Karol Wojtyla
The Acting Person

INTRODUCTION: THE EXPERIENCE OF MAN

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7

The inspiration to embark upon this study came from the need to objectivize that great cognitive process which at its origin may be defined as the experience of man; this experience, which man has of himself, is the richest and apparently the most complex of all experiences accessible to him. Man's experience of anything outside of himself is always associated with the experience of himself, and he never experiences anything external without having at the same time the experience of himself.

Speaking of the experience of man, however, we are primarily concerned with the fact that in this experience man has to face himself; that is, he comes into a cognitive relation with himself. The experiential nature of this relation is, in a sense, continuous; but it is also renewed each time the relation is disrupted and then reestablished. For the experience of the relation is not uninterrupted even when it refers to the ego. At the level of consciousness it stops, for instance, in sleep: nevertheless. man always remains in his own company and so his experience of himself is in one way or another continuing. There are in it some vividly expressive moments and also whole, dull sequences, but they all sum up to make the specific totality of experience of that individual man who is myself. The totality is composed of a multitude of experiences and is, as it were, their resultant.

The phenomenalistic standpoint seems to overlook the essential unity of the distinctive experiences and to attribute the unitary nature of experience to its allegedly being composed of a set of sensations or emotions, which are subsequently ordered by the mind. Undoubtedly every experience is a single event, and its every occurrence is unique and unrepeatable, but even so there is something that, because of a whole sequence of empirical moments, may be called the "experience of man." The object of experience is the man emerging from all the moments and at the same time present in every one of them (we disregard here all other objects).

Moreover, we cannot say that experience as such exists only in the one moment of its occurrence and that subsequently there is only the work of the mind shaping "man" as its object on the basis of a unitary empirical moment or sequence of such moments. The experience of man, of myself (the man I am), lasts as long as there is maintained that cognitive relation in which I am both the subject and the object.

Intimately associated with the relation is the process of comprehension that also has its own distinctive moments and its continuity. Ultimately, our comprehension of ourselves is composed of many separate moments of understanding, somewhat analogous to experience, which is also composed of many distinctive experiences; it thus seems that every experience is also a kind of understanding.

Experience as the Basis of the Knowledge of Man

All that was said here applies in fact only to that man who is myself. But men other than myself are also the objects of my experience. The experience of man is composed of his experience of himself and of all other men whose position relative to the subject is that of the object of experience, that is to say, who are in a direct cognitive relation to the subject. Naturally, the experience of an individual does not encompass all men, or even all his contemporaries, but is necessarily limited to a certain, larger or smaller range. The quantitative aspect in this experience has some significance; for the more numerous are the people encompassed by man's experience, the greater and, in a way, the richer it becomes.

Digressing from the main trend of our discussion of experience, which is important not for its own sake but for the whole problem of understanding the human being, we should note that different people may mutually exchange the results of their experiences had in intercourse with their fellowmen even without direct communication. These results themselves are a quantum of knowledge contributing to what we know about man rather than to our experience of him - the knowledge that may be either pre-scientific or scientific and pertaining to different tendencies or domains of learning. It is, however, ultimately grounded in experience, and, consequently, the knowledge of man that people share in mutual communications appeals in one way or another to everyone's own experience. This knowledge not only springs from experience but somehow also influences it. Can it deform experience? In view of what was said about the relation of experience and understanding there is no reason to think it does. It seems more likely that having its source in experience this knowledge serves as a means of multiplying and supplementing experiences.

The Ego and Man in the Field of Experience

It becomes clear in our consideraticins that the need for explaining the meaning of experience in general, and the meaning of the experience of man in particular, is becoming increasingly evident, and we shall have to return to this point later. In the meanwhile, before proceeding to an explanation of this fundamental concept, we shall sketch in rough outlines the highly complex and intricate cognitive process, which we have here called the "experience of man." A point of great importance for the present, and even more for our future considerations, is that other men as objects of experience are so in a different manner than I am for myself or than every man is for himself. We may even ask whether both cases are rightly called the "experience of man," whether they are two different experiences and thus mutually irreducible. In one of them we would have the experience only of man and in the other only of the ego. It is however impossible to deny that in the latter case we are also dealing with a human being, and we are having an experience of him while having an experience of the ego. The two experiences differ but are not separable. For all the difference between the subject and the object of experience, in either case there is a fundamental unity of the experienced object. There are indubitable reasons to speak of a disparity in the experience, but, equally, there are reasons to assert the essential points of its inherent sameness.

