Person and Community : Selected Essays

Human language is the only proper tool through which man’s intelligence is capable to attain the truth of reality. In deciphering the truth of reality, however, the human intelligence can establish a twofold meaning of things, namely, ‘meaning-content’ and ‘meaning-value’; the former concerning the objectivity of beings, the latter expressing the existential dimensions of human subjectivity. In his philosophy of man and his axiology of human behavior, Karol Wojtyla tries to keep a balance between the objective and subjective truth of man conceived as a person. But, considering human nature as it is found in each and every individual person, Wojtyla tries to establish a synthesis between the language that expresses the truth of man’s beingness in his/her objectivity, and the language that unfolds various existential values of one’s own unique subjectivity. In view of the twofold language of meaning, Karol Wojtyla was able to synthesize the traditional metaphysics of being with the contemporary axiology of human moral experience and behavior.