The free personal act in which the person gives herself to the other. It presupposes self-possession and self-mastery: only those who “have” themselves can give themselves. Wojtyła formulates the principle: “Man can fully find himself only through a sincere gift of himself.” Self-gift is therefore not self-loss, but the highest realization of the person in personal love.
Self-gift is the core of love in the personalist understanding. To love means to give oneself to the other for the other’s own sake. This fundamentally distinguishes personal love from every form of desire that makes the other an object of one’s own need-satisfaction.
Self-gift essentially presupposes free will. It cannot be coerced and loses its character as soon as it is no longer free. It further presupposes freedom in its deepest sense: the person must be able to dispose over herself (self-possession) in order to be able to give herself away (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 200–210).
Bodily self-gift is a special form of self-gift in which the person gives herself to the other also in her bodily dimension. It is the fitting expression of conjugal love and stands in direct opposition to concupiscence, which degrades the body of the other to an object of desire. Chastity is the virtue that makes self-gift possible in the bodily dimension. It places sensuality at the service of personal love.
Self-gift is realized in its most perfect form in the Communio Personarum — the community of persons founded on mutual gift.
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate concept: Personal Act
- Subclass: Bodily Self-Gift
- disjoint with: Concupiscence
Ontological relations:
- presupposes: Free Will, self-possession, self-mastery
- realizes: Personal Love, Communio Personarum
- stands in opposition to: Concupiscence
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: Personhood (German)
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology. Bexten 2017, pp. 276–279, 282 (self-transcendence and gift).
Further sources:
- Second Vatican Council (1965): Gaudium et Spes, §24 (self-gift as self-discovery).
- Wojtyła, Karol (1960): Love and Responsibility (Miłość i odpowiedzialność). Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL.
See also: Person, Love, Personal Love, Freedom, Free Will, Communio Personarum, Chastity, Concupiscence, Bodily Self-Gift, Karol Wojtyła, Spousal Love, Marriage