusion that fulfillment is connected with the inner and intransitive effect of the action. This effect causes the acting of man to be arrested and preserved in the person and is achieved by means of self-reliance, which is the basis for the structure of man's free will and contains in itself the manifest power to subordinate man, his will and his actions to the recognized truth. As manifested in man's conscience, the capacity to surrender to truth shows how deeply the relation to truth is rooted in the potentiality of the personal being of man. It is this capacity, with its persuasive and prompting power, that we have in mind when we speak of the "rational nature" of man, or when we attribute to his mind the ability to know the moral truth and to distinguish it from moral falsehood. The mind is commonly regarded as the organ of thought: the function of thinking itself and also of comprehending is usually connected with the intellect. In fact, the mind is first of all merely a faculty of the man-person. Thinking and comprehending are the manifestations of its intellectual function, but besides its shaping of means and projecting their relations, its practical function consists in the evaluating and distinguishing of what is true and what is not. As one of man's faculties and powers, the mind in these two functions allows man to keep alive the widest possible contacts with reality. Every being can become the object of the mind's concern, and it is not merely cognition but recognition of moral truthfulness that is the primordial element in the mind's concern with this being.

Because of its ability to grasp the truth and to distinguish it from fallacy, the mind provides the basis for man's peculiar ascendancy over reality, over the objects of cognition. This ascendancy forms part of the integral experience of the person's transcendence - in particular, of the person's transcendence in action, which is the main theme of our present inquiry. This is clearly seen in and confirmed by the analyses of Chapter 2. Man's consciousness has indubitably a mental character, but even so its proper function does not consist solely in searching for truth and distinguishing it from fallacy, because this belongs to judgments. Consciousness in its mirroring function draws its significative contents from the active intellectual and practical processes that are directed toward truth. In this way the state of truthfulness also becomes their share and thus consciousness in its reflexive function conditions the experience of truthfulness. But as we already asserted in Chapter 2, neither the knowledge nor the active evaluation and understanding of truth constitute the proper function of consciousness. This must have a bearing upon the interpretation of the person's transcendence in the action, in particular, in what concerns the function of the conscience, on which in our approach the transcendence depends.

It is the activity of the mind, the whole effort directed toward moral truth and not consciousness alone that seems to supply the basis for the transcendence of the person. When we speak here of truthfulness, we have in mind this effort and man's intellectual activity at its crucial point. The grasping of truth is connected with a special striving in which truth as a value is the end that is sought. Man strives for truth and in his mind the ability to grasp it as a value - by distinguishing it from nontruth - is combined with the urge to search and inquire. Already in the striving we see his necessary dynamical need for truth as a value. It is the surrendering of the mind with regard to truth that conditions the transcendence of the person. Far from being but a passive mirror that only reflects objects, man acquires through truth as a value a specific ascendancy over them. This "superiority," which is inscribed into the spiritual nature of the person, ⁵³ is connected with a certain distance or aloofness toward mere objects of cognition. This is precisely why the use of reason, or of the mind as the distinctive trait of the person, is so rightly stressed in the Boethian definition quoted above.

The Person's Transcendence and Fulfillment Depend on the Truthfulness of the Conscience

Earlier in this study mention was made of the structural trait of the person manifesting itself in self-governance and self-possession. These structures are fundamental for the interpretation of the action in its intrinsic relation to the person and in its simultaneous transitiveness and intransitiveness. The persistence of an action in the person, because of its moral value, derives from and depends on the conscience. On the other hand, man's conscience is connected with the mind not only by consciousness but also by moral truthfulness. It has often been stressed that the function of the conscience is to judge of the moral value of an action, of the good or the evil contained in the action. This interpretation though correct does not seem to be fully satisfactory. It seems impossible to grasp the specific totality of the conscience without first outlining the structure of the person, the structure of self-governance and self-possession. Against the background of these structures we can perceive and interpret the dynamism of self-determination with its parallel dynamism of fulfillment - and it is there that conscience is rooted. Now, the conscience is the necessary condition of man's fulfillment of himself in the action. The man-person, as we already noted, fulfills himself in both the ontological and the axiological or ethical sense. In the latter case fulfillment follows the surrender to the recognition of the moral goodness while nonfulfillment is the result of missing it - and this directly depends on the conscience.

The role of conscience is to experience not only truthfulness but also duty, which will now be analyzed. Moral truthfulness, on which the sense of duty relies, thus comes to the forefront. When we say judgment is a function of the conscience we are referring to what is in a sense the last stage of this function and very often its purely formal aspect (this in many cases is connected with an intellectualized interpretation of the conscience). Actually, the conscience, when considered as a distinctive system, consists in a very specific effort of the person aimed at grasping the truth in the sphere of values, first of all in the sphere of moral values. At first it is a search for and an inquiry into the truth before certitude is reached and becomes a judgment. After all, we know all too well that the conscience may falter and often be at fault, that it may be in disaccord with the reality of the good. But all this is only additional evidence that the conscience has to be closely related to truthfulness and not only to consciousness - even though in the light of the earlier and the present analyses it seems evident that it is consciousness that supplies the judgments of the conscience with the subjective experience of truthfulness. Similarly it brings into these judgments the experience of certitude. In other situations it will bring the experience of incertitude, of a faltering conscience and, at worst, of bad faith or of a "false conscience."

The effort of the conscience itself, so far as it is the task of the mind striving for truth in the sphere of values, does not consist in theoretical inquiry. On the other hand, it is very closely connected with the special structure of the will as self-determination and also with the structure of the person. It issues from, and in its own specific manner is aimed at, the person. The will, as we know, always has an intentional direction; it is always a willing directed to an object that is seen as a value. Such willing is consequently not merely a detached intentional act; on the contrary, it has an intransitive significance in the person. When willing something even beyond myself I thereby also in one way or another bring back the discretion of the will upon myself. Since willing is an intentional act, it can never pass unheeding by the ego, which in some respects is the ultimate object of the will. Freedom conceived of as based in self-reliance is presupposed in the freedom that consists in independence from the possible objects of willing. It is with this reality of the human will and of human liberty that the effort of the conscience is most closely related. When it is an effort of the intellect striving for truth in the sphere of values, then its aim is to grasp not only any detached values as such of the objects of willing but also - together with the intransitiveness of the action - the basic value of the person as the subject of the will and thus also the agent of actions.

