The history of this century can be read in terms of the emergence of the human person.

- In Asia, the century opened with China still an empire and all power centered in the one person of the Empress; this was overturned in 1911. Eventually power was transferred to the people; progressively, through mechanisms of the economy and of civil society, personal initiative emerges and the country leaps ahead.

- In Europe, the seemingly invincible totalitarian powers of the 1930s fell due to their oppression of the people and were replaced by forms which respect and promote the person.

- In Africa, the external colonial powers have retired and the peoples struggle to assert their own identity and destiny.

Throughout all of this it becomes cumulatively clear that the central value of our times is the human person. What suppresses the dignity of the person dies, due especially to having deadened creativity from within. What diminishes the life of the person is bad and fails of itself, whereas what promotes the realization of personal life is by definition good and in practice thrives. That, thankfully, is the basis of our hope and confidence in the good. It is crucial then to look for the roots of this sense of the person and for the manner of its emergence in our times.

In this search the new possibilities of communication and interchange enable us now to bring together the resources of the many cultures. Thus the high Confucian sense of the gentleman can be joined with the deep Hindu sense of Self, both of which are broadened by the Buddhist sense of tolerance, the African sense of community and Islam’s sense of people. This is the context of our attention to the Christian sense of person, which Professor Nishitani, the great Buddhist scholar of Kyoto, described as follows: "There is no doubt that the idea of man as a personal being is the highest idea of man which has thus far appeared. The same may be said as regards the idea of God as a personal being."

One of the most widely acknowledged and important contemporary thinkers regarding the Catholic sense of the human person or Christian anthropology is Karol Wojtyla — who, not incidentally, was named Pope in 1978, with the name of John Paul II. His effort has been to synthesize tradition and modernity, enriching centuries of Catholic thought on the human person with contemporary, especially phenomenological philosophy. This provides the foundation for the ethical-moral values of the concrete person as the responsible agent in interpersonal and community relationships. From this anthropological vantage point John Paul II in two major addresses to the United Nations has been the voice of modern aspirations for the respect and promotion of personal dignity and for a vision of society which would enable human aspirations for the coming millennium.

This led to his quest to understand the dignity of each and every human being and the importance of each culture as an expression of the human spirit. Each concrete, individual person must be respected, but by nature the person is a member of a community to which they have the responsibility of loving service for the common good. For John Paul these two, the dignity of each person and the integrity of community, together provide the authentic bases of freedom, justice and harmony.

All this was clearly demonstrated in his two addresses before the United Nations, first in October of 1979 and again in October of 1995, where before the representatives of the member states throughout the entire world he synthesized and applied his anthro-pology to the problems facing the person and community today.

In both instances, he emphatically affirmed the infinite dignity of each and every human person without exception. This dignity is predicated upon the reality of being human, from which emerge also his freedom, rights and justice. It applies to every person and encompasses every moment and stage of life. This has implications as well for various contemporary political, economic and tech-nological issues including the significance of culture and tradition, community and nation.

Both times, he spoke at length about the particularly violent character of this century which has experienced a continuous and widespread violation of human and national dignity, as well as the greatest loss of life of any century in human history. While various systems have harnessed great technological advances for humankind, too much of the benefit has been restrict to a privileged few or even turned into instruments of terror and destruction. Catas-trophic wars, genocide, colonialism and neocolonialism, attempts to suppress the culture, religion and language of ethnic minorities, all have marked this century on a hitherto unprecedented scale.

The first address to the United Nations had focused on the person, the second built upon its principles and extended the implications to the rights of peoples and nations. In a world of intensified intercommunication he pointed out a path to living together in harmony and cooperation.

Here, we shall sketch briefly John Paul II is to response to the questions: (1) what and who is the human person, (2) what is his/her destiny, and in this light (3) what is culture, community and nation. The answers to these questions are of enormous import to the attitude to persons and peoples in our times.

