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 only 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 human~.

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.