Normative Power as the Union of Truth and Duty

The question then arises how to be good and not bad;⁵⁴ how through action to become good and how not to become bad. In so stating the substance of the problem we touch upon those normative roots of truthfulness which spring from the conscience. Indirectly we also touch upon the essence of man's fulfillment of himself, of the fulfillment of the person that in the dynamism appropriate to the person runs, so to speak, parallel to self-determination. Due to the role of conscience, it is the normative function of the evaluated and recognized truth to condition not only the performance of an action by the person but also his fulfillment of himself in the action. It is in such fulfillment that the structure of self-governance and self-possession peculiarly appropriate to the person is confirmed and at the same time acquires the status of reality and may be actually functioning. Truthfulness, seen as the normative rule of truth put to exercise by the conscience, is like the keystone of the whole structure. Without truthfulness (or while out of touch with it) the conscience or, more broadly speaking, the whole specific system of the moral function and order cannot be properly grasped and correctly interpreted. This refers essentially to the norms of morality, inasmuch as it is they that serve the performance of the action and the fulfillment of the personal ego through the action, while the norms involved only in cognitive and thinking operations apply - as we asserted earlier -solely to man's products or works. This is the reason why in the present study we are primarily concerned with that normative power of truth which appertains to consclence.

More recently, the students of these problems with an interest in far-reaching abstraction have taken as the theme of their analyses only the truthfulness or the falsity of normative propositions. Moreover, they have often held that no logical value can be assigned to such propositions, inasmuch as truth or untruth can be asserted only of propositions with the word "be" in the copula but not of sentences with "should" as their syntactic functor.S⁵ This view in no way changes or belittles the statement that conscience is that basic experiential reality in which the person manifests (or perhaps even reveals) himself most fully to himself and to others. The fact of the conscience, for all its subjectiveness, still retains a measure of inter-subjectivity; it is in the conscience that there is achieved the peculiar union of moral truthfulness and duty that manifests itself as the normative power of truth. In each of his actions the human person is eyewitness of the transition from the "is" to the "should" - the transition from "X is truly good" to "I should do X." Faced by this reality the person never remains unsupported by ethics seen either as a philosophical clarification of conduct or wisdom, which is both a knowledge and a method of seeking the exact truth. Thus ethics is in the right when it sees its main task in justifying the norms of morality so as to contribute thereby to the establishment of the truthfulness of the human conscience.

It seems it is now the most appropriate moment to introduce ethics into the analysis of the reality constituted by the person and his acting.

4. THE OBLIGATION TO SEEK SELF-FULFILLMENT

Duty and the Person's Fulfillment in Actions

The explanation of the normative power of truth is to be sought in its reference to the sense of duty, while it also explains the sense of duty because of the reference to values. The fact that the assertion "X is truly good" activates the conscience and thus sets off what is like an inner obligation or command to perform the action that leads to the realization of X is most strictly related with the specific dynamism of the fulfillment of the personal ego in and through the action. It is from this point of view that duty is discussed here, albeit it may also be considered from different angles. Duty may be viewed as in a way the consequence of a ready-made and preexistent moral or legal principle. This principle we may call a "norm" because of its content, which is not only declarative - it cannot be expressed by the copula "be" - but obligatory because to be expressed it requires the semantic functor "should" or "would." In this approach a duty - regardless of whether it is a moral or legal obligation - may appear to be something derived from without the subject-person. It then expresses the individual's social obligations toward other people and toward the whole society to which he belongs. The person's duties with regard to other people present themselves differently; they occur in virtue of an interpersonal nexus of "participation" that manifests itself in the personal intertwinings of the coexistence and collaboration of people, and will be considered separately in a subsequent chapter.

The Truthfulness of Moral Norms as Such

Inherent in all the obligations man has toward other people and which are the foundations for the codes of moral and legal norms is the presupposition that a duty is a specific interpersonal reality. It is a dynamic reality that forms an integral part of acting whereby the person - as we have more than once insisted - also finds the fulfillment of himself as a person. The state of affairs that in the performance of an action man simultaneously fulfills himself through the truth of the action is visualized in the conscience. There is a correlation between the conscience as the interpersonal source of duties and the objective order of moral or legal norms, the order that in its significance and application extends far beyond an individual person and his concrete innerness. Nevertheless, the operative role of these norms to determine duties derives from the fact that in the social sphere as well as in the partly interpersonal and partly suprapersonal dimensions they emphasize objectively the good, as relevant to the person which thus takes for him the form of an obligation. The fundamental value of norms lies in the truthfulness of the good they objectify and not in the generation itself of duties; this is so even though the normative formulas used in actual practice accentuate their mandatory aspect by such expressions as "necessary," "duty," "must," and so on. Nevertheless, the sense of the moral or legal normative sentences lies essentially in the truth of the good that they objectify. It is owing to their truthfulness that they become related to the conscience, which then, so to speak, transforms their value of truth into the concrete and real obligation. Such is the case even when the conscience responds as if its acceptance of an obligation was based solely on an objective moral or legal norm. We have to remember, however, that the truthfulness of the good contained in norms may be directly evident, and this then determines the direct acceptance of their normative contents by the conscience and furnishes them with their own normative power. At other times, when the merits of the case are not as evident, the conscience very definitely checks and in its own manner verifies the norms by testing, as it were, their truthfulness within its own limits.

This is due to the fact that truthfulness and duty are strictly concomitant; for the real issue is not just an abstractly conceived objective truthfulness of norms but experiencing their truthfulness, the kind of experiencing that expresses itself in the conviction or subjective certitude that such-and-such a norm corresponds to a good. The deeper the certitude the stronger becomes the sense of obligation. Experience of obligation is intimately united with experience of truthfulness. Often, or indeed almost as a rule, we then speak not of truthfulness but of rightness. Theoretical judgments may be true or may be false, but norms are right or wrong. The right norm is a source of obligations for the conscience, which, conformably with the etymology of "obligation" and "to oblige," means to bind the conscience and bring it to act in compliance with the precepts of the norm. A right norm is thus one that it is proper for the conscience to obey; a wrong norm, on the contrary, one that is not to be followed.