The major philosophical tools of John Paul II’s analysis of these questions are ancient Aristotelianism, medieval Thomism and contemporary phenomenology. Through Aristotle, he established an objective realism by which human nature is identified and its attributes explored. Through Thomas he developed the notion of the person as properly existing in his or her own right and acting according to that nature. Through phenomenology he explored the nature and implications of consciousness and subjectivity, in which he drew as well as his deep study of John of the Cross and the Christian mystics. This anthropology spans objectivity and subjectivity to unveil the dynamic reality of being human; conversely, it shows the exclusion of any of these truncates and compromises the truth regarding the human person.

While each of these three approaches contributes its unique and necessary insight regarding the person, the epistemological parameters of each must be respected so as not to stretch them beyond their competence. Nor is any one to be employed to the exclusion of the others. An attempt to grasp the dynamics of the human person through the lenses of only one approach would reduce the full dimension of being human and jeopardize seriously the integrity of an anthropology. John Paul is concerned to avoid such reductionism by integrating the biological, social and behavioral sciences, as well as the approaches to the human spirit. The understanding of the full truth of being human is continually and explicitly stressed as the goal.

The anthropology of John Paul can be described through its answers to a series of fundamental questions.

This begins to appear from the nature of the Sacred Scriptures as revelation. They not only state who God is, who is the human person and what is expected of him. But simply by being revelation they demonstrate the open and communicative character of being in its source. Thus, from Judaism comes the notion of God as communicator. This is found in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, Genesis, which begins with God’s creating the various beings of the physical cosmos. Each act of creation is a speech act and begins with the Hebrew words, "And God said", "let there be . . . " (Gen. 1), and a creature comes into being. God then is not jealous, but shares his reality out of love.

This character is extended to the human person. At the apex of cosmic creation God creates humankind (in Hebrew, adam) specifically in the divine image as male or female, and hence as physically open, communicative and sharing; the very nature of the person is to be open to and for others. Human agency, self-determination and integrity of conscience all are grounded in, and expressions of, the divine.

From this it emerges clearly that for a Christian anthropology, human nature, the human person and human agency are to be understood in terms of the highest Being who is knowledge and love. This, in truth, is an exalted notion of humanity.

Non-dualism of Creation in Judaism and Christianity: Is the human person focused on the good or a compromise between good and evil?

An important element of Judeo-Christian anthropology is its non-dualism, a point of extreme importance for John Paul II. The issue arose of Judaism and Christianity since many Middle Eastern religions of the time proposed a dualism in which the cosmos was created by two equally powerful forces, good and evil. The human person was constituted of these warring components and trapped between them. Generally the two forces were the good as the spiritual cosmos of light, and evil as the physical cosmos of darkness. The eternal struggle for humankind was played out between these two.

Judaism, however, rejected this thesis from the first line of its Scriptures, and the anthropology of John Paul continues this perspective. In Judeo-Christian thought, there is one supreme, uncreated, spiritual Being who identifies himself to Moses simply as I am. He is reality who brings into being all else, both spiritual and physical, which thus participate in him. As reality, he is also truth and goodness; in him there can be neither falsehood nor evil as both are modes of falling away from what is truly real. Initially, everything in creation reflects the truth and goodness of which God consists and of which alone he can communicate. At the end of each act of creation, God beholds his work and sees that it is good; when he finishes, he beholds his creation as very good and rests on the seventh day (Gen. 2:1). In Hebrew thought the number "seven" is symbolic of perfection and completion. No evil then is to be found in the work of creation, because everything is created by God, who is all good and perfect (Col. 1:16). There is no counter principle here; in the beginning there was complete harmony between God and the human person, and within creation itself.

It is in these unambiguous terms of the source and hence the nature of reality as being true and good that John Paul proceeds to unfold the substantial reality of human beings as participants in that goodness. This is the inherent basis of human dignity and rights, freedom and justice. Without such a metaphysical-ontological basis, human reality would be epiphenomenal and even ephemeral; the essential nature of the human person would remain out of reach, incomprehensible and subject to dangerous conjecture and reductionism. In contrast, on the basis of the created character of the person and the non-dual, i.e., unambiguous, character of reality, the anthropology of John Paul proceeds on two levels: one is metaphysical-ontological and concerns the reality the human person in itself; the other is phenomenological and concerns this same reality as emerging in human consciousness.

