Saenz Ruiz 1

Magdalena Saenz Ruiz

Father William Joensen
Human Identity in Community (PHI 250)
May 13, 2014
The Real Meaning of Human Life: Absolutely Transcending the World to Touch and Reach
the Infinite
Humanity is the maximum expression of individuality and personality (personhood); it is
the manifestation of irreplaceable wholes that come together as complementary beings, in order
to build up a true metaphysical, ontological, and moral community with distinctive values, roles,
and goals. Individuality denotes material uniqueness; it is strongly tied to bodily perfection and
genuine beauty, as well as the corporeal manifestation of authenticity. It signifies immediacy,
temporality, and instrumentality; hence, it only constitutes a single part, fraction, or component
of human subsistence that can be inclined towards permanent dissolution or fragmentation.
Individuality resides in the material end; it is embedded in matter and in the narrowness of the
ego, (Maritain 37) continuously occupying the physical world and conditioned by nature.
(Spaemann xii) Personhood, in contrast, is the spiritual transcendence of ones self; it moves
beyond matter in order to initiate the long human voyage towards the infinite throughout a
unique spiritual soul. Therefore, personhood is the subsistence of the spiritual soul
communicated to the human composite and it signifies interiority to self. (Maritain 41)
Individuality and personhood come together to authentically generate a unified human
composite; the two principles are constitutive of the whole unified being that is the human

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person. (Ramos 13) They represent the same human reality and identity, constituting a unique
self-experiencing subject (Wojtyla 213), who is permanently being and becoming an end in
himself inherently and absolutely, and who is capable of self-transcending due to the existence of
an immaterial, spiritual, incorruptible, and immortal soul. (Ramos 2) This rational soul guides
human beings throughout a path of perfection, in which they are able to genuinely transcend their
nature and reach a superior ultimate end; human beings overcome the state of deficiency in
which they find themselves as natural beings (Spaemann 15) and move beyond their corporeal
realities, in order to reach a maximum state of transcendence of their souls. The subsistence of a
spiritual soul in human beings composes each person as a unique irreducible particular and as
a free agent capable of unification and self-transcendence. Each whole human being participates
in reasons trans-temporality and immortality (Spaemann 14), throughout a permanent
movement beyond substance in order to reach the Absolute, the infinite. (Spaemann 19)
Each human individual is an authentic person in possession of a unique act of being or
existing. The act of being of each human person is the source not only of the essence but also of
the incommunicability and uniqueness of the person. (Ramos 10) The person subsists,
possesses, and transcends himself by freely integrating and harmonizing his unified substantial
whole; he is a substantial entity enjoying a sort of freedom with respect to his own substance
(Kass 416) Moreover, each human being, in his personhood and freedom, actualizes himself,
in order to continuously seek to be like God, who is pure act, the model of personhood and true
freedom. (Ramos 14) Furthermore, the person generously gives himself to others by expanding
his being. (Ramos 13) Each person genuinely and freely communicates himself to another,
throughout self-giving love and knowledge. Personality, of its essence, requires a dialogue in
which souls really communicate, (Maritain 42) in order to attain a true and coherent teleological

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society, in which each human person offers himself unconditionally to others and infinitely
transcends the nature of humankind towards the infinite. Each person, hence, comes near to God,
throughout free, integral, and coherent actions of self-transcendence, self-giving love, selfmastery, self-realization, and self-actualization in order to touch and reach the ultimate uncreated
common good: God.
The gradual and continuous multidimensional process of free transcendence of the human
soul towards the attainment of the infinite builds up a meaningful or purposeful life, constituted
by the human person as a substantial unit, as a self-giving agent, and as a true irreducible
particular and member of an entire human community seeking to reach the Absolute. When the
human person as a unified whole and as a free agent of determination within society exists in a
substantiated teleology characterized by a true ultimate end and by a coherent path towards the
infinite and ultimate goal (God), his life acquires an authentic meaning and therefore, each
experience is founded on the basis of subjective, free, and transcendental actions that do not tend
towards disintegration; on the contrary, they represent unified wholes that move beyond the
world and seek to mystically and spiritually reach the supernatural. Life is meaningful when the
soul of each authentic irreducible particular, who is a free agent of his own subjectivity,
transcends throughout coherent actions towards oneself, others and a superior and infinite being,
founded on the basis of a true teleology of life, death, and eternity.
Nevertheless, those human beings who exist within a mistaken and deviated teleology of
life, characterized by an erroneously constructed self-determination, become part of a life in
absence of God and faith; thus, they reside in a state of nothingness, materialism, selfishness,
individuality, and permanent disintegration. They reject their self-transcendence, fail to
unconditionally give themselves to others through self-giving love and knowledge, and live

