MAN, CULTURE AND EDUCATION

Education is a phenomenon which concerns man and, as a process of human praxis, takes place in its own world: the world of culture. Accordingly, it bears the historicity inherent in objective realizations of culture. Therefore, it can be understood and interpreted only within the temporal framework of an epoch in dynamic relationship with the system of values, beliefs, ways of life, ideas, and views of reality which shape our tradition, set up our cultural heritage and support our identity. For this reason, any analysis of education as a phenomenon, either in its individual or social dimensions, or in its cognitive, affective or moral aspects, requires situating the reflective attempt in the framework of the philosophy of the human person nurtured by the contributions of the human sciences.

To theorize and philosophize on moral education supposes a systematic reflection on problems brought about by educational praxis in the whole context of present day culture and society. It is based on an idea of man as a premise of any further inquiry. In this sense the axis of the reflection should be placed on the interaction between humans and culture, which shapes humans as "creators" and as "created" by culture.

In order to accomplish this critical and liberating (or emancipating -- Habermas's term)¹ function implicit in innovative and creative tasks, one needs to be incorporated in his or her cultural heritage. It is exactly here that the educational phenomenon is inserted. Its proper function essentially is to guide the process by which new generations understand, interpret and apply their cultural heritage.²

To decide on education as a means to liberate or emancipate man is a value decision grounded in our cultural heritage. Actually, it is being accomplished in a culture and a society in crisis. This crisis affects the character development and the conditions under which our younger generation must strengthen its moral judgment, define its personality, and assume the fundamental task of making its own life and constructing its own world. Hence, the challenge brought about by the questions raised by the end of an age and the advent of a new century become disturbing and promote the boldest speculations. In our classrooms today we have a generation anxious to accomplish in the shortest time in the course of history the task of protagonist in every sector of human praxis. The only prediction we can make concerns the radical character and the high speed of change; these seem to be the essential features of the 21st century. On which basis should we set up the educational process in order to guide young people in the complex task of freely defining their moral behavior, and thereby realizing the highest values of our cultural heritage? How can we offer them proper assistance in understanding, interpreting and applying these values at present and in the near future? Here, we face two essential questions which beset us at the beginning of our reflections.

Freedom and responsibility are attributes of the human person which, as values, are founded in our cultural heritage. As such, they point a way for the educational process and set up a reliable starting point which encourages moral growth in accord with cognitive development and the unfolding of intelligence and rationality. However, they do not exhaust the inherent complexity of human action (praxis). Human fulfillment, which supposes the development of the dynamism of action of the whole person is achieved only in "acting together" with other human beings. It is here that the relevance of the commandment of love is attained, i.e., in the genuine sense of "caritas" as the guiding principle of being and acting and, therefore, as a criterion of moral excellence and of the realization of the whole person. This appears as the ultimate end of moral education which faces the challenges of a new century. Consequently, it is on this that we shall focus in what follows.

PERSON, ACTION, MORALITY

The experience one has of one's fundamental cognitive process is the starting point for the knowledge of man as a person. In this sense, it is the richest and most complex experience. In Karol Wojtyla's words:

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.³

Thus, this epistemological approach proceeds from one's experience, as an experience of oneself, to the elucidation of anthropological questions in the framework of the concrete person's existing and acting.

From the human being's viewpoint, the term 'experience' denotes "experience lived through." It corresponds to the meaning of the German term `erlebnis' which comes from `erleben' and means "to live" -- a happening, for example. In this regard, H.G. Gadamer says:

Insofar as it is a secondary formation on the word erleben . . . the motivation of this linguistic formation should be sought in the meaning of erleben. To start, erleben means "to be still living when something happens." Henceforth, the word erleben gains a tone of immediate understanding of something real, in opposition to that which one believes to know, but without the certainty of his own experience, either because it is something drawn upon, supposed or imagined. What is lived (das erlebte) is always lived by oneself.⁴

Consequently, man's immediate experience, that is to say "erlebnis," is the most direct way to know the human person. This experience, as an experience of myself, implies a cognitive relationship in which I am, at the same time, the subject and the object. As such, it extends to other people as objects of my experience. Thus, according to Wojtyla's view:

The experience of man is composed of his experience of himself and 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.⁵

Therefore, experience becomes the primary source of the knowledge of man. Be it the knowledge of the man that I am or the knowledge of other men. Insofar as it is human experience, it is integrated by the experience of oneself and that of other human beings.

