Karol Wojtyla
The Acting Person

CHAPTER TWO: AN ANALYSIS OF EFFICACY
IN THE LIGHT OF HUMAN DYNAMISM

Chapter 1

Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7

END NOTES

THE BASIC CONCEPTIONS AND DIFFERENTIATIONS OF HYUMAN DYNAMISM

Introductory Remarks on the Relation of Dynamism to Consciousness

We now abandon the aspect of consciousness in order that we may understand better its functions through an analysis of the fact that man acts. The fact is given us first in the experience of "I act." Because of the experience we ourselves are placed, as it were, right inside this fact. Similarly, the fullness of an experience is inherent in our process of experiencing, and thus by analogy and generalization it is the basis for the formation of the human act. For every ego is a human being and every human being is this, that, or any other ego. Hence, when it is "you," "he," or "anybody else" who acts, their acting can be understood on the ground of experiencing our own acting, in "I act." The experience of acting is subjective in the sense that it keeps us within the limits of the concrete subjectivity of the acting human ego, without however obscuring the intersubjectivity that is needed for the understanding and interpretation of human acting.

The objectivation of the fact of "man-acts" requires an equally objective presentation of integral human dynamism.²⁶ For this experiential fact occurs not in isolation but in the context of the entire human dynamism and in organic relation to it. The dynamism in question is the total dynamism that is present in the complete experience of man. Not everything belonging to the human dynamism is reflected in consciousness. For instance, practically nothing' of the vegetative dynamism of the human body is mirrored in consciousness. Similarly, not all the factors of the human dynamism may be consciously experienced by him. We already had the opportunity to mention briefly the disproportion between the totality of man's life and the scope or range of his experiences, and we shall return to the question to expound and complement it. At any rate, it is the conditions themselves of experience that seem to dictate in the analysis of the human dynamism the need to put aside at present the aspect of consciousness and the questions bearing only upon experiencing. It is not by accident that in the Introduction we discriminated the total experience of man from its various aspects, of which its inner aspect was even then seen as being closely connected with consciousness.

All the same, it is not only the dynamism proper to man that receives its basic reflection in consciousness; the human being is aware as well of the main trends in his dynamism, this awareness being connected also with his experiencing them. Indeed, he experiences acting and doing as something essentially different from the mere happening, that is to say, from what only takes place or goes on in him and in what he as man takes no active part. Having the experience of the two, objectively different structures - of the "man-acts" and the "something~happens-in-him" - together with their differentiation in the field of experience, provides the evidence, on the one hand, of the essential contiguity of man's consciousness with his being; on the other hand, the differentiation of experience gives each of these structures that innerness and subjectiveness which in general we owe to consciousness. At present, however, we are not interested in experiencing as such but in those structures which to be objectively differentiated require that we rely upon the total experience of man and not merely on the evidence which might be supplied by our consciousness. The immanent experience itself is insufficient with respect to all the processes, operations, events and states of the human body, all that pertains to the life of the organism. We always have to reach to other sources than the merely spontaneous and instantaneous evidence of consciousness itself and the experiences associated with it; we have to supplement it continuously from the outside in order to make our knowledge of man in this dimension as complete as possible.

The Juxtaposition of "To Act" and "To Happen" as the Experiential Basis of Activeness and Passiveness

The two objective structures, "man-acts" and "something-happens-in-man," determine the two fundamental lines of the dynamism proper to man. Their directions are mutually opposite, so far as man's "activeness," that is to say, his acting, is visualized - and actualized -in one, while his certain passiveness, and passivity, are in the other. In each of these elemental lines of the dynamism proper to man the phenomenon or the content of visualization corresponds to the actual structure, and, conversely, each structure manifests itself as the phenomenon. The activeness and the passiveness visualized in either line are the constituents of the structures and the objective ground for their differentiation. The "activeness" in the "man-acts" structure is something different from the "passiveness" of the "something-happens-in-man" structure, the two being mutually opposite. In this opposition the whole structure, the one and the other, takes part.²⁷

Just as we may consider "activeness" and "passiveness" to be not only mutually opposed but also conditioned and determined by each other, so we can draw a line separating what we do from what happens in us, though the things on either side of the line not only differ but also mutually account for themselves. This has the greatest importance for understanding the "man-acts" structure and subsequently for its possibly complete interpretation. We may say that man's actions and all that happens in him are not only mutually opposed but also distinctly correlated in the sense of a certain parity of both facts or both structures. For speaking of acting we say "man acts," and of what takes place in him we say it "happens in man," so that in either statement man stands as the dynamic subject. Man's actions just as much as the things that happen in him provide - all in their own way - the realization of the dynamism proper to the human being. Both have their source in man; and thus if in another aspect we speak of activeness and passiveness as of two different directions in the same dynamism, we thereby assert that the direction "from within" is common to both - the more so as it forms part of the essence of all dynamism. Though activeness and passiveness differentiate the dynamism they do not deprive it of the unity issuing out of the same dynamic subject; this, however, in no way alters the fact that action differs from the rest of the dynamic manifestations of the man-subject, the manifestations that are included in the category of passiveness.

It also seems necessary to call attention to two different forms of passiveness that are expressed in the propositions, "Something happens in man" and "Something happens with man." In ordinary speech these propositions may sometimes be used indiscriminately; often, in speaking of something happening with a person, we actually think of what takes place in him. Actually, when speaking of what happens with a person we refer to what the person undergoes from outside. This is an entirely different kind of passiveness. Rather than the dynamic subject, and the source of what occurs, man is then merely an object that only undergoes what another subject or even another force is doing with him. Undergoing as such refers to the passiveness of man, the subject, but says nothing, at least not directly, of the subject's inner dynamism, in particular nothing of the dynamism referred to in the proposition "Something happens in man."

The Potency and Act Conjugate as Conceptual Homologue of Dynamism

In the traditional approach to the person and to action the dynamism proper to man is interpreted by analogy to the dynamism of all beings. The dynamism of being is the subject of traditional metaphysics, and to metaphysics - in particular to its great founder, Aristotle - we owe the conception in which the dynamic nature of being is expressed in philosophical terms. This is not limited to the concept of "act" alone but includes the conjugate conceptual whole formed by the pair, potency and act. The dialectic - as we would say nowadays - conjugation of the pair makes them so essentially referring to each other that when pointing to one we at the same time indicate the other; for to grasp the correlated meaning of either, the understanding of the other is indispensable. It is for this reason that act cannot be understood apart from potency and vice versa.²⁸ The terms potency and act need little explanation. Potency, the Latin potentia, may be defined as a potentiality, as something that already is but also is not yet: as something that is in preparation, is available, and even ready at hand but is not actually fulfilled. The act, the Latin actus, is the actualization of potentiality, its fulfillment.

As is to be seen, the meanings of both concepts are strictly correlated and inhere in the conjugate they form rather than in each of them separately. Their conjugation reveals not only the differentiated, though mutually coincident states of existence, but also the transitions from one to the other. It is these transitions that objectivize the structure of all dynamism inherent in being, in being as such, which constitutes the proper subject of metaphysics, and at the same time in every and any being, regardless of the branch of human knowledge whose specific concern it constitutes. We may with justice say that at this point metaphysics appears as the intellectual soil wherein all the domains of knowledge have their roots. Indeed, we do not seem to have as yet any other conceptions and any other language which would adequately render the dynamic essence of change - of all change whatever occurring in any being - apart from those that we have been endowed with by the philosophy of potency and act. By means of this conception we can grasp and describe precisely any dynamism that occurs in any being. It is to them we also have to revert when discussing the dynamism proper to man.

The concept of the "act" - we may call it so, for short, once we keep in mind the correlate it implies - has primarily an existential significance. The two different states of being, to which correspond two different forms of existence, are not indicated solely by the two terms ~otency and act) essential to this conception. In addition, the transition from potency to act, termed actualization, is a transition in the order of existence; it indicates some sort of becoming, not in the absolute sense - this is possible only when something comes into being out of nonexistence - but in the relative sense, that is to say, becoming based on an already existing being and from within its inner structure. The dynamism of being is intrinsically connected with its very existence and is also the basis for, and the source of, all the structures that may be distinguished in it. Every actualization contains in itself both the possibility and the act, which is the real fulfillment of the possibility; hence it contains them not as two entities but as two interrelated forms of existence. Actualization always implies the following pattern of existences: what exists as a possibility may, because it thus exists, come into existence in an act; and conversely, what came into existence in the act did so because of its previous existence as potentiality. In actualization possibility and act constitute, as it were, the two moments or the two phases of concrete existence joined together in a dynamic unity. Moreover, the act does not signify solely that the state of fulfilled potentiality has ended; it also signifies the transition itself from potentiality to fulfillment, the very fulfillment. It now becomes evident that there is need of a factor that would allow this transition or fulfillment to be accomplished; this problem, however, we will not discuss at present.

