A Gift to the World: The Human Person's Place in Creation According to the Thought of Ferdinand Ulrich

Abstract:Saint Pope John Paul II once suggested that the world is a gift to man and man is a gift to the world. This paper seeks to interpret this felicitous phrase in the light of the metaphysical anthropology of the German philosopher and theologian Ferdinand Ulrich (1931–2020). Building upon the comprehension of creatio ex nihilo as a "metaphysics of gift" and Aquinas' assertion that esse is "completum et simplex sed non subsistens" (De pot. q.1 a.1 ad.1), Ulrich, in his Homo Abyssus, describes the human person's role in creation as a "Gift-Task" (Auf-Gabe) that must be accepted and fulfilled. Man, as frontier and microcosm, is the only creature that can perform the act of reditio completa, yet what Ulrich proposes is that, through the act of naming—a spoken word uniting love and knowledge—man incorporates other creatures into his very soul, helping them achieve a fulfillment they could not otherwise achieve.