Man in the Field of Responsibility

Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) was Bishop of Cracow when he wrote this long précis to a work in philosophical ethics he was to write with Tadeusz Styczen. Fr. Styczen never finished his part, so this work, the last work of philosophy that Wojtyla, who was soon to be elected Pope, would ever do.

Introduction to this Edition by Fr. Alfred Wierzbicki
Author's Introduction

Part I. Morality as the Field Proper to Ethics
1. The Problem of the Experience of Morality
2. Experience and understanding
3. From a Pre-scientific to a Philosophical Understanding
4. Understanding and Interpretation
5. The Debate about the Interpretation of Morality
6. The Interpretation of Morality as the Uncovering of its Aspects

Part II. The Normativity of Ethics & the Responsibility of the Person
1. The Understanding of Morality and the Questions of Ethics
2. The World of Norms—Their Analogical Character
3. An Attempt at a Closer Determination of Moral Norms
4. Utilitarianism: Is it only a debate about the foundations of the norms of morality?
5. Utilitarianism & Teleology
6. Norms as Truths about Goodness
7. Norms and Exemplarism
8. Ethics—A Normative Science or a Practical One?

Part III. The Natural Law & Personalist Norms
1. The Full Profile of Ethics
2. The Limits of a Practical Science
3. The Limits of a Normative Science<div

St. Augustine’s Press and translators Kenneth W. Kemp and Zuzanna Maslanka Kieron are to be commended for making this important work available for the first time in English. Man in the Field of Responsibility offers fascinating insights into the thought of the man who would become Pope John Paul II. Here we find Karol Wojtyla grappling philosophically with the great questions of good and evil, freedom and fulfillment, that were central to his papacy, and especially to key encyclicals such as Veritatis Splendor and Evangelium Vitae. This book is necessary reading not only for students of John Paul II as a thinker and for students of Catholic philosophy, but also for all who seek greater understanding of the moral predicament of modern man. – Carson Holloway, University of Nebraska at Omaha