The Ambiguity of the Concept of "Act" and Differentiation of the Experiences of Acting and Happening

Applying the conception of the act to the dynamism that is proper to man and constitutes the vital core of the dynamic conjugate of action and person, we have to assert at this stage of the discussion that it fits both essential forms of the human dynamism known from and by experience. The structure of "man-acts" as well as the structure of "something-happens-in-man" constitute the concrete manifestation of the dynamism proper to man. Some of their equivalence consists in man being present in either as its dynamic subject. The equivalence exists from the point of view of the human dynamism itself. From this viewpoint, having assumed the analogy of being, we may regard man's acting as well as what happens in him to be the fulfillment of a potentiality. The one and the other is an actualization, the dynamic unity of potentiality and act. This way of grasping the problem is justified by the general dynamism of man. It also enables us to search for and determine those potentialities which are inherent in man at the beginning of his various actings and of what we may perhaps call the various happenings, the different things that happen in him.

The difference of the activeness-passiveness type that occurs between the acting of man and the happening in man, the difference between dynamic acting and certain dynamic passiveness, cannot obscure or annul the human dynamism, which is inherent in one as well as in the other form. It does not obscure in the sense of the phenomenological experience and does not annul in the sense of the need of a realistic interpretation. Essentially, the human dynamism is interpreted by the concept of the "act." In this sense the term "act" adequately denotes the dynamic content of both structures: "manacts" and "something-happens-in-man." The question remains whether it is equally adequate to show the specific nature of action. To put the problem precisely we have to ask whether the word "act," while designating the dynamism of all being, as well as every human dynamism - activeness as well as passiveness - has also the capability of revealing the whole specific nature of action.

2. THE DEFINITION OF EFFICACY

 The Experience of Efficacy and the Differentiation of the Experiences of Acting and Happening

A distinction may be drawn between human act and act of man. In this way action is distinguished from all the other actualizations taking place in man (act of man) by means of the attributive human. It seems, however, that this distinction has a merely verbal significance and serves to accentuate rather than to explain the difference. For human act, or, equivalently, "human acting," is also an act of man. Hence, it is first necessary to demonstrate why and when the act of man is not human acting; for only then will it be possible to understand why human acting alone is the acting proper to man, that it alone corresponds to what actually is contained in the structure of "man-acts." We shall now endeavor to find such an explanation while adhering to our initial position as defined above.

Thus, the starting point in our argument will be the experiential difference that is discernible in the totality of man's dynamism between man's acting and what happens in man. An examination of the facts discloses that it is the moment of efficacy that determines this fundamental difference. In this case the moment of efficacy is to be understood as the having of the experience of "being the actor." This experience discriminates man's acting from everything that merely happens in him. It also explains the dynamic contraposition of facts and structures, in which activeness and passiveness are distinctly manifest. When acting I have the experience of myself as the agent responsible for this particular form of the dynamization of myself as the subject. When there is something happening in me, then the dynamism is imparted without the efficacious participation of my ego. This is precisely the reason why we speak of the facts of the latter kind as of something that happens in man, indicating thereby that then the dynamism is not accompanied by efficacy, by the efficacious participation of man. It is thus that in the dynanlism of man there appears the essential difference arising from having the experience of efficacy. On the one hand, there is that form of the human dynamism in which man himself is the agent, that is to say, he is the conscious cause of his own causation; this form we grasp by the expression, "man acts." On the other hand, there is that form of human dynamism in which man is not aware of his efficacy and does not experience it; this we express by "something happens in man."

The contraposition of acting and happening, of activeness and passiveness, brings forth still another contraposition that arises from having, or not having, the experience of efficacy. Objective efficacy is the correlate of the experience of efficacy, for having this experience opens to our insight the structure of the efficacious ego. But not having the experience of efficacy - when the ego does not efficaciously participate in all that only happens in man - is by no means equivalent to the absence of objective causation. When something happens, when an inner change takes place in man, it must have a cause. Experience, in particular the inner experience, only supplies the evidence that the ego is not the cause in the manner that it is in an action, in acting.

The Experience of Efficacy and the Causal Relation of Person and Action

We now see that the moment of efficacy, which is present in acting and absent in happening, does not at once explain what efficacy is, but only points to the specifically dynamic structure of human acting as well as of the one who acts. Having the experience of himself as the agent the actor discovers himself to be at the origin of his acting. It is upon him that the existence of acting as such depends: in him it has its origin, and he sustains its existence. To be the cause means to produce an effect and to sustain its existence, its becoming and its being. Man is thus in a wholly experiential way the cause of his acting. There is between person and action a sensibly experiential, causal relation, which brings the person, that is to say, every concrete human ego, to recognize his action to be the result of his efficacy; in this sense he must accept his actions as his own property and also, primarily because of their moral nature, as the domain of his responsibility. Both the responsibility and the sense of property invest with a special quality the causation itself and the efficacy itself of the acting person. The students of the problems of causality, on the one hand, and psychologists, on the other, often note that human acting is in fact the only complete experience of what has been called by Aristotle "efficient causation." Without going into the details of this thesis, we have at any rate to accept that part of it which asserts the special self-evidence of man's efficient causation in acting, the efficient causation of the acting person.

The Experience of Efficacy and Man's Transcendence of His Acting

Efficacy itself as the relation of cause and effect leads us to the objective order of being and existence and is thus of an existential nature. In this case efficacy is simultaneously an experience. There lies the source of the specific empirical significance of human efficacy related with acting. For, as already mentioned, the efficacy of man draws him, on the one hand, into that form of his dynamism which consists in acting and, on the other, it allows him to remain above this dynamism and this acting. In the structure of "man-acts" we also have what may be defined as the immanence of man in his own acting and at the same time what has to be regarded as his transcendence relatively to this acting. The moment of efficacy, the experience of efficacy, brings forth first of all the transcendence of man relatively to his own acting. But then the transcendence proper to the experience had in being the agent of acting passes into the immanence of the experience of acting itself: when I act, I am wholly engaged in my acting, in that dynamization of the ego to which my own efficacy has contributed. The one could not be accomplished without the other. The "efficacious ego" and the "acting ego" each time form a dynamic synthesis and a dynamic unity in any particular action. It is the synthesis and unity of person and action.

This unity, however, neither obscures nor abolishes the differences. It is here that we come to the distinguishing trait in the structure of "man-acts," the trait that sets it off essentially from the structure of "some thing-happens-in-man." Being the agent, man is definitely the subject in his acting. When something happens, it is not man but the "something" that stands out as the agent while man remains as the passive subject. He experiences passively his own dynamism. What takes place in him cannot be, on the evidence of experience, defined as acting, even though it is still some sort of actualization of his own potentiality. The term "act" is not as strictly exfoliated phenomenologically as is acting or even action. Its reference is not to any actualization, to any dynamization of the subject that is man, but only to that actualization or dynamism in which man is active as the ego: the man who is the ego has the experience of himself, as the agent. According to the evidence of the integral experience it is then, and only then, that man performs an action.

The Experience of Efficacy and the Differentiation of Action out of Various Activations

Every dynamization of man in which he is not active as the concrete ego - that is to say, he as the ego, does not have the experience of his efficacy - we shall call activation. There is activation whenever something happens only in man and the something that happens is derived from the inner dynamism of man himself. But now the mode of the inner derivation is different from that which man does, in what is his action. The term activation seems to combine most adequately the moment of certain passiveness with the moment of activity, of certain activeness or, at any rate, actualization. The word is much used in natural science, but does not seem to have been applied in the study of the human being, in spite of its apparent adequacy for defining, and in a way even for explaining, the difference existing between the fact that man acts and the fact that something happens in him. Moreover, being rooted in everyday speech it expresses well the semantic difference and even contraposition between it and action.

By now the dynamism proper to man seems to have been sufficiently explained in the first approach. This first approach has dealt with the experiential differentiation of the human dynamism by the facts of acting and the facts of happening, which take place in the human being. In addition, in the first experiential approach we have already been able to discern within the structure of "man-acts" all the specificity of the conjugate of person and action. It has been brought into view by the moment of efficacy, which is simultaneously the moment of the transcendence of the person with regard to his acting. As the person-action conjugate occurs owing to this moment of transcendence we shall now consider it separately for a thorough analysis.

Man "Creates" Himself in Action: the Roots of Human Ethos

Efficacy and transcendence bring with them a special dependence of acting upon the person. Man is not only the agent of his acting, he is also the creator of it. It lies in the essence of efficacy that it produces and maintains the existence of an effect. On the other hand, the essence of creativeness is to shape the created work. In a sense, acting is also a work created by man. This characteristic trait of acting is specifically evidenced by morality as one of its properties (and which we have frequently referred to in this study). Morality and acting differ essentially, but at the same time they are so strictly united with each other that morality has no real existence apart from human acting, apart from actions. Their essential separateness does not obscure their existential relationship. The one and the other are most strictly related with the efficacy of the person, indeed, with the phenomenon of the experience had of efficacy. (At this point phenomenology seems to infringe boldly upon metaphysics, and it is here that its reliance upon metaphysics is most needed; for phenomena themselves can visualize a thing clearly enough, but they are incapable of a sufficient explanation of themselves.)

