In-arguably, the concept of personhood and the consequences of the existence of personhood on all spheres of reality is one of the most central themes of Pope Saint John Paul II's writings and a central focus of his pontificate. With this foundation and central focus, it is no surprise that JPII would have found much in phenomenology to assist him in his own development. And, it is no wonder that it was JPII, the man from the crossroads where the East meets the West, the Pole, who would be instrumental in creating an initial reconciliation in the rift between Classical philosophy and Modernity and identifying a path forward.
Man has always wondered at reality, and is constantly theorizing to explain the reality which he experiences. After Descartes such wonder has largely given way to the more ratio-istic (as opposed to Pierer’s intellectus) driven inquiry. The nature, quality, and even quantity of knowledge gained by such an inquiry is greatly diminished and limited, leading to a radical nihilism or at best electionism whereby only those who have studied and are deemed “experts” in such a field are able to have knowledge in specific matters. As we have seen, knowledge of this sort stems from an inward focus and is concentrated more on what knowledge can I specifically hold and know as sure as opposed to a basis of what can be held as true and known.
Phenomenology as an aid to the thought of JPII really finds its stride and strength in the acknowledgement of the human person as a beholder of reality and that the subjective experience must have consequence in how we speak of it, though not necessarily dictating what and how much can be known and still admitting that there is an objective reality which can be known and must be adhered to for ethics and morals.
In one sense, one could use as illustration quantum physics, where particles of matter act differently depending on whether there is an observer in the experiment or not. If there is an observer, matter behaves exactly as it should and as one would expect: as matter which can be defined according to place and quantified according to mass. If the observer is absent however, the particles of matter behave as if they were waves of light, and almost inexplicably tend towards a state of non matter.
Now, an analogy is only as good so far as it goes, and the previous analogy is admittedly not perfectly translatable to the current discussion, seeming to demonstrate in one sense that reality itself is dependent on my observation of it. Though this may be true about the material world, and the argument that there always is a Person who observes reality (God), I include this description here as a way of illustrating how the existence and almost passive participation of a person does have some consequence on reality and, whatever it may be, must be taken into consideration and accounted for in discussion. In this way phenomenology is a right and good aid to the thought of JPII.