This perspective should not be viewed mistakenly either as a positivist empiricist or phenomenalist approach. What is given in experience is not the "surface" aspect of the human being as sensorially perceived, but man as such. At this point, it should be kept in mind that:

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 man himself. Moreover, it seems most improbable that man with his conscious acting is not given as the object of experience.⁶

In other words, what is immediately given in experience is man's acting. The immediate human experience (erlebnis) leads us directly to human acting which is manifest in the dynamic totality "person-action." Accordingly, human experience always is the experience of "I act." Therefore, inasmuch as one's conscious acting is what is immediately given by experience, it is fundamental to disclose the inherent essence of the fact "man acts" in any attempt to know and understand the human being as a person. It is in the experience so interpreted that we can discover the whole evidence of man's acting. Because, if action is a manifestation of conscious acting, it can be ascribed only to man as a person. In brief, action presupposes man as a person. We experience man as a person and we are convinced of it because he acts. Action, then, yields the deepest insight into the essence of the human being as a concrete person.

But actions have a moral value: they may be good or bad. This intrinsic feature of human acting cannot be found in the acting of an agent who is not him or herself a person. Consequently, the person's acting is the only expression of human dynamism that might be called "action" with the sense we ascribe to it. Actions then have an intrinsic moral dimension.

On this basis, the fundamental reason of the encounter between anthropology and ethics in the history of human thought becomes evident. Given the unity of human moral experience, it is an encounter that may well be extended to the relationship of philosophical anthropology to ethics, on the one hand, and to the philosophy of education, on the other. As has been stressed elsewhere:

. . . it is in connection with his acting (that is action) that man experiences as his own the moral value of good and bad (or as is sometimes wrongly said, of the moral and immoral). He experiences them in the attitude he assumes toward them, an attitude that is at once emotional and appreciative. At any rate, he is not only conscious of the morality of his actions, but actually experiences it, often very deeply. . . .

Simultaneously, both the action and its corresponding moral value -- goodness or badness -- function, if we may say so, in a thoroughly subjective manner in experience, which consciousness conditions by its reflexive function.⁷

Summing up, human experience is the experience of an acting person; that is to say, the experience implicit in the "I act". As such and to the extent that it is free, this is conscious and responsible and hence essentially ethical. Education, as a way of acting inherent to the person, holds an identical ethical modality:

When we search deep into the integral structure of moral conduct and becoming, into the integral structure of man's becoming morally good or morally bad, we find it in the proper moment of freedom. It is in the structure of man's becoming, through his actions, morally good or bad, that freedom manifests itself most appropriately. Here, however, freedom is not only a moment; it also forms a real inherent component of the structure, indeed, a component that is decisive for the entire structure of moral becoming: freedom constitutes the root factor of man's becoming good or bad by his actions; it is the root factor of the becoming as such of human morality.⁸

Education inserts itself in the becoming of the human person, as is manifest by the moral value of his actions. Consequently, moral acting is one form of human praxis. In itself it constitutes a process by whose means the subject's potentialities are actualized in the human person, that is to say, in the concrete man-person. Or, as Jacques Maritain put it, it is a "moral act", praxis, or "practical wisdom in the Aristotelian sense."⁹

In what follows, we shall attempt to examine the nature of the person's own dynamism and, afterwards, spell out its implications for "acting together with others." On these bases some pedagogical conclusions will be drawn concerning the role of education in the person's realization from the general viewpoint of the search for moral excellence and human fulfillment.

HUMAN PERSON AND HUMAN DYNAMISM

Karol Wojtyla's existential personalism is a philosophy of subjectivity and consciousness, which attempts "to enrich the realist view of the person," as it appears in the Lublin school of thought. From this phenomenological perspective we shall draw a series of inferences which can provide intellectual enlightenment for the interpretation of the person's moral behavior.¹⁰

- Phenomenological experience is the fundamental source for a deep understanding of the person through his or her acts.

