The Primal We

Studies of Karol Wojtyła’s personalism have consistently kept to his theme of understanding the person in a way that begins with the individual, prior to addressing the community. Following the paradigm of Person and Act, the I is seen as the ground for understanding the We, as it is through experience that one has contact with reality, and the community is itself composed of individual subjects. This article, however, inverts the question. Can a Community‑First approach strengthen personalism without falling into the trap of collectivism? I argue that the community is not merely a result of individual participation, but also the primordial soil that allows the subject to emerge as a person.