A Dispute about Man [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 29-46]

A DISPUTE ABOUT MAN
35
force, even crime. The conviction comes that we already know everything
about communism. But we also know that we are helpless before it. The
system cannot be changed. Instead of bringing satisfaction the newly discovered truth awakens depression, and even greater hopelessness. In this
situation, wouldn't even the slightest illusion that allows one to live be
better?
But the deepest crisis in the value of truth takes a different form.
The use of sheer force in the dispute with the nation liberates in that nation
a reflex of retaliation. This reflex becomes in a certain measure the principle
of the society's behavior toward the authorities. The reasoning here is surprisingly simple: if the authorities have the right to lie to the citizens,
the citizen also has the right to lie to the authorities. But such reasoning
brings disastrous social results. It ruins civic consciousness and cuts off
the very roots of civil society. After all, one cannot live by the lie alone. It
should not come to the point that the basic form of truth between the
citizen and the authorities is... agreeing on a bribe. But the communist
societies are about to reach this extreme.
In this situation, what is the role of religion and the Church?
We might guess that it is not an easy role. To be truthful the Church
is not alone here, it still has numerous allies among the intelligentsia, but
this does not in the least diminish its responsibility. It must be constantly
stressed that truth is an absolute value. However, if only yesterday one had
to say this above all to the communists, today it has to be said also to
society, to the entire nation, the Catholics themselves. "Hope comes from
truth"-said Cyprian Norwid. This is perhaps the most difficult: where
is the truth that could become a source of hope, since the truths known to
us so far have become the source of today's hopelessness?
The Concept of Man
The dispute about truth was closely associated with the dispute about
man. It might seem it was a quarrel about an abstraction. In reality it was
about concrete, everyday, and elementary things. What, really, is man?
Communism proclaims that the "true man"-the ideal that does not yet
exist, but will be-is a man liberated from the instinct of private ownership.
His opposite is a "false man," possessed from head to toe by the desire to
privately "own." This conviction found expression in Karl Marx's definition
of the "human essence" when he wrote: "... the essence of man... is... in
its reality the totality of social relations."8 Social relations-their "totality"-are found outside man. Therefore what is most important for man,
his "human essence," is not contained within him but is outside him. Still,
it has to remain in some relationship to man. After all it is the essence of
man and not the essence of the totality of social relations. What is this