Abstract
This paper addresses one particular understanding, based in the Catholic intellectual tradition, of ethical and anthropological foundations of the formation of social and economic attitudes in the family, and how these might be related to the understanding of humanity at the foundation of participation in an inclusive economy. What is at stake is how the primordial subjectivity of the human person, formed in the family, may be related to the formation of social and economic attitudes in the wider society. Building on the position, expressed in the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes (52), that “the family is a kind of school of a deeper humanity,” I will investigate the development of the notion of “humanity” in the thought of Karol Wojtyła (the future Pope John Paul II) to situate the question of economic inclusion in a context of human ecology. I will treat the question of human consumption within this perspective, as related not only to the human vocation to participate in community, but also to the consequences for persons of consumerist attitudes.
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Notes
- 1.
I will refer to John Paul II as “Wojtyła,” except when referring explicitly to his papal teachings.
- 2.
Unless otherwise specified, all translations herein are my own.
- 3.
Augustine, De Trinitate 8, 10, 14.
- 4.
“Familia schola quaedam uberioris humanitatis est.” (Gaudium et Spes 52; cf. 47–52).
- 5.
Wojtyła uses the formula istnieć, bytować, działać (1976, 8), recalling the three perfections (esse, vivere, intelligere—(Aquinas, In III Sent.; cf. Aquinas, In III Sent., proœmium) cited by Epimenides (Fragment from Cretica, c. 600 BC) and St. Paul (Acts 17:28) as evidence of a divine context for human action.
- 6.
The Hon. Rocco Buttiglione (1948–), Italian politician, professor of political science, member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, and close friend and disciple of Wojtyła from about ten years before he became pope, is often reputed the leading living authority on Wojtyła’s philosophy.
- 7.
Husserl (1997, 107).
- 8.
“Prayer can be said to be a constitutive element of human existence in the world. Human existence is ‘being directed toward God’” (Wojtyła 1979b, 135).
- 9.
Presenting at the same conference, Buttiglione compared Wojtyła’s “hidden man,” to the “hidden God” of Pascal, while Styczeń compared Wojtyła’s homo absconditus to the Deus absconditus of Isaiah 45:15 (Buttiglione et al. 1984, 19, 129–34).
- 10.
“Myśl jest przestrzenią dziwną” (Thought: Strange Space) (Wojtyła 1998, 78–88, esp. 86–87).
- 11.
Wojtyła’s lectures (1958, 2018) were at least partially derived from the lectures of Wojtyła’s mentor Jan Piwowarczyk (1960, 1963). The extent of Wojtyła’s sole authorship of this early, derivative work is uncertain; one may safely cite it to confirm Wojtyła’s positions elsewhere, but not to challenge them. Beyer, the editor, suggests (2020) that the 2018 text may be hermeneutic for the later thought of Wojtyła and John Paul II, but his sources don’t support a definitive conclusion. No other scholar could publish such a text, Wojtyła himself declined to publish it, and its attribution must be carefully weighed throughout.
- 12.
Wojtyła (1958) incorrectly lists the citation as I-II, 24, 4.
- 13.
Similarly, Wojtyła (1994, 323–26) lists conformism (konformizm) and ducking responsibility (unik) as inauthentic attitudes that are opposed to participation, and inimical to dialogue.
- 14.
Urbankowski (1983) writes that, at the level of culture, “the proper seat of mankind,” man appears not as “an artificial homo economicus, but as Adam who gives meaning even to things he has not created, whereby he creates them for the second time.
- 15.
- 16.
Wojtyła is not opposed to modeling, or statistical analysis, so much as to the reduction of the value of the person to some aspect of quantity.
- 17.
Years earlier, shortly before becoming Pope, Wojtyła (1979b, 23–24, cf. 20–21) had similarly exhorted Pope Paul VI to reflect on the stories of creation and the fall in the first three chapters of Genesis, so as to understand the situation of humans in a contemporary world influenced by Sartre and Marx.
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Rice, J. (2024). A Deeper Humanity: The Family as the School of an Inclusive Economy. In: Róna, P., Zsolnai, L., Wincewicz-Price, A. (eds) Homo Curator: Towards the Ethics of Consumption. Virtues and Economics, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51700-6_11
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