The disparity occurs because I am given to myself as my own ego, and thus more directly and differently than any other man who is not myself. Even when we assume the closest possible relation to another human being the difference will always remain. Sometimes when we are very close to another person we may find it easier to objectivize what there is in him or what he actually is, though this is not equivalent to "having an experience." Everyone is the object of his own unique experience and no external relation to any other human being can take the place of the experiential relation that the subject has to himself. An external experiential relation may contribute many cognitive insights that are unobtainable in the subject's experience of himself, and these will differ according to the closeness of the relation and the manner of his involvement in the other person's experience (or, so to speak, in the other person's ego). This, however, cannot lessen the essential disparity of that unique experience - the experience of the man who is myself - with any other experience of man.

Experience and Comprehension

The experience of oneself, however, is still the experience of man; it does not extend beyond the limits of an experience that includes all humans, that is, man himself. This is certainly the result of the participation of the mind in the acts of human experience. We cannot say what is the stabilizing effect of sense alone with regard to the object of an experience, for a human being has no way of knowing from his own human experience what is the nature and what are the limitations of a purely sensuous experience (which is found only in animals). Yet there must be some stabilization of this kind, even if, at the most, it is exercised by individuals, in which the particular sets of sense qualities converge. (It is in this way that a dog or a horse, for example, recognizes its master from a stranger.) The stabilization of experiential objects peculiar to the human experience is essentially different and is accomplished by mental discrimination and classification. It is owing to this kind of stabilization that the subject's experience of his own ego is kept within the bounds of the experience of man and that these experiences may be subsequently superimposed on one another.

Such interference between experiences, which results from the specific stabilization of the object, then constitutes the basis for developing our knowledge of man from what is supplied in both the experience of the man I am and of any other man who is not myself. Let us note that the stabilization of the object of experience by the mind is in itself no evidence of knowledge a priori; it only evidences in the whole process of human cognition the indispensable role played by the intellectual element in the formation of the experiential acts, those direct cognitive encounters with objective reality. It is to the intellectual element that we owe the inherent sameness of the objects in the experience of man both when the subject of this experience is the same as the object and when they differ.

Simultaneity of the Inner and Outer Aspects in the Experience of Man

The likeness, however, ought not to be concealed by the disparity, which results from the fact that the experience had from the inside is only possible in relation to the man who is myself, and that this inner experience can never be had in relation to any man but myself. All other men are included in experience had from the outside, termed "outer experience." There are of course other ways than an experience of communicating with them and obtaining access to what is the object of their own experience had from the inside, but the inner experience itself is untransferable by and out of the ego.

Nevertheless, in the totality of our cognition of man this circumstance does not produce any cleavage that would cause the "inner man," who experientially can only be the ego, to differ from the "outer man," who is always other than myself. Other human beings in relation to myself are but the "outerness," which means they are in opposition to my "innerness"; in the totality of cognition these aspects complement and compensate each other, while experience itself in both its inner and outer forms tends to strengthen and not to weaken this complementary and compensating effect.

Thus, being the inner and the outer object of either experience I myself am first of all for myself my own innerness and outerness. Although every man other than myself is for me only the object of experience had from the outside, he does not relatively to the totality of my cognition represent the outerness alone but also has his own peculiar interior. While I do not experience his interior directly, I know of it: I know about people in general, and in the case of individuals I may sometimes know very much. When based on a definite relationship this knowledge may occasionally develop into something similar to an experience of somebody else's interior; though this experience differs from the experience of my own ego had from the inside, it also has its peculiar empirical traits.

All this has to be taken note of when considering the experience of man. It is impossible to isolate artificially this experience from the whole range of cognitive acts having man as their object. It is also impossible to separate it artificially from the intellectual factor. The nature of the whole set of cognitive acts directed at man, both at the man I am and at every man other than myself, is empirical as well as intellectual. The two aspects interpenetrate, interact, and mutually support each other.