- The human act is the clearest expression of the person in the framework of his or her own dynamism.

- Given the intrinsic moral nature of human acting, there is a phenomenological identity between one's self-experience and the experience of morality.

The person's understanding is achieved on the basis of his acts, which are the main source for experiencing values, for only by acting does the person experience the moral value of good and bad. Hence, we shall analyze the structure of human dynamism in order to grasp its essence and work out a clearer understanding of moral behavior. As we have already pointed out, the experience of "I act" represents the main source. The experience of acting, as a means of personal realization, has a subjective character; it is the acting of an ego which in itself has a conscience in function of its acting consciously. Insofar as the agent has an experience of self, the actor discovers that he or she is the source of his or her own action.

Here we reach the grounds of the person's efficacy and transcendence in action. What is given in human acting as a whole is the experience implicit in "I act." In this sense, every experience is an experience of oneself, that is essentially, of the efficacy of the act which at the same time transcends the agent's subjectivity.

In the perspective of an existential-personalist view, I exist inasmuch as I am an acting person. I am conscious of the fact that I cause and perform my own acts, and I transcend them because I know that I cause them and am not completely expressed by them, for I can substitute them by other acts. In other words, the efficacy and transcendence of the ego over the content of what is mine is shown in an immediate self-evident and original experience.

However, the human dynamism involves two manifestations that should appropriately be distinguished in favor of our main argument: (l) on the one hand, human acting or doing is itself conscious and carries along with it the responsibility implicit in the "I act"; and (2) the mere "something happens in man" is the result of a passive activation from the consciousness viewpoint. In other words, this is the difference between "man's acting" and that which "merely happens" to him. But being manifestations of that dynamism by means of which the human being's potentialities are actualized and realized, they are integrated in the "ontic support" -- or "suppositum" in St. Thomas' words,¹¹ considered as the concrete man-person. This represents the unity and synthesis of the person's acting (activeness) and the implicit dynamism of that which merely happens in him or to him without himself being the agent of his own action (passiveness).

In brief, human dynamism entails, on the one hand, the efficacy and transcendence of the person's acting and, on the other, the implicit activation of that which happens to man as a result of an inner dynamism in which he is not "active" as a concrete ego. In that sense, the term 'activation' involves the passiveness and activeness that are supposed in every actualization of man's potentialities.

Being a "dynamic unity" his "acting", as well as that which "happens to him", have a common root, which is not other than the human being as a dynamic subject who is the main source of his acting. Accordingly, actuation and activation denote two manifestations of human dynamism that, in their origin are integrated in the unity of the ontic support (suppositum). Here we reach the ultimate foundations of action. The subjectivity present in both requires an ontologically subsequent factor as its necessary condition. In this sense the "suppositum" is a being inasmuch as it is the subject of existing and acting. Its coming into existence is the first act by which it sets up its own dynamism. Therefore, initially, it becomes identified with the person:

In the first fundamental approach the man-person has to be identified with its basic structure. The person is a concrete man, the individual substantia of the classical Boethian definition. The concrete is tantamount to the unique or, at any rate, to the individualized. The concept of the "person" is broader and more comprehensive than the concept of "individual," just as the person is more individualized than nature. The person would be an individual whose nature is rational -- according to Boethius' full definition: persona est rationalis naturae substantia.¹²

However, neither "rational nature" nor its "individualization" fully denote the implicit meaning of the term `person.' The person is not only "something"; it also is "somebody." This is an important distinction whenever it is identified with its ontic support or ontic structure. As a person, the human being is an acting subject, a subject of existence and action. His existence is personal and not only individual. As we have already said, that existence integrates the efficacy of acting and the subjectiveness of activation. The individual who acts is somebody: the man-person as the subject of his or her actions. The "ontic support," as the source of potentialities and the ultimate foundation of the person's dynamic cohesion, synthesizes and unifies the two expressions of human dynamism: acting and activation. In this perspective the human being is disclosed as a being which is, exists and acts, and which by acting realizes its own potentialities and creates himself in action. This distinctive feature is evidenced particularly by morality:

