In finding himself “alone,” man is manifested to himself as man. Here we see a first “self-definition” of man as one in his relationship with what surrounds him (the visible world): such unity is the real revelation of man to himself. This is why the Pope can affirm that there is continuity between man’s solitude and his subjectivity. The intimate connection between self-definition and relationship with the world suggests a great unity between the subjective and the objective dimensions of knowledge: “by this knowledge which makes him come out, so to speak, of his own being, at the same time man reveals himself to himself in the whole peculiarity of his being.” (Catechesis 5, 6)
Later on, in the articulation of solitude-body-subjectivity, the dictatum of the catechesis identifies the “central problem of anthropology” to be examined by maintaining man’s acting and his own body awareness as the elements allowing him to begin to have a reflected self-awareness.
Therefore, through a specific intuition on his own body, man perceives his own uniqueness amongst all the living beings through his habits and/or his behavior. It is worth remembering that the body, though able to assimilate man to all other living beings, at the same time becomes that constituent element which manifests his uniqueness (his objective difference from the other creatures) and therefore, becomes the reason for his solitude.
The journey, started with man’s discovery of himself through his own body, seems to find its fulfillment in the renewing work of Christ’s grace, by keeping a unique continuity which illumines the whole novelty of the Son of God’s redeeming action, once again filtered by the human body. “Through Redemption, every man has received himself and his own body almost anew from God. Christ has inscribed into the human body – in the body of every man and of every woman – a new dignity, since in himself the human body has been admitted, together with the soul, to the union with the Person of the Son-Word.” (Catechesis 46, 4)
This first level of self-discovery through his own body opens man to the second original element indicated by the category of unity. Solitude, in fact, presents itself as the element leading man to discover not only the “proper transcendence of the person” but also the original call to experiencing that fundamental communio personarum which represents the raison d’être of the sexual difference between man and woman. It is important to note how the Pope insists on the point that there is no solution of continuity between the discovery of the one’s own personal subjectivity through the experience of the body in one’s solitude and the awareness of the reciprocity man-woman, since “All that constituted the foundation of the solitude of each of them was indispensable for this reciprocity. Self-knowledge and self-determination, that is, subjectivity and consciousness of the meaning of one's own body, was also indispensable.” (Catechesis, 6, 1)
The glance of Adam on Eve is not successive to his glance upon himself (and vice-versa), but the unity of the two glances recalls the centrality of self-definition and relation of oneself with another. Once again, the Pope is concerned with pinpointing that the discovery of oneself is inseparably and simultaneously subjective and objective: to look at oneself and to look at another.