Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, K.Wojtyla on Person and Ego Essay example

Plotinus, Augustine, doubting Thomas, K.Wojtyla on Person and EgoABSTRACT directly the connection between person and the I is acknowledged in numerous loves but not always analyzed. The need to re youthful it to the human race of the human being has sparked the present probe of the philosophical anthropology of four thinkers from the late ancient, medieval, and contemporary periods. Although it may seem that the question of the role of the I with respect to the human being hinges on the larger problem of objectivity v. subjectivity, this does not seem to be the case. Many topics, however, are necessarily entailed in this investigation such as individuality and universality, soul and body, consciousness and action, substance and history, the egotism and the other, the metaphysical and the phenomenological, and experience and the ethical. At the end of this study we arrive at more than a grammatical use of the I. From reflection on the contributions of Plotinus, Augustine, Aquina s, and Wojtyla, the ontological role of the I is identified. In doing so, one realizes that the ontological does not abjure the concrete, but penetrates it more deeply. Indeed, that was what Plotinian philosophy claimed to be doing recognizing the richness of human reality. A common interpretation of Platos theory of human reality is to identify it with soul. It has been for some(a) a problem as to whether or not Plotinus adhered to his masters position on this point. H. J. Blumenthal initiated much discussion when he asked Did Plotinus believe in Ideas of Individuals? (1) Supported by apparently contradictory texts Blumenthal concluded that Plotinus did believe at times in such ideas, and at other times did not. One way that commentators shoot down in s... ..., De Genesi ad litteram sevensome.27.38.(10) Augustine, De anima et ejus origine IV.2.3.(11) Augustine, De Trinitate XII.4.4 VII.6.11. (12) Augustine, De Trinitate XV.5.7 Epistula 137.3.11 De civitate Dei V.11.(13) Augusti ne, De civitate Dei XXI.7.(14) Thomas Aquinas, St. Summa Theologiae I,29,3,c.(15) Thomas Aquinas, St. op.cit. I.29, ad 2.(16) F.D. Wilhelmensen, The I and Aquinas Proceedings ACPA, v. 51, 1977, p. 51(17) Thomas Aquinas, St. Summa contra Gentiles I.65.(18) Augustine, De Trinitate X.11 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.87,3,c.(19) Wilhelmsen, op. cit. p. 55.(20) K. Wojtyla, The Personal Structure of Self-Determination, Tommaso DAquino nel suo VII Centenano, Roma, l974, 379-390. (21) K. Wais, Metafizyka, 1924.(22) M.T. Clark, An Inquiry into Personhood, Review of Metaphysics, 46, 1, 1992,3-28.