John F. Crosby

The Christian personalism represented by Karol Wojtyla, as well as by von Hildebrand, Ratzinger, Guardini, Scheler, Newman, and others, sometimes stands in tension with pre-modern Catholic philosophy centered around Thomism. In the coming century Catholic philosophers will have to work through these tensions. My paper tries to frame some of the debates that are coming, especially the debate over the dignity of the human person. I argue that much of the growing consciousness of personal dignity in our time is well-founded. Though it involves a certain turn to the subject, it does not have to be subversive of the Catholic tradition; it rather is capable of being an asset for it. The encounter of the Catholic tradition with personalism is not unlike its encounter with Aristotelian philosophy in the 13th century: the same boldness that St. Thomas showed in his reception of Aristotle is needed again in our time in our reception of personalism.

I begin by explaining why individuality in persons is something different from and something stronger than individuality in non-persons. In the second part I offer a metaphysical account of this distinctly personal individuality of a human being, an account that comes to us from Edith Stein. I consider her proposal that each person has, besides the common human essence that we all share, an unrepeatable essence as this person. In the third part I provide some historical setting for Edith Stein’s idea; it is a setting that makes her idea more understandable and more plausible. And in the fourth and final part of my paper I consider two objections to Edith Stein’s position, and I attempt to respond to them, thereby clarifying her position and making it more convincing.

In this paper I ask what subjectivity is and why it reveals man as person, as Karol Wojtyla and others claim. First, I explain subjectivity, which I also call interiority, in terms of self-presence, which is a mode of relating to myself from within myself. I am present to myself as subject, not only as object. Only I can encounter myself in the intimacy of my self-presence; no other person can be present to me as I am to myself. Next, I further explore self-presence as weak or strong, calling strong self-presence recollected self-presence. Finally, I conclude by explaining how it is that recollected self-presence reveals man as person. Against the suspicion that this “turn to the subject” opens the door to a bad subjectivism, I argue that it entirely coheres with the realism of Christian philosophy.

Ryn restates and develops certain themes of conservative political philosophy in the tradition of Edmund Burke. His essay centers around a distinction between plebiscitary democracy and constitutional democracy: the "new Jacobinism" is the broad movement of thought, strenuously opposed by Ryn, which has almost succeeded in making the former type of democracy prevail over the latter. Ryn sees the origin of constitutional democracy in a fundamental ethical stance. He argues that our first moral duties and responsibilities are to those with whom we live every day, and that we do not have the same strong duties towards those who live at a distance from us; the love of one's immediate neighbor has priority over the love of "humanity." Whoever recognizes this has a strong experience of his or her moral frailty and fallenness, since it is extremely difficult to practice well the active love of this concrete individual who is my neighbor. Now this fundamental ethical stance gives rise to a very definite kind of political order; one learns to esteem the "small" communities of family and village, since this is where moral character is primarily formed. One constitutes political authority so that it supports and protects family life and local community life, and does not interfere with and overrule them. This means that one decentralizes and limits authority, and does so not only for the sake of the local and the regional, but also because one knows of the moral frailty of human beings.

Taking John Paul II's teaching on the Christian meaning of suffering as my main source for a Catholic perspective on suffering, I show how seriously he takes the reality of suffering, and how seriously he takes the question as to the meaning of suffering. I proceed to explore his many-sided teaching on the way in which sin is and is not involved in the meaning of suffering, giving particular attention to his teaching on social dimensions of sin and suffering that are little understood in the individualistic West today. The heart of his teaching on suffering lies in his explication of how it is that we have to be conformed in our suffering to the suffering of Christ so as to share in His resurrection. But it is not the suffering as such but the love that we are called to live when we suffer, that incorporates us into the risen Christ.

My purpose in this paper is to set forth a case for inclusion, without any restriction whatsoever, of gays and lesbians in the legal definition of marriage within the various jurisdictions within the United States of America. Historical and cross cultural definitions of marriage are usually based on two basic premises or components, structure and function. Structural definitions of marriage, with which most people and jurisdictions identify, are based on exclusion and inclusion, i.e. on who is eligible for inclusion and who must be excluded. Ordinarily the restrictions exclude those not having reached the age of majority, those who are not judged mentally competent, and those of the same gender. Functional definitions of marriage are based on the willingness of the partners to engage in the duties and responsibilities to each other and to all offspring regardless of their physical or mental fitness. I intend to defend the proposition that legal marriage for gays and lesbians is better defined and defended when based on function rather than structure. Specifically, this means that marriage is the union of those who 1.) without mental equivocation embrace their mutual commitment to support and care for each other; 2.) are of legal age; 3.) are of sound mind; and 4.) affirm their commitment to fulfill, to the best of their ability, the following functions as they pertain to the natural birth, legal adoption, or foster care of any and all children included in the marital union: These functions include but are not limited to: protection (physical and mental), economic, affect-giving, socialization, acculturation, education, and sexual access between the conjugal partners. Historically, there is no record throughout the history of humankind, of any state or body politic that does not profess a vested interest in the mate selection patterns of its young. This is not generally for the edification of the married, but rather for the assurance of the socialization and acculturation of the ascending generation.

I use concepts of Karol Wojtyla’s personalism, especially the concept of subjectivity, to explain Newman’s personalism. There is a “turn to the subject” in Wojtyla, and there is a similar “turn to the subject” in Newman; and they explain each other. Thus Newman’s distinction between the theological intellect and the religious imagination, and his particular concern with the latter, is shown to be an expression of his personalism. I try not only to throw new light on Newman’s personalism, but also to explain why his personalism, as Wojtyla’s, has been mistaken for subjectivism. I show that there is in Newman, as in Wojtyla, a unity of subjectivity and objectivity that secures his thought against subjectivism.

I explore the personalism embedded in von Hildebrand’s moral philosophy, and then I explore the personalism in his later account of love. I claim that his personalism was significantly developed in his later work, and that it can be still further developed by us. I begin by explaining what Hildebrandian value-response is, and then I proceed to show how he subsequently qualified this foundational concept, first in his Ethics but especially in his late work, The Nature of Love, and here especially through the concept of Eigenleben that was introduced in that work. I am particularly interested in showing why the personalism of von Hildebrand’s thought is enriched through this concept.