Originality of Karol Wojtyła’s Method of Philosophy

Abstract

This article analyzes the originality and specificity of Karol Wojtyła’s method of philosophizing, as developed primarily in Person and Act, situating it against the background of twentieth-century Thomism and phenomenology. It reconstructs the methodological debates that followed the publication of Person and Act, highlighting the difficulties philosophers encountered in classifying Wojtyła’s approach within established philosophical disciplines. The study shows that Wojtyła deliberately positions himself between the philosophy of consciousness and the philosophy of being, seeking neither a synthesis nor a compromise, but a methodological transcendence of both. By integrating subjective experience with metaphysical realism, Wojtyła develops a personalist method that discloses the human person simultaneously as a conscious subject and a real being. The article demonstrates how this method corrects and surpasses the limitations of phenomenological ethics—particularly Max Scheler’s emotivism—as well as the shortcomings of certain Thomistic anthropological and ethical interpretations, notably in the domains of moral agency, conscience, sexuality, marriage, and personal action. Finally, the paper argues that Wojtyła’s distinctive contribution lies in his insistence on the unity of metaphysical, anthropological, and ethical experience, articulated through a methodological “third way” that grounds philosophical analysis in the lived efficacy, self-determination, and transcendence of the person. This approach remains a significant and underexplored resource for contemporary philosophical anthropology and personalist ethics.