Karol Wojtyła’s (John Paul II) Phenomenological Account of Human Freedom

Abstract

In his analysis of the experience of human action, Karol Wojtyła puts special emphasis on person’s power of selfdetermination which reveals itself through experience as the essential characteristic of freely acting person. It is important to see that K. Wojtyła does not equate freedom with man’s ‘autonomous power of self-determination’ which manifests itself as egocentric individualism associated with the individual “right” to do what the subject wants, the “right” to establish one’s own “truth”, allowing a man to live life as if he is not dependent on God and others. On the contrary, K. Wojtyła presents a much more profound notion of freedom: he proposes the notion of ‘freedom’ understood as man’s free participation in the actualization of truth and good through the gift of self out of genuine love.