If it is in acting that man forms his own moral value - wherein is contained an element of the specifically human creativity - then this additionally confirms that man, the actor, himself shapes his acting and his actions.~ The old Aristotelian problem, whether actions are the products of the acting man or the product is solely the outward effect of his acting - for instance, whether the product is the sheet of paper covered with writing or the strategic plan worked out by the mind - supplies sufficient evidence that human efficacy is also creative. Its creativeness uses man himself as its raw material. In the first plan, the human being forms himself by his acting. In the contraposition of man as "creator" and man as the "raw material" we again discover a form, or rather an aspect, of the contrast between activeness and passiveness, which we have been tracing here from the start. Indeed, it is a new aspect rather than a new form; for we cannot simply and definitely identify man as the "creator" with human acting, and man as the "raw material" with what happens in the human subject. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that action always consists in overcoming human passiveness in one way or another.

The moment of creativeness, which closely accompanies the moment of efficacy, the experience of efficacy that sets up the objective structure of "man-acts," brings out even more vividly the dominant role of efficacy in the integral dynamism of the human being. Efficacy itself is dynamic: indeed it constitutes, as it were, the culmination of the dynamism of the human being. But, at the same time, it distinctly differs from this dynamism as a whole. The difference between them has to be adequately emphasized by their interpretation.

3. THE SYNTHESIS OF EFFICACY AND SUBJECTIVENESS. THE PERSON AS A BASIC ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE

The Differentiation between Acting and Happening Contrasts Efficacy with Subjectiveness in Man

An analysis of the dynamic entity "man-acts" must account for both "man" and "acting" as the two constitutive elements of a whole. What is the man who acts, and what is he when he acts? That is the question which we must now consider. Man is the subject of his actions - this assertion is often made and as a rule is accepted without reservations. But what does "subject" really mean?

Following the line of our argument we reach the conclusion that within the integral experience of man, especially with reference to its inner aspect, we can trace a differentiation and even ~omething like a contrast of subjectiveness and efficacy. Man has the experience of himself as the subject when something is happening in him; when, on the other hand, he is acting, he has the experience of himself as the "actor," this difference having been already emphasized in our discussion. To the experiences thus had corresponds a fully experiential reality. Subjectiveness is seen as structurally related to what happens in man, and efficacy as structurally related to his acting. When I act, the ego is the cause that dynamizes the subject. It is the attitude of the ego that is then dominant, whereas subjectiveness seems to be indicating something opposite - it shows the ego as if it were subjacent in the fact of its own dynamization. Such is the case when something happens within the ego. Efficacy and subjectiveness seem to split the field of human experiences into two mutually irreducible factors. Experiences are associated with structures. The structure of "manacts" and the structure of "something-happens-in-man" seem to divide the human being as if they were two separate levels. The two levels will turn up on various occasions in the course of our further analyses.

For all the sharpness and distinctness - especially in the inner aspects of experience - of the differentiation and the contrast, it is impossible to deny that he who acts is simultaneously the one in whom something or other happens. Similarly, it is impossible to question the unity and the identity of man at the roots of acting and happening. Neither is it possible to question his unity and identity at the roots of the efficacy and the subjectiveness structurally contained in the acting and the happening that occur in man. For the human being is, as already stated, a dynamic unity, so much so that in our earlier analyses we called him outright the dynamic subject. This designation is here regarded as valid. Man's acting and that human efficacy which constitutes it experientially, as well as all that happens in him, combine together as if they issued from a common root. For it is the human being, as the dynamic subject, who is their origin. Speaking of the subject we simultaneously refer to subjectiveness. Subjectiveness has here a different sense from the subjectiveness we discovered in the experience of something happening in man when we contrasted the experience (and its corresponding structure) with acting and the efficacy contained in it. On that plane subjectiveness and efficacy appeared to be mutually irreducible, while now they can both be comprised by subjectiveness in its distinctive aspects. For, as is shown time and again by experience, they both spring from it.

How the Subject is an Ontological Basis of Action

However we analyze the structure, conditions, and source of action we cannot bypass its ultimate ontological foundation. The subjectiveness present both in man's acting and in what happens in him, implies or refers to an ontologically subsequent factor as its necessary condition. Of course, in principle, man "underlies" all his actions and everything that happens in him insofar as they are but his manifestations. And yet we still need to differentiate in man a structural ontological nucleus that would account for the fact itself of man being the subject or the fact that the subject is a being. It is in the subject as a being that every dynamic structure is rooted, every acting and happening. It is given as a real, actually existing, being, the man-being that actually exists and hence also "really" acts. There is, indeed, between existence and acting a strict relationship. This relationship seems to be the basic datum of man's cognition upon which evidence his most elementary vital existence relies. Philosophically we may interpret this state of affairs by an assessment that "for something to act, it must first exist." However, let us not forget that action is an enactment of existence or actual being. And yet it seems that in the perspective of our investigations existence lies at the origin itself of acting just as it lies at the origin itself of everything that happens in man - it lies at the origin of all the dynamism proper to man.

Existence (or actual being) has to be differentiated, however, from its structural (ontological) foundation. It is only its derived constitutive aspect, and yet it is of immense importance. For if the "something" did not exist, then it could not be the origin and the subject of the dynamism which proceeds from its being, of the acting and the happening. If man were not to exist, then he would not actually act nor would anything actually happen in him. Considered as such a fundamental condition of the actual existence of every existing being, it may be said that this structural/ontological basis is itself a being insofar as it is the subject of existing and acting. Coming into existence may, indeed, be seen as the first act of every being, that is, the first and fundamental factor establishing its dynamism.~ The entire dynamism of man's functioning which consists in the acting of, and happening in, the dynamic subject simultaneously proceeds from (1,ut also enacts) the initial dynamism due to which a being exists at all.

Man's Ontological Foundation of Action

In the first and fundamental approach the man-person has to be somewhat identified with its basic ontological structure. The person is a concrete man, the individua substantia of the classical Boethian definition. The concrete is in a way tantamount to the unique, or at any rate, to the individualized. The concept of the "person" is broader and more comprehensive than the concept of the "individual," just as the person is more than individualized nature. The person would be an individual whose nature is rational - according to Boethius' full definition persona est rationalis naturae individua sub -stantia.³¹ Nevertheless, in our perspective it seems clear that neither the concept of the "rational nature" nor that of its individualization seems to express fully the specific completeness expressed by the concept of the person. The completeness we are speaking of here seems to be something that is unique in a very special sense rather than concrete. In everyday use we may substitute for a person the straightforward "somebody." It serves as a perfect semantic epitome because of the immediate connotations it brings to mind - and with them the juxtaposition and contrast to "something." If the person were identified with its basic ontological structure, then it would at once become necessary to take account of the difference that distinguishes "somebody" and "something."

The person as such possesses, however, its own ontological structure, though one very different from all the others that surround the human being in the visible world. This difference, the proportion or rather the disproportion that is indicated in the words "somebody" and "something," reaches to the very roots of the being that is the subject. The fundamental dynamization of the being by existence and consequently also all the subsequent dynamizations, which are reflected by acting, operating, and the happening, also manifest the same difference, the same proportion with its inherent disproportion. The person, the human being as the person - seen in its ontological basic structure - is the subject of both existence and acting, though it is important to note that the existence proper to him is personal and not merely individual - unlike that of an ontologic ally founded merely individual type of being. Consequently, the action - whereby is meant all the dynamism of man including his acting as well as what happens in him - is also personal. The person is identifiable with an ontological basic structure in which a provision is to be made: the ontological structure of "somebody" manifests not only its similarities to but also its differences and detachment from the ontological structure of "something."

Differences between Efficacy and Subjectiveness and Their Synthesis

Once we reach the insight into the man-person as the ontological basis for existence, we can see in him a synthesis of those experiences and those dynamic structures which we have distinguished in this chapter. The two structures, that in which man acts and that in which something happens in man, cut across the phenomenological field of experience, but they join and unite together in the metaphysical field. Their synthesis is the man-person, and we discover the ultimate subject of the synthesis in its ontological groundwork. Not only does this groundwork underlie the whole dynamism of the man-person, but it itself is also the dynamic source of the dynamism. The dynamism derived from the actual existence has as its consequence the dynamism pertaining to activity.

The synthesis of acting and happening, which takes place on the ground of the human basic structure, is indirectly also a synthesis of the efficacy proper to acting with the subjectiveness pertaining to all that takes place in man. Ultimately, the synthesis not only has its foundation but also occurs actually through the mechanism of the basic ontological structure, that is to say, in the ontic subject. This is the reason why the human being, even while he is the agent in acting, still remains its subject. He is both the actor and the subject, and he has the experience of himself both as actor and as subject, though the experience had of his efficacy is overshadowed by the experience of his subjectiveness. On the other hand, if something only happens in man, then we have the experience of subjectiveness alone; in this case efficacy is not experienced, for then the human being as the person is not the agent.

