Wojtyła’s Critical Engagement with Immanuel Kant and Max Scheler in the Lublin Lectures and Love and Responsibility
Keywords:
Karol Wojtyła, Lublin Lectures, Love and Responsibility, Kant, Scheler, personalistic norm, moral agencyAbstract
My paper analyzes Karol Wojtyła’s critical engagement with Immanuel Kant and Max Scheler in the Lublin Lectures and Love and Responsibility through a systematic comparison that distinguishes three levels of connection: explicit textual appropriation, strong conceptual continuity and interpretive resonance. Wojtyła accepts Kant’s prohibition of treating persons merely as means, but questions whether Kant’s approach sufficiently grounds ethical normativity in the good and being of the acting agent. Scheler provides resources to consider objective values as well as their lived disclosure. However, Wojtyła challenges the adequacy of Scheler’s account of efficacious moral agency. The foregoing comparison tracks the continuity between the Lublin Lectures’ treatment of rational norming, duty and efficacy and Love and Responsibility’s account of love, responsibility and the person. It also acknowledges the inclusion of positive obligations toward others in Kant’s ethics, and the foundational role Wojtyła’s metaphysical commitments play in his engagement with both these thinkers. Spousal self-gift is a distinctive realization of the positive personalistic norm, which identifies love as the adequate attitude toward the person. Wojtyła’s distinct contribution emerges in his personalistic articulation of these issues in engagement with Kant and Scheler within a realist account of the good and agency.
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