In this study we must keep in mind the total experience of man: the disparity in the experience of man, which was mentioned earlier, does not cause any cognitive disruption or irreducibility. In our cognitive exploration we may venture far into the structure of the human being without fear that the particular aspects of experience will lead us astray. We may even say that the complexity of the experience of man is dominated by its intrinsic simplicity. The complexity itself of this experience simply shows that the whole experience, and consequently the cognition of man, is composed of both the experience that everyone has concerning himself and the experience of other men, the experience had both from the inside and from the outside. All this tends to compose a whole in cognition rather than to cause complexity. Thus, this conviction of the intrinsic simplicity of the experience of man may be considered as an optimistic aspect of the cognitive aims that confront us in this study.

2. COGNITION OF THE PERSON RESTS ON THE EXPERIENCE OF MAN

The Empirical Standpoint is not Identifiable with Phenomenalism

In the course of the preceding argument it seemed necessary to define with greater precision the meaning of experience in general in connection with the experience of man. Naturally we do not interpret experience here in the purely phenomenalistic sense, as has often been the practice in the broad sphere of empiricist thinking. On the contrary, the empirical approach adopted by us must not, and indeed cannot, be identified in any way with the phenomenalistic conception of experience. To reduce the range of experience to the functions and the content of sense alone would lead to deep contradictions and serious misunderstandings. This may be vividly illustrated by considering the object of cognition (the main concern of this work). For once the phenomenalistic stand is adopted it becomes necessary to ask, what then is given directly in experience? Is it only some "surface" aspect of the being called "man," an aspect detectable by sense, or is it man himself? Is it my own ego as a human being and if so, to what extent is it given? It does not seem reasonable to believe that we are given only some more or less undefined set of qualities in, or rather of, man, but not man himself. Moreover, it seems most improbable that man with his conscious acting or action is not given as the object of experience.

The Argument Begins with the Assumption that "Man-Acts" Is Phenomenologically Given

An experience is indubitably connected with a range of data which we have as given.¹ One of them is evidently the dynamic totality of "man-acts." It is this fact that we take as the starting point, and on it we shall primarily concentrate in our argument. Acting is a ceaselessly repeated event in the life of every man, so that when we consider the number of living people we obtain innumerable facts and hence an enormous wealth of experience.

Moreover, experience is indicative of the directness of cognition itself, of a direct cognitive relation to the object. While it is true that the relation of sense to objects in the surrounding reality, to the range of different facts mentioned above, is direct, there is no reason, however, to assume that these objects or facts can be grasped directly only in a "sensuous" act. It would be difficult to deny that the intentional-intellectual act must play a part in the direct grasping of the object. Such directness as an experiential trait of cognition can abolish neither the difference of content between a complete act of cognition and a purely sensuous act nor the difference of their genesis.

But these are detailed problems from the theory of knowledge and need not be discussed here. At present we are concerned with that cognitive act as a whole to which we owe among other things our grasp of the fact of man's acting. It would be impossible to accept as true that in grasping this fact experience only reaches to the "surface," that it would be restricted to a set of sense data, which in every particular case is unique, while the mind is, so to speak, awaiting these data so as to make of them its objects, which it will then call either "action" or "acting person." On the contrary, it seems that the mind is engaged already in experience itself and that the experience enables it to establish its relation to the object, a relation also, although direct in a different sense.

Action as a Special Moment of Insight into the Person in the Experience of Man's Acting

Thus in every human experience there is also a certain measure of understanding of what is experienced. This standpoint seems contrary to phenomenalism, but fits very well with phenomenology, which stresses more than anything the unity in the acts of human cognition. To put the matter in this way has a vital significance for the study of the person and of action. For our position is that action serves as a particular moment of apprehending - that is, of experiencing - the person. This experience is, of course, inherently connected with a strictly defined understanding, which consists, as already mentioned, in an intellectual apprehension grounded on the fact that man acts in its innumerable recurrences. The datum "man-acts," with its full experiential content, now opens itself for exfoliation as a person's action. It is only in this way that the whole content of experience reveals the fact with characteristic manifestness. What in this case is the meaning of manifestness? First, it seems to indicate an essential ability of an object to manifest or visualize itself, which is its characteristic cognitive trait. But, at the same time, "manifestness" means that the interpretation of the fact that "man-acts," in terms of the person's action - or rather in terms of the acting-person's totality -find full confirmation in the content of experience, that is, in the content of the datum "man-acts" in its innumerable recurrences.