The difference in these experiences and structures is in no way diminished by the fact of the synthesis of efficacy with subjectiveness, which reduces them to the structural support alone. Indeed, the dynamism proper to man cannot be adequately interpreted and fully understood without this difference, and thus it will have to turn up time and again in the course of our considerations. The structural nucleus functions as the subject, which means that it is simultaneously both the basis and the source of the two different forms of dynamism. It is in this that is rooted and from this that springs forth not only the dynamism of what happens in man, but also the total dynamism of acting with that conscious efficacy which is constitutive of it. The unity of the human structural nucleus can in no way obscure the deep differences that make the actual wealth of the human dynamism.

4 THE PERSON AND NATURE: THEIR OPPOSITION OR INTEGRATION?

The Significance of the Problem

The discussion of the ontological basis of man-person has brought us definitely to the analysis of the subject of acting. We shall now have to proceed with this analysis even further, in order to uncover, so to speak, the most deeply hidden roots of the dynamism of man, and more particularly the roots of efficacy, for it is efficacy that is the key for the understanding of the person-action relation. Man as the subject of acting and the acting of the subject are the two correlated limbs in our discussion, and each has to be cognized and cognitively deepened by means of the other. It may seem that when we identify the person with its structural nucleus - evidently, by applying the analogy of proportion - we regard as already definitely settled the place that in our analysis of the subject of acting we intend to assign to nature. However, the person and with it its ontological foundation have here been conceived not only as the metaphysical subject of the existence and the dynamism of the human being, but also as, in a way, a phenomenological synthesis of efficacy and subjectiveness. Thus nature has to assume to some extent a double sense, a point which we now intend to examine.

Nature Defines the Subjective Basis of Acting

Etymologically the term "nature" is, as we know, derived from the Latin verb nascor ("to be born"), hence natus ("born") and naturus ("about to be born"). Thus "nature" denotes literally everything that is going to be born or is contained in the fact itself of birth as its possible consequence. Accordingly, the corresponding adjectives of the natural are inborn, an Anglo-Saxon word, and innate, a word of Latin etymology. Nature in its substantive use has many senses: it may refer to the material world with all its phenomena, whether animate or inanimate, though in the latter case it goes beyond its etymological source, which relates it to birth; as this is possible only in living creatures inanimate nature is in a way a contradiction in terms; it may also be used with an attributive limiting its meaning when we speak, for instance, of human nature, of animal or vegetative nature, and even of the nature of a concrete person, who may be good or bad natured. In all these uses the noun nature seems to point to some property of a specific subject, to something we may also call its essence. Occasionally, the two words are used almost interchangeably - for instance, we may speak of the nature or the essence of a thing - though their meanings never exactly overlap. Speaking of essence we refer to a different thing than when speaking of nature.

Nature does not denote a real and actual subject of existing and acting; it is not to be identified with the ontological foundation of a being. It can only apply to an abstract subject. For instance, in speaking of human nature we refer to something which has the status of real existence as the ontological structure of man only in an actual human being, but which has no real existence apart from him. Nevertheless, if we, so to speak, prescind from the nature of every human being, in whom it actually exists, then we may conceive it as an abstract being, which stands in relation to all men. In this way human nature directly points to what is the specific trait common to all human beings by the very fact of their being humans, and indirectly also to those to whom it belongs, that is, to the human beings themselves. It is at this point that, semantically speaking, nature comes nearest to essence, for it is here that it refers to what is specific to man as such, that is, points to what is essentially human, what makes man to be nothing or nobody but man.

Nature Determines the Manner of Acting

Taken semantically, nature, conformably with its etymology, also reaches in another direction. It is not confined to the domain of the subject of acting, which to some extent we have already explored, but also signifies the manner of acting open to it. Without going into the problem of the manner of acting specific to nature as such we have first to look closer at the orientation itself of nature in the direction of acting or, more broadly, in the direction of dynamism. Nature; because of its etymology and the close resemblance to the Latin participle that it is derived from, tells of what is about to be born and what is contained in the fact of birth itself as its possible consequence. The fact of birth is in itself something dynamic; but it also marks the beginning of the dynamism proper to the subject that is being born. Birth is also the beginning of existence - it contains the initial and basic dynamization caused by existence, from which will issue all the subsequent dynamism of functioning. Hence, in the case of man the consequence of birth would be the whole synthesis of acting and happening which we have been tracing in this chapter. Is it nature that lies at the basis of this synthesis? If so, it would have to be either identical or very closely integrated with the human ontological nucleus. Or is it that nature only points to a certain domain of the human dynamism, to a definite form of actualization? Then it would be possible to attribute to it and deduce from it only a certain mode of acting rather than all human acting.

Why the Antagonistic Conception of Nature and Person?

It is the latter understanding of nature that seems to result from the phenomenological reduction. By phenomenological reduction we mean the moment of the fullest and simultaneously the most essence-centered visualization of a given object. Assuming man to be a specific dynamic whole we may rightly regard as the moment of the complete and the most essential manifestation of nature the moment when something happens in man rather than that of his acting; the moment of what we have called activation rather than that of action; the moment of subjectiveness rather than that of efficacy. Why so? Because the concept of nature includes that dynamism which is directly and solely the consequence of birth itself; the dynamism that is exclusively inborn or innate, exclusively immanent in the given subject of acting, as if it was determined in advance by its properties. Nature reveals the dynamism of the subject, that is, it reveals that activeness which is wholly and entirely contained in the subject's dynamic readiness; as if this activeness was from the start an attribute of the subject and was entirely prepared in its subjective dynamic structure. This activeness does not rely on efficacy in the sense that efficacy occurs in every action or in the structure of "man-acts" where it takes the form of a certain predominance or transcendence of the acting subject in relation to the dynamization itself of the subject.

When so conceived nature presents itself as a strictly defined moment of the dynamism proper to man rather than as the basis of all this dynamism. It is manifested solely in the activation of the man-subject, while actions show him to be a person. While contained in actions efficacy brings into view a concrete ego as the self-conscious cause of action. It is this that is the person. So conceived, the person would differ from the nature in man and would even be in a way its opposite. As can be seen, this differentiation and this opposition comes after the first experiential differentiation; that is, the differentiation and the opposition between, on the one hand, the experiences and structures of man's acting and, on the other, those referring to what happens in man. This separation of experiences and structures would divide the human being, as it were, into two worlds: the world of the person and the world of nature. Emphasizing some moments in experience we may miss and disregard the transition between man's nature and his person, and we may fail to grasp their integrity. Let us note, however, that person and nature would then denote practically nothing more than a certain mode of acting and hence also a certain form of the dynamism proper to man, but would not in any significant way denote the subject of this dynamism and acting; indeed, they would almost completely disregard it.

Why the Integrated Conception of Nature in Person?

There seems to be in that approach a kind of transposition that puts the aspects of experience above its total significance. The total experience, which gives both a simple and fundamental perception of the human being - whether it be in the pre- and even nonscientific approach, or in the domains of learning, especially philosophy -supplies the evidence for the unity and the identity of the man-subject. This is accompanied by the synthesis, on the ground of the one and the same ontological support, of acting and happening that takes place in man, the synthesis of actions and activations, of efficacy and subjectiveness. There is, therefore, no valid reason for the mutual opposition in man of person and nature; on the contrary, we now see the need of their integration. From the particular moments or aspects of experience we have to pass to the whole and from the particular moments or aspects of man as the subject of experience to the total conception of man. (In the course of an actual cognitive process there is no such passing from one to the other and no such lines of cognizing: all the moments and aspects are firmly embedded in the cognitive whole. Nevertheless, we may here consider both the passage itself and the lines followed in it, in order to base our knowledge on firmer grounds. Another important aim is to show how phenomenology and metaphysics both scrutinize the same object, and that phenomenological and metaphysical reductions are not mutually contradictory.)

5. NATURE AS THE BASIS FOR THE DYNAMIC COHESION OF THE PERSON

Efficacy of the Person and Causality of Nature

How is the integration of nature in the person accomplished? The answer was already indicated in the analysis of the mutual relation of the internally differentiated human dynamism to its ontological basis. When viewed from the standpoint of the ontological nucleus of the human structure the difference and the opposition between acting and happening, between the efficacy proper to acting and the subjectiveness proper to happening, to what takes place in man, must yield to the obvious unity and identity of the human being. For it is man who acts. And though, even if he - who is the personal "somebody" - does not act when there is something happening in him, the whole dynamism of activations belongs to him just as much as does the dynamism of actions. It is in man, the personal "somebody," that the activations that happen in him have their origin just as much as it is from him that spring the actions he as the actor performs.