Morality and acting differ essentially, but at the same time they are so strictly united with each other that morality has no real existence apart from human acting, apart from actions. Their essential separateness does not obscure their existential relationship.¹³

The man-person, as a suppositum, realizes himself in the efficacy and transcendence of his or her actions which, as such, represent authentic expressions of his or her self-determination. For this reason, the ultimate constitutivum personae essentially is self-determination. The main question concerning its structure becomes the fundamental issue in any attempt to know and understand the person through his or her acts. Self-determination is an ontic property implicit in the person's freedom which in itself is inalienable. Consequently, it is a necessary condition for his or her whole realization. To that extent it brings forth an essential aspect of moral excellence as an ultimate end of education.

SELF-DETERMINATION, MORAL EXCELLENCE,

AND THE REALIZATION OF THE PERSON

In the person's self-realization through action, the will shows itself as a property of the person; the person which is realized in its own dynamism, which is an expression of the will. Exactly here, the role of self-determination, the dynamic foundation of the person's realization, becomes clear.

The structure of self-determination supposes self-governance and self-possession. Human action reveals an ego who possesses and governs him or herself. Anyone may assume or carry out this property. It is grounded the person's inalienability which, to the extent that it is something specific to the person, unites and integrates every manifestation of the person's dynamism. Therefore, only in experience and, to be more strict, in self-experience, is man given as a person. By acting he, at the same time, determines (that is, is subject) and is determined (that is, is object).¹⁴

Considered as an instrument for the person's realization, self-determination has a transcendental and dynamic character. It sets forth the person's transcendence, because experiencing oneself as a source and agent (efficient cause) of action one goes beyond the limitations of one's own nature in order to reach the highest level of self-realization. This shows its dynamism insofar as it makes possible the person's actualization and realization according to the highest value that his actions may achieve from the moral point of view. In such a sense, self-determination becomes the ultimate foundation of moral excellence; it is one of the goals pursued by education in every age.

Self-governance and self-possession are responsible for the person's freedom and define the way to moral excellence in the educational process. They set up the essential elements of practical wisdom, or ethical "know how," in the Aristotelian sense. They are learned inasmuch as they shape our own lives. For that reason they assume the role of principal means for the personal fulfillment and assume the freedom of every act. Undoubtedly they are the grounds of every education that attempts to achieve the moral excellence inherent in full development of the human being.

The human act, as an expression of the will in the person's dynamism, has a value by itself. This is the personal or "personalist" value of action, according to Wojtyla.¹⁵ It points to one's self-realization in the dynamic interrelation between person and action. Consequently, it becomes the main source in apprehending the person's value and the hierarchy of his valuations.

However, self-realization is achieved finally in man's "acting together with others." Hence, if in the person's knowledge what is immediately given is action, and this bears the distinctive character of "acting together with others," it could not be possible to conclude an analysis of the person-action dynamics without considering the questions raised by intersubjectivity. This is a matter of extending this analysis to "acting together with others." The consequences of such an attempt is the crucial question which leads us to the domain of intersubjectivity and participation¹⁶ as the last parameter for personal fulfillment in action. As we shall see in what follows, this sets the conditions for achieving moral excellence and human fulfillment in a time of accelerated and unpredictable changes.

INTERSUBJECTIVITY, PARTICIPATIVE COMMUNITY

AND HUMAN FULFILLMENT

Human acts are accomplished in the context of different social and inter-human relations. For this reason, in order to understand and interpret the personal nature of human acts it is absolutely necessary to consider the consequences derived from the fact that they may be performed with other human beings. "Acting together with others" not only is frequent and usual, but universal. The questions raised by this universal dimension of human action may be answered on the basis of an analysis of the concept of intersubjectivity by participation.

According to Wojtyla,"participation" offers the basic channel for the dynamic correlation person-action, inasmuch as it is a way of "acting together with others."¹⁷

The "Personalistic" Value of Action

We shall start from what has been called the "personalistic" value of action. For the person, the performance of action is in itself a value. Here, efficacy, transcendence and self-determination are integrated in the unity of the person. Consequently, the "personalistic" value of human action is the clearest and most fundamental manifestation of the person's worth.

