Chapter Two

Adequacy of Freedom and Truth in Love

A. Freedom

It has been mentioned in the earlier chapter that lovers, particularly young unmarried

couples, have their own sense of what freedom is. However, as this paper would be

presenting, one notion of freedom might be different from another; one might be right

and the other wrong. In Wojtyłan philosophical anthropology, human freedom is coupled

with the duty of responsibility upon knowledge of the truth through the conscience (This

will be discussed later).1 This triggers the long-standing debate between the notions of

“absolute” freedom versus determinism,2 to be labeled in this papers as license and

restraint, respectively. One points out that anything can be done, while the other points

out that there is no freedom at all.

1. Issues on Freedom

a. Licentiousness

Licentiousness, or simply license, is a system wherein freedom controls the person.

Consider the attitude of Jean-Paul Sartre that “the fullest realization of one’s manhood is

found in the recognition that one’s very identity is freedom itself.” 3 Upon considering the

Sartrean “existence precedes essence” idea, one can say that man is a project, a destiny.

Man can create something for himself and it makes it what he is. This “condemnation to

1
Miguel Acosta and Adrian Reimers, Karol Wojtyła’s Personalist Philosophy: Understanding Person &
Act (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 119.
2
Rev. Grzegorz Hołub et al., Karol Wojtyła (Krakow: Ignatianum University Press, 2019), 54.
3
John Kavanaugh, “Human Freedom,” in Philosophy of Man: Selected Readings, ed. Manuel Dy Jr.
(Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2019), 176.
freedom” is the gift and task of modern man. Contemporary man sees himself as maker

of himself and fulfiller of his own destiny.4

b. Restraint

Restraint by determinism maintains the tenet that free will is either passé or non-

existent since some kind of fate “determines” the course of one’s life and that man cannot

be separated from such. Hailing from the ideas of B.F. Skinner, man is not free in the

absolute sense because his behavior is determined by external stimuli – culture, words, or

systems. One is restrained by the factors of his humanity, i.e. biology and genetics,

environment, and outside forces.5 Skinner’s determinism excels as a scientific method for

the influence of historicity in human behavior. But making it as a be-all explanation for

the problem of freedom is naught because it does not account for man’ capacity to think,

reflect, and inquire.6

2. Man is indeed free (Wojtyła’s account)

Where do we go from here? It seems that if man is absolute free, he is not bound by

some kind of order. Yet, if we take the opposite pole, man has no capacity for freedom.

There are those who deal with freedom in the middle way – a kind of structured freedom.

This is the type of freedom Christian philosophy espouses, an example of which is the

philosophical system of Karol Wojtyła. Many have written on the topic of human

freedom through his accounts. Nonetheless, this shall be discussed here.

a. Man as master of himself

Unlike animals who act according to their instincts, human beings act in a value-

oriented manner: they do an act due to the value that incises their experiences. Here
4
Agustin Martin Rodriguez, May Laro ang Diskurso ng Katarungan (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila
University Press, 2014), 82.
5
Kavanaugh, “Human Freedom,” 174.
6
Ibid., 176.
Wojtyła initiates his treatise on freedom in Person and Act (more popularly known in the

English-speaking world as The Acting Person).7 However, he does not start right away

with freedom. Rather, he begins with the simple – with human experience, owing to his

phenomenological training. “The most complete way of insight into the essence of man is

to see the act…a person reveals himself in a special way in philosophical analysis in an

act.”8 At the onset of his philosophy, he iterates the freedom of the will; it is not pre-

determined from outside within itself, besides the desire for the absolute good, i.e.

happiness.9

The basic explanation for Wojtyła on freedom are the phrases “I can – I do not have to

