Volume 48, Issue 1, March 2008
Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.
Pages 99-106
The Metaphysical Realism of Pope John Paul II
Karol Wojtyła (Pope John Paul II) found phenomenology very helpful for the analysis of concrete human experience and for overcoming the ethical formalism of
Kant. Phenomenology, he believed, could also enrich classical Thomism by exploring the lived experience of freedom, interiority, and self-governance. But phenomenology, in his opinion, needed to be supplemented by metaphysics in order to ground experiences such as the sense of duty in the real order. He criticized much modern philosophy for abandoning metaphysics and thus neglecting the sapiential dimension. Since his career as a professor was very short, he did not have time to complete his project of a personalist Thomism in which phenomenology and metaphysics would be harmoniously combined.