JORAS Volume 12 Number 1 2023

Acting Person and the Ethics of Neighourliness

Philip Osarobu ISANBOR
Abstract

This paper is aimed at assessing the ethical values of the Acting Person as a subject of lived experience in reference to the ontological values of the other selves in the society. It recognises, according to the understanding to Wojtylan Existential Personalism (WEP) that the human society is fashioned along the contents of human actions, which are expected to the expressed in truth in order to achieve integral human Development (IHD). Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) was the first ethicist and phenomenologist to have philosophically classified the human individual as an Acting Person, with which, he believed that there are principles (priority, participation, freedom and transcendence) which are hinged on the ethics of neighbourliness, that the person to be human. The ethics of neighbourliness directs the Acting Person to see the values of himself or herself and that of others in every action performed and every choice expressed, owing that, the sense of truth being expressed in right conscience and freedom should inform the Acting Person that he or she can only be fulfilled in the lives of others as co-subject of lived experiences. Adopting the phenomenological method of analysis, the paper concludes that the achievement of the Culture of Peace or sense of global social order that promote the fullness of the human person is possible when the individual as an Acting Person acts to values his or her life and the lives of others as his or her neighbours, better still, as his or her brothers and sisters, as against the ever-increasing imposition of the imperialistic and consumerist nature of the Culture of War and other forms of dehumanization.

Keywords:
Copyright © 2026 ACJOL.