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Life Arts    H3'ed 10/10/19

The Road Not Taken by Pope Francis (REVIEW ESSAY)

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"In this historical perspective, medieval scholastic logic appears as a kind of pre-mathematics, a subtle and unwitting preparation for the large-scale operations in quantitative modes of thinking which will characterize the modern world. In assessing the meaning of [medieval] scholasticism, one must keep in mind an important and astounding fact: in the whole history of the human mind, mathematics and mathematical physics come into their own, in a way which has changed the face of the earth and promises or threatens to change it even more, at only one place and time, that is, in Western Europe immediately after the [medieval] scholastic experience [in short, in print culture]. Elsewhere, no matter how advanced the culture on other scores, and even along mathematical lines, as in the case of the Babylonian, nothing like a real mathematical transformation of thinking takes place not among the ancient Egyptians or Assyrians or Greeks or Romans, not among the peoples of India nor the Chinese nor the Japanese, not among the Aztecs or Mayas, not in Islam despite the promising beginnings there, any more than among the Tartars or the Avars or the Turks. These people can all now share the common scientific knowledge, but the scientific tradition itself which they share is not a merging of various parallel discoveries made by their various civilizations. It represents a new state of mind. However great contributions other civilizations may hereafter make to the tradition, our scientific world traces its origins back always to seventeenth and sixteenth century Europe [in short, to Copernicus and Galileo], to the place where for some three centuries and more the [medieval] arts course taught in universities and para-university schools had pounded into the heads of youth a study program consisting almost exclusively of a highly quantified logic and a companion physics, both taught on a scale and with an enthusiasm never approximated or even dreamt of in ancient academies" (I have added the boldface emphasis here).

What Ong here refers to as a new state of mind is arguably the state of mind that will be carried forward in modern science and other realms of post-medieval thought. However, because Guardini fails to note the development of the quantification of thought in medieval logic, as Ong does, I would suggest that Guardini's account of the medieval thought-world leaves out a significant development that subsequently became more significant.

For further reading about Ong's account of our Western cultural history, see my article "The West Versus the Rest: Getting Our Bearings from Walter J. Ong" in the journal Explorations in Media Ecology, volume 7, number 4 (2008): pages 271-281.

Now, because Ong's relationist way of thinking about major cultural developments is not yet a familiar way of thinking for most Americans, I should explain that Ong's relationist way of thinking does not involve straightforward cause-and-effect claims. Relationist claims are usually claims about significant factors and the interaction of those factors with one another. So let me illustrate how this kind of relationist thought works.

(1) No print culture, no modern capitalism as we know it in Western culture.

(2) No print culture, no modern science as we know it in Western culture.

(3) No print culture, no modern democracy as we know it in the United States or elsewhere in Western culture.

(4) No print culture, no Industrial Revolution as we know it in Western culture.

(5) No print culture, no Romantic Movement as we know it in Western culture.

Now, when Guardini refers to the end of the modern world, he means essentially the last two centuries in Western cultural history roughly the Industrial Revolution (Ong's "Technology" in the title of his 1971 book) and the Romantic Movement in the arts, literature and philosophy (Ong's "Romance" in the title of his 1971 book). However, Guardini announces the end of the modern world in the title of his 1950 book, and is the herald of the still emerging post-modern world. But does Ong say anything about the still emerging post-modern world? Yes, he does.

In Ong's 1971 book Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture (Ithaca, New York and London, England: Cornell University Press, pages 10-11) and in his 1981 book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (Ithaca, New York and London, England: Cornell University Press, pages 18-19), the published version of his 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University, Ong masterfully summarizes Erich Neumann's Jungian account of eight stages of the development of consciousness in his famous 1949 book in German The Origins and History of Consciousness, translated by R. F. C. Hull (New York: Pantheon Books, 1954). Briefly, taking hints from Ong, I would align the two centuries that Guardini refers to as the modern world with stage seven of the eight stages of consciousness that Neumann discusses, and the still emerging post-modern world with stage eight.

For further discussion of Ong's thought in relation to the stages of consciousness that Neumann describes, see my essay "Secondary Orality and Consciousness Today" in the 1991 book Media, Consciousness, and Culture: Explorations of Walter Ong's Thought, edited by Bruce E. Gronbeck, me, and Paul A. Soukup (Newbury Park, California; London, England; New Delhi, India: Sage Publications, pages 194-209).

Now, in 2015, Pope Francis further outraged certain conservative American Catholics when he issued his eco-encyclical known formally by the medieval Italian tag-line as Laudato si' (taken from St. Francis of Assisi's famous canticle; English: Praise be to You). It includes 246 numbered paragraphs, followed by 172 end-notes. In my estimate, the pope's eco-encyclical is well-informed and gracefully written overall (probably by a ghostwriter -- but it may represent the pope's heartfelt thought).

Incidentally, in his 2015 eco-encyclical, Pope Francis quotes his 2013 apostolic exhortation twelve times, as noted in the end-notes numbered 33, 67, 91, 115, 119,130, 139, 140, 142, 143, 151, and 155. Official documents issued by the deceased Pope John-Paul II (born in 1920; reigned as pope 1978-2005) and by the still living former Pope Benedict XVI (born in 1927; reigned 2005-2013) occur far more often no doubt to connect Pope Francis' teaching with the teaching of his two immediate predecessors, both of whom are fondly revered by the same conservative American Catholics who have responded with shows of hostility and verbal resistance to Pope Francis.

Now, after President George H. W. Bush lost his bid for re-election as president of the United States, he himself attributed his loss to his lack of "the vision thing." Pope Francis' 2015 eco-encyclical is distinguished for its comprehensive but carefully nuanced philosophical and theological vision of the common good and the principle of subsidiarity longstanding staples of Roman Catholic social teaching.

In Ivereigh's recent Commonweal article, he says, "It wasn't just the [climate] activists and the experts who were impressed. Laudato si' was by a long shot the most widely read papal document in history. Four years after its publication it remains the most quoted encyclical ever. Far outside the Catholic fold, people were blown away by its tone, at once tender and caustic, apocalyptic and hopeful, and by the way it doesn't just give a reading of the situation but spells out concrete actions, something unprecedented in the history of papal social teaching."

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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book (more...)
 

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