The Foundations of Mieczysław Albert Krąpiec’s Metaphysical Personalism

This paper discusses the cardinal points of Krąpiec’s metaphysical personalism, in the context of a synthetic reading of his most important works in philosophical anthropology. A new vision of Krąpiec’s thought is proposed, via a discussion of the metaphysical foundations of his anthropology and by emphasizing his notion of the three stages or phases in which personhood reveals itself. Each of these emerges as an integral element when outlining a conception of persons and when demonstrating the overriding importance of the issue of personhood for philosophical anthropology. Firstly, personhood manifests itself in the inner experience of one’s own subjectivity as something universally shared by human beings. Next, this fact is itself shown to be grounded metaphysically in the soul as an immaterial principle organizing the body. As a result, persons emerge as substantial rational beings. An examination of the potentialities of such beings then reveals the transcendence of persons in respect of nature and society, together with their self-fulfillment in intellectual and moral acts, in interpersonal relations, and—ultimately—in their relatedness to the Person of the Absolute. Krąpiec’s personalism relies upon classical Thomistic metaphysics, and presents a person’s life in universal terms as a process culminating in the actively experienced moment of death.