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within a continuous spiritual and teleological blindness, in which they are unable to encounter
the infinite God. They hate life, remain attached to their individuality, consider themselves
parts of the whole, and can be viewed as strangers or shadows of the true uncreated common
good: God.
At first, life is meaningful when the human person, as a substantial unit of matter and
form, body and soul, is capable of becoming a whole unified being in order to achieve a true
perfection and nobility of life. The human person absolutely self-transcends himself to become
and authentic and unique irreducible particular; in his own genuine actions of subjectivity and
interiority, the human person is able to encounter his irreplaceable identity, in order to coherently
self-determine himself and achieve a maximum state of self-actualization and self-realization.
Self-determination involves a sense of efficacy on the part of the acting subject, who recognizes
that I act means that I am the efficient cause of my action and of my self-actualization as a
subject. (Williams 188; Wojtyla 214)
At the same time, although matter is inclined to disintegration, the spiritual soul of each
individual human person moves beyond the world, in order to reach a maximum state of beauty,
meaning, and perfection. The human person freely integrates or harmonizes the various material
interests, with the essential goal of coherently achieving human freedom and ultimately reaching
an absolute state of self-mastery. (Spaemann 55) Each human person as a unique and
unrepeatable personal subject discloses his unified whole throughout a process of self-awareness,
voluntary actions directed towards nobility and goodness, coherent acts of freedom, and the final
achievement of beauty and perfection which only exists in the infinite and absolute God. Hence,
each human person as an authentic free agent, each man as the author of his actions, (Williams
186) is creator and responsible for his actions that must be directed towards the transcendence

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of the spiritual soul in order to achieve a state of true self-mastery, self-realization, and selfactualization that ultimately reach the Absolute and give meaning to human life.
By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life,
I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within
man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive
characteristic the self-transcendence of human existence. It denotes the fact that being human
always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself--be it a meaning to
fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a
cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes
himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that
the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is
possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence. (Frankl 110-111) When human persons give
themselves freely and responsibly to others throughout authentic acts of being and existing, they
are capable of absolutely transcending themselves and truly loving others, in order to selfactualize their lives and acquire a genuine life meaning.
Hegel, for instance, emphasizes the importance of oneself and others in the process of
acquiring a true and authentic life meaning. Those human beings who find their lives purposeful
and hence, attain a true and genuine spiritual human fulfillment, are able to responsibly
determine themselves as individuals and persons, and are capable of translating their actions into
self-giving experiences of love with and for others: Hegel attempted to show that human
fulfillment was not confined to the determination of the means to satisfaction, the latter being
taken as the ultimate end of human activity, but concerned the growth of forms of activity
constitutive of men's individuality, distinctness, and personal identity. Moreover, he believed this

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development to be inextricably bound up with the character of men's relations with one another
which he regarded not just as a means to the achievement of personal ends but constitutive of
essentially human powers and capacities and therefore integral to the growth of individuality
itself. (Walton 755)
Furthermore, human life is meaningful when the human person, in his unique act of being
and existing, subsists, possesses, and transcends himself, generously giving himself to others.
The human person subsists uniquely in himself, but is also capable of building up a
complementary universe on the wholeness of being; he transcends himself and throughout this
self-transcendence and wholeness of being, he gives himself to others unconditionally by fully
expressing love. Particularly, when each human being stands back and relativizes his own
finite, he is capable of becoming the Absolute. He becomes incommensurable and able to offer
himself in the service not immediately his own, even up to the point of self-sacrifice. And so the
person becomes capable of love of God carried as far as contempt of self. (Spaemann 59)
This finite self-relativization allows human persons to self-transcend, live within a true
wholeness of existing and being, and self-give or self-sacrifice themselves by generously
expressing love, and complementarily and unconditionally building up a bridge of
communication amongst unique irreducible particulars.
Love, thus, provides an authentic and real meaning to human life; it is the name of the
desire and the pursuit of the whole. (Kass 175) Specifically, benevolent or rational love allows
human persons to build up life on the basis of reciprocity and recognition of oneself and the
other. Benevolent love purposes union only on the condition that distance has first been
preserved. Benevolent love allows the others Being-for-Itself to be real for me. (Spaemann 90)
When human beings recognize themselves as unique self-transcendent subjects and at the same

