W pułapce nihilizmu – zagrożony personalizm

Western culture has found its most fundamental and integral expression in personalism throughout history. It has made it possible to show man as a person, something not found in any other religion or civilisation. The personalistic vision of man has been influenced, on the one hand, by Greek philosophy, led by Aristotle's metaphysics, and, on the other, by Christian revelation, within the framework of which the concept of God as unique in the Trinity appears. The latter is subjected to philosophical analysis through great theologians such as St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. However, in modern and contemporary times, there is a deformation of both the concept of God and the concept of person. This deformation eventually leads to the negation of the category of person as well as the negation of the concept of being. Nihilism, whose main agenda is destruction, comes to the fore in philosophy and culture. From nihilism to culture there is no return, just as from non-being there is no return to being. What remains, as M. A. Krąpiec emphasises, is the initial affirmation of being as existing and of the human person as a self-determining subject. This is the way for a philosophically and theologically grounded personalism that does not fall into the trap of nihilism.