Man's experience culminates in the experience of his ego. It is the ego that is the agent of actions. When man acts, the ego has the experience of its own efficacy in action. When, on the other hand, there is something happening in man, then the ego does not experience its own efficacy and is not the actor, but it does have the experience of the inner identity of itself with what is happening and, at the same time, of the exclusive dependence of what is happening upon itself. What takes place in myself in the form of various activations is the property of my ego and, what is more, it issues from nly ego, which is its only appropriate substratum and cause, though then I have no experience of my causality, of my efficacious participation, as I have in actions. Any attempt, however, to attribute what is happening in myself - to attribute this activation - to any other cause but myself would be immediately contradicted by experience. The human experience had at the crucial point where man experiences his own ego leads us directly and definitely to the conclusion that everything taking place in the human being appertains to the ego as the dynamic subject. This appurtenance includes also the causal relation, which though different in activations than in actions is still experiential and real. To put in doubt this appurtenance or this causal relation is tantamount to contradicting the evidence of the experience we have of our own self, of the experience had of the unity of the ego and its dynamic identity not only with all that man does but also with everything that happens in him.

These considerations have already brought us on the road leading to integration, regardless of whether or not we keep to the basic distinction between nature and person. Even if nature is to be identified only with the moment of activation, as opposed to the moment of action, which reveals the person in the human being, then the former moment at any rate is not external to the unity and identity of the ego. The experience of the unity and identity of the ego is objectively precedent to and also more fundamental than the experiential separation of acting from happening, of the efficacy from the nonefficacy of the self. The experience of unity and identity extends into the other experience constituting thereby the experiential basis for the integration of nature in the person, in the structural center of its ontological foundation. In this way nature still denotes that form of dynamism as its derivative, which is different from that of the person. The integration does not abolish the differences in the manner the very structural core of a being is dynamized, but simply prevents any tendency to treat person and nature as two separate and independent subjects of acting. In this way nature, conceived as that unique type of support of being which is man and hence the person, still indicates its different causations. Are these causations non-personal? The personal causation is contained in having the experience of efficacy of the concrete ego - but only when man is acting. On the other hand, when there is something happening in man, efficacy is not experienced and consequently there is no causation that would be proper to the person. Nevertheless, for the causes underlying this form of the dynamization of the subjective ego we have also to look within the ego and not to the outside of it; for then nature itself would appear as the cause of the dynamism. Nature integrated in the unity of the specific structural nucleus, which is man, would then refer to and indicate a different causal basis of the subject than the person.

In this approach we attempt to distinguish nature from the person as clearly as this is possible.

The Meaning of the "Priority" of Existence over Action

The metaphysical reduction, on the other hand, leads to the full integration of nature in the person. Paying no heed to nature as a specific moment in the dynamization of the subject it considers nature, as a basic property of the acting subject, which in our case is the man-subject. In the metaphysical approach nature is identical with essence, and thus nature in man is the same as the whole of his humanness, though humanness that is dynamic rather than static -because conceived as the basis of all the dynamism proper to man. It is at this point that we touch upon the essential difference between the metaphysical and the previous, more or less phenomenological, conception of nature. Nature in the metaphysical sense is equivalent to the essence of any being, where essence is regarded as the basis for the dynamism of this being.

The first elementary understanding of the relation existing between action and an acting being is expressed above in the priority attributed to existence over action. We must now take a closer look at the meaning of this assertion. In the first place we note its existential significance, for it states that in order to act it is first necessary to exist. It also states that acting as such is different from existence as such; merely to act does not mean to be contributing or perpetuating the process of existence; it is not just its homogenetic continuation or extension. There is a real difference between the two manifestations of man, "man as existing" and "man acting," even though it is the same man who exists and who acts. When man acts, his acting also has a kind of derivative existence of its own. The existence of the acting depends indeed on the existence of man, and it is here that there lies the proper moment of their existential causalitY. The existence of acting flows from and is subsequent to the existence of man; it is its consequence or effect.

The existential relation between action and being with which we are here concerned allows us to clarify and grasp these relations not only in the order of existence. It also brings to light the relation between the acting process and the acting subject - in this case the man-subject - in their essential status. The statement that action is subsequent or follows existence is meant to indicate a specific cohesion of the acting process and the acting agent. This cohesion is impossible to express otherwise than by resorting to the conception of nature. For nature is none other than the basis of the essential cohesion of the one who acts (though the acting agent need not be human) with his acting. To put it more generally and more precisely, we may say nature provides the basis for the essential cohesion of the subject of dynamism with all the dynamism of the subject. The attributive all is important, because it allows us to reject once and for all that meaning of nature which exhibits it as only a moment and only one mode of the dynamization of the subject.

Personal Existence as the Basis of the Dynamic Cohesion of Man

The cohesion considered here is confirmed in experience. When man is considered as the subject of dynamism the cohesion applies to both his acting and what is happening in him, to every one of his actions and to every one of his activations. It includes the efficacy experienced in action by a concrete ego and the subjectiveness itself of the ego in the case of activations when efficacy is not experienced. There is cohesion whenever an action is operated by, or proceeds from, the human being as its agent. It is based on human nature, that is, on the humanness pervading all the human dynamism and shaping it so that it becomes really huma~.

The experience of man's coherence with all his dynamism, with his acting as well as with what happens in him, allows us to understand how nature is integrated in the person. The integration could not consist solely in the individualization of nature by the person. The person is not merely an "individualized humanness"; it actually consists rather in the mode of individual being that pertains (from among all the types of existing beings) to mankind alone. This mod~ of being stems from the fact that the peculiar type of being proper to mankind is personal. The first and foremost dynamization of any being appears as being derived from its existence, from its actual being.

Dynamization by the personal being must lie at the roots of the integration of humanness by the person. At any rate, considering the experiential cohesion of the whole human functioning with his existence, we are led to accept that it is human nature that constitutes the appropriate basis for the cohesion of the man-subject - whatever kind of inner dynamism it has - with any of its dynamizations. Of course, nature as the basis of this dynamic cohesion really inheres in the subject, while the subject itself having personal existence is a person. Hence, every form of dynamization of the subject, every operation -whether it consists in acting or in happening, that is, in activation - if really related to humanness, to nature, must also be really personal. The integration of human nature, of humanness, in and by the person has as its consequence the integration of all the dynamism proper to man in the human person.³²

Person as the Real Existence of Human Nature

At the same time it is important to stress that because of man's nature, because of his humanness, such integration is possible only in man. Humanness or human nature is equipped with the properties that enable a concrete human being to be a person: to be and to act as a person. Moreover, it prevents him from being and acting otherwise. As these properties will be discussed more fully below, they need be only briefly mentioned here. Even so we see clearly enough that the integration of nature by the person in the human being not only presupposes nature, presupposes humanness, but also derives from it its real constitution. Hence, no other nature has any real (that is, individual) existence as a person - for this pertains to man alone.

The element of nature, of humanness, introduced into the preceding analysis has enriched our knowledge and our understanding of the person as the existential ontological support and also as a living, always expanding, synthesis of the dynamism proper to man, the synthesis of actions with activations and thus of efficacy with subjectiveness. With this element the whole interpretation of the person-action relation confirms its human import. Acting and happening are both human insofar as they derive within the person from nature, from the humanness of man. It is the person itself that is human and so are its actions. The efficacy of the human ego pertaining to action reveals the transcendence of the person, without, however, separating the person from nature. It only indicates the special properties of nature; it indicates the forces that constitute the being and the acting of man at the level of the person.

6. POTENTIALITY AND ITS RELATION TO CONSCIOUSNESS

The Nature-Person Relation in the Potentiality of the Man -Subject

The integration of nature in the person achieved by way of the metaphysical reduction brings to light the unity and the identity of man as a subjective being. The integration of humanness by the person, which is equally the integration of the person by humanness, does not however abolish in any way that difference between the person and nature which is manifest in the total experience of man, especially in its inner aspect. The fact of the unity and identity of the human being as the subject of the dynamism proper to him does not abolish in any way the fact of the difference between man's acting and all the things only happening in him, between action and the various activations. Neither does the integration of nature in the person abolish or in any way obscure the fact that man's personality is ascertained from his actions, that is to say, from his conscious acting, while everything else is contained in the person because of the identity and the unity of that subject which acts consciously and performs actions. "Personality" as here used means that man is a person. Man's being a person and the fact that this is manifested or visualized in his conscious acting as well as in his consciousness was discussed in the preceding chapter. We owe to consciousness and especially to its reflexive function, that man - the subjective autonomous being - has the experience of himself as the subject, which makes his being fully "subjective."

The difference between person and nature within the frame of the same ontological structure of man is obvious, even when we consider their metaphysical integration: if there were no distinctiveness, there would be no need to integrate. Humanness and personality (the fact of being a person) are two different things. In this study, where we are striving to arrive at the deepest possible understanding of the structure of man's acting, nature as humanness may be but another step in our analysis and comes in only as if it was its background. In the foreground there is nature as the ground of causation for the human ontological basis, and following it comes a certain form of dynamization of that ontological basis. In other words, we are interested in the relation of nature to the person from the viewpoint of the potentiality of the man-subject. We may even say that hitherto our whole analysis was indirectly an analysis of his potentiality.

