THE PERSONALIST1C VALUE OF THE HUMAN ACT IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF KAROL WOJTYLA

This article attempts to postulate ''The personalistic value of the human act'' as a key-con- ceptfor a more adequate understanding of the whole of Karol Wojtyia's pre-pontifical philo- sophical project. Throughout the article the authors provide a textual, as well as conceptual analysis to this claim, mainly hy permitting Wojtyla's own writings to speak on their own. Having postulated the personalistic value of the human act as a legitimate key-concept - certainly not the only one central to his philosophical project - the authors demonstrate the originality of Wojtyla's insights as regards the discovery of a distinct personalistic level pertaining to the reality of the human person and its acts. The article shows how Wojtyla's writings fruitfully interrelate with the traditional methaphysical concepts of St. Thomas Aquinas, especially with the elements of his natural law theory. Using a methodology today known as ''thomistic personalism, Wojtyta discovers the personalistic domain of values as distinct from - though not in any way opposed to - the domain of moral values. He esta- blishes that the personalistic value represents a sort of a structural preamble for the domain of moral values. Given that Wojtyla identifies certain concepts - previously elaborated in his central, 1969 work ''The Person and the Act'' - namely, self-determination, transcend- ence and integration - as crucial particular aspects of the correct understanding of the per- sonalistic value of the act, the authors proceed to extrapolate the elements of these concepts that best illuminate the specific content of the personalistic value. On numerous occasions in the article footnoted references are made to possible further developments of the perspec- tives only roughly outlined in Wojtyla's own writings, as regards the intersections of his concept of the personalistic value and various traits of the thomistic natural law theory.