– I want to.” This is self-determination. It is a decision among values which allows for

freedom to be best manifested. Whenever a human person is free, his actions are

determinable through the scale of morality, whether it is good or evil. 10 Self-

determination makes man the master of his actions? How? Through the concepts of “self-

ownership” and “self-control.” It connotes man’s agency over his acts. “A person is not

only the “creator” of his act, but is also—of course, to a certain extent—the creator of

himself. Therefore, we can say that the first subject of the self-determination of man is

himself, his own self.”11

b. Deliberation of action

7
Hołub et al., Karol Wojtyła, 54-55.
8
Krzystof Stachewicz, “Karol Wojtyła’s philosophy of freedom,” Teologia i Moralność 15, no. 1
(2020): 154.
9
Karol Wojtyła, Considerations on the Essence of Man, trans. John Grondelski (Rome: Società
Internazionale Tommaso d’Aquino, 2016), 105.
10
Jose Reynaldo Salaria, “Retrieving Chaste Love and Committed Relationship as Ideal Virtues for
Young Unmarried Persons, Based on the Thoughts of Karol Wojtyła” (AB Thesis, Ateneo de Manila
University, 2018), 23.
11
Hołub et al., Karol Wojtyła, 56-57.
 How does man choose how and what to act out? Wojtyła explains that if the will is

attuned to the good, its acts are dependent on that aim. Hence, the will, along with reason,

may choose to accept or reject any object that is contrary to the telos of the will.

Returning to the previous section, because of the capacity of man to consent or decline to

objects and their corresponding values, man’s decisions belong to human acts; thus,

belonging to the realm of ethics.12

Hence, by discussing what Karol Wojtyła wrote on the topic of human freedom and

freedom of the will, it can be said that man is free because of his human nature. Also, he

is free because of his capacity for rational thought and volitional attunement towards

values he deems as good, either as an end in itself or as means to an end. Despite external

influences, such as feelings and pleasure, man can decide either to give in or to stay away

from doing what is contrary to the good.

3. Responsibility

a. Doing the good one ought to do

Unlike believers of absolute freedom, those who subscribe to structured freedom

admit that there are things that one must not do despite being free. The loose sense of this

existentialism-influenced absolutism of freedom interprets freedom as doing anything

one desires. The faculty at the Ignatianum in Poland, in the anthology Karol Wojtyła,

distinguishes two kinds of freedom: external and internal. On the one hand, the former

refers to the man’s capacity to be free without any restriction or coercion (versus

determinism). On the other hand, the latter refers to “the relationship with his own nature,

due to which we call this man a person.”13

12
Wojtyła, Considerations on the Essence of Man, 105, 107.
13
Hołub et al., Karol Wojtyła, 58.
 Doing the good one ought to do is said to be the mark of responsible freedom – of the

legitimate sense of the concept. Nonetheless, freedom is said to be at its best when it

entails responsibility because it is not because of fear or compulsion that man acts.

Rather, because of his assent to truth that man has the “response-ability” for his actions.

Responsibility “is born, as it were, in the ‘transition’ from knowledge to action.”14

Freedom, the internal independence from determinism, demands an openess to the good –

in general and to the whole scale of it.15

b. Regulation of freedom

Regulation of freedom is a characteristic of responsibility via the principle of self-

determination. “Because of self-determination, every man actually governs himself; he

actually exercises that specific power over himself which nobody else can exercise or

execute.”16 By virtue of this concept, man can put his freedom on the value he deems

good.

It could be the case that one good value he thinks so might not be in reality an

objective good. Take again the example of extramarital sexual intercourse as exemplified

by the phenomenon of “friends with benefits.” Partners see having sex as good because

they value the pleasure it brings sans the strings attached in the relationship or even the

consequences it might bring. They put their freedoms at the performance of such act and

they were able to manage themselves. But the question remains: if freedom regulated

properly? We return to the abovementioned discussion on the assent of the will to the

truth. If such is the case, partners having sex without proper context or objective truth is

still an abuse or aberration of freedom; it was not regulated. Such anomaly is not an

14
Ibid., 117.
15
Wojtyła, Considerations on the Essence of Man, 109.
16
Ibid., The Acting Person, trans. Andrzej Potocki (Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979), 107.
authentication of human freedom nor of human dignity. Again, it is only through a

prudential and responsible exercise of human freedom that man’s dignity is preserved.17

B. Truth

Because responsibility and freedom involve assent to truth, one must understand what

truth really is and how does it affect cognitive and volitional function in the free

performance of action. "To fulfill freedom is truthfulness - that is today, according to the

relation to the truth - is equivalent to the fulfillment of the person." (AP, 175) Unlike

agnostics or idealists, who derive a world view from the thinking subject himself,

