Definition of the World in Personalist Doctrine of Czeslaw Stanislaw Bartnik

Abstract

In this article, the author reveals the way Czeslaw Stanislaw Bartnik, a Polish philosopher-personalist and Catholic theologian, interprets such philosophical concept as the world. The author points out that the ideology of Bartnik is bound up with the concept of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Catholic philosopher, who considered existence of the universe a charmed universal evolution, which conduced to birth and development of a man as a personality. Following Bartnik’s interpretation, the world is the bosom of a human being. It provides the basis, creates an opportunity for existence, development and realization, whereas a person contributes specific forms, vectors, interpretation and sense to the world. On the one hand, the Polish thinker highlights similarity of a person and the world in the aspect of their creation. On the other hand – their fundamental difference, preconditioned by the fact that a human being has its own personal essence, as long as it has got objective reality, rooted in existence of the world, because of creation of Lord. A man individualizes existence in a person in an absolute way. According to the personalist definition of the world, suggested by Bartnik, it is impossible to understand the world without its relationship to a person, and a person without its relationship to the world. A person embraces the whole universe with its thought, will, love, aspirations and religiosity. It exists in it, forms it, thus being dependent on it.