Even though being is prior to action, insofar as the person and his value are prior to the value of action it is in action that the person actualizes himself through the structure of self-governance and self-possession. This fact has been stressed since the beginning of our argument: the "personalistic" value of action is drawn from the personal performance of the act. In this sense, the "correlation of the action with the person" attains an ontological as well as axiological validity.

On this basis we reach the conclusion that the personalistic value of action is prior to, and conditions, the other values. Every moral value supposes an action grounded on the person's self-determination. Therefore, any judgment on the merit or demerit of a person's acts must begin by determining whether he is or is not the true author of the said acts. Hence, the action's performance cannot be perceived only in ontological terms but, on the contrary, should be viewed in an axiological context.¹⁸

The action's value is "personalistic" because by performing the action the person thereby fulfills himself or herself, or in other words becomes a person or attains the ontological status of a person. Inversely, anything opposed to this "fulfillment," that is to say, anything which may limit or deny action should be considered morally bad, insofar as it would be opposed to the person's fulfillment. Whenever the person is self-fulfilled in action, the structure of self-determination is wholly consummated. It is exactly in this self-realization -- which itself means to perform or accomplish acts -- that its ethical value is found. It emerges and develops as a substructure of the personalistic values which it itself supposes.

Participative Community and "Common Good": The Idea of "Neighbor"

The personalistic perspective in the analysis of human dynamism offers enough evidence of the authenticity of the "action's value" from the person's viewpoint. Although this is not an ethical value thus far, it comes forth from the depth of human dynamism and, to this extent, it reveals and confirms the ethical values. This provides a better understanding of such values in strict correspondence with the person and the "world of persons", rather than as ideal entities detached from human existence.

We may now raise the questions leading to the core of our main argument. What meaning does the phrase "acting together with others" have for the "personalistic value of action"? Can we keep, in this context, the person's transcendence and inalienability; can the person's acts uphold the value hierarchy which derives from this transcendence? In the perspective of Wojtyla's existential personalism, an affirmative answer to these questions emerges from the idea of a "participative community." It is the very idea of "participation" which can lead us to the clarification of human dynamism in the context of an "acting together with others." At this point, the argument requires more precision regarding the definition of the concept of "participation;" this will be the focus of what follows.

Currently, the term `to participate' means "to have a part in something." However, from the philosophical viewpoint, its meaning concerns directly the intrinsic nature of the human being. It is nothing other than the person's transcendence in action whenever it is accomplished "together with others." This transcendence itself reveals that the person is not engaged or conditioned by social interaction, but holds up his or her own freedom and dignity which, as such, are the ultimate grounds of "participation." In that sense the personal value of action is retained and fully realized, without any limitation or entanglement arising from the "acting together." To be able to participate means that "acting together with others" one retains the "personal value of action" and, at the same time, shares the realization as well as the results of that action Thus, participation becomes the essential feature of "acting together with others."¹⁹

This idea of participation leads us to the foundations of the dynamism of the person. The whole structure of the value of action -- the person's fulfillment, transcendence and integration -- is clearly manifested as a consequence of an action accomplished in conjunction with other human beings. Therefore, participation assumes the entire burden of the fact that by "acting together with others" the person achieves his full realization. To that extent, participation becomes the determining factor of the "personal value" of any possible mode of cooperation.

According to the main lines of our argument, individualism, as well as totalitarianism -- or anti-individualism -- represent clear limitations of "participation." On the one hand, individualism denies participation because it assumes that the individual's good is in contradiction with that of the other individual's. In such a case, there is no possibility for the person's realization by "acting together with others." On the other hand, this denial is also implicit in totalitarianism -- or anti-individualism -- which, in a way, might well be called "reverse individualism" It presupposes that in the individual there is only an inclination to achieve his own good; consequently, the common good can only be achieved by restraining that of the individual. As may clearly be seen, both alternatives deny and contradict the personalist perspective which is grounded in the conviction that the person's distinctive feature is his capacity to participate. Obviously, this capacity needs to be cultivated and developed and it is at this point that education plays a role of transcendental importance.²⁰

It is not human nature which compels man to exist and act "together with others." Rather, it is the existing and acting together with other human beings which enables one to achieve one's own fulfillment; that is to say, one's intrinsic development as a person. For this reason, every person is entitled to act in order to fulfill himself in action. Hence individualism and totalitarianism must be rejected together with all their mistaken implications.

