Volume 98, Issue 3, Summer 2024
John F. Crosby
Pages 227-244
https://doi.org/10.5840/acpq20241111298
Why Subjectivity Reveals Man as Person
In this paper I ask what subjectivity is and why it reveals man as person, as Karol Wojtyla and others claim. First, I explain subjectivity, which I also call interiority, in terms of self-presence, which is a mode of relating to myself from within myself. I am present to myself as subject, not only as object. Only I can encounter myself in the intimacy of my self-presence; no other person can be present to me as I am to myself. Next, I further explore self-presence as weak or strong, calling strong self-presence recollected self-presence. Finally, I conclude by explaining how it is that recollected self-presence reveals man as person. Against the suspicion that this ¡°turn to the subject¡± opens the door to a bad subjectivism, I argue that it entirely coheres with the realism of Christian philosophy.