Earlier, however, we said that action was a particular moment in the apprehension of a person. This statement defines more accurately our approach to the points that are the basis of the whole argument in this study; it also shows with greater precision the direction we shall follow in discussing experiences and understandings. Indeed, the interpretation of the fact of man's acting in terms of the dynamic person-action conjunction is fully confirmed in experience. Neither is there anything in experience that would be opposed to this interpretation when the fact that "man-acts" is objectivized in terms of a person's action is confirmed. Within the frame of this expression, which could perhaps be put differently, there appears, however, the question of the appropriate relation of person and action. Their close correlation - their semantic homology and interdependence - becomes manifest in experience. Action is not a single event but a processlike sequence of acting; and this corresponds to different agents. The kind of acting that is an action, however, can be assigned to no other agent than a person. In other words, an action presupposes a person. This has been the standard approach in different fields of learning that have as their object man's acting, and is especially true of ethics, which treats of action that presupposes a person, that is, presupposes man as a person.

In our study, on the other hand, the aim is to reverse this relation. The title itself of this book, The Acting Person, shows it is not a discourse on action in which the person is presupposed. We have followed a different line of experience and understanding. For us action reveals the person, and we look at the person through his action.² For it lies in the nature of the correlation inherent in experience, in the very nature of man's acting, that action constitutes the specific moment whereby the person is revealed. Action gives us the best insight into the inherent essence of the person and allows us to understand the person most fully. We experience man as a person, and we are convinced of it because he performs actions.

The Moral Modality of Human Actions

But this is not all. Our experience and also our intellectual apprehension of the person in and through his actions are derived in particular from the fact that actions have a moral value: they are morally good or morally bad. Morality constitutes their intrinsic feature and what may be viewed as their specific profile, which is not to be found in acting that assumes agents other than a person. Only the acting, in which the agent is assumed to be a person - we have stressed earlier that only such acting deserves to be called "action" -has moral significance.

This is why the history of philosophy is the tale of the age-old encounter of anthropology and ethics. That branch of learning which has as its aim the comprehensive study of moral goodness and evil - and such are the aims of ethics - can never evade the state of affairs that good and evil manifest themselves in actions, and by actions they become a part of man. It is not surprising, therefore, that ethics, especially in the traditional approach, has always assiduously concerned itself with action and man. Examples can be found as early as in the Nicomachean Ethics. And though in modern philosophy, particularly in contemporary philosophical thought, there is a visible tendency to treat the problems of ethics somewhat apart from anthropology (this terrain is now being explored by psychology and moral sociology), the total elimination of anthropological conclusions from ethics is not possible. The more a philosophical reflection becomes comprehensive, the more the anthropological questions tend to appear. For instance, it seems their role is much more important in phenomenological than in positivistic thought - in Sartre's L'Etre et le Neant than in the works of the Anglo-Saxon analysts.³

Moral Value Deepens Our Insight into the Person

Mention was already made that it is the rule in ethics to presuppose the person because of his actions, which are vested with direot moral value. In the present discourse we have adopted an opposite approach. We assume that actions provide the particular moments for apprehending and hence for experientially cognizing the person. Actions, therefore, are the most adequate starting point for comprehending the dynamic nature of the person. But moral value as the inherent property of actions leads in an even more direct way to the same result. We are not interested here in moral values as such, this being the domain of ethics, but we are very much concerned with their actual participation in actions, with their dynamic fieri. For their actual dynamic involvement gives us an even better and deeper insight into the person than into action itself.

This moral aspect - it could equally be termed "dynamic" or "existential" - allows us to reach a better understanding of the human being insofar as he is a person: this is precisely the aim of our inquiries. Hence, while deliberately relying on the total experience of man we can never avoid consideration of the experience of moral values. The latter experience in its dynamic or existential aspect is indeed an integral part of the experience of man, which as we already know provides firm ground for our understanding of the person. Moreover, it has to attract our special attention because moral values - good or evil - not only determine the inner quality of human actions, but they also never enter into a dynamic sequence of actions without leaving an imprint whereby man as a person, owing to his actions that may be good or may be evil, himself becomes either good or evil. Thus, assuming the dynamic or existential point of view, we may say the person stands at the origin of moral values just as much as in their final outcome. In them the person emerges into view more completely than in "pure" action. Indeed, to detach human action from moral values seems an artificial operation that would turn our attention away from its full dynamism.