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time recognize others in all their naturalness (Spaemann 92), a moment or state of internality,
and therefore of totality and infinity (Spemann 93) is achieved. Life, therefore, acquires an
intrinsic meaning; through benevolent love, reality, ones own self and others existence fully
reveal themselves (Spaemann 94) and life is freely lived at its fullest. Love is the only way to
grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully
aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled
to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is
potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his
love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making
him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come
true. (Frankl) Love fulfills life; it allows human beings to recognize others as unrepeatable
irreducible particulars with unique potentialities, talents, and passions. It directs each human
person throughout a transcendental and spiritual path of discovery and encounter with the true
experience of self-actualization and self-realization, in order to attain a true meaning of life.
When human beings act out of love, life acquires a certain level of goodness and
therefore, it reaches a state of authentic fulfillment and meaning. (Wolf 9) Not all reasons of
love contribute to a meaningful life, however, because love can be misplaced or misguided.
(Vitrano 82; Wolf 6) When love lacks reciprocity, mutuality, complementarity, and self-sacrifice,
the meaning that it gives to human life becomes an objective and superficial component of
fulfillment. Nevertheless, when love reaches a maximum state of self-giving and self-sacrifice,
life acquires a true intrinsic meaning and happiness is truly fulfilled. For instance, when human
life is surrounded by suffering, acts of love and sacrifice can give meaning to this suffering, in

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order to attain an authentic meaning of life: In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the
moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. (Frankl 135)
The human person moves out of himself, gives life to others throughout self and mutual
transcendence and ultimately surpasses the world, in order to reach a final uncreated common
good: God. Human beings, in their intrinsic existence, perform individual and unique acts of
wholeness and transcendence of material and corporeal experiences and interests. As well, each
human person authentically and uniquely relates to others through mutuality, reciprocity, and
complementarity, in order to build up a meaningful and united human community on the basis of
self-giving love, knowledge, and communication, and which is permanently aspiring towards the
same uncreated common good. The human person is a whole within a superior unity of beings;
he is part of a political or temporal society offering himself to others in his entire humanity.
However, he also aspires to give himself entirely by absolutely transcending through his own
human nature and through others, in order to touch and reach the supra-temporal or supernatural
society, in which the immortal and incorruptible soul is able to surpass the limits of humanity
within the world and ultimately reach a state of eternity in union with God. The human person,
therefore, must give himself unconditionally and entirely to both his temporal and his immortal
or infinite communities, with the main objective of finding a meaningful life determined by
wholly devoting himself to the political community and finding his own supra-temporal vocation
in the divine or eternal community.
When each human person is and becomes a whole within the totality of humanity, he is
capable of giving a true and authentic meaning or purpose to his life; he offers his entirety of
being to the human community and at the same time, transcends this community, in order to
ultimately reach eternal life, characterized by divine fulfillment and infinite happiness.

Saenz Ruiz 9
Fulfillment and happiness, hence, can only be encountered if each human person, through his
unique temporal and supra-temporal vocations, entirely offers and self-gives himself to others in
the human society and transcends this mutual relationship through his spiritual and immortal
soul, in order to achieve a maximum state of divinity and union with God.
To encounter an absolute and perfect state of fulfillment in life, each human person must
view life and the universe as a complete whole and not as separate component parts. He must
operate within the frame of reference of infinity, for this is the plan of Nature. (Alford 284) At
the same time, man can never fully realize himself and his world until he relates to the whole of
his existence instead of to its imaginary components; until he refuses to compromise restlessly
and discontentedly with immediate, short-range, incomplete goals; and until he happily accepts
and experiences life for what it is the ultimate miracle of the whole. (Alford 287) When each
human person discovers and encounters his temporal and infinite vocations as a whole within the
entire human community aspiring to reach eternity through God, he recognizes himself as a
unified being and thus, fulfills his life on the basis of transcendence, love, and happiness.
As well, the fulfillment of humanity is built up on the permanent search and ultimate
achievement of the infinite and perfect uncreated common good: God. When each human person
relativizes his own finite reality, in order to recognize others as wholes within the totality of
humanity and become absolute existing beings within the temporal and supratemporal
communities, a meaningful life is reached, beauty, perfection, and nobility are attained, and
infinity and eternity are permanently being touched. Through the intuition of the divine essence,
each blessed soul becomes God, in an intentional way, and thus enters into the uncreated society
of the Divine Persons (Maritain 87) () the human being, exalted by supernatural power to
share as a pure personality in the Uncreated Society of Divine Persons, enters into the Kingdom

