At the Center of the Human Drama: The Philosophy of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II (Michael J. Mcgivney Lectures of the John Paul II Institute)

Where did the title come from? So did I wonder upon revisiting this splendid book nearly a year after my original reading. In my initial construal, the word ‘drama’ was seen to be an allusion to John Paul’s early involvement in underground theater in Nazi-occupied Poland during WW 2. This topic is covered in Chapter 1. Whereas I had always presumed that he was just an actor, I learned there that he was mainly a serious playwright. More impressively, some of the ‘arch-ideas’ articulated in his later philosophical writings were present in some of his plays. Such overtly exhibited prescience at a young age seems truly remarkable, and what a strong base upon which to launch his academic career! Now I must re-read that chapter and ponder some of John Paul’s thematic content there.More significantly, however, drama pertains to the challenges in navigating the contingencies and opportunities encountered in one’s life, where the predominant dimension and intensity occur in interior drama. There one must come to terms with those eventualities. Properly, one would act with the realization that the gift of life includes a capacity to discern efficacious actions for attaining a caliber of existence as intended by the Creator. This entails a “return to their transcendent Source, if they are to find the fulfillment of their destiny and their hopes” (p. 90). This theme harks back to the arch-idea central to his play “Return to the Father” (p. 4).Regarding the ‘center’ in the title, p. 90 holds that “the center of the personal project of each human being is the individual’s conscious activity.” Here, it is vital for a person to draw on the inner character of lived experience for a new self-consciousness in the form of an enriched interior life, a “new sense of interiority” (p. 138). ) One’s aforementioned personal project may then realize potential good that is commensurate with the concrete possibilities arising in their own life. Here, John Paul stresses the primacy of action to animate and elevate a person’s existence. Moreover, he grounds these views in an anthropology that he finds largely implicit in Genesis, as well as in his salient modifications to orthodox phenomenology. These factors accentuate and explicate a person’s interior life.Basically, John Paul II deems as untenable and too restrictive phenomenology’s view of intentionality as just pertinent to the bonding of a subject’s consciousness to an attended object. This stance assigns an absolute status to consciousness, as if the self-referenced action-perception loop were the exclusive mode of mental life. Here, the transcendental phase of orthodox phenomenological analysis pertains just to horizontal or worldly transcendence. In contrast, he sees the new interior self-consciousness as addressing and engaging vertical transcendence. Accordingly, the associated Christian interiority is not one of autonomous subjectivity, but rather one of subordination in aspiring to access to the Source for discernment. Such aspiration might be termed spiritual intentionality, which transcends the material world. The expanded latitude of this new self-consciousness then situates consciousness within the entire person, and in turn, in one acting as a participant among other similarly endowed persons. Thus one is enabled to pursue their respective prospects for fulfillment of their divine vocation.In sum, John Paul’s account is predicated on the following elements:o. Avoiding the separation of subject and object as the primary division of realityo. Every person having their own interior life, as enriched via communal participationo. Metaphysical factors not intruding on actual subjective interiorityo. The new self-consciousness entailing the whole human being as an operative agento. The person recognizing itself as both subject-in-action and object-as-effector.Overall, the organization and integration of the various chapters of this book yield a smooth logical flow as well as thematic cohesion. Nonetheless, the complexity and novelty of some topics necessitated rather slow reading for me. That attentiveness, however, was well worthwhile as the content was generally highly insightful and sometimes surprising. Also, some concepts, terms, or their bases were reinvoked occasionally to reinforce their significance or to explore a new topic. And the ample footnotes were most helpful for ideational situatedness or elaboration. In my view then, the author did a fine job of articulating John Paul’s quite innovative and convincing philosophical ideas. The coverage of the book addressed only scholarly pursuits, save for some enlightening remarks on the background and significance of John Paul’s philosophical legacy. There is much here for the reader to consider or to build on later.In closing, Schmitz’s book is fascinating, thought-provoking, and a wonderful introduction to the substantive originality of John Paul’s philosophizing during his earlier years. With concerns over access and reliability of some of his English translations of his corpus, together with its expansiveness, it is most gratifying to have this incisive composite of John Paul’s scholarly legacy. The illumination of both phenomenology and spirituality are thereby well served. Assuredly, I will be returning to this resource not infrequently, and undoubtedly will be obtaining further welcome insights.