Anthropology and Ethics Rest on the Unity of the Experience of the Moral Man

This book is not a study in ethics. The person is not presupposed, is not implied in it; on the contrary, all our attention is centered on possibly the most comprehensive explanation of that reality which is the person. The source of our knowledge of the reality that is the person lies in action, but even more so in the dynamic or existential aspects of morality. In this approach we shall rely on the real objective unity of the experience of moral value and the experience of man, rather than try to retain the traditional links of anthropology with ethics. This is the fundamental condition of exfoliating and then progressively comprehending the person.

Ethics as the Common Factor

As to the position of the relationship of anthropology and ethics in this approach it may be formulated - by analogy to operations used in algebra - as placing a term before brackets. We place outside brackets those factors of an algebraic expression which in one way or another are common to all the terms of the expression, that is, which are somehow common to everything that remains within the brackets. The aim is to simplify subsequent operations and not to reject what is withdrawn or to sever the relations of what is outside to what remains' in brackets. On the contrary, the operation underlines and enhances the significance of the factor isolated from the expression. If it were not placed outside the brackets, it would remain hidden among the other terms of the expression; but it is now brought to light and given prominence.⁴

Similarly, the traditional problem in ethics of the person-action relation, when we look at it as if it were withdrawn from brackets, may reveal itself more fully not only in its own reality but also in that abundant reality which is expanded by human morality.

3. THE STAGES OF COMPREHENDING AND THE LINES OF INTERPRETATION

Induction and the Unity of Meaning

We said earlier that the person-action relation is grasped, or rather the person is revealed in action, on the ground of the experience of man. The experience of man is composed of innumerable data, the most important for our discussion being those of man's acting: it is in them that the person is especially revealed by action. All these data manifest - besides their multiplicity, that is, their quantitative complexity - the already mentioned complexity; this means that in all men other than myself they are given from the outside, and they are also given from the inside on the ground of my own ego. The transition from the multiplicity and complexity of "factual" data to the grasping of their essential sameness, previously defined as the stabilization of the object of experience, is achieved by induction. At any rate this is how Aristotle seems to have understood the inductive function of the mind.⁵ This view is not shared by modern positivists, such as J. S. Mill, for whom induction is already a form of argumentation or reasoning - something which it is not for Aristotle. Induction consists in grasping mentally the unity of meaning from among the multiplicity and complexity of phenomena. In connection with our earlier assertions we may say that induction leads to that simplicity in the experience of man which we find in it in spite of all its complexity.

When the experience of man takes the form of apprehending the person through action, it is in this apprehension that experience in its whole simplicity is focused and the experience itself is expressed. Thus the transition from the manifold to the sameness of experiential elements is operated from the point of view of the apprehension of the person; it enables us to assert that in every instance of a person's acting there is the same person-action relation, that the same relation implies the manner in which a person becomes visualized through action. "Sameness" is understood here as equivalent to the "unity of meaning." Since experience as such cannot take us farther than the multiplicity of factual data, it becomes the task of induction to reach this unity. The whole wealth and diversity of "factual" data accumulated from individual details is retained in experience, while the mind disengages from their abundance and grasps only the unity of meaning. In order to grasp this unity the mind, so to speak, allows experience to predominate without, however, ceasing to understand the wealth and diversity of experience. The grasping by the mind of the unity of meaning is not equivalent to a rejection of experiential wealth and diversity (though sometimes this is how the function of abstraction is erroneously interpreted). While comprehending (say) the acting person on the ground of the experience of man, of all the "factual" data of "man-acts," the mind still remains attentive in this essential understanding to the wealth of diverse information supplied by experience.