This understanding of the radically unitary reality that is the human person comes directly from Judaism and continues in Christianity. In it the body is not something negative or irrelevant, but is that according to which the person interacts with and experiences the cosmos and other persons. The person experiences him or herself bodily, noted the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel. Indeed, as the body is of a specific sex, male or female, and accordingly is foundationally related to its alternate, the person is essentially relational, that is, social in nature. Finally, the person is fully what he/she is only as the unitary soul-body reality; therefore, the body must share in the dignity of the soul and even in its final glory (1 Cor, 15:36-49).

John Paul II’s route to exploring the notion of being human as subject enriches the objective Aristotelian realism with the Christian sense of existence. As the created image of God, the human person is not simply another instance of a specific nature whose whole purpose is merely to continue the species, but exists in its own right or, as it were, stands on its own two feet. Hence, it cannot be under-stood simply as a part of some larger whole to which its meaning is subjected: its reality cannot be negated, minimized or instrumentalized. Nor are its dignity and rights conferred by an outside agency like an academic degree. By the creative power of God the human person exists in the image of His absolute existence and is entitled to recognition, protection and promotion by society. This forceful religious sense of human existence is central to the emergence of the person in our times.

At the same time, the human subject is also rational. This differentiates the human subject from other subjects in the physical cosmos. For Wojtyla it is the interior life of the human subject that makes one a person, and this is precisely because of the soul. Being spirit in the divine image, the human person can understand, plan and direct his/her acts. Thus, the person experiences free will and in the integrity of conscience understands him/herself as the active source of his/her own acts. The person is then both subjective and objective, "an objective something and a subjective someone." This insight is crucial to the Kantian notion of the human person always being an end in him/herself and never a means to an end. This has profound axiological implications. One’s actions are not only facts, but carry meaning (Meinung) and values (Wert). This one reason Wojtyla’s philosophical approach has been called an existential personalism. The other is his phenomenological analysis of the human person.

Wojtyla’s anthropology adds to the classical Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition of the person as a rational subject a further phenomenological analysis of conscious life by exploring the foundations of the human person’s free agency and self-realization. Throughout the Scriptures, the person is seen to be both conscious and self-conscious. God is reflected in the glory of his creation (Gen. 1; Ps. 19; Wis 13; Sir 12; 42:15-25; 43:1-35; Rom. 1:19-20) and decides to call into being a creative which truly images what and who He is.

The other kind of consciousness or self-awareness is termed reflexive consciousness. Here the individual returns upon oneself not only to know oneself as an object, but to know that one is knowing and to shape its content. Through this the person constitutes him or herself and understands oneself as subject-person, ego or "I": the person is a "self-conscious self" acting as a "self-conscious being". This can be called a "creative intelligence" because persons thereby freely create what and who they are by their active lives. Throughout their lives they become more and more of the divine image or refuse to do so. This is the real foundation and implication of the ethical/moral order.

The person then apprehends the truth objectively and understands it subjectively, objectivity and subjectivity being necessary epistemological compliments of one another. Thus, objectivity is protected from the danger of objectivism wherein fact alone is accepted and value is given no more meaning. Such a truncated objectivity results in the denial of value, tending solipsistically to negate the interior personal reality. At the same time, its complimentarity with subjectivity prevents the latter from degenerating into a subjectivism whereby fact and value take on a radically individualistic sense and devolve into solipsism. Ultimately, both objectivism and subjectivism trap the person in epistemological isolation. This deprives the individual of the full sense of his/her subjectivity and personhood and breaks the community bonds of shared value and meaning which arise from the spirit of the constituent persons.

Both objective and subjective reality are perfectly and eternally communicated by God because the uncreated Being is both knowing and communicative. As self-consciousness which is pure existence, the perfect act knows itself absolutely and communicates goodness, truth and love. Hence, it does not grow in self-knowledge which is already perfect; it does not become more from creation, because it is the fullness of being; existence is not indifference or randomness. Rather, from its source all being is purposeful, creative and intelligent; this is the key to subjectivity and personhood, and the foundation of its being relational and loving.