The Creative Role of the Conscience

For all the fitness and adequacy of the attributes right and wrong with reference to norms, it seems that they tend to leave in the shadow the moment of truthfulness, of the experience of truth as value, and (as associated with this experience) the transcendence of the person in an act of conscience. There is no question of assigning to the conscience, as Kant argued, the power to make its own laws - followed by an identification of this power with the notion of autonomy and thus in a way with an unrestricted freedom of the person. The conscience is no lawmaker; it does not itself create norms; rather it discovers them, as it were, in the objective order of morality or law. The opinion that man's individual conscience could itself establish this order distorts the correct proportions in the relations between the person and the society or community and - on a different level -between the human creature and the Creator. Such views are the source of arbitrary individualism and threaten to destroy the ontic and ethical balance of the person; in addition, the rejection of natural law in ethics leads to similar consequences. At the same time, we have to recognize that from the point of view of the integral experience of man as a person the function of the conscience cannot be reduced to a mechanical deduction or application of norms whose truthfulness inheres in abstract formulas, formulas that in the case of established legal systems may be codified.

The conscience plays a creative role in what concerns the truthfulness of norms, that is to say, of those principles of acting and behavior which form the objective core of morality or law. Its creativity goes beyond simple recognition of the norm or injunction that generates the sense of obligation resulting in passive obedience. The experience of rightness is preceded and integrated by the experience of truthfulness. The latter inheres in the acceptance of a norm which occurs upon the strength of the subjective conviction. The creative role of the conscience coincides with the dimension of the person; it is wholly internal and applies to the acting, as well as to the moment of the person's fulfillment of himself. Indeed the creative role of the conscience consists in the fact that it shapes the norms into that unique and unparalleled form they acquire within the experience and fulfillment of the person. The sense of conviction and certitude, whereby the truthfulness of a norm is molded within the personal dimension, are followed by the sense of duty. Its mandatory power, the normative power of truth within the functioning of the person, is intimately related to the conscience and evidences the freedom the person has in acting. Far from abolishing freedom, truth liberates it. The tension arising between the objective order of norms and the inner freedom of the subject-person is relieved by truth, by the conviction of the truthfulness of good. But it is, on the contrary, intensified and not relieved by external pressures, by the power of injunction or compulsion. This is best formulated in St. Paul, in his demand of rationabile obsequium, which is the personalistic synonym of obligation.'⁶ The use of compulsory measures overshadows the transcendence of the person or reflects an immaturity in the person. Even if it is impossible to deny that such immaturity may happen, it would be inhuman to equate obligation with external pressures.

The Transition from Value to Obligation

There is ample evidence to show that the transcendence of the person through freedom is realized in the quest after the value of truth or truthfulness. Insofar as truth is the ultimate point of reference for the transcendence of the person, the traditional definition of the person is right in stressing that this transcendence, especially the transcendence of a person in action, has its source in the mind. It seems, however, that - as we already noted - the metaphysical reduction implicit in this definition emphasizes the intellectual nature (i.e., rational nature) rather than transcendence of the person through the relation to the value of moral truth. It is this transcendence as the constitutive feature of the person that we are trying to disclose in this study. Obligation evidences once again what has already been explained in the preceding chapter, namely, that the will and the freedom of the person in their own dynamic way surrender to truth, that they have their own dynamic relation to truth. This relation determines the specific originality of every choice and decision and in a special manner the individual originality of the varied instances of duty or obligation. For obligation is in a way a special stage in the dynamlzation of the will in its specific reference to truth.

We are not speaking here - as already stressed - of truth in the theoretico-logical sense and not even of that axiological truth which is connected with the cognitive experience of value. The cognitive experience of values does not necessarily initiate the willing of values, not to mention the experience of obligation. If a value is to give birth to obligation it needs first to intercept in a special manner, and as a specific appeal, the path of the person's acting.

The passage from value to obligation presents a separate problem, which we shall outline here but not analyze in detail. It very often has the form of an obligation to abstain from doing something in recognition of a value; many of the moral norms are presented in the form of prohibitions, as for instance most of the commandments in the Decalogue. This form, however, in no way excludes or obliterates their value, but, on the contrary, underscores it. Thus, the commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness," accentuates all the more strongly the value of veracity, while the commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," brings into light the whole system of values connected with marriage, the person, the rearing of children, and family life in general. The passage from value to obligation in what seems to be the negative way characteristic of morality and legislation, is neither the only way nor the most important. The positive way seems to have a greater importance. The best and the most comprehensive example of obligation initiated by value in the positive sense is now and will always remain the evangelical commandment, "Thou shalt love." Obligation is then directly released by value with all its intrinsic content and all its attractive power. But the content and the attractiveness of a value are, so to speak, checked at the threshold of the person's innerness, the threshold erected by the conscience, which tests the truthfulness of the good presented in the value; it is with this test that obligation begins.

The Calling to Self-Fulfillment in Action

An obligation arising in a positive way because of the attractiveness and acceptance of values, which are spontaneously or reflectively recognized as true, may become a vital manifestation of the person's "calling." In recent moral philosophy there seems to be a clear tendency to distinguish between or even to oppose the roads leading to obligation: the negative, commonly identified (though without sufficient justification) with a system of norms conceived primarily as prohibitions, and the positive, identified with the attractiveness and the acceptance of values. The latter is usually understood as consisting in the "calling" of the person. The issue of a calling or vocation deserves in itself a separate investigation, as does the problem of the relation of values and norms. But here this issue is approached only from the viewpoint of the performance of an action and thus in terms of man's fulfillment of himself through action. For it is difficult to deny the objective closeness or perhaps even partial overlapping of this fulfillment and the person's calling. It seems, moreover, that any obligation, also that to which the passage from value is along the negative path, tells in one way or another about the calling of the person. For in every obligation there is an imperative: be good as man - do not be bad as man. It is in this imperative that the ontological and the axiological structures of man as the person come, so to speak, together. All other more detailed callings and vocations, or perhaps we may call them challenges by values, are ultimately reducible to this first, fundamental calling.

