In his classic book, Aranguren carries out a fascinating etymological analysis—in my view—of the term that gives it its name, “ethics.” As is often the case, etymologically speaking, the original term has a much richer meaning than that associated with the current term into which it has been translated. The Greek term “ethos” has to do with “character,” “way of being,” and “way of living,” highlighting the dimension that it is something that one acquires or shapes throughout one’s existence through one’s actions; but, on the other hand, it also has to do with being the very origin of those actions. In some ways, character is a consequence of our actions, thus shaping our habits; but not entirely, since our character also shapes those actions and habits. We can therefore observe a circularity between ethos-habits-acts, such that each of them provides feedback (positively or negatively) to the other two.

The character can be viewed from this double meaning: as the source of our actions, or as their result, a distinction that at the time was reflected by using a specific term for each case: êthos and éthos, respectively. The difference seems subtle, but it is substantial, with important repercussions for the subject’s existence. Why? In the first case, we are talking about the configuration of a character in which the whole person is involved; that is, what we are talking about is the configuration of our way of being holistic, integrating all our dimensions: as they say, the focus falls on our self, configuring a holistic way of being whose expression would be precisely our moral conduct. In the second case, however, more attention is focused on what we do or fail to do; regardless of whether what we do or don’t do has a greater or lesser impact on our way of being, the weight falls on our actions, not so much on our way of being. The difference could be expressed as an attention to a person’s moral character, either ‘from within’ or ‘from without’.

For Aranguren, the fundamental meaning is the former, whereas throughout history more emphasis has been placed on the latter, directing attention toward moral acts and habits. Character, understood as a whole, was gradually disaggregated in favor of the analysis of distinct virtues and vices. The consequence of this approach was the loss of a certain unitary sense of moral reality, a fragmentation of the human being and their practical life; attention falls more on what one does than on what one is, with the risk that what one does not necessarily correspond to what one is.

Certainly, addressing character as a source is complex, as it is neither as accessible nor as visible as actions and habits: the latter are easier to deal with than the former. Because character as a source does not manifest itself nor can it be modified directly, but only indirectly, precisely through the unfolding of our existence, through our living. But if this dimension is not properly addressed, the counterpart arises: there may very well be a distance between what we do and who we are, leading us to the confusion that by ‘doing’ good acts we ‘are’ good. They are two very different things: one may very well act, but this does not necessarily imply that this goodness emerges from the depths of our being, misleading not only those who observe us (which is also true), but above all ourselves. Because in fact, it is common for the external to prevail over the internal, not acting according to what we are and how we are, but according to what we should or should not do; which can generate internal tensions of lesser or greater severity by not going to one who we are and how we are, on the one hand, with what we do, on the other, beyond a reasonable and healthy tension that allows us to grow.

Karol Wojtyla—Pope John Paul II—offers a way to address this situation in his highly recommended book, *Person and Action*. As the title suggests, Wojtyla’s reflection seeks to understand the person by analyzing what an ‘action’ strictly constitutes, that is, one of the modes of our behavior in which our personal dimension is expressed uniquely. In his analysis, Wojtyla studies what he calls *dynamisms*, that is, dynamics that occur within our personal being and which, and this is important to emphasize, are not limited to our conscious dimension. In his opinion, if an analysis of the person only took consciousness into consideration, it would be doomed to be inadequate, because the person is first a ‘unit of life’ and not a unit of experience. This implies considering those unconscious dimensions of our being, which, despite being unconscious, are still human. True to his holistic concept of the person, Wojtyla distinguishes different dynamics within it, which, rather than being autonomous and independent dynamics that coincide within us, are different ways of realizing that single, great dynamic that is living, human life, personal life. He roughly distinguishes three dynamics: the somatic-vegetative, the psycho-affective, and the spiritual-conscious. It is not that these dynamics exist within the person, but rather that they are all intrinsic to their personal being; they are an expression of their existence. Human functioning does not occur outside the somatic-vegetative and psycho-emotional dynamics, but rather presupposes them, building upon them. Our body possesses its own biological dynamics that are not ‘something other’ than the person we are, but rather form an intrinsic part of our being, intervening in and affecting our spiritual behavior, just as our spiritual behavior affects and influences biological dynamics.

The truth is that these processes often go unnoticed; in some cases this is inevitable, but in others it is not: many of the processes inherent to these dynamics occur beneath consciousness, but in other cases this need not be the case; they can very well be identified if one is sufficiently sensitive. This is precisely what Wojtyla is aiming for: to adequately integrate all our dynamics into human action, all of which involves identifying, knowing, and understanding—to the extent possible—how they unfold and interrelate with each other. Human action does not strictly belong to the spiritual-conscious dynamic, but rather belongs to the whole person, with all their dynamics. And what it is about is for all of them to be harmoniously integrated for the benefit of our personal being, since they may very well be disintegrated.

In my opinion, it seems reasonable to establish—and this is where I was going—a certain parallel between classical ethos, on the one hand, and the person with their integrated dynamics, on the other. Because if ethos has to do with the holistic configuration of character, so that it becomes the source of our actions ‘from within,’ this ‘within’ can be understood in light of the biological dynamics Wojtyla explains, upon which spiritual ones are built. This opens up lines of reflection and research in which biology and anthropology can mutually enrich each other.

Alfredo Esteve Martín – Catholic University of Valencia