The genius of Wojtyla’s anthropology is to evolve the sense of the human spirit while maintaining the objectivity of value and meaning; in this he bridges tradition to modernity and points the way to a new global awareness which is sensitive to the range of cultures and unfolds new levels of human meaning.

Being Human as Free and Self-Determining: What is the relation between one’s self-consciousness as image of God and the exercise of freedom as "self-determining"?

This is experienced interiorly as the person knows him or herself to be the cause of his or her acts. This is the spiritual dimension of the human person; it is the ontological foundation of the intellect, self-reflexion and self-determination, that is the ontological basis of one’s free will. The person alone, as sui iuris or the one who freely generates the law from within, is the master of his or herself. Therefore in a very real sense one is self-governed rather than determined by another person or a government.

The issue of freedom versus determinism persists. Immanuel Kant’s second critique attempted to grasp the spiritual or metaphysical dimensions of the human person in order to validate free will at its ontological or metaphysical roots, and thereby to establish the transcendence and dignity of the person. With the rapid progress of the empirical sciences, there was anxiety that the sciences of the human person would be subsumed under the sciences of nature so that the human would be seen as but one creature among many driven by the laws of nature. Nature would no longer be controlled through knowledge of its laws for the progress and betterment of humankind, for but the human person, being part of nature, also would be controlled "for the greater humanization of society."

Jurgen Habermas clearly saw this problem in his critique of modern philosophy and science. His colleagues from the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, saw bitter irony in the fact that the thrust of the Enlightenment and modernity would enslave humankind within the laws of science, rather than achieve its original goal of human liberation. Habermas rejects this pessimism, since he believes that the historical thrust of humankind is toward an ever increasing freedom, realized through reason’s expanding grasp of the truth (increased rationalization) about man and nature. Historically, humanity has tended to liberate itself from the constraints and necessity of nature, as well as from the oppression that exists in various socio-political models, by moving away from ignorance in the former and rejecting dogmatism in the latter. This process both validates one’s transcendence and freedom, and increasingly constitutes one as free.

Habermas is concerned at the use of the analytic-empirical sciences beyond their scope, whereby the science of the human being is subsumed under the science of nature. Therefore, he seeks a science with a different epistemological scope, in this case a critical science of communication which will allow universal parti-cipation in the critique of social structures and the "truth" statements which validate them.

In his address before the United Nations in October of 1995, John Paul II spoke of the need to work for a true culture of freedom. Freedom as self-determination is an essential attribute of being human, rooted in the human spirit. Hence, the quest to understand freedom cannot be pursued within the parameters of the physical or natural universe, precisely because there physical laws hold absolute sway. Freedom is a spiritual, transcendent mode of being, for which reason John Paul II has insisted on an ontological, metaphysical foundation for his study of the human person. He employs also a phenomenological approach in his investigation of the human person in order to learn from the content of our interior consciousness, being careful to use the various methodologies according to their proper scopes and competencies.

In this light he is able to bring out the special significance of a transcendent God who is free because he is spirit, whereas if God were only immanent in nature he would be trapped within the very laws which he ordained. As divine image the human person also is transcendent, as can be seen in the person’s self-awareness and hence self-determination. Certainly, being human means being in the physical universe and being subject to its laws within the parameters established for physical human survival in the cosmos; nonetheless, being human signifies also transcendence as the divine image and a reality which extends beyond physical natural.

Sacred Scripture also makes clear that the human person has free will and can choose one’s course of action, what to do or not to do, good or evil (Gen 4:7; Sir 15:11-20; 17:1); thus there is ethical and moral content to human action. The will is oriented to something apprehended by reason in order to realize or achieve an end or good. The issue is why that good is chosen and is therefore a free action. Commonly it is thought simply that God determines what is good and evil, which he communicates to the person who, in turn, has but to obey. Certainly, God is creator and ground of all being in whom every creature participates for its very existence. Yet, if the human person simply obeys, of what use is free will? Nor do moral laws and norms arise only because God wills them, for then obedience would be a voluntarism in which the will acts in total autonomy from the intellect or reason. The Scriptures sight no instance where God impinges on the freedom of the person.