Saenz Ruiz 10
of God and the Light of Glory. Strive not, ye men, to socialize the life of the spirit. It tends of its
own nature to live in society and its fulfillment only there. (Maritain 51-52, 81) When the
spiritual soul of each human person transcends the nature of each unique irreducible particular
within the entirety of the human community through self-actualization, self-giving love, and
responsible self-sacrifice, he absolutely becomes part of the infinite world of God; he rejoices in
the midst of the eternal life, and finds an absolute fulfillment and meaning of his life. The unity
of the human person with the community of the Divine Persons is therefore translated into an
absolute and infinite encounter with God; this encounter with eternity and divinity provides each
human being, in his own immortal soul, with an authentic life meaning and total fulfillment.
Although a meaningful life can be achieved throughout a responsible and unique process
of self-transcendence, self-relativization, self-giving love, and ultimate union of the immortal
and incorruptible soul with eternal life and the infinite God, man is capable of determining
himself and therefore, he can reach a deviated meaning of life, characterized by a mistaken view
of reality and of his own teleology of life. Man is not fully conditioned and determined but
rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words,
man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his
existence will be, what he will become in the next moment. (Frankl 154) A misguided teleology
of life, conditioned by self-interest and self-exaltation, directs each human being towards a lack
of purpose in life. Absence of God, lack of faith, immersion within the disintegrated character of
individuality and materialism, scarcity of love, and instrumentalization of humanity provide
human beings with a life determined by nothingness, emptiness, nonexistence, and nonbeing.
When the human person is primarily centered on transcending himself and exalting his
life over the existence of others, a state of superiority and power is achieved, in which ones own

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life becomes subordinated to the supremacy of the individual over the true and authentic person
and the ultimate infinite an eternal life with God. He is not comparable with the human being as
we know him, primarily because in this superman or generic being human selftranscendence will finally have been absorbed into a definitive autonomy, and laid to rest
(Spaemann 21) Nietzsche, in fact, emphasizes the primacy of the self over God, making way to
the coming of a new human, a subject which can only become a self when it paradoxically
learns to overcome its very constructed self. (Lackey 737) Therefore, Nietzsches logic runs as
follows: so long as God exists, a subject who overcomes himself cannot come into being; for as
Richard Schacht rightly notes, the God-hypothesis serves as a support for the traditional subject
hypothesis in Nietzsche's writings. So to produce a self-over-coming subject Nietzsche must first
kill what he considers that stodgy old tyrant of the soul. (Lackey 737) Each human being who
has become immersed within the urgency of isolating himself from God, in order to overcome
his own reality as a unique self, rejects the infinity of God and hence, lacks meaning in life.
When human persons become supermen and destructively exalt themselves as superior
individuals, they reject or kill God; they believe in their own self-transcendence as subjects,
but at the same time destroy the ultimate, eternal, and divine life with God, generating a collapse
of their own identities as unique human persons and irreducible particulars, and failing to build
up a true teleology of life on the basis of God as the final infinite and uncreated common good.
They live within a life of nothingness and absurdity, in which their value as human persons is
placed on their self-realization as subjects and thus, thy progressively become disintegrated in
their self-exalted nature, lack of faith, and absence of God.
Heidegger is indeed post-Nietzsche. He does not speak of the death of God because that
has already happened and Nietzsche had said it well enough. Heidegger's reflections presuppose