The Person's Transcendence Evidenced in the Drama of Values and Obligations

The intimate connection between values and obligations reveals the human person in his peculiar relation to a broadly conceived reality. This relation, as should be perfectly clear by now, is more than that purely cognitive one which like a lens focuses the reality in the microcosmos of man. The whole cognitive process merely interiorizes, as it were, the extrapersonal reality in the subject-person (this reality together with the subject himself is in a special manner interiorized by consciousness). 'Whereas, obligation goes in the other direction: it introduces the person through his actions into that characteristic drama enacted in the context of reality of which it makes of him the subject (dramatis persona). On the side of the man-person it is the drama of values and obligations. Outside of the drama man cannot fulfill himself as a person. Indeed, the fulfillment appears to be the more mature, the more profound and radical is the drama of values and obligations in man. Obligation - both as an element in the total calling of man and as the concrete content of a particular action - appears capable of telling much about the transcendence of the person. It brings into view, on the one hand, the reality of this transcendence and, on the other, its equally real limits, the limits of the reality within which man is to fulfill himself. Being a specific structure of self-governance and self-possession the person realizes himself most adequately in his obligations. He realizes himself neither by the intentionality of volitions nor through self-determination but through his sense of obligation as the peculiar modification of self-determination and intentionality.

At the same time, through obligation the person opens himself to values while still retaining toward them the measure set out by the transcendence that conditions the action and also allows us to distinguish acting from what only happens in the man-subject.

5. RESPONSIBILITY

Obligation Relates Responsibility to Efficacy

The analyses so far provide a sufficient ground for grasping and interpreting the relation that in man's action exists between efficacy and responsibility, in particular for interpreting the notion of "responsibility" itself. The relation between the efficacy and the responsibility of the person may serve as the framework for establishing the elementary facts on which rests the whole moral and legal order in its full interhuman and social dimensions. Nevertheless, this relation, like obligation, is in the first place an inner reality of the person, a reality that exists within the person. It is only owing to this interpersonal reality that we in turn can speak of the social significance of responsibility and lay down for it some principles in social life. Already the first look at the notion of "responsibility" shows that if we want to bring out in full relief its social and interhuman implications, we have first to make man himself with his personal structure and his transcendence in acting the object of our analysis.

The very fact that we relate responsibility directly to efficacy and can say that "man as the doer of X is responsible for X" reveals how complex as well as cohesive and condensed are the elements constituting the simple whole contained in the phrase "man performs an action." From our previous discussion we see how numerous are the elements which the reality of performing an action is composed of on the side of self-determination and parallel to it also on the side of fulfillment, the fulfillment that says more of the performing person than of the performed action itself. Similarly, responsibility informs us primarily about the person performing an action and fulfilling himself in the action. Although we have related responsibility directly to efficacy, its source is in obligation rather than in the efficacy itself of the person. Man can be responsible for X only when he should have done X or, conversely, should not have done X. The one is contained in the other inasmuch as the way the passage from value to obligation is achieved may be either positive or negative. For instance, a man being untrue to others or telling lies is responsible for misleading others, and this he should not do because of his obligation to truthfulness. The relationship of responsibility with efficacy implies obligation.

Responsiveness to and Responsibility for Values

The relationship of responsibility and efficacy also indicates that there is included in obligation an opening out of the person to values. Responsibility, as an intrapersonal fact that man has the experience of in an intimate relation with his conscience, seems to presuppose the specific dynamism of the will noted in the preceding chapter. The analysis of choice and decision with their own originality then led us to the conclusion that the will consisted in the ability to respond independently to a value rather than in the ability to strive for an object because of its value. The ability to respond to values integrates in its own special manner man's acting and impresses it with the mark of personal transcendence. Following it comes responsibility, which is most intimately connected with the action, because it is action that carries in it the response to values that is characteristic of the will. Thus we see outlined the response-responsibility relation. 'When man agrees to be responsible for his own actions, he does so because he has the experience of responsibility and because he has the ability to respond with his will to values.

This relation presupposes moral truthfulness; it presupposes that relation to truth in which obligation is rooted as the normative power of truth. And obligation constitutes that mature form of responding to values which is most intimately related to responsibility. Responsibility bears within itself the element of obligatory reference to values. Thus whenever the sense of obligation, an "I should," leads to a response, we have in outline the obligation-responsibility relation. Because of obligation the response to values characteristic for the will assumes in the person and in his actions the form of responsibility for values. Owing to the intentionality proper to the will, human actions are, as we know, directed toward various objects, which present such-and-such a good or, in other words, such-and-such a value. The important thing in human striving is its truthfulness - the striving must correspond to the true value of its object. For instance, when a person's action has as its object another person, the directing to the object must correspond to the value of the person. We have here the obligation to refer to the object in accordance with its true value; parallel to it we see the responsibility for the object in connection with its value or, briefly stated, the responsibility for values. This responsibility is somehow inherent in the formation itself of the obligation and itself has its source in this formation. Responsibility is conditioned by obligation and, simultaneously, participates in the constituting of an obligation.

The Subject's Responsibility for His Own Moral Value Is Based on Self-Determination

The responsibility for the value that is appropriate to the object of acting is strictly connected with the responsibility for the subject himself, namely, for the value that in the course of acting is formed in the subject, in the concrete ego. For the first and the most important feature of the will is its reference to the ego, the objectification of the ego in acting, and not only the intentionality in the reference to objects external to the ego. Together with the responsibility for the value of intentional objects, the first and fundamental responsibility that arises in acting on the basis of self-determination and self-dependence is the responsibility for the subject, for the moral worth of the ego who is the agent performing the action. This integrated structure of "responsibility for" constitutes a whole, which approximately corresponds to what is usually called moral responsibility. It is at this point that, through the analysis of responsibility, we can probably see most vividly why morality cannot be reduced to some heterogeneous dimensions external to the person but achieves its adequate dimension within the person himself, within his ontology and axiology. The transcendence of morality as an objective order with respect to transient life conditions, which, so to speak, outgrows the person, is simultaneously strictly correlated with the transcendence of the person. The responsibility for the intentional object of acting -and more so for the subject and agent of this acting - manifests an intimate relationship with the fulfillment of the self, with the autorealization of the personal ego in every action.

The Relation of Responsibility to Personal Authority

The whole of the reality constituted by responsibility has still another aspect, which we shall here designate as "responsibility to," and which presupposes "responsibility for." This other aspect, which is undoubtedly inherent in the very essence of responsibility, tells us a great deal about the surrender of man to the world of persons. For it lies in the nature of responsibility that we are always responsible to somebody and thus to a person. The world of persons has its interhuman structure as well as its social structure. Within this structure the need to be responsible to somebody is obviously one of the sources of power, in particular, of judicial power. The world of persons has also its religious structure very distinctly apparent, especially extensively articulate in the religion of the Old and New Testaments; within this structure the responsibility to somebody assumes the religious meaning of being responsible to God. It is a responsibility both in the eschatological and in the temporal sense. In the latter sense man's conscience - in performing its judicial rather than its directive function, both being appropriate to it - assumes a special authority. It is this authority that allows us to conceive and to speak of conscience as the "voice of God." In the philosophy of religion and also in theology (moral theology) this circumstance occupies a key position.