Wojtyla points out how Jesus does not force, but as a teacher points to what must be done, as in the story of the rich young man (Mt 19:21): "If you will be perfect, sell what you have, give to the poor and follow me." In this dialogue, God who is all-knowing and the ground of all truth offers that truth to the person, but does not force it; the person is free. The moral code found in Scripture is given to humanity as the means by which each person can choose freely to realize him/herself according to the truth of who he or she is; that is, according to the truth of his/her human nature as the divine image: "If you would be perfect." The person must reflect self-consciously to understand this and what act to choose in order to realize his/her personhood.

Thus, freedom must be ordered to the truth about God, the self, other human beings and creation in order that the individual realize and constitute who and what he or she is. One can choose to act contrarily to this truth but this is to deform what one is, namely, the divine image.

The truth of what a person is, what is good and evil, right and wrong, is not arbitrary; directly and ontologically it is related to the very nature of the one under consideration, apprehended objectively and subjectively. Thus, the basis of true freedom is constituted in reason precisely because of the relations of freedom to truth: it is the truth that makes one free and God is Truth (Jn 8:32; 14:6). Thus, the moral law of God is not imposed, but offered as the way to self-actualization in truth; this is the way to authentic freedom with its infinite possibilities. To act outside this truth is a false freedom which harms and destroys.

This dignity and integrity of the person demands respect for personal decisions that do not harm persons or the commonweal. A person cannot be forced to want what another wants. Thus, person must be respected in his/her conscience which is the sanctuary of personhood. The conscience is the place of the person’s unique subjectivity and freedom. John Paul insists that this is to be regarded seriously by other persons and institutions, who must never violate the conscience. Anything to the contrary strikes at the core of one’s personhood and subjectivity.

If personal freedom is expressed as self-determination, it is also realized as self-governance. This means that one is master of oneself, not only freely determining what one wishes to do according to one’s conscience, but also governing oneself in the sense of being self-controlled. One does not give free vent to self-indulgence, lack of discipline or egotistical desires; rather, through self-governance, the person wills to do what he or she must do in truth, in order to be the divine image, to develop one’s human nature and to act for others; in fine, to act in the full truth of who and what one is.

But if truth is love, then it must be understood as self-giving, symbolized by God’s own self-giving in creation and on the cross. Authentic freedom is not an egotistical pursuit, but total openness to others and their well-being. Hence the person is not only self-determined and master of oneself; freedom orients this mastery to self-giving.

This contrasts to radical individualism where freedom is freedom from anything or anyone that might limit one’s ability to do whatever one wishes. Legal and personal barriers protect the person from commitment even to family, friends and community; this is radical "freedom from". True freedom is relational; it is always a freedom for others, following the example of Jesus who came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mt 20:28). Authentic freedom in the truth of being human builds family, community and nation; it rejects radical, self-centeredness. Only in transcendent acts of freedom for others does the person constitute him or herself as human in the divine image.

This moral content is not arbitrary, but objective, for the conscience operates under the principle of syneresis by which we are commanded by the law of God, written in our hearts, to "do good and avoid evil" (Rom 1:15).

This law of our nature urges, but does not force us to act in accord with our human nature as the divine image. It is the means God offers us to realize who and what we are. Thus, one does not act according to a moral norm just because it is willed by God, but acts in the freedom of one’s heart because such a self-determined act realizes the self in its full truth.

What is evil is precisely that which is against human nature and disfigures the divine image. This would be to act in an egotistical freedom, ignoring the truth of God, of oneself, of other persons and of nature. Such an act breaks community and harmony, and is the cause of strife and conflict; hence it is immoral or sinful. Sin is the rejection of the objective truth of self and others. When closely considering the very first recorded sin in the Sacred Scriptures one finds not the breaking of an arbitrary rule and a punishment for this act of disobedience, but in highly symbolic language God telling the first humans to avoid breaking their relationship with the divine. This becomes more apparent in the deceitful words of the serpent (read "Satan") who suggests that God is jealous of his Godhead and wishes to keep the human person from being divine. Here there are three untruths: 1. that God is jealous; 2. that humans will be gods; and 3. that they will not die. The all-encompassing lie is that God is deceptive, when in fact he is truth.