Saenz Ruiz 12
that the term God is meaningless for most people. (Scott 365) Heidegger focuses on the
absence of God and lack of faith; he states, The weakness of God and divine things is absence.
But absence is not nothing; it is actually the appropriating presence of the hidden plenitude of
what is past, and hence it is the collected presence of the divine things of ancient Greece, of
prophetic Israel, of the sermon of Jesus. This no-more is in itself a not-yet of the veiled coming
of his inexhaustible presence (Heidegger 183) He argues the incapability of human reason to
fully know and encounter God, and therefore, the impossibility to find human life meaning
throughout the knowledge of God. Heidegger has thus reacted against what Ralph Harper calls
Nietzsche's violently overstrained will which placed so much emphasis on man's overcoming
all obstacles and reaching a position of transcending insight by virtue of his own efforts ()
he has placed primary emphasis on the need for God's immediate disclosure and for man's nonaggressive reception of this disclosure. (Scott 368; The Seventh Solitude; Denken und
Sein) Heidegger proposes a state of failure to acquire a true meaning of life through God;
consequently, similar to Nietzsches argument on the superiority of the self and the death of God,
he rejects human life meaning through Gods absence and lack of faith. Because God is absent,
man, not God, must confirm the content of the belief, and hence the validation of faith falls back
on man and not on a present disclosure of God. (Scott 369)
Absence of God and lack of faith direct humanity towards a meaningless life and a lack
of a true nobility state, due to an erroneously-created teleological significance of God as the true
purpose of human life. Human beings who reject God and who are immersed within a life of
disbelief are incapable of loving themselves, others and God (absence of absolute
transcendence); they have fallen into the deep abyss of a disintegrated individuality and life in
community, with a completely disoriented uncreated common good.

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Additionally, human beings who live within self-seeking love are unable to recognize
others as authentic and unrepeatable subjects and irreducible particulars. They lack reciprocity,
recognition, mutuality, and complementarity; therefore, they love themselves because they find
themselves particularly important, pleasant, or desirable. But in such an estimation the subject
hasnt yet left nature in its completely hidden and unrevealed state: on this view a human being is
valuable only because he is valuable to himself (Spaemann 93) Self-seeking love is also
accompanied by selfishness and a search for individuality and materialism; they direct human
life towards the instrumentalization of the person as an absolute end in himself and lead to
incoherent acts of freedom, characterized by the destruction of the irreducible particular and
the absence of the true wholeness of being. Life, consequently, becomes meaningful and its true
teleology is completely mistaken.
Moreover, today, society has become focused on temporality, success, and achievement,
all of them determined by immediacy and by the urgency of the world. Todays society is
characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful
and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who
are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense
of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. (Frankl 156) Value and utility are
permanently fighting within todays society. Those who find life useful remain attached to the
material world; they have a deviated teleology of life determined by temporal goods and goals.
They emphasize achievement and success in life, but forget to transcend the world in order to
reach the infinite God. However, those who find life valuable are able to move beyond the limits
of the temporal world, with the main objective of transcending themselves, others, humanity, and
ultimately reach infinity and eternity in union with God.

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Human life is meaningful when it is experienced at its fullest, throughout a free and
spiritual transcendence of the immortal soul: It is this spiritual freedom- which cannot be taken
away- that makes life meaningful and purposeful. (Frankl 155) When human beings absolutely
self-transcend themselves in order to reach their wholeness of being and existing, when they
become immersed within a life of self-giving, love, knowledge, and communication, and when
they achieve perfection, beauty, and nobility throughout their encounter with the infinite and
eternal common good (God), their lives acquire a true, intrinsic, and authentic meaning. Human
persons who are able to relativize their own finite, in order to absolutely transcend humanity and
the world, and ultimately reach eternity and infinity, encounter the real meaning of life
substantiated in the true teleology of God. Throughout their self-actualization and self-mastery as
genuine persons, their expression of benevolent love to others, and their spiritual transcendence
towards the Absolute, human beings encounter life and death as blessings and gifts (Kass
413-425; 428), because they both constitute authentic paths towards eternal life, which is the
ultimate goal of humanity and which gives a true purpose, happiness, beauty, and perfection to
human life.
However, those human beings who lack faith and who have become immersed within the
absence of God, who perform incoherent acts of freedom, who have a deviated teleology of life
and an erroneous self-determination, and who have disintegrated or destructed the true meaning
of personhood through materialism and a disoriented individuality, have not been able to give
meaning to their lives. They have fallen into the deep abyss of nothingness and emptiness,
specially, due to the fact that they have failed to absolutely transcend the world through the
immortality of their souls and their union with the infinity of God.

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