John Paul II Poet & Philosopher

By becoming Pope, the philosopher Wojtyla precipitated the hitherto obscure school of phenomenological personalism on to the central stage of Catholic thought. This philosophical approach does not contradict the more traditional Thomistic tradition, but it is new and modern in several important respects. However, it is unfamiliar to Anglo-Saxon philosophers who have not specialized in Continental thought, and there are very few books that explain it in a way that students of philosophy - as well as students of the Pope - would find useful and enjoyable. This is one of the first books to do so. The question that the author finds at the heart of the Pope's thinking is not the abstract question of how to define the human person, but the Gospel and existential question, 'Who is my neighbour?'. By answering this, Wojtyla provides a footbridge into the very heart of Christian experience and the meaning of love.