In committing this act of defiance, Adam and Eve declare that they are now gods and no longer have any need of the God who created them. They declare total independence and in so doing have break their intimate relationship with God. But since God is the only source of life, being Life itself, they suffer death. Similarly, since God is the source of love, being Love itself, the original harmony is broken. The original justice and its harmony having been lost there succeeds conflict between the human person and God, between human persons, and between the human person and nature. This is not a threatened punishment; rather, God warned the first persons to avoid this course of action in order not to suffer the consequences of their own freely willed act. Their decision to act in a way which ignored and rejected the truth of self and of all else, including God, was an act of "freedom from" others, and the source of oppression in humankind.

If God’s intention was to punish, this is not apparent from the analysis of Sacred Scriptures. It was the human persons who cast themselves out the symbolic garden of original justice, love and harmony through the abuse of their freedom. God as Love and Life had created them for love and life. Therefore he intervenes to reveal to spiritually blind persons, lost in arbitrariness and egotistical "freedom from," who they are. In revealing himself in Sacred Scrip-ture, God communicates the truth of who we are as his image; we learn about God and ourselves. He also gives us the moral law in order that we might freely will to accept it and thereby to image God by our acts, namely, to live the truth of who and what we are.

The Christian vision is that God reveals himself as a divine Community of Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit — a community united in perfect and infinite justice and love, truth and goodness, beauty and harmony. Seeing the frailty of humanity before evil, the Father sends the Son in the flesh through, and in, the power of the Holy Spirit. This is because God, in being true to what he is as justice, love, truth, goodness, beauty and harmony, looks upon the dignity of the human person created by him in love in the divine image. He sees the suffering and evil which afflicts the human person and, in a profound act of "freedom for" others, reaches out for our welfare.

This is seen in the words and deeds of Jesus who reveals the Father to us because as God he is the perfect image of the Father. Further, as man he also reveals the Father because in his human nature Christ is perfectly the divine image. In revealing the Father, he reveals who we are so that freely we can will to follow his example in living the truth of who we are.

From the ontological perspective the notion of value is the subjective side of the objective good founded upon being: axiology is rooted in ontology.

Value has both a divine and a human aspect. The human person knows the good at the objective level, but linked to knowledge is an emotive level. The object elicits positive or negative emotion to the extent that the individual perceives something as good or evil, as a value or a disvalue. It is terms of this subjectivization of the good that one speaks of value and meaning. The personalizing of the good in terms of the self adds the axiological dimension to the object by which the fact of its existence is given specific value or meaning.

Acts or objects are of value or have meaning inasmuch as they realize the person’s good as the image and likeness of God. As such, their objective goodness must be seen in the whole truth of being human; they are freely chosen only in that light. Some acts or objects have an attraction and value because of their specific goodness, but, because if done or chosen they would compromise the whole truth of being human as divine image; hence they carry an objective disvalue. Sex itself is an important good and has great value and meaning in marriage by realizing the divine image in married love and children, but as adultery it carries a negative value in relation to the specific person, severely compromising the divine image and falsifying the person.

Because value is related to the ontological good as it relates to being, the more good an object/subject is understood to contain the more value it has for the person; conversely, the less good or the more evil an object/subject has the less value or greater disvalue it has for the person. This is the subjectivization of objective good and evil. Therefore God has the greatest value because he is the greatest good. Each man and woman must be seen in their goodness and inviolable dignity as the divine image in their uniqueness and irrepeatability and in their relationship to God. In this light the true objective good of the person is seen and properly subjectivized in value.

