EXPERIENCE OF BELIEF FROM KAROL WOJTYLA'S PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The study focuses on the analysis of the experience of the belief phenomenon at St. John of the Cross through the optics of Karol Wojtyła. Seeing faith as an experience phenomenon allows Wojtył to open up a noetic discourse based on experience. Wojtyła deals with this subject both as a poet in his literary work and as a theoretician in his scholarly work. The phenomenon of the experience of faith is seen here as experiencing the world in immediacy and viscerality, which forms the basis for belief. This phenomenon appears to be an interface where conviction flows into action, modeling its nature as an act and individual. The subjective reading of experience determines the path taken by the act and the person on the basis of that experience. In the phenomenon of faith, the relationship between faith and intellect opens up. In the intellect, at some point, the activity of reason becomes a passive activity, opening the way for the act of receiving and donating. Inside the relationship of acceptance and donation, there is attachment – love that in turn turns the passivity of reason into activity. This moment opens up the possibility of answering the question after existence in unification. The phenomenon of belief experience is thus at odds with solipsism or egotism and, on the contrary, postulates a dimension of openness to human existence. But this phenomenon of internal experience seeks symbolic language to express itself. This is where the experience of believing in the experience of artistic expression passes. The question of artistic inspiration is a question of translating experience that precedes or exceeds artistic inspiration. The belief phenomenon containing the potential for unification has three fundamental pillars: communication, participation and transformation. It is these aspects of the belief experience that the study seeks to identify.