Religion in Zofia Józefa Zdybicka’s Philosophical Explanation

Abstract

Sister Professor Zofia Józefa Zdybicka, an Ursuline SJK, for a long time Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Catholic University of Lublin, concentrates her philosophical research on the problems of God and his relations with the world, and especially on the problems of religion and its connections with other branches of culture.

In her most important book, Człowiek i religia, published many times and translated into English (Person and Religion), she presents a unique – on the world scale – realistic interpretation of the fact of religion. Her interpretation is directed by understanding of the objectively existing fact of religion, and not only by its subjective experiencing – as in the traditional post-Kantian philosophy. In Zdybicka's view religion is a real, personal relation of a human person to a real personal Absolute that exists beyond the subject. The sufficient condition for religion is on the one hand the real existence of God beyond the subject, God that is the intentional, model and causative reason of the world; and on the other the human person's status as an entity, a being that is accidental and limited, but at the same time transcending the world of nature and culture, open to what is absolute, desiring a full and lasting happiness.