In our present discussion the fact of responsibility - of being responsible to somebody - sheds a new light on the structure itself of the person in his relation to the action. Once again we find in this aspect a confirmation of the intransitiveness of the action, which means that on the basis of efficacy and obligation it is specifically vested in the person. Moral truthfulness - the person's proper relation' to moral truth - stands guard not only when the action issues forth but also when it penetrates into the person. Through the conscience, truthfulness, so to speak, keeps a watch over the roads of the transitiveness as well as the intransitiveness of the action. It is this innermost and thus most fundamental relation of the person to truth, which we have often referred to as truthfulness, that lies at the origin of both obligation and responsibility. Responsibility to somebody, regardless of any other appropriate relations, develops and is expressed in relation to its own subject. I myself am also the "somebody" to whom I feel and am responsible. If this elementary form of responsibility were not inherent in the whole dynamism of fulfillment, it would be difficult to understand any responsibility whatever. The world of persons finds its experiential starting point and foundation in the experience of the ego as the person. At the ego-person begins the road which leads to other persons seen both in the community of mankind and in religious perspectives.

In His Conscience Man Is Responsible to Himself

The responsibility to somebody when integrated in the voice of the conscience places my own ego in the position of judge over myself. It would be difficult to doubt the actual presence of such a judicial function in the experience of the conscience. Responsibility to somebody in the sense of self-responsibility seems to correspond to the self-dependence and self-determination proper to man; it is in this correspondence that the will and the freedom of the person is expressed and embodied. As the structure of the person which we have described here is centered on self-governance and self-possession, these together form the basis of man's self-determination. If man as a person is the one who governs and possesses himself, then he can do so also because, on the one hand, he is responsible for himself and, on the other, he is in some respects responsible to himself. Such a structure of the person is, as previously noted, indicative of the specific complexity of the man-person. For he is at once the one who governs and the one who is governed by himself, the one who possesses and the one who is his own possession. He is also the one responsible as well as the one for whom and to whom he is responsible.

Thus the structure of responsibility is the characteristic structure of, and appropriate only to, the person.⁵⁷ A diminished responsibility is equivalent to a diminution of personality. The structure of responsibility is also intimately connected with man's acting, with the person's action, but not with what only happens in man, unless what only happens is a consequence of and thus depends on his acting or nonacting. Moreover, it is first appropriate to the person from within; and only because of the primordial intersubjective nexus of moral and social participation, coexistence, and collaboration within the human world does it become a responsibility to somebody. The great problem of the personalistic significance of responsibility to God ought to be considered separately in a comprehensive theological analysis, but such an enquiry does not fall within the scope of the present work.

6. HAPPINESS AND THE PERSON'S TRANSCENDENCE IN THE ACTION

Self-Fulfillment as a Synonym of Felicity

The analysis of fulfillment as the reality that in the dynamic whole of the person-action relation unrolls parallel to self-determination cannot be continued without at least touching upon happiness, that classical theme in the philosophy of man. "Happiness" and "felicity" are susceptible of subtle distinctions in meaning which do not reduce to differences in degrees of intensity. We can sense, however, that "felicity" fits better than "happiness" into the general line of our analysis. We may consider this problem here not only out of loyalty to a certain philosophical tradition but primarily because of its part in the general framework of our discussion. In the notion of "felicity" there is something akin to fulfillment, to the fulfillment of the self through action. To fulfill oneself is almost synonymous with felicity, with being happy. But to fulfill oneself is the same thing as to realize the good whereby man as the person becomes and is good himself. We can now see clearly the lines joining felicity and the axiological system of the person. Their connection is in fulfillment, and it is there that it is realized.

Truth and Freedom as Sources of Felicity

The preceding remarks do not imply that action as the dynamism proper to the man-person is eo ipso making man happy, the source of man's happiness. We already know that to assert the performance of an action implies a twofold effect of the person's efficacy and self-determination, namely, the external and the internal, the transitive and the intransitive; the sphere of felicity is to be sought in what is internal and intransitive in the action, in what is identifiable with the fulfillment of the ego as the person. We also know that such fulfillment of the ego is constituted by various aspects, which we have been trying to distinguish step by step in our analysis. Two of them are connected with each other; they are moral truthfulness and freedom. The fulfillment of the person in the action depends on the active and inwardly creative union of truth with freedom. Freedom alone, as expressed in the simple "I may but I need not," does not seem to be rendering man happy in itself. Within these terms freedom is but a condition of felicity, albeit to deprive man of his freedom is equivalent to endangering his felicity. Thus felicity has to be identified not with the availability of freedom as such but with the fulfillment of freedom through truth. To fulfill freedom in truthfulness - that is to say, according to the relation to truth - is equivalent to the fulfillment of the person. It is the fulfillment that plays the role of creating the state of felicity of the person.

Felicity Derived from the Relation to Others

Admittedly, it is not an easy matter to consider in isolation this most intimate dimension of the person in which he experiences happiness at his own unique scale; nor, indeed, to sort it out, first, from the whole network of interpersonal and social relations and, second, from the whole multilateral system of references to the "world," that is, to nature in the most general sense, which includes the many different kinds of beings less developed than, and yet necessary to, man. All these relations are in one way or another meaningful for the happiness of man, but man's relation to other persons plays a special and crucial role. Further on in this study we shall take a closer look at the problem of the interpersonal system of mutual participation in each person's strivings, modalities of existence and concerns that brings together and unites human persons on a specifically personal plane. Experience shows that this sort of mutual participation is the source of a special type of happiness. It is also on the level of personal participation that - though only by suitable analogy - we may interpret felicity in the religious sense, the felicity or beatitude that derives from the intercourse with God and the communion with Him. A profound understanding of the person is certainly of great significance for the understanding and the interpretation of the revealed Christian doctrine on the eternal beatitude consisting in the union with God.