Reduction Allows Us to Explore the Experience of Man

This is probably the reason why, concurrent with the understanding of the person-action relation, there appears the need to examine and explain it. Induction opens the way to reduction. It is precisely the need for examining, explaining, or interpreting the rich reality of the person, which is given together with and through actions in the experience of man, that has inspired this study. Thus we think it a waste of time to demonstrate or prove that man is a person and his acting is "action." We assume these to be irreducibly given in the experience itself of man: person and action are somehow contained in every instance of man's acting. Nevertheless, it is necessary to explain in detail the various aspects of the reality of the acting person on the ground of a fundamental understanding of person and action. The experience of man not only reveals this reality but also stimulates the need for discussing it and provides the basis for the discussion. The wealth and the diversity of experience somehow provokes the mind to the effort of grasping and explaining as fully as possible the reality of person and action when it has been apprehended. But this can be accomplished only by going deeper and deeper into the content of experience so as to bring the person and his actions out of the shadow and into full light for the cognizing mind to thoroughly examine and explore.

It is by an analytic argument and reductive understanding that experience is explored. We have to remember, however, the correct meaning of the term "reductive," which does not indicate here any reduction in the sense of diminishing or limiting the wealth of the experiential object. On the contrary, our aim is to bring it out more fully. The exploration of the experience of man ought to be a cognitive process in which the original apprehension of the person in and through his actions is continuously and homogenetically developed. At the same time, this first apprehension has to be enriched and consistently extended and deepened.

Reduction and Interpretation Lead to a Theory Issuing from Human Praxis

This, in broad outline, is our plan for the interpretation of the acting person. Induction makes possible the fundamental "intersubjectivation" proposed in the present approach to replace an "objectivation" of person and action, which stand out as an object for everyone to see, regardless of the subjective implications, in which the object is at least partly involved. "At least partly" is a necessary qualification, because a very important part of the experience of man consists in the experience of his ego. We may rightly say that for every one of us the person-action relation is first of all an experience, that is, it is a subjective event, a factual datum. Induction, however, makes of it a problem for and a subject of reflection, and it is then that it comes within the scope of theoretical considerations. For, being an experience, that is to say, an experiential factual instance, the person-action relation is also partaking of what in traditional philosophy was called "praxis." It is accompanied by that practical understanding which is necessary and sufficient for a man to live and to act consciously.

The line of understanding and interpretation that we have chosen here leads through a theoretical treatment of this praxis. The question thus facing us is not how to act consciously but what conscious acting or action really is, how the action reveals the person and how it helps us to gain a full and comprehensive understanding of the person. In this study an interpretation along these lines appears from the start to be self-evident. Nevertheless, it has seemed useful to include also the moment of the relation to the praxis, to the so-called "practical cognition," with which ethics has long-standing traditional links. We already noted that in ethics the person is only presupposed, while here our chief task is to examine and interpret the person.⁶

Issues Relevant to Adequate Interpretation

This is why in this study the argument is based on reduction. The term reduction, as here used, has no limiting or diminishing implications: to "reduce" means to convert to suitable arguments and items of evidence or, in other words, to reason, explain, and interpret. When reasoning and explaining we advance step by step to trace the object that is given us in experience and which directs our progress by the manner in which it is given. The whole wealth and diversity of experience together with all its complexity lie open awaiting our exploration, and they are not in the least overshadowed by induction and the associated intersubjectivation of person and action; indeed, they remain an inexhaustible source and unfailing help for the mind seeking for evidence and adequate arguments to explain fully and comprehensively the reality of person and action.

After all, we are not concerned with the abstract but seek to penetrate something that actually exists. The arguments explaining this existence have to correspond to experience. Thus also reduction, and not only induction, is an inherent factor of experience without at the same time ceasing to be, though different from induction, transcendent with respect to it.

Generally speaking, understanding is intrinsic to human experience but also transcends it, not only because experience is an act and a process, the nature of which is sensuous while the nature of understanding and interpretation is intellectual, but because of the intrinsic nature of one and the other. To experience is one thing and to understand and interpret (which implies understanding) is quite another.

The aim of interpretation is to produce an intentional image of the object, an image that is adequate and coincident with the object itself. This means that all the arguments relevant to the object must be grasped in their correct proportions. On this largely depends the correctness of the interpretation and this also increases the difficulty.