To achieve greater precision regarding the concept of participation, we need to define it from the viewpoint of the concept of community. Participation is the constitutive factor of community understood as the concrete reality of existing and acting "together with others." In this sense, participation is directly related to the person's experience.

However, community itself is not the subject of action. On this matter, Wojtyla says:

The term "community," like "society" or "social group" indicates an order derived from the first one. Being and acting "together with others" does not constitute a new subject of acting but only introduces new relations among the persons who are the real and actual subjects of acting.²¹

But, in its substantial and abstract sense, the concept of community is nearer to the reality of the person and participation -- nearer, perhaps, than such notions as "society" or "social group." This is because of the role played here by the idea of the common good as a cohesive factor. In Wojtyla's words:

the solution to the problem of the community and participation does not lie in the reality itself of acting and existing "together with others"; it is to be looked for in the common good, or, more precisely, in the meaning we give to the notion of the "common good."²²

In an "axiological sense," the common good becomes the community's good, for it promotes or brings forth the conditions for communitary existence. Therefore, it is the foundation of any authentic human community. As a principle of right participation, it places the person in a position to accomplish authentic actions and fulfill oneself in acting "together with others":

In groups established on the principle of a temporary community of acting, participation is neither manifested as clearly, nor realized to the same extent, as in communities where their stability is grounded in the fact of being together -- for instance, a family, a national group, a religious-community, or the citizens of a state. The axiology of these latter communities, which is expressed in the common good, is much deeper.²³

But, in the "acting together with others," we should distinguish between two types of attitudes: "authentic" and "nonauthentic." Among the first should be mentioned solidarity as a person's constant disposition to assume his or her responsibility in the community; opposition, indisposition to act or work for the common good; and dialogue, which shapes and strengthens human solidarity by means of opposition. Among the "nonauthentic" attitudes it is enough to mention, first, conformism, which sets aside human solidarity and turns itself into a negative disintegrating attitude. It is a form of passivity in which the man-person becomes the subject of what happens instead of the responsible actor or agent building his or her own commitment in the community. Evasion is a second nonauthentic attitude characterized by the lack of engagement and interest for the common good. In this way, our analysis reaches the basis of the concept of participation in the context of the human dynamism: the person's being and acting as a member of a community.

We find here two reference systems of essential importance which derive from two implicit meanings of the concept of participation in the context of human dynamism: the idea of "neighbor" and that of "member of a community". Although, in a way, these two ideas seem to coincide, inasmuch as a member of a community is also another man's neighbor, some differences should be stressed. On the one hand, the notion of neighbor requires not only an acknowledgment of the human as such, but of the person's value, regardless of his or her membership in a given community or in society at large. Therefore, the notion is related intrinsically to man and to the value of the person, beyond any consideration of one's relations to this or that community or to society in the broad sense of the term. In other words, the notion takes into consideration only one's humanness, which is a possession of every man as well as of myself. On the other hand, although being a member of a community is presupposed by the reality denoted by the notion of neighbor, it removes to a more distant plane and in a sense overshadows the broader notion of neighbor.

The notion of neighbor is the most direct way to understand "participation" as "sharing the humaneness of every man." In this sense, it refers to the widest reality one may come to share. Consequently, it leads us to the ultimate foundations of inter-human relations; the capacity to participate acquires all its depth in the notion of neighbor. The man-person is not only able "to share" in the community's life, but is able to participate in the very humaneness of others.²⁴ It is exactly on these grounds that stand the meaning and the "personalist value" of the concept of community. Something implicit in the deep content of the concept of neighbor reveals the meaning denoted by the term `participation.' To share the humanity of every man is the essence of participation; it is the necessary condition for any personal value of existing and of acting together with others.'

