DESCRIPTION: Prof. Tadeusz Wojciechowski (1917-2000) graduated from Lviv and the Jagiellonian University. He was associated with the Pontifical Faculty of Theology in Krakow (later the Pontifical Academy of Theology, now the John Paul II University in Krakow). He was dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology. Wojciechowski's main area of scientific interest was traditional philosophy in the light of contemporary evolutionism. This includes, among other things, the important philosophical issue of human hominization, and thus, from a religious point of view, the problem of the origin of the human soul. In this regard, there was a clear polarization between the positions of Wojciechowski and his teacher, Prof. Kazimierz Kłósak. The latter represented the mainstream Thomist position, maintaining that the human soul is created by God ex nihilo sui et subiecti. Father Wojciechowski, on the other hand, believed that the human soul could only have been created by God ex nihilo sui at a certain stage in the development of the human species. He developed the concept of the evolutionary origin of the human soul, which is the subject of the article in question. In his position, he refers to the views of Teilhard de Chardin, the theory of evolution, and so-called grassroots anthropology. When considering death from the point of view of evolution, he started from a different assumption than traditional philosophy. In his opinion, the need for a new perspective on the problem of death stems from the fact that traditional science, which views death as the separation of the soul from the body, has not provided a satisfactory answer to this question. Considering this problem within the framework of new, evolutionary-existential theories of being, he starts from the basic assumption of the general scientific theory of evolution. "The evolutionary view of human death, together with the evolutionary view of human nature, also postulates the need to rethink the traditional theory of the relationship between the soul and the body as a hylomorphic composition. According to the evolutionary origin of the human soul, man is indeed a single substance, part of which was transformed and elevated at the moment of conception to the level of eternity. Life, understood evolutionarily, is a dynamic process of maturation, of growing up to full spirituality. Therefore, it can be assumed that the process of growing up actually begins at the moment of conception and lasts throughout life, but is only completed in all its perfection through resurrection at the moment of death” (p. 91).
SUMMARY: 1. Two perspectives on the issue. 2. Death from an evolutionary perspective. 3. Some consequences of the evolutionary view of death: The problem of alienation. Natural and supernatural evolution.
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