Thus, every person carries a supreme value which never can be measured. Though some can be perceived as of less good and therefore be less valued, as human persons they have the same inviolable dignity and should enjoy the same rights as all: the unborn; women; the handicapped; minorities; persons of other races, nationalities, religions or language groups; the poor and marginalized; and immigrants. This is precisely where the axiological fact is related to its ontological base in the good of particular beings.

While the person is the principle instance of being human, persons cannot realize their humanness outside community. Because God is a Community of three Persons united in love, the human person also has relatedness as an integral part of his or her nature as divine image.

Though God creates animals to be companions, none is found sufficient for the person, for as image of God who is a trinity of persons one communicates from the depth of one’s subjectivity or personhood. No other creature can reach into the depths of what it is and reflect upon it; this is given only to the divine image.

God makes two persons from one, and for the first time the words man (ish) and woman (isha) are used. They are both persons of the same human nature: flesh of flesh and bone of bone. God creates them as radically equal; they become one flesh and are radically complimentary as helpmates to one another. Reflecting the self-giving love of the Divine Community of Persons, they are the image of that mutuality by which each exercising his or her "freedom for" wills the good of the other. Each is an "I" who looks upon the other as "thou", i.e., as one who is also subject like oneself and with whom one exists in an intimate bond of justice, love and harmony. In their love, bringing forth children is not simply procreation as with other animals, but cocreation with God of their children as the divine image. Hence, each child is unique and unrepeatable in their relationship to God and has an eternal destiny.

Distinct from the community of the family is the larger community of society, nation or world for their relationships are not "I-thou" but "we" in character. They do not carry the intimacy of sacramental marriage in one flesh, though there is mutual com-mitment in justice and love to respect one another and to work together for the common good. Here as divine image the person is called to exercise "freedom for" in terms of the commonweal, to recognize everyone in the community and the larger world as a divine image. Therefore, justice must be realized as a demand of love and love as a demand of justice — two sides of the same coin. Only in this way can there be harmony or peace (shalom). More than an absence of war, this harmony comes from a society and world rightly ordered in justice and love as each lives the full truth of the divine image; this is a radical call to live "freedom for."

The community of persons arises as culture and nation. Though these are not the primary ontological reality of being human, nonetheless they are imbued with their own subjectivity due to participation in a collectively shared history from which language and culture are born. Due to collective self-reflection, self-cognition and freedom in the divine image, nations, ethnic groups and minorities bear their own dignity and integrity. The bitter experience of colonialism or the brutal occupation of nations and peoples still lives in the collective consciousness.

The metaphysical dimension of human spirituality and relation to God are necessary in order to understand the wonder of the human person.

To ignore the spiritual would be to truncate the understanding of the person and remove the source of personal value and meaning; it would miss the full understanding of self and reality as deeply personal and relational; it would remove the very basis of the profound dignity and integrity of person and nation.

In contrast, by grasping the religious grounds of the person one sees the value of human life from its first moments and how persons need to live according to their human dignity, to express their creativity as the divine image, and to contribute to the common good by their work.

The person’s dignity calls for respect for one’s conscience and the need for truth. Hence, the political process should be fully open; the participation of all the members of a nation, and all countries should have their say in what effects their destinies.

In this light technological advances and economic and political structures must be seen as serving human persons and the community. Technology, with all its wonders, must be used in the full truth of being human. Political, social and economic structures too must serve the good of every person as a member of the community of humankind.

In Judaism and Christianity, there is an insistence upon justice — to consider the laborer, the vulnerable, the poor and the indigent. they proclaim a moral code and demand that all live accordingly; thus prophets have confronted the ruling class. Religion must never allow itself to be used as a legitimating force of oppression; rather it is called to a meta-critique of structures so that a true community of justice, love and harmony can prevail. God made the goods of creation to be shared by all, not by a few privileged persons or nations.

As humankind enters a new epoch of interaction and cooperation, as markets expand and technology advances, the truth of the human person and the nation must be considered in all its dignity and integrity. Without justice and love, there can be no genuine harmony. Technology, politics and economics are for the human person, not the reverse. In the eyes of John Paul II Catholic anthropology is to illuminate the full truth of being human so that humankind can construct a "civilization of love and life" after a very bloody century of death. In this world the human person will not be shaped to technology or to political or socio-economic systems, but vice versa. This is the conclusion of thousands of years of reflection upon the nature of being human; it is grounded in the divine and expressed in community as "freedom for".