The Understanding and Interpretation of the Object

Similar difficulties beset the conception, that is to say, in this case the expression itself of the understanding, which matures gradually from the initial apprehension of the acting person to the final and complete interpretation. It is not only the question of an inner conviction that the man who acts is a person, but also of finding such a manner of expressing this conviction in both thought and speech, of giving it such an outward form (in this study) as would make it fully communicative. Such a conception develops parallel with the growing understanding of the object and takes on the form necessary to allow understanding - which should be as complete and as comprehensive as possible - to be expressible and effectively communicable to other people. For it is by the mutual communication and exchange of things understood that human knowledge, which is a social phenomenon, develops.

The difficulties besetting the interpretation and the conception of man are associated with the already mentioned disparity inherent in the experience of man, and thus also indirectly in that grasping of the person-action relation which issues from this experience. Evidently the manifestation of the relation with reference to the ego will be different within the range of the immanent experience than within the range of the outer experience, which extends to all men other than myself. In the course of the interpretation and in the conception of person and action the problem will unavoidably appear of integrating the manifold of singular understandings that emerge from the disparity in experience. The resolution of this problem by an attempt to integrate correctly the two aspects in the experience of man is one of the main tasks that face us in this study.

4. THE CONCEPTION OF PERSON AND ACTION TO BE PRESENTED IN THIS STUDY

Attempt to Approach the Subjectivity of Man

Although the disparity in the experience of man that we have been stressing here is an obstacle to the arrival at an interpretation and conception of man, it does open new possibilities and wide vistas for investigation. On the ground of the integrated experience of man, unlike through the behavioristic approach, the person is revealed through action, because in this experience man is given us from the inside and not only outwardly. Just because he is given not as the man-subject but, in his entire experiential subjectiveness, as the ego, new possibilities are opened for such an interpretation of man which will at the same time allow us to reproduce in the right proportions the subjectiveness of man. This has a fundamental significance for the conception of person and action that we intend to present.

Perhaps we have the right to assume that the divergence of the two great currents in philosophical thought, separating the objective from the subjective and the philosophy of being from the philosophy of consciousness, has at its root the experience of man and that cleavage of its inner aspect from outerness which is characteristic of this experience. Admittedly, to attribute this divergence only to the double aspect of experience or to the duality of the data in this experience would unduly simplify the matter. At any rate, it is not in that direction that we intend to pursue our inquiries, all the more so as their subject matter is strictly defined. However, from the point of view of our subject matter itself, which is the acting person, and which we will try to interpret and understand on the ground of the experience of man (the experience of "man-acts"), we reach the conclusion that much more important than any attempt to attribute absolute significance to either aspect of human experience is the need to acknowledge their mutual relativeness. If anybody asks why, then the answer is that this relation lies in the very essence of the experience that is the experience of man. We owe the understanding of man precisely to the interrelation of these two aspects of experience, and this interrelation serves as the basis for us to build on the ground of the experience of man (of "man-acts") our conception of person and action.

The Aspect of Consciousness

Once the problem is put in these terms, it immediately becomes evident that the analyses in this study are not going to be conducted on the level of consciousness alone, though they will necessarily include also the aspect of consciousness. If action is, as already mentioned, the special moment of revealing the person, then naturally we are concerned not with action as the intentional content constituted in consciousness, but instead, with that dynamic reality itself which simultaneously reveals the person as its efficacious subject. It is in this sense that in all our analyses we will consider action; and it is in this sense that we intend to exfoliate the person through action. At the same time, however, we must keep clearly in mind that action as the moment of the special apprehension of the person always manifests itself through consciousness - as does the person, whose essence the action discloses in a specific manner on the ground of the experience of man, particularly the inner experience. Accordingly, both person and action have to be discussed under the aspect of consciousness. Nevertheless, it seems evident that the manifestation of action under the aspect of consciousness is not the only reason why action - the act of the person - consists in acting consciously.

Our first task, therefore - in Chapters 1 and 2- will be to examine the interrelation of consciousness and the efficacy of the person, that is to say, of consciousness and what constitutes the essence of the dynamism pertaining to man's action. Going deeper into the wealth of that experiential whole in which the person reveals itself more and more fully through action we shall discover the specific transcendence disclosed by the person's action, and we shall then - in Chapters 3 and 4 - try to submit it to a thorough analysis.

