Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?

The following summary is from the essay Wojtylan insights into love and friendship by Scott Fitzgibbon (Culture of Life – Culture of Death ed Luke Gormally, London – The Linacre Centre 2002).

“The Wojtylan mirror is a metaphor for consciousness. In Wojtylan thought, the mirror is the repository and reflector of what has been encountered or comprehended. It is not the mind as a whole, not even the ‘conscious’ mind as a whole; it is not the will nor the thinking, analysing, reasoning activity of the mind. Rather, it is the medium upon which those things which we experience or understand are perceived, ‘penetrated’, ‘illuminated’, and reflected back to the inner self.  Consciousness is, Wojtyla says at one point, understanding.” (284)

“The Wojtylan mirror is not only a medium for the reflection only of the self. Not at all – a wide mirror displays the surrounding scene as well.  Nor is it a medium for the reflection only of current contemporaneous phenomena: the Wojtylan mirror not only receives and reflects: it retains and records. (p283-4)

Consciousness has a deeper structure which leads KW to construct more complex metaphors than that of a mirror. In his play The Jeweller's Shop the mirror becomes a lens, absorbing what it reflects. In KW's poem Looking into the Well at Sichar, the mirroring surface of the water covers another surface.

Look now at the silver scales in the water

Where the depths trembles

Like the retina of an eye recording an image.

An important attribute reflected in consciousness is incompleteness (289). When we act we are seeking to complete ourselves. “Self-fulfilment ultimately involves transcendence. Transcendence – “inseparably connected” with self-fulfilment – is a surpassing or “a going-out-beyond or a rising above”, says KW in his essay Person and Community. And ... "Transcendence ultimately converges at a single source, which constantly resounds within the human being … Transcendence is the spirituality of the human being revealing itself”. 

Self-knowledge comes through affiliations with others (solidarities). The current age is one of a crisis in affiliations ...

As a man and a woman stand before each other and allow themselves to be known (to be naked and not ashamed), they are present to each other's consciousness. This can be called 'solidarity of consciousness'. This opens up the possibility of the ' solidarity of transcendence', where consciousness of God is transmitted through the conscious of the other person. In The Jeweller's Shop, when Teresa and Andrew stand before the shop window (which acts as a mirror/lens), Andrew becomes aware that he is seen and recognised  by the author of the solidarity of love (p293); the Jeweller is behind the window. As the two are present to each other in each other’s consciousness, the awareness grows that they are both existing within the consciousness of God; He sees them as they really are, as they allow themselves to be seen by each other.

It is the genius of the Wojtylan metaphor of the mirror/lens … that it reflects and contains and transmits this complex set off relationships (293-294)

The thou stands before my self as a true and complete ‘other self’., which, like my own self, is characterised not only by self-determination, but also and above all by self-possession and self-governance. In this subjective structure, the thou … represents its own transcendence and its own tendency towards self-fulfilment. (293)

Also to be noted John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila's use of the mirror metaphor.


I LOVE THIS!! Masses of implications. I can never stand in front of any surface and not affected by what lies behind it.