Potentiality Indicates the Source of the Inner Dynamization of the Subject

The reason for this last conclusion lies in the fact that we take note of the potentiality of the man-subject by ascertaining its dynamism. Either form of this dynamism - man's acting or action, and all that happens in him and that we have called "his activation" - issues from within and has its origin in the subject, which in our account we have rightly defined as dynamic. The dynamism of the subject is derived from his potentiality; for potentiality consists in having at one's disposal certain powers inherent in the subject. At this point, however, we have to define some of our terms. Dynamism, etymologically derived from the Greek dynamis, means force or power, while potentiality, derived from the Latin potentia, here denotes power or faculty. We thus see that etymologically the two terms are very closely related. But their application in the present discussion also shows the clearly marked differences between them. Thus dynamism, as we could see, refers primarily to that actual dynamization of the man-subject which issues from within and may have the form either of acting or of happening. Potentiality, on the other hand, denotes the source itself of this dynamization of the subject, the source that is inherent and that ceaselessly pulsates in the subject, and which comes to the surface in one or the other form of the subject's dynamization. In the traditional conception of man based on metaphysical premises this source is called "faculty"; a faculty is equivalent to the point where a force is focused, the center where power resides and is wielded.

We ascertain the potentiality of the man-subject while ascertaining his dynamism. Accordingly, our knowledge of it is in fact experiential: contained in either form of dynamism - whether acting or happening - there is also potentiality as the basis and as the source of the then existing dynamization. This basis is not, however, as apparent in experience as is the dynamization itself of the subject and the actual form of the dynamism. Our interpretation of it, that is, of the dynamic source of either form of the actual dynamism, rests on a reasoning that is strictly connected with the overall object of experience; far from being detached from the object, our reasoning goes deeper into the heart of the matter than when the dynamism in any of its forms is merely taken note of. When man acts and when anything happens in him, it is first of all this concrete form of the dynamization of the man-subject that is given us experientially, whereas its basis and its source are given us only indirectly, as if they came at secondhand; for experience clearly shows that this form of dynamism issues from within. But, while revealing the innerness of the source, experience must also show what is the source of the dynamization within the subject; it must point not just to the subject as a whole but to the particular, clearly defined dynamic source for one or other form of the dynamization of the subject. Without these well defined but varied sources it would be difficult to explain why the subject is dynamized in such different ways.

The Different Basis of Activity and Passivity in the Potentiality of Man

The most striking difference is that which occurs between the dynamization of the subject when man acts and when there is something happening in him. Underlying this difference in the dynamism of man there must be a different potentiality of the human ontological nucleus with its regulative organization. To grasp and define the specific nature in the structure of man's acting from the point of view of the subject's potentiality is one of the chief aims in this study. We advance toward this objective step by step, by analyzing the separate contents of both structures. The structure of something happening in man indicates a different basis for the potentiality of the man-subject than for the structure of man's acting. However we may venture to guess that if the difference in the forms of the dynamism itself is so striking, then there has to be a corresponding difference in the potentialities, which means that different faculties must lie at the dynamic roots of acting and happening, of action and activation.³³ The problem was fully investigated by traditional philosophical anthropology (psychology), and as we are here striving to focus our attention on the person with all his specific dynamism, we will not follow the traditional path of discriminating between man's particular faculties as such. The road of tradition being well trodden and fully explored we must abandon it at this point. We shall instead follow the basic intuition of the person as it manifests itself in actions. Accordingly, in approaching the end of the analysis of this dynamism, which has already brought out the specific role of the efficacy of the personal ego in every action, we have now to turn again to our earlier discussion of consciousness. In doing so our aim is to develop a more precise conception of the relation of consciousness to potentiality in man.

The Relation of Consciousness to Psychoemotive Potentiality

With this purpose in view we are going to consider two very different kinds of both dynamism and potentiality, which may also be spoken of as two structural levels of the dynamic man-subject. They also constitute two levels of the subjectiveness of every concrete ego, because at these levels the ego has the experience of itself only as the subject and not as the actor, which it would have when acting consciously, that is, in actions. The two levels in the dynamism as well as in the potentiality of man are the psychoemotive and the somato-vegetative.

It is worth noting that we are always concerned with the relation of dynamism to potentiality, so far as the relation is visualized in the experience of man (and especially with reference to his inner aspect). It is in this aspect that, because of the different relation to consciousness, the vegetative dynamism and indirectly the vegetative potentiality differs in man from the emotive dynamism and also indirectly from the emotive potentiality. Consciousness in its mirroring function, and the reflexive consciousness that follows, is the condition of having a subjective experience, in this case of having the experience of what is happening in man. Thus we are not at present concerned with the objective difference between those acts and faculties as such which pertain to the somato-vegetative and the psychoemotive levels, but with what we may call their position in the reflecting of consciousness and in experience, and with the range of consciousness in these areas of man's potentiality. All this is not without significance for the complete image, in which we consider the man-person not only as an objective being who is the subject, but also in connection with the experience he has of the subjectiveness of his being and acting. These conditions are not without significance in the effort to understand the vegetative and emotive forms themselves of both the dynamism and the potentiality.

The difference between the two forms of the dynamism as well as between the two levels of man's potentiality manifests itself among others in our awareness of one but not of the other. This refers first of all to the character of the dynamism itself, that is to say, of the corresponding actualizations. The acts of the emotive sphere - or, in other words, that form of dynamism which in the subject is based on and springs from the psychoemotive potentiality - are clearly mirrored in consciousness. They have, if one may say so, their place in the field of consciousness, and they proceed in the subject as more or less distinct experiences. We may even say that not only are we aware of them, but that they are inherently accessible to consciousness, which means that consciousness must necessarily reflect them and include them as experiences in the inner profile of man's subjectiveness.

The Relation of Consciousness to Somato-Vegetative Potentiality

The acts of the vegetative sphere - that sphere or form of the human dynamism which in the subject is based on and springs from the somato-vegetative potentiality - do not on the whole attain man's awareness, and they even seem to be inaccessible to consciousness. It is to be stressed that the somato-vegetative dynamism and its corresponding potentiality in the man-subject are connected with the human body so far as it constitutes the organism. The term "vegetative" is used here in a wider sense than when we speak, for instance, of the vegetative system in medicine. Its meaning corresponds approximately to the old Aristotelian idea of the vegetative soul. The somato-vegetative dynamism is that form of the dynamism proper to man which is vital to the human body as an actual organism and, moreover, so far as the organism conditions the various psychical functions.

The whole of this dynamism and consequently also its correspondmg potentiality seems to have an entirely different margin in the field of consciousness, one that is much more restricted and indirect than that of the psychoemotive dynamism. Man is aware of his body but as something that has its specific life. Having the awareness of the body leads indirectly to having the awareness of the organism. But the human being has no direct and detailed consciousness of his organism; he is not conscious of the particular dynamic instances of acts which compose the whole of the vegetative dynamism. These factual instances, these forms of the dynamism of the human subject, remain inaccessible to consciousness. They occur and develop spontaneously without the accompaniment of their being mirrored in consciousness. The dynamic facts, the actsof the somato-vegetative nature, are not included as experiences in the inner profile of the human subjectiveness. It is only by means of sensations that we can have the experience of anything that happens at this structural level of the human subject, a fact already mentioned in the preceding chapter. Accordingly, when we have, for instance, the experience of physical pain or physical well-being and fitness, then the nature of the experience is basically psychical and not vegetative, though its objective roots are on the somato-vegetative level, in the potentiality of this level.

The total experience of the body and the consciousness of the body seem to rely extensively on the sphere of sensations, the so-called bodily sensations. Since the significance of somato-vegetative and psychoemotive factors in the study of the acting person is indubitable, and since these questions deserve a fully detailed and comprehensive analysis, their discussion is deferred to a separate chapter.

7. THE RELATION OF POTENTIALITY TO CONSCIOUSNESS EXPRESSED BY SUBCONSCIOUSNESS

Potentiality Comes before Consciousness

Man who is the actor, who performs actions, is also the dynamic subject of everything that happens in him, whether the occurrences are at the emotive or the vegetative level and whether they are or are not accessible to consciousness.~ The subject is always one and the same; it is the subject that is all a person, a "somebody," and does not cease to be a person in the whole sphere of the causations of nature which, as already noted, differs from the causation of the person. The fact of the man-subject being a person is not altered by the activations that fashion the dynamism pertaining to the emotive sphere of man's integral existence. The unity and identity of the being who is the subject bear witness to the reality of the potential unity, and hence also to the dynamic unity of this subject. Its unity is not abolished by those structural differences which, for instance, are manifest in the relation of potentiality to consciousness and vice versa. We have already seen that consciousness does not reflect to the same degree the whole potentiality of the human being with its consequent dynamizations. The vegetative potentiality and dynamism of the human being both remain essentially inaccessible to consciousness; they are not registered in consciousness though they form part of the structure of the dynamic subject who is a person. Undeniably, vegetative potentiality constitutes a factor in countless instances of conscious human acting, in countless actions, which of course does not mean that vegetative potentiality itself is their source.