The Intrapersonal Profile of Felicity

In our discussion we limit ourselves to drawing attention to what felicity seems to be in the inner and intransitive dimension of the acting person. We limit our account to this dimension in order to be able to better understand the other dimension just mentioned. In addition, when in his quest for happiness man reaches out beyond himself, the fact of the quest itself seems to indicate a special correlation between felicity and his own person. The correlation has a dynamic character and is established and realized by the action. But its foundations are to be looked for within the person, in the freedom and moral truthfulness that are the person's constitutive features, and, in that dynamic relation to cognitive truth and action which is rooted in the mind. We may perhaps go as far as to say that felicity displays a kind of special responsibility with regard to the person, to his structure of self-governance and self-possession. This responsibility is so distinct that we may speak of the "personal structure of felicity," that would have no meaning apart from or outside the person.

Felicity and Its Reverse Belong to Personal Structure

The personal foundation of felicity implies that it may be experienced only by beings who are also persons. It seems impossible to predicate felicity of nonpersonal beings even when, like animals, they possess a psyche. Indubitably animals feel natural satisfaction and pain, a kind of comfort or discomfort felt at the sense level. Felicity - like its extreme opposite, which may best be exemplified by "despair" -seems, however, to be the exclusive privilege of the person, with that special unique structure of the person which has no analogue in the world of nature. It is only in the structure of the person that the fulfillment of the ego is achieved through the action, but it cannot be extrapolated beyond the person.

Felicity Is Not Pleasure

The same reasoning may apparently be followed in establishing the principle that allows us to distinguish felicity from pleasure. The dividing line runs within the limits of the experiential distinction, which we have been referring to from the beginning. It is the distinction between the fact "man acts" and the fact "something happens in man." The former involves not only the performance of the action according to the principle of self-determination but also the person's fulfillment based on the same principle; for self-determination always consists in a concrete instance of actualized freedom. The actualization of freedom is the dynamic core of the fact "man acts." Man's acting - the action - as the actualization of freedom, however, may be in accord or disaccord with the conscience, that is to say, with truth in the normative sense, and this means that man as the person either fulfills himself or he does not. 'What is strictly related to this fulfillment we call felicity but not "pleasure"; thus we see that felicity is structurally conjugated with the experience of acting and with the transcendence of the person in the action. The argument applies similarly to the opposite of "felicity," to despair, which is a result of acting contrarily to the conscience and recognition of moral truth.

We would seek in vain for pleasure as the element of this integral structure. On the one hand, is it possible to speak of pleasure in having a "clear conscience" or in fulfilling an obligation? Indeed, in this case we rather speak of joy or satisfaction. The fact that the satisfaction may also be pleasurable is only secondary - as the vexation caused by remorse is also secondary. But neither pleasure nor vexation is in itself connected with the personal structure of the fulfillment of the ego through the action. On the other hand, pleasure as well as vexation happens in man. This circumstance appears to inhere in the essence of pleasure and to distinguish pleasure from the felicity that corresponds to the content of personal fulfillment. Felicity points to the personal structure while pleasure can be related to what may be viewed as the simply natural structure of the individual, with reference to some aspects of the comparison between the person and nature made earlier.

The Person and the Action Remain within the Sphere of Pleasure and Displeasure

We have thus established tentatively what may serve as the dividing line between felicity and pleasure. This distinction, however, is not easy to make; felicity and pleasure tend to overlap in human experience, so that they may be easily confused or mistaken for each other. Such confusions appear to be frequent, and we often find felicity being treated as but a form of pleasure, or pleasure as a constituent of felicity.⁵⁸ The difference between them is often treated solely as a matter of intensity or rather of depth; pleasure is then thought of as a more superficial or less profound experience than felicity. These distinctions are suggested primarily by the emotional side of experience of felicity and pleasure. Such, for instance, is the stand of Scheler. For others felicity is a spiritual instance while pleasure is only sensual or "material." All these views seem to oversimplify the problem.

Actually, the dividing line appears to run along the fundamental experience of "man acts" and "something happens in man" and to refer to the structures contained in these experiences. Felicity would then correspond to the structure of the person and to fulfillment. It would be wrong, however, to maintain that pleasure is connected only with what happens in man, for we know acting may be accompanied by pleasure or displeasure. We also know acting may have, and often has, as its aim to provide oneself or others with pleasure and to avoid displeasure; it is these premises that serve as the basis for all of the so-called utilitarian ethical systems, not to mention commonplace hedonism. In the integral experience of man there is nothing to warrant the supposition that the notions of "person" and "action" are to be separated from the sphere of pleasure and displeasure. This would be equally unwarranted as to separate man as the person from nature. The sense of the distinction drawn here does not lie in detaching the person and the action from the sphere of pleasure and displeasure; its purpose is to indicate that the performing of the action, or rather the personal fulfillment of the ego through the action, is correlated with felicity (or its reverse) as something so completely specific that it can never be resolved into the pleasure-displeasure elements or can in any way be reduced to these elements. It is that specificity and irreducibility of felicity which seems to be most strictly related to the transcendence of the person.

7. THE TRANSCENDENCE OF THE PERSON AND THE SPIRITUALITY OF MAN

The Various Meanings of "Transcendence"

The concept of "transcendence" has been the leading motif in our discussion of the person and the action in this and the preceding chapter. When it was introduced in Chapter 3 an explanation was provided of the sense in which it would be used in this study. This seemed necessary because the term has various meanings. One of these meanings is associated with metaphysics, the philosophy of being, and expressed in the absolute status of such general notions as being, truth, good, and beauty. None of these notions can be contained in a definition indicating either its nearest genus or its specific differential traits; for each of them transcends in its substance all species or genera under which are subsumed and defined the objects of the known reality. Another meaning of "transcendence" is primarily connected with epistemology, or more broadly speaking, with the so-called philosophy of consciousness. In this sense "transcendence" means reaching out and beyond the subject, which is characteristic of certain human acts, or the directing of these acts out of the cognizing subject beyond the objectifiable realm. In the preceding chapter we called this "horizontal transcendence," distinguishing it from the "vertical transcendence" that characterizes the dynamic person-action conjugate.