Wojtyła posits the traditional epistemological claim that our minds can grasp the essences

of the extra-mental objective realities. Hence, the subject is the tool, not the source of

cognition.18

Willing is preceded always by knowing because the good that we are to choose must

be recognized first. “Reason values because it is somehow penetrated to its depths by the

proper aspiration of the will, the motor to the good.” 19 But then, what is the traditional

definition and explanation of truth? Scholastically speaking, this is the adequatio rei et

intellectus – conformity between mind and being. Truth is the subject of both

metaphysics (truth of things themselves) and epistemology (truth as found in the mind).20

Man’s thoughts and actions are always bound up with the truth. It is his vocation to bear

witness to it.21

For instance, take the case of the question on human sexuality: are there two sexes

(i.e., genders) or can they expand to fit modern “man’s” needs? Despite agreeing to
17
Wojtyła, Sign of Contradiction (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), 124.
18
Wojtyła, Considerations on the Essence of Man, 17, 19.
19
Ibid., 103.
20
W. Norris Clarke, The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 295.
21
Wojtyła, Sign of Contradiction, 119-120.
either, arriving at the truth is complicated: it is both easy and hard. Modern paradigms

view sex as a power struggle or a matter of equitable sameness. But in the Catholic

paradigm. The male and female are different from, but complement each other. 22 Despite

the sensibility of the Catholic point-of-view, we still argue over gender and sexuality.

There are still advocates of the sameness paradigm and the radical agenda of the

LGBTQIA+ worldview.23 So, how do we regain sensibility and sanity in such a world?

We return again to a more fundamental discourse – truth.

Intrinsece malum: it must be reminded to people, especially the Christian faithful, that

there are acts that run contrary to the order of God and the divine image of man. Veritatis

Splendor of Pope John Paul II iterates that intrinsically evil acts are always wrong by the

object of their acts. Even if the gravity is diminished by intention or circumstances, they

are still evil and cannot be ordered to God.24 Sexual perversion, either by promiscuity or

gender aberration, is intrinsically evil due to the fact that the goal of the sexual act is for

the procreation of offspring and union of spouses (Note here that the sexual act can only

occur between spouses in the context of marriage), and that denying the natural sex of a

person is a denial of the natural and metaphysical facts of the human person. To

acknowledge the presence of intrinsically evil acts is to acknowledge “the integral truth

about man…in his dignity and vocation.”25

1. Attitudes to truth

22
Rudolf Steven Seño OP, “What it Means to be Man and Woman: Seeing God’s Design through Divine
Illumination in the Midst of Moral Relativism,” Vita: Journal of Philosophy and Arts 13, no. 1 (2019-
2020), 75-78.
23
Ibid., 81.
24
Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor: Regarding Certain Fundamental Questions of the Church’s
Moral Teaching (August 6, 1993), 80-81. Henceforth it will be abbreviated as VS.
25
VS, 83.
 Human beings, due to their desire to know, are curious with the way things are the

way they are as human beings. They explore themselves and the world around them. For

a sane and normal person, reaching falsehood is sad, but reaching truth brings joy.26

However, there are those who, out of malice, distort truth or their attitude to it. This will

be discussed in the segment below.

a. Proper attitudes

One attitude to truth is sacrifice. But, what kind of sacrifice? It is the sacrifice of

humility, of accepting things that man does not know at first but now he does. 27 That

humility mentioned is also known as receptivity. One must be humble before knowledge

in order to accept the truth brought about by the facts of knowledge and the facts of life,

one way of which is through education.28 Despite his ability to know, he cannot presume

that all the he knows is everything that there is to know, or else his rational faculty has

come to a halt. His mind would not progress and would stagnate for the reason of his

pseudo-omniscience.

Ignorance, the simple non-knowing, may be rectified by the capacity of man to

interrogate, to ask questions. One does not know something; hence, if he so wishes to

know what it is, the task of looking for it lies upon him. This is a difficult part on the

quest for knowledge, true knowledge that is.29 If he does not give enough attention to the

matter at hand, he could end up assume the position that he would not even care know.

This is a counterpoint to pseudo-omniscience, a pseudo-nescience.