We now see that it is not owing to consciousness that the dynamic unity of the man-subject is achieved at the vegetative level. The unity is attained apart from and in a way outside of consciousness, which in its reflecting function is not instrumental in this respect; for, as we saw, dynamic unity is antecedent and primary to consciousness in both its mirroring and reflexive functions. In the man-subject it consists - at least at the somatic level - primarily in the unity of life and only secondarily and, as it were, accidentally in the unity of experience. This assertion supports the priority of potentiality with regard to consciousness. An analysis of the human being, of the acting person, if it were to be grounded on consciousness alone, would from the first be doomed to inadequacy.

Consciousness and the Delimitation of the Psychical and the Somatic

The priority of potentiality with regard to consciousness has to be taken into account also at the emotive level, even though the role of consciousness at this level of the human dynamism is very distinct and very effective. All elements composing the emotive sphere of the human dynamism - the various sensations or emotions - are not only spontaneously recorded in consciousness but are also vividly experienced by man. The dividing line between these experiences and the great wealth and variety of data that belong to the somato-vegetative life and are not had in experience coincides to some extent with the line dividing the psychical from the somatic. Although the latter delimitation, which refers only to objective structures, is established according to different criteria, they are to some extent adopted from the criteria of the former division. This is basically permissible as long as the adoption is carried out on the right plane, which is important because otherwise confusion may result among the different aspects of experience, and consequently in the understanding of man - a confusion we must avoid. If the human being is a specific field of experiences and understandings then consciousness and experience, which help in obtaining a comprehensive grasp of this field primarily in the inner experience, cannot be interchanged with what determines the relations among the objective structures themselves. It is to such objective structures that the division of the psychical from the somatic, not to mention the soul and the body in man, seems to refer. Every one of these divisions has a different significance and issues from different premises, even though we may say they all have a common root where they meet.

Introducing Subconsciousness into the Analysis

So far our analysis has allowed us to distinguish in the totality of the human dynamism a sphere accessible to consciousness and another that remains inaccessible to it. Thereby the way is opened to introduce the factor of "subconsciousness." With reference to the same man-subject, who is a person, the dynamism accessible to consciousness is distinguishable from the dynamism inaccessible to it. We may even say that in a way they are opposed to each other, if the relation of the dynamism to consciousness is taken as the dividing criterion. But in the concept of subconsciousness there is more than just the inaccessibility to consciousness of the dynamic facts, of the activations that occur in the man-subject, especially at the somatovegetative level. The subconscious, as we know it from researches in psychoanalysis, designates a different source of the content of human experience than the source that feeds consciousness. Such is the case, for instance, with sexual objects in the treatment by Freud of the subconscious, and with other objects in the approach of Adler or Jung. Genetically, this content of human experience is connected with instincts, such as the sexual instinct or the ego instinct.

At a later stage of our discussion we shall deal with the problems of instinct and impulses in the whole structure of human dynamism. It is obvious, however, that these problems are of great significance in the present context, insofar as we are tempted to seek in the subconscious the potentiality of the human subject. Moreover, this tendency might lead us to attribute specific priority of potentiality with respect to conscious functions. We mean by that a priority concerning the structuring operations of the human mind and consequently priority in the terms of interpretation and hence of understanding: in point of fact, it seems that it would be impossible to understand and explain the human being, his dynamism as well as his conscious acting and actions, if we were to base our considerations on consciousness alone. In this respect, as it seems, potentiality of the subconscious comes first; it is primary and more indispensable than consciousness for the interpretation of human dynamism as well as for the interpretation of conscious acting. Consciousness stresses the subjective aspect of conscious acting and to some extent also of what happens in man, but it does not constitute the inner structure of the human dynamism itself.

The Relation of Subconsciousness to the Dynamism and Potentiality of Man

All that has just been said is confirmed by subconsciousness in a specific manner, specific so far as the subconscious itself is primarily related to the inner aspect of human experience. Speaking of the subconscious we refer to, as it were, an inner space, to which some objects are expelled or withheld and prevented from reaching the threshold of consciousness. Both one and the other - the expulsion and the holding back - show that subconsciousness is also controlled by laws of a specific dynamism. This is evidenced by the threshold over which some elements must force their way before they can reach consciousness and enter into the process of experience; while remaining in subconsciousness they are beyond the flux of experience' or, to put it more accurately, they remain in a state of subexperience. What is it that keeps guard at the threshold of consciousness? Is it the task of consciousness itself or of still another factor ranking higher in man, namely, the will? The threshold of consciousness does not seem to be always closely guarded, and it is not always that the control or censorship by that dominant factor in man is exercised. The ordinary emergence into consciousness, the coming to awareness, takes place spontaneously and in an uncontrolled manner: for instance, when we feel pain in a bodily organ we become aware of its existence and of its malfunction. But in this case there is only transition from the nonconscious to the conscious. Psychoanalysts have, however, designated subconsciousness solely for the elements whose reaching the threshold of consciousness is associated with the exercise of the factor dominant in man, with the special vigilance of this factor.

Then, however, the consideration of subconsciousness allows us to see all the more clearly the dynamism and the potentiality in man; for it is indicative, on the one hand, of that dominant dynamism - and with it of that underlying dominant potentiality which keeps watch at the threshold of consciousness - and on the other, of that potentiality which in the man-subject stays below the level of consciousness or, at any rate, below the current threshold of consciousness. Indeed, the elements that have been expelled from consciousness - sometimes they are even called repressed - or prevented from reaching it, do not float in the void but obviously remain with the subject. They are, moreover, maintained in a dynamic condition, waiting to be carried over the threshold of consciousness. Psychoanalytical researches tell us that they are always waiting for a suitable opportunity to emerge:

for instance, when consciousness is weakened or inhibited by overwork or in sleep. Should we not conclude that these lower levels of human potentiality - that is, the vegetative and in a way also the emotive - assist, as it were, with their own dynamism rather than shelter the objects shut off from consciousness? But while the dynamism of the vegetative level remains almost entirely inaccessible to consciousness, the emotive dynamism, which will be more fully discussed below, seems very helpful in the psychical reproduction and vividness of various objects as well as of those that have been rejected by consciousness and the will.

Subconsciousness Shows Consciousness as the Sphere of Man's Self-realization

The remarks referring to subconsciousness are of special significance at this stage of our discussion when we are considering primarily the human being as the subject of acting and more generally as the subject of dynamism. 

First, they clearly show the potentiality of the subject in the inner aspect itself.

Second, they help us to see at least to some extent, the inner continuity and cohesion of the subject; because it is seemingly subconsciousness that brings into view the transitions between, on the one hand, what only happens in man owing to the natural vegetative, and possibly also emotive activations and, on the other, what man consciously experiences and what he considers to be his actions. The continuity and cohesion exist within the frame of the subconscious, but they also span the gap between subconsciousness and consciousness. The threshold of consciousness not only divides the one from the other but it also connects them with each other.³⁵

Third, subconsciousness, with its continuous relation to consciousness, allows us to see the human being as internally subjected to time and thus having his own internal history. This history is determined and formed to a great extent by factors in man's dynamic structure itself. Consciousness has often been compared with a stream of contents flowing continuously in the man-subject; by allowing us to better comprehend how this stream is related to the potentiality of the subject, subconsciousness shows indirectly where the springs to the histories of individual human beings are to be sought.~

Finally, in what is but a comment to the preceding point, we may say that subconsciousness brings out vividly the hierarchy of human potentialities. There is something highly significant in the constant drive toward the light of consciousness, in the constant urge emanating from the subconscious to attain the level of consciousness and to be consciously experienced. Hence both the existence of subconsciousness and the functions it performs indubitably indicate that consciousness is the sphere where man most appropriately fulfills himself. The subconscious is to a high degree shaped by consciousness, but otherwise it is only a repository where what is contained in the man-subject is stored and awaits to emerge in awareness. For it is then that it will also assume a fully human significance.

Let us add that the transfer to the domain of consciousness of moments captured in subconsciousness, and especially those hindered from coming to a genuine objectivization, stand out as one of the chief tasks of morality and education. This, however, is a problem that goes far beyond our present concern and will not be considered in this work.