"Transcendence" Expresses the Essence of the Experience of Acting

The concept of "vertical transcendence" allowed us to contain within a descriptive analytical whole the essence of the experience "man acts." In this experience man manifests himself as the person, that is to say, as the highly specific structure of self-governance and self-possession. It is in and through his acting, in and through the action, that we see him in this highly specific structure. Thus the person and the action constitute together an intimately cohesive, dynamic reality, in which the action is the manifestation and the explanation of the person and the action. This parallelism of manifestation and explanation is characteristic for the phenomenological method.⁵⁹ The concept of the "transcendence," in the sense it has in this study, is well fitted to the method; it serves our attempts to interpret the inherent essence of the experience "man acts," to objectify that which allows the acting person to manifest himself and be visualized as the person. Since manifestation comes together with explanation, the concept of "transcendence" not only expresses the essence of the phenomenological insight in what concerns the person but also explains the person in his dynamic cohesion with the action. The phenomenological method in nowise stops at the surface of this reality but, on the contrary, allows us to penetrate deep into its content. Not only does it allow intuition but it also leads to explanation.

Against the background of this method the concept of "transcendence" serves the understanding of the structure, which manifests itself in the whole of the experiential fact "man acts." This is the structure of the person. The one who acts is the person and asserts himself as "somebody"; and at the same time he even more vividly and more completely demonstrates in his acting, in the action, why he deserves to be regarded as "somebody." Indeed, he shows himself as having the special ability and power of self-governance which allows him to have the experience of himself as a free being. Freedom is expressed by efficacy and efficacy leads to responsibility, which in turn reveals the dependence of freedom on truth; but this relation of freedom to truth constitutes the real significance of the conscience as the decisive factor for the transcendence of the person in his actions. It is in this way that transcendence determines that special structural trait of man as the person which consists in his specific domination of himself and his dynamism. This superiority above his actual being that the person exhibits leads to self-governance and self-possession. In virtue of his self-governance and self-possession man deserves the designation of "somebody" regardless of whether he has this distinctive structure actually or only virtually. Thus man is somebody from the very moment of his coming into existence as also when and if something intervenes and prevents his fulfillment of himself in actions, that is to say, if his mature actualization of self-governance and self-possession was to be prevented. That the designation "somebody" is appropriate to man can be deduced also in an analysis of man's being and not only from the experience of the person's transcendence.

The Spirituality of Man and the Person's Transcendence in Action

Thus we come to the conclusion that the evidence of the spiritual nature of man stems in the first place from the experience of the person's transcendence in the action, which we have been trying to describe and analyze. The notion of "spirit" and "spirituality" is often, somewhat one-sidedly, identified with the denial of a purely material nature of man. By "spiritual" we mean indeed an immaterial factor which is inherently irreducible to matter. The interpretation of spirituality through the negation of materiality presupposes, however, also a positive view of spirituality itself, to be found in the idea of the transcendence of the person. In point of fact, we may easily observe that everything of which the person's transcendence in the action consists, and which constitutes this transcendence, is in this sense spiritual. Since this, as we saw, is within the reach of the phenomenological insight, the acceptance of the spiritual nature of man in its authentic manifestations is not a result of some abstraction but, if one may say so, has its intuitional shape; spirituality is open to intuition as well as to an unfolding analysis. This shape, the shape of transcendence, is in concrete that of human existence: it is the shape of human life itself. Man as the person both lives and fulfills himself within the perspective of his transcendence. Is it not freedom, obligation, and responsibility which allows us to see that not only truthfulness but also the person's surrender to truth in judging as well as in acting constitute the real and concrete fabric of the personal life of man? Indeed, it is on them that, as we have more than once endeavored to bring to light in our analyses, the entire phenomenological structure of self-governance and self-possession is based.

The Real Immanence of the Spiritual Element in Man

In tracing that expressive whole of the experience of man we cannot limit our quest solely to an acknowledgment of the manifestations of spirituality without seeking to reach its roots. In point of fact, it appears that all the manifestations of the spiritual nature of man lead by the thread of their genesis to showing the real immanence of the spirit and of the spiritual element in man. Man could not exhibit the spiritual element of his nature had he not in some way been a spirit himself. This point of view refers to the fundamental principles of understanding the whole of reality: the principle of noncontradiction and the principle of sufficient reason. Although assuming these cornerstones of the traditional categorical way of grasping the whole of reality and man, it seems however that we have gone much farther than traditional philosophy in its conception of man, inasmuch as in our analyses we have accumulated sufficient evidence of the spirituality of man in the descriptive phenomenological sense which also led, even if only indirectly, to the ontological level. In the course of gaining an insight into the transcendence of the person, we saw how the spirituality of the human being is manifested.

The Sequence of Comprehensions

Let us first emphasize that our cognition of the spirituality of the human being comes from the transcendence of the person. The sequence of our comprehensions in this respect is as follows: to start with, we recognize that man is the person; next, that his spiritual nature reveals itself as the transcendence of the person in his acting; and finally, that only then can we comprehend in what his spiritual being consists. In establishing this analytic sequence we have to keep in mind that for a spiritual being like man the person is the proper existential foundation; in the evidence of experience we can neither detach the person from the spiritual nature of man nor detach the spiritual nature from the person. Thus when we speak of "spiritual nature," we use the expression as indicating some ontologically grounded permanence of the spiritual being.

Without assuming this permanence of the spiritual element in man it would be entirely impossible to understand and explain the discreet and yet consistently interrelated manifestations of his spiritual nature. We have to keep in mind, however, that the mode itself of existence and acting that reveals and crystallizes this element or, to put it differently, that liberates this element in man is, as we have noted before, the mode of existence and acting not of nature as such but of the person.

The following general conclusions can now be drawn from our investigation. The person can only partly and only in a certain respect be identified with nature, namely, only in his "substantiality." As a whole and in his intrinsic essence he reaches beyond nature. For the personal freedom repudiates the necessity peculiar to nature. But we have to emphasize the necessary relation between, on the one hand, humanness or human nature and, on the other, personality (being a person) and freedom. We then judge that free will belongs necessarily to human nature. Freedom itself is, however, opposed to necessity. Thus if we are to speak of the nature of the person, we can do so only in terms expressing the need to act freely.