1. In order to avoid possible misunderstanding, it might be helpful at the outset to note six points which are found in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christianity: (1) The human person is basically good and not totally corrupt because of sin. (2) In spite of the absolute goodness and transcendence of God, absolute alienation does not exist between God and the human person. (3) From the beginning God continuously seeks intimacy with the human person and unity with all creation. (4) While God is totally other in his transcendence, in his love for the human person he has freely entered into a paradox of simultaneous immanence through his incarnation as Jesus Christ. (5) The physical and social dimensions of being human are not ephemeral or negative. (6) Family, community and culture are not seen as incompatible with faith or authentic Christian commitment. Catholic and Orthodox anthropology finds its roots in Judaism.

2. Poland was for centuries one of the greatest and most important kingdoms in Central Europe. It saved most of Central and all of Western Europe twice from Turkish conquest and domination under the Ottoman ruler, Sulayman, the Magnificent. In the 1700’s, Poland was divided through conquest and occupation by the Prussian, Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. There was a harsh attempt to suppress the Polish culture and language, and the Catholic faith was persecuted in the parts dominated by Russia and Prussia. After World War II, Poland was again an independent nation, but this was short-lived because of the Nazi occupation which began another long oppression by foreign occupation and ideologies. This has certain parallels to the experience of the Chinese people under European and the Japanese domination.

3. Karol Wojtyla, The Acting Person (Osoba/CZYN), trans. Anna-Teresa Tymiencka (Dordrecht, Boston: D. Reidl, 1979).

4. John Paul II, "The Person: Subject and Community" ("Osoba: podmiot i wspolnota") in Catholic Thought from Lublin, vol. 4, trans. Theresa Sandok, OSM (1993), pp. 219-261.

5. John Paul II, "The Fabric of Relations among Peoples," Origins, 25 (no. 18-19; October, 1995), 300.

6. The Evangelist Luke, who wrote one of the Gospels and perhaps the Acts of the Apostles, is believed to have been non-Jewish.

7. The three terms, substance, supposit and subject are closely related linguistically in Latin (substance: sub-under, stare-to stand; supposit: sub-under, ponere-to place; subject: sub-under, jacere-to throw). The first two terms traditionally have been used interchangeably in the philosophy originating from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Karol Wojtyla’s anthropology seeks to develop and link with that the contemporary idea of subject in order to give it a ontological basis and thereby to protect this important contemporary concept from possible subjectivism through a philosophical realism. For him, the subject is a substantial reality in the Aristotelian-Thomistic sense precisely because it is a substance or supposit. Thus, the human being is a substance, supposit or subject of a specific kind, that is, with a nature that makes him/her a person. See Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 1981, chap. 1.

8. The notion of person had been developed and generally applied in reference to the Christian concept of the Trinity as found in the New Testament. In the attempt to explain how three divine entities, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, could be understood in monotheistic religion, the concept of person was used; i.e., three persons in one God. The word "person" is derived from the Greek for an actor’s mask (prosopon; in Latin: persona or personare-to speak through. This was not to imply that one entity was speaking in three modes; i.e., using three masks. Rather each divine person expresses himself in an absolutely distinct manner through his relationship to the other two; each is a distinct person and yet of one substance with the other two.

Since each divine person is a supposit (subject) who possesses consciousness and self-consciousness, freedom and agency, and since the human subject is created in the divine image who also possesses consciousness, self-consciousness, freedom and agency, Wojtyla’s application of the term to the human subject constructs an anthropology of a dynamic human reality.

9. Wojtyla comments that "self-knowledge" may not be the best term since knowledge can refer to a more generalized knowledge, whereas self-knowledge has only the ego or I as its focus. He suggests "self-cognition" as a more correct term, which is used in this paper (see The Acting Person, p. 40).