26
Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio: On the Relationship between Faith and Reason (September 14,
1998), 25. Henceforth it will be abbreviated as FR.
27
Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (Canada: Random House, 2018), 223, 226.
28
Blaise Ringor, “Educational Receptivity: Karol Wojtyła's Philosophy of Community as a
MeansTowards Embracing Differences” (European Conference on Education, London, United Kingdom,
2020).
29
Juan Jose Sanguineti, Logic and Gnoseology, trans. Myroslaw Cizdyn (Rome: Urbaniana University
Press, 1988), 279-280.
 Of course, the best way to receive truth is certainty – to rest within the truth. Certainty

to the truth is founded on immediate evidence, demonstrative evidence, or evidence of

testimonial. Until the truth is achieved, the human mind would not be certain that what he

knows is what is true. This paper would limit itself to two kinds of certainty:

metaphysical (the basis of every certainty), and moral (regarding human actions and

customs). And because a proposition is certain, we can put our faith in the credibility of

the proponent who proposed such since the one who said that content will not deceive

us.30

b. Improper attitudes

Because of the social dimension of truth, man has a right to know whatever is true.

However, it can be manipulated for the sake of deception or cover-up. 31 Dishonesty to the

truth might be a dangerous thing because it weakens character and could lead up to doing

terrible things. Improving reality through falsification is a disgrace to Being, making the

honest man deluded and the world corrupted.32

Error is as maleficent as deception, because it is believing volitionally to a false

proposition. It might be different from simple ignorance or lying; however, error is the

privation of the conformity of thought with reality, a dissonance for short. Error might be

found in the premises, in the denial of affirmations, in fallacious reasoning, or in the

opposition against authority. Error may be caused by inattention of the intellect,

influences of the will and passions, and external influences (e.g., propaganda). Despite

30
Sanguineti, Logic and Gnoseology, 282-286.
31
Wojtyła, Sign of Contradiction, 121.
32
Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, 212-213.
man being infallible, it still rests on his reason and will to know the truth and to recover

from the experience of falsehood and error.33

2. Truth and the community of knowers

Despite man’s capacity to know through his own intellect, “it is not possible…to

know all the facts about the world or for him to attain complete comprehension of the

physical and social sciences.” Thus, there has to be a community where we share

knowledge through testimony.34 Fides et Ratio even posits the claim that human

knowledge is development: that our knowledge of ourselves and the world around us are

attained through a constant and life-long search for the truth, living by belief. Believing

in others and acknowledging the truth values they propose should be built and forged in a

spirit of friendship and dialogue, not in mistrust and suspicion. Because of this, not only

do we obtain empirical and philosophical knowledge, but also the “truth of the human

person” – the ones whom we share information with.35

C. Justice

How do truth, responsibility, and freedom relate to justice? Let us return to a

discussion of justice and see a development of the theme in this discourse. Suum cuique is

the common description to justice: to each what is due. But, what is due, really? Justice

may neither be legal order nor even equity, nor can it also be a fulfillment of a need – a

justified one that is. Tracing back the concept of justice leads to the recognition of man in

his dignity and sacred inviolability. Hence the equality of justice is “an equality of being

33
Sanguineti, Logic and Gnoseology, 286-291.
34
Acosta and Reimers, Karol Wojtyła’s Personalist Philosophy, 81.
35
FR, 31-33.
rather than having.” One should be just to the others because despite man’s individual

nature, he is also a social being.36

1. Compromising justice

There have been considerations in the execution of justice to others. According to the

abovementioned paragraph, any other meaning of justice other than considering human

dignity is a compromise to what justice is. Think through justice as equity: distributive

justice is not all that there is to justice. It is disregarding genuine need in order for the

sake of a false notion of “equality.” 37 Disregarding metaphysical, scientific, and logical

truths for the sake of the welfare of a majority of people is a disgrace and an “injustice”

not only to the order of things but also to fraternal charity which ought to express truths

to persons regardless of their own feelings.

2. Individual and social justice

This segment clarifies justice within the context of individuals and of the society as a

whole. We use here what Wojtyła tackles as the theory of participation. Man inevitably acts

together with others. And despite upholding one’s unique personhood, he also asserts himself in

the social sphere without interfering others’ personhoods. 38

36
Manuel Dy Jr., “Philosophy and the Just Man,” in Philosophy of Man: Selected Readings, ed. Manuel
Dy Jr. (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2019), 23.
37
Ibid.
38
Salaria, “Retrieving Chaste Love,” 27.