8. THE UNITY AND COMPLEXITY OF THE MAN-PERSON

Phenomenological Intuition and the Unity and Complexity of the Man-Person

The preceding remarks about the relation of the transcendence of the person to the spiritual nature of man impel us to look more closely into the problem and to discuss the complexity of man as a corporeal and spiritual being - "corporeal" as here used referring to matter and to the material though primarily in the metaphysical rather than in the physical sense. Experience - seen as accessible in phenomenological intuition - tells us in the first place that man is a unity. His unity is also manifested in his dynamism, though in this respect we note a striking disparity between acting (the experience "man acts") and happening (the experience "something happens in man"), which so far has not received a full interpretation and will therefore be considered again in later chapters. The disparity in the dynamism of acting and happening does not prevent the unity of man as the person but reflects a certain complexity, which was already noted in Chapter

3. The unity of the person is most completely manifested in the action, that is to say, through transcendence. But again the person's transcendence in the action also shows a certain complexity; the one who possesses himself is simultaneously the one who, according to the principle of self-determination, is possessed by himself; according to the same principle he both governs and is governed by himself. His superiority is correlated with his subordination. Each helps to compose the unity of the person.

This complexity is clearly revealed in the phenomenological approach, but the remarkable thing about it is its structure, which is manifested first of all as a specific organic unity and not as an unintegrated manifold. It is how the complexity manifests itself in the action. The fact that in the performance of the action man also fulfills himself shows that the action serves the unity of the person, that it not only reflects but also actually establishes this unity. In point of fact the analyses in this chapter are meant to show that it is owing to the spiritual nature of man that the person's unity in the action is manifested and actually established. When speaking of man's spiritual nature we are not referring to the set of symptoms that determine the person's transcendence in the action but to the real source of all these symptoms, to the spiritual element in the human being. The experience we rely upon and the analyses we carried out suggest the conclusion that it is this element that constitutes the unity of man. Thus the transcendence of the person in the action, understood in the phenomenological sense, seems to lead to an ontological conception of man in which the unity of his being is determined by the spirit.

The Spiritual Element Underlies the Spiritual Virtuality of Man

We hope that our considerations have shown with sufficient clarity that the specific dynamism of the person has its source in the spiritual element. The dynamism itself is manifested in efficacy and responsibility, in self-determination and conscience, in freedom and the reference to truth that impresses upon the actions of the person and his being itself a specific "measure of goodness." As the source of the specific dynamism of the person, the spiritual element must itself be dynamic. Dynamism is, as already demonstrated in Chapter 2, proportional to virtuality. We infer from this the presence of the spiritual virtuality in man, the powers of his spiritual nature. The correlates of these powers are the dynamic reference to moral truth in the cognitive function and freedom together with the dynamic dependence of freedom on truth in the function of self-determination. The former we equate with the notion of the intellect and the latter with that of the will. Hence the powers of the intellect and the will seem to be partaking of and exhibiting themselves as a spiritual element. They constitute the dynamic conjunction of the person with the action. Consequently, these powers contribute creatively to the profile of the person, and they themselves bear a distinctly personal stamp. They are not reducible to nature. Attributing "spiritual aspect" to the intellect and the will may indicate that their appropriate dynamism, their mode of dynamization, does not pertain to and remain at the level of nature alone.

Spirituality Determines the Personal Unity of the Corporeal Man

This notion ol "spirituality" may serve as the key to the understanding of the complexity of man. For we now see man as the person, and we see him first of all in his acting, in the action. He then appears in the field of our integral experience as somebody material, as corporeal, but at the same time we know the personal unity of this material somebody to be determined by the spirit, by his spiritual nature and spiritual life. Indeed, the very fact that the personal - as well as the ontic - unity of the corporeal man is ultimately commanded by man's spiritual factor allows us to see in him the ontic composite of soul and body, of the spiritual and the material elements. The phenomenological insight does not reveal directly this complexity but only brings into prominence the unity of man as the person. We also know that it does not obscure the complexity, but on the contrary leads up to it. For once attention is focused on the person's transcendence in the action because of his spiritual nature, the need immediately arises to understand better not only the manifestations of this spirituality but also its ontic basis and roots. Other questions then refer to the relation between the spiritual and corporeal, all that is visible in man and accessible to sense; for the spiritual is invisible and inaccessible to sense, even when in its manifestations it contributes to the vividly expressive content of intellectual intuition. Neither efficacy nor obligation, responsibility, freedom, nor moral truthfulness are in any way accessible to sense and thus they are "immaterial," they are not "flesh," but even so they indubitably belong to the experience of man; they are objects of intuition as evident data, which the mind can grasp and whose understanding it may itself cultivate and develop suitably. ⁶⁰

The Experience of Personal Unity Helps to Understand Man's Ontic Complexity

Thus the experience of the unity of man as the person stimulates the need to understand the complexity of man as a being. Such understanding entails extensive knowledge of how to measure the limits or perhaps the depth of things. It belongs to metaphysics, in which throughout the ages thinkers have been unraveling the nature of man as a being consisting of soul and body, of spirit and flesh. It is possible, however, that while returning to those arguments and analyses already attempted in this study, those reserved for later chapters may shed on them some new light of their own. For there is no question but that the conception of man as the person - though it is accessible in the original intuition within the frame of phenomenological insight - has to be completed and supplemented by the metaphysical analysis of the human being. Thus while the experience of the personal unity of man shows us his complex nature, the attempt at a deepened understanding of this complexity allows us in turn to interpret human nature as the one and ontically unique person.

The Experience of the Soul

It is to metaphysical analysis that we owe the knowledge of the human soul as the principle underlying the unity of the being and the life of a concrete person. We infer the existence of the soul and its spiritual nature from effects that demand a sufficient reason, that is to say, a commensurate cause. In this perspective it is evident that there can be no such thing as a direct experience of the soul. Man has only the experience of the effects which he seeks to relate with an adequate cause in his being. Nevertheless, people often think and speak of the soul as something of which they have had an experience. But in fact the content of what is meant as the "experience of the soul" consists of everything that in our previous analyses was attributed to the person's transcendence in the action, namely, obligation, responsibility, truthfulness, self-determination, and consciousness. It is the innerness of all these moments, however, that is most vividly manifest in this experience; they make the vital fabric of the inner man, they inhere in his inner life, and as thus experienced they are identified with the experience of the soul. But the possible knowledge of the soul is not limited solely to these moments and their specific role; it encompasses in and through them man's entire, as it were, spiritual ego. Thus the possible knowledge of the soul as the spiritual ego of man seems in its own way to point out the direction of metaphysical analysis.