Transcendence and Integration of the Person

The apprehension of the transcendence of the person in action constitutes in a way the main frame of the experience that we are always referring to throughout our conception, because it is in experience that we also find the fundamental evidence allowing us to assert that the man who acts is a person, and that his acting is really the act of a person. It would, of course, be possible to develop a more comprehensive and more elaborate theory of the person as a being, but in this study our first and chief concern is to educe from the experience of action (that is, of "man-acts") that evidence which shows man to be a person or "brings the person into view."

The basic intuition of the transcendence of the person in action allows us to perceive simultaneously that moment of the integration of the person in action which is complementary in relation to transcendence. For integration is an essential condition for the transcendence of the person in the whole of the psychosomatic complexity of the human subject. In Chapters 5 and 6 we shall analyze this complexity from the point of view of the integration of the person in action. In this part of our study our chief aim will be to place the basic intuition on sounder grounds rather than provide an exhaustive treatment of that extensive problem. Integration as a complementary aspect of the transcendence of the person-in-action supports our claim that the category of person and action adequately expresses the dynamic unity of the human being, which must have its basis in an ontic unity. In this study, however, we will not embark upon an analysis of the ontic unity, our aim being solely to approach as closely as possible the elements and issues that are essential to it. It is this approach, which, we believe, allows us to draw in the fullest way upon experience and to make use of the phenomenological approach to man, that we regard as the distinguishing trait of the conception of person and action to be presented here. The last chapter, 'Intersubjectivity by Participation,' brings us to a different dimension of the experience of "man-acts," a dimension that it is absolutely necessary to note but whose more complete analysis we shall not undertake.

The Significance of Personalistic Problems

The argumentation and analyses contained in this study reflect the tremendous significance that personalistic problems have today. Their vital import in the lives of all men as well as of the whole, always expanding, human family is undeniable. Ceaseless speculations about the various trends in the development of mankind - for example, the quantitative aspects of development, the progress of culture and civilization with all the resulting inequalities and their dramatic consequences - are a powerful impulse for the philosophy of the person. We cannot help feeling, however, that the magnitude of cognitive efforts spent in all directions is out of proportion to the efforts and achievements actually concentrated on man himself. It may be not merely a question concerning the cognitive efforts and accomplishments, which we know to be enormous and increasingly comprehensive. Perhaps the problem consists of the fact that man is still awaiting a new and profound analysis of himself, or rather, what is much more important, an ever-new synthesis, and this is not easy to attain. Having conquered so many secrets of nature the conqueror himself must have his own mysteries ceaselessly unraveled anew. In the absence of a definitive analysis, man must forever strive for a new - a more mature - expression of his nature.

Moreover, as already noted, man is the first, closest, and most frequent object of experience, and so he is in danger of becoming usual and commonplace; he risks becoming too ordinary even for himself. It is necessary that this be avoided; and it was precisely due to the need to oppose the temptation of falling into the rut of habit that this study was conceived. It was borne out of that wonderment at the human being which, as we know, initiates the first cognitive impulse. As a function of the mind, this wonderment - which is not to be confused with admiration, albeit they have something in common - manifests itself in a set of questions and then in a set of answers and solutions. In this way not only is an inquiry (our own inquiry) initiated in a train of thoughts about man, but, in addition, one of man's fundamental needs receives attention. Man should not lose his proper place in the world that he has shaped himself.⁷

The problem consists in coming to grips with human reality at the most propitious point, the point that is indicated by the experience of man and which man cannot abandon without a feeling of having abandoned himself. In embarking upon this work the author is fully aware that there are many who have already explored or will explore the domains of human experience. The reader himself will readily recognize all the influences and borrowings in this work - influences which form a part of man's great philosophical heritage and of which any new study of man must in one way or another take account.⁸

It has not been the author's intention to produce a historical or even a comprehensive, systematic study of the subject. It is merely his own individual endeavor to understand the object of his concern, an essay in analysis aimed at developing a synthetic expression for the conception of person and action. The essence of this conception has for its prime objective the understanding of the human person for the sake of the person himself; it is thus designed to respond to the challenge that is posed by the experience of man as well as by the existential problems of man in the contemporary world.⁹