Therefore, to lay the groundwork for an authentically human community in a future world -- of which we can predict only the depth and speed of changes regarding inter-human relations -- the systems of reference implicit in the notions of neighbor and community membership should overlap and permeate each other, instead of becoming radically distant. The radicalization of this distance brings forth the always present danger of "alienation." Let us listen to Wojtyla's words:

Man's alienation from other men stems from a disregard for, or a neglect of, that depth of participation which is indicated in the term "neighbor" and by the neglect of the interrelations and inter-subordinations of men in their humaneness expressed by this term, which indicates the most fundamental principle of any real community.²⁵

The "dehumanization" of our present-day society, besieged by every kind of alienation of which we are direct witnesses and protagonists, does not lie in the system of things: as nature, civilization or system of production and distribution of material goods. It should not be forgotten that even though humans did not create nature, they are its master. Furthermore, man develops the systems of production. Therefore, it is in his hands to overcome alienation and dehumanization in today's civilization: only man is responsible for alienation. It is precisely the "commandment of love" which reveals the essence of man's alienation, which has no other source than the neglect of the depth implied by the meaning of the word "neighbor."

It is the commandment, "Thou shalt love," in its authentic sense of "caritas," that clearly discloses the highest ideal of "human fulfillment." This is an ideal that, given the critical circumstances of today's culture and society, becomes an enlightening criterion to meet the demands every human being must confront in order fully to realize the Good in existing and acting together with others. Accordingly, it represents the ultimate end of an education that, by means of moral excellence, attempts to realize the whole man-person, facing the disturbing questions raised by the advent of the 21st century.

Universidad Simón Rodríguez

1. Cf. Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971); see also Ciencia y Técnica como Ideología, (Madrid: Tecnos, 1984), p. 173; and The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. I (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), pp. 366-99.

2. Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Verdad y Método (Salamanca: Sígueme, 1977), pp. 378-314. Regarding the meaning and implications of a "critical hermeneutics", see Habermas's "On Hermeneutics' Claim to Universality" in K. Mueller-Vollmer, The Hermeneutics Reader, (New York: Continuum, 1985); P. Ricoeur, "Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology," in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 63-100; and J. B. Thompson, Critical Hermeneutics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 36-111.

3. Karol Wojtyla, The Acting Person (Holland: D. Reidel, Dordrech, 1979), p. 3.

4. Gadamer, pp. 96-97.

5. Wojtyla, p. 4.

6. Ibid., p. 9.

7. Ibid., p. 48.

8. Ibid., p. 99.

9. Jacques Maritain, La Educación en este Momento Crucial (Buenos Aires: Club de Lectores, 1977), p. 13.

10. K. Wojtyla, "The Task of Christian Philosophy Today," in The Human Person, Proceedings of The American Catholic Philosophical Association, vol. LIII, (Washington, D.C. The Catholic University of America, 1979), pp. 3-4; Existential Personalism, Proceedings of The American Catholic Philosophical Association (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 1986, vol. LX, 1986); M.A. Krapiec, I-Man: An Outline of Philosophical Anthropology, (Connecticut: Mariel Publications, 1983); Andrew N. Woznicki, Existential Personalism (Connecticut: Mariel Publications, 1980); George Huntston Williams, The Mind of John Paul II, (New York: The Seabury Press, 1981).

11. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, vol. II (Madrid: BAC, 1967), pp. 810-820. See also Wojtyla, The Acting Person, pp. 80-90.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., p. 70.

14. Ibid., pp. 106-108.

15. Cf. ibid., p. 264.

16. Cf. Karol Wojtyla, "Participation or Alienation?," Analecta Husserliana (Holland: D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1977), pp. 61-73. By the same author, see "The Person: Subject and Community," Review of Metaphysics, vol. 35 (1982), 35, pp. 273-308.

17. Cf. Wojtyla, The Acting Person, pp. 264-265.

18. Ibid., p. 267.

19. Cf. ibid., p. 268; see also, Wojtyla, "The Person: Subject and Community," p. 288.

20. Cf. Wojtyla, The Acting Person, pp. 271-276.

21. Ibid., p. 277.

22. Ibid., p. 280; see also Wojtyla, "The Person: Subject and Community," pp. 300-302.

23. Wojtyla, The Acting Person, p. 282.

24. Cf. ibid., pp. 294-295.

25. Ibid., p. 297.