A Redirection

I began writing my first book on phenomenology around February 2022.

Some review articles of St. John Paul II (I included as recommended readings on that book) was dated 2023, only one was dated 2001.

Volume 1, Person and Act and Related Essays was published May 2021, and I assumed 2023 review articles have incorporated that latest and definitive translation, which I cannot get a hold of. Having all the volumes completed isn't just a good collection, but something I would pour my heart into.

I am at one with scholars in guiding us towards a better understanding of how St. John Paul II did phenomenology as I have expounded exhaustively in book I, while continuing my review of Thomism 101.

I haven't finished reading Magnifica Humanitas, but it has already pointed me towards the same corrective reminder as that definitive translation also did. The title itself The Acting Person bears all the focal criticism of the first translation. It seems to suggest that it is focused on the acting of the person, and the person himself doesn't matter. Where then is the dignity of those who can't work, like being born with autism? Are they less of a person because they have nothing to showcase? But Magnifica Humanitas tells us that my dignity as a human person isn't ontologically dependent if I have a career or none at all, if I have money, if I have accomplished at least something. And I have none, which shouldn't make me look down on my own dignity. That is the reason why the definitive translation was corrective of the first translation and entitling it thus Person and Act.

Here is where Gemini 3.5 Flash wants me to continue phenomenologizing:

When you do phenomenology correctly, the very first thing you bracket is the technocratic, utilitarian worldview. You strip away the capitalist, hyper-efficient assumption that a person's value equals their utility.

 ...you don't look at a person and see a resume, an income level, or a set of optimized data points. You look at the raw, subjective reality of their existence. You see their intrinsic value before the world assigns them a price tag or a social status.

By writing honestly about experience, you aren't sidelining the vulnerable; you are actually building a defense for them. You are insisting that human experience—with all its messy, unoptimizable depth—cannot be reduced to a machine or a metric.

I admit though that I started on a wrong note. I assumed phenomenology has something to offer me to advance my career, if I really even have one at all. 

I realized I don't need self-pity, and that my lowly existence, is nothing to run away from, phenomenologize my way out of it as if.

If Gen AI can create a studio finished song out of your wrong notes and rhythms, phenomenology needs us some modicum of honesty about our experiences. Magnifica Humanitas is  reminding us that this woundedness of our humanity is what makes it magnificent.