8. MAN IN BECOMING: THE MANIFESTATION OF FREEDOM IN THE DYNAMISM OF THE MAN-SUBJECT

The Being-Acting-Becoming Relation

So far in the analysis of the dynamism proper to man we have tried first to identify and define its manifest differences and then to indicate what are the necessary relations between dynamism and potentiality in the man-subject. There is still another problem that we have to examine. Every form of the dynamism we find in man, whether it be acting, that is, action, or happening in its manifold forms here called activation, is also associated with a certain form of becoming of the man-subject. By "becoming" we mean such an aspect of the human dynamism - whether it is the aspect of man's acting or the aspect of what happens in him - that does not only center on man himself, the subject of this dynamism, insofar as it introduces or carries on a process of change. In point of fact, in all dynamizations the subject does not remain indifferent: not only does it participate in them, as demonstrated to some extent above, but it is itself in one way or another formed or transformed by them. (At this point we will touch upon the inner structure of the life-process itself.)

Thus our analysis brings us down again to the innermost dimension, the dimension we refer to when speaking of the concrete ontological nucleus of man. It is not a passive substratum but, on the contrary, the first and fundamental level for the dynamization of the being that is the personal subject; it is a dynamization by the process of existence itself - by the very fact of existence. It is to this that in the ultimate analysis we have to refer all becoming, the entire becoming process occurring in the already existing man-subject. Indeed, to come into existence is as much as to become. The initial, original dynamization of the individual being as such is simultaneously the first instance of becoming of the human being, his coming into existence. All subsequent dynamizations due to any form whatever of the becoming process do play the role of maintaining in existence the already originated being. Nevertheless, in each subsequent dynamization something begins to exist in the man-subject that already is. In metaphysical terms, such coming into existence is accidental relatively to that original coming into existence which constitutes the being itself. Having come substantially into existence, man changes one way or another with all his actions and with all that happens in him: both these forms of the dynamism proper to him make something of him and at the same time they, so to speak, make somebody of him. An analysis of the human dynamism ought to exfoliate this becoming. In the metaphysical analysis it is this aspect that is first of all brought into prominence. It is only indirectly that the act as such tells us of man's acting or of what happens in him, but it very adequately indicates any definite instance of change, transformation - that is, of becoming - of the man-subject himself or of his faculties.

The Subject's Differentiated Potentiality and the Corresponding Spheres of Man's Becoming and Development

In the present analysis the question of the becoming of man comes to the fore, the becoming that is referring to the whole human dynamism. As it may be easily seen, every form of the dynamism is in some way more or less directly connected with a different form of becoming; the becoming of man is internally differentiated and depends on the form of the dynamism that contributes to the whole process of becoming as well as on the potentiality on which the dynamism is grounded. At an earlier stage of the discussion a line was drawn dividing the somato-vegetative from the psychoemotive dynamism and at the same time separating the two levels of the potentiality proper to the human subject. Now we may add that the becoming takes place, as it were, on two different levels, which correspond to the two levels of potentiality and the related dynamisms. First, there is the becoming of man at the somato-vegetative level. During all life the human organism undergoes change: first there is growth and development, then come exhaustion and gradual dying away. These changes are visible with the naked eye. But our knowledge of the human organism allows a much more precise definition of its becoming when connected with the potentiality and the dynamism at the somato-vegetative level. We know, for instance, that the physicochemical composition of all tissue cells is completely exchanged every few years. The natural activities of the organism consist not only in self-sustenance but also in permanent reconstruction. We do not need, however, to go into such details here, this being the task of the particular sciences. Our main question is not how the organism is built, which in itself is highly interesting, but how it is integrated in the person and how the dynamism proper to it is integrated in the actions of a person, in the conscious acting of man.³⁷

Let us now turn to the psychoemotive dynamism and the level of the human potentiality at which it develops in the man-subject. Also at this level there is a corresponding specific type of becoming, a becoming and psychical development of man. We may think of it and discuss it by analogy with the becoming of the human organism. An attempt to comprehend the psychoemotive type of becoming of man will be made later in a separate chapter. At present it suffices to say that both kinds of becoming - one connected with the vegetative potentiality and dynamism of the organism, and the other with the psychoemotive potentiality and its corresponding dynamism - depend on a certain passiveness in man. It is the kind of passiveness pertaining only to that which happens in man and to that which we see in the causation of nature itself and not to that conscious efficacy which involves the causation of the person. In this connection, however, we have to note at once that the manner in which the vegetative dynamism remains receptive and accessible to conscious influence differs entirely from that of emotive dynamism. The human organism determines almost entirely its own development, and only the conditions of the development are established by man. The situation is the opposite in the psychoemotive sphere, which itself establishes the conditions and, as it were, supplies the material for its own development; consequently, the formation of this sphere mainly depends on the human person.

Actions Make Man Good or Bad

The formation of the psychoemotive sphere brings us to that aspect of the type of becoming human which will next receive our attention. It is man's actions, his conscious acting, that make of him what and who he actually is. This form of the human becoming thus presupposes the efficacy or causation proper to man. It is morality that is the fruit, the homogenetic effect of the causation of the personal ego, but morality conceived not in the abstract but as a strictly existential reality pertaining to the person who is its own proper subject. It is man's actions, the way he consciously acts, that make of him a good or a bad man - good or bad in the moral sense. To be "morally good" means to be good as a man. To be "morally bad" means to be bad as a man. Whether a man, because of his actions, becomes morally better or morally worse depends on the nature and modalities of actions. The qualitative moments and virtualities of actions, inasmuch as they refer to the moral norm and ultimately to the dictates of the conscience, are imprinted upon man by his performing the action.

The becoming of man in his moral aspect that is strictly connected with the person is the decisive factor in determining the concrete realistic character of goodness and badness, of the moral values themselves as concretized in human acting. Without in any way constituting the content of consciousness itself they belong integrally to the personal, human becoming. Man not only concretizes them in action and experiences them but because of them he himself, as a being, actually becomes good or bad. Moral conduct partakes of the reality of human actions as expressing a specific type and line of becoming of the man-subject, the type of becoming that is most intrinsically related to his nature, that is, his humanness, and to the fact of his being a person.

Freedom Is the Root of Man's Goodness or Badness

When we search deep into the integral structure of moral conduct and becoming, into the integral structure of man's becoming morally good or morally bad, we find in it the proper moment of freedom. It is in the structure of man's becoming, through his actions, morally good or bad, that freedom manifests itself~ most appropriately. Here, however, freedom is not only a moment; it also forms a real and inherent component of the structure, indeed, a component that is decisive for the entire structure of moral becoming: freedom constitutes the root factor of man's becoming good or bad by his actions; it is the root factor of the becoming as such of human morality. It also takes place in efficacy and thus plays a decisive role in man's acting. By being interwoven with efficacy, freedom and efficacy together determine not only acting or action itself, which are performed by the personal ego, but their moral goodness or badness, that is to say, the becoming of man morally good or bad as man.

The Moment of Freedom Emerges from the Analysis of Human Dynamism. Freedom and Efficacy of the Person

It is by means of the moral value which man crystallizes through actions as enhancing his own being that these actions, or man's conscious acting, are brought down to the exercise of the moment of freedom. This freedom is best visualized by the human being in the experience aptly epitomized in the phrase, "I may but I need not." It is not so much a matter of the content of consciousness alone as of a manifestation and actualization of the dynamism proper to a man. This dynamism is in the line of acting, and it is along this line that it becomes part of the efficacy of the personal ego but remains distinct from all that only happens in man. The manifestation and actualization of the dynamism proper to man must have its correlate in the potentiality of the man-subject. We call the correlate the will. Between the "I may" on the one hand and, on the other, the "I need not," the human "I want" is formed, and it constitutes the dynamism proper to the will. The will is what in man allows him to want.

The identification of freedom as the decisive moment of the experience of efficacy and at the same time as the factor that, on the one hand, actually constitutes the structure of "man-acts" and, on the other, distinguishes it structurally from all that only happens in man (from the structure of "something-happens-in-man") brings to a conclusion the present stage of our investigations into the dynamism of the human person. For it is the person that is the real subject of the dynamism - and so far as acting is concerned not just the subject but also the actor. The discovery of freedom at the root of the efficacy of the person allows us to reach an even more fundamental understanding of man as the dynamic subject. Conformably with our basic experience the totality of the dynamism proper to man is divisible into acting and happening (actions and activations). This distinction rests on the difference between the real participation of the will, as in conscious acting or actions, and the absence of the will. What happens only in man has no dynamic source; it lacks the element of freedom and the experience of "I may but I need not." In the perspective of the person and of his proper dynamism, that is, as dynamized by action, everything that happens in man is seen to be dynamized out of inner necessity without the participation of the moral becoming of man free from constraints, in this dynamism; the moment of the dynamic transcendence is lacking however; the moment of freedom is immanent to the conditions of man's moral becoming and connected with the causation by nature. Action proper, on the other hand, exhibits - owing to the causation by the person -the transcending feature that passes into the immanence of the acting process itself: for acting also consists in the dynamization of the subject. The dynamic transcendence of the person is itself based on freedom, which is lacking in the causation of nature.