Abstract

The author of the text outlines the problem concerning the relation between man and civilization in the light of the personalistic concept of the personal and communal civilization founded by Emmanuel Mounier. On the basis of Mounier’s theory lies the belief that the contemporary crisis of civilization is deeply rooted in the Renaissance which reduced the position of a man to the role of a citizen. According to Mounier, The Renaissance ideology of individualism is the main source of the domination of egoistic goals, the annihilation of the spirit of love, it also creates the source of social nihilism. The aim of personalism thus is to overcome the Renaissance for the sake of the revival of a man as a person. This kind of re-born Renaissance is to re-value typical for the western culture rules of the individual and social life. Together with the compensation for the mistakes of Renaissance comes the notion of ‘bringing the human order back’, liberating from the material objects and being able to rule them. Here comes the way to overcome the conflict between reality and the axiological foundations of a person. The author presents the Mounierian way of understanding civilization as a sphere of material objects, structures and institutions that have been historically determined to exist in various patterns, and which differ among each other in the spheres of economy, law, politics, science technology, and concentrating around values. Moreover the author attempts to reconstruct the way of Christian evaluation of everything that is connected with civilization proposed by Mounier.