KAROLA WOJTYŁY TEORIA UCZESTNICTWA
KAROL WOJTYŁA'S THEORY OF PARTICIPATION: RESEARCH AND APPLICATION POTENTIAL FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SOCIOLOGY

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents and justifies Karol Wojtyła's anthropological theory of participation understood from the sociological perspective as a thesis for research with practical potential. Based on the personalistic approach and in the context of a number of epistemological and methodological premises concerning the analysis of the person from the perspective of her actions, as well as the phenomenological approach to her experience, Wojtyła proposes and fills with specific content the categories of participation and community, explaining their anthropological anchoring and mutual dependencies. He explicates the issue of the ontological rootedness of the subjectivity of persons and the implications of this rootedness to the individual as well as the community. Wojtyła describes his understanding of community and its proper constitution in reference to the concept of participation based on a recognition of the common good. He points both to manifestations of actual participation and community and to their mere appearances or outright negation. As such, Wojtyła's theory of participation has proven to be an inspiring concept and point of reference for interdisciplinary reflection, designing sociological research on the discussed issues. Incorporated into the body of theories that constitute the background of sociological qualitative research on voluntary social engagement in very diverse fields, it has become an integral element of the analysis that led to the formulation of a model of social participation as the person's experience. The first two parts of the article focus precisely on this issue. The third part in turn describes exemplary variants of applying the model and theory treated as a Weberian ideal type (with references to instances of these applications discussed in earlier studies). Interdisciplinary reflection has shown that theory understood as a model can also serve as an analytical, diagnostic, and explanatory point of reference, a tool for explaining processes occurring wherever people, together with others, create communities of existence and action.

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