There I stood: in the dental care aisle of Big-Box Pharmacy Store. Been there lately? Amazing place. First of all, on coming in the door, you can easily note how all these places are set up remarkably similar. There're always women's products within eye-sight of the door, as well as seasonal products (shovels and pails and such in the summertime, Christmas decorations this time of year). The pharmacy, sbeing presumably the raison d'etre of the store, is of course always in the very back. You have to walk past all the other products to get there. There are food products, miscellaneous cheap technology (it seems to be one of the only places left where one can buy a portable CD player), cards, stationery and office gadgetry, and basic houseware-type stuff (light bulbs, hose connectors, weed killer).
The health stuff is all on one side of the main aisle. Usually somewhere in the middle is the dental care area.
So, there I stood, in the dental care aisle, looking at a wall of products. I didn't take time to count, but I think it reasonable to assume that there were about 25 different kinds of toothpaste and twice as many different varieties of toothbrush. I was in the market for a toothbrush.
Now, my last toothbrush was, by any consideration, a roaring success. I've had the same model multiple times now, and my experience is consistently excellent. It's just a good toothbrush, despite all of the advertising gimmicks. It looks like the Swiss Army Knife of toothbrushes, and might be priced about the same, but it's really that good. It has rubber edgy thingies that get your gumline, and a protruding nose of sort that ducks down behind the molars. It has a magical color change item that tells you when it's getting tired, and a tongue-washer on the back. Honestly, the tongue-washer I'm not too thrilled about. The bristles seem to do a better job on that essential task, even if that might somewhat reduce the life of the brush.
I should note here that I'm a yeoman when it comes to my routine in the washroom. I've admitted some technology to the process over the years. For example, I used an electric razor before I had a beard (now, I shave my neck the old-fashioned way, that is to say the "plastic blade-cartridge with moisturizing strip on the end of a battery-operated vibrating stick" sort of way). My shower and toilet are scrubbed by Elves who take the form of bubbles that are automatically dispensed after each use. But when it comes to the work of cleaning my mouth, I like to do the work myself. Although I'm intrigued by newfangled brushes that utilize sonic booms or whatever to blast the plaque off your teeth, and the spinny-jobbers and shaky-doodads that are becoming increasingly "affordable" (that is, to the consumer in the instant of purchase), I stick to the normal arm-operated brush.
Well, after much searching and bewilderment by the bright colors and variety of the display, I finally located my reliable brush in the fray. I was dismayed to find that I couldn't purchase a single unit, but only two-for-the-price-of-(slightly-more-than)-one. I've tried that before. It never works out. Invariably, I either lose the spare brush, or leave one at my parent's house so that I have it available when I travel and end up never using it, because it doesn't feel right and I'd need to run boiling water over it and I bring mine along anyway. If I manage to keep and not to lose the spare brush, I find that I am uncontrollably urged untimely to begin using it. Although my last brushing with each of these brushes is good on an objective scale, it must be admitted that nothing compares with the first time, when the bristles are brand new. And having one laying around that can provide such an experience is too great a temptation. I end up throwing my old one away before the magical color indicator tells me to, and travel back to the Big-Box Pharmacy within the same time frame that I would have done had I bought only one brush.
I didn't want to buy two toothbrushes. I only needed one. On the same level, hanging a few brushes away from my old faithful, was another brush. It was shiny. And it cost much less than the two brushes I knew to be excellent. They weren't shiny, but they were good. This new brush, on the other hand, was shiny. It caught my eye. I knew it was shiny - this was not a subconscious perception. I might have said aloud, had I had someone in the aisle with me (not necessarily someone with whom I'd traveled to the store, but just a fellow shopper) - I might well have said, "That's shiny." But there wasn't, so I didn't. But I did think to myself, "Well, just because it's shiny doesn't mean it won't be good." And I went the way of all flesh. I gave in. I submitted to the allure of shininess on which our whole modern consumerist state depends. And I have found like so many other shiny-consumers, that it seems very little which glitters anymore is gold.
The gimmick of my new brush (all brushes have a gimmick) is a grippy-spot. On the front and back of the brush, right around where it contorts between the handle and the bristles, is orange, bumpy grippy stuff in a little spot on one side and a big spot on the other side. Presumably the little spot is for the tip of the thumb and the big spot for the side of the index finger.
Last night, I used my old brush one last time in a sort of mournful decommissioning. The hazy blue indicator area made me think how true it is that "old soldiers never die, they just fade away."
I tried out my new brush this morning. The bristles perform well. It lacks something of the gum-sexing that the old brush offered, but I need to learn to floss better anyway and maybe this will motivate me, because I'll miss that tingly feeling. My new brush is annoying, though, in its gimmicky grippy-spot. I found that the rest of the handle of the brush seems to have been made deliberately slick and slippery in order the enhance the perceived benefit of the grippy-spot. I took my old brush from the top of the trash pail and felt the bottom of each handle. Sure enough, my new brush is remarkably less grip-able. The grippy-spot isn't an enhancement on a normally grip-able brush. But it's a gimmick, placed on a brush that has been manufactured to (outside of it's special place) be less grip-able than a normal brush. Perhaps someone will tell me that, for effective brushing, one ought to grip the indicated spot because it's on the pressure pivot of the brush and enables the best control and maneuverability. I say, hogwash! I do grip my brush in the proper place, but occasionally a repositioning or what-not is in order, and I want to be able to perform these tasks without the risk of dropping my brush in the sink and needing to boil the damned thing before I'm satisfied with its sanitation.
Anyway, I tell this story so as to invite a reflection on the role of perceived obsolescence in our consumerist culture. I think the principle - which, basically defined, means the creation of an impression on the part of the consumer that old stuff isn't good anymore and they need new stuff - is apparent in many ways in Big-Box Pharmacy Store. I think you can find it operating in many instances in the story: in the superabundance of dental care products in the aisle; in the technology-enhancements of toothbrushes to vibrate and make noise; in the psychology that operates on me when I have purchase two of the same brushes at the same time; in the grippy-spot being manufactured to seem more necessary by the compromise in the grippyness of the rest of the brush.
The concept of perceived obsolescence is an important one of which to be aware at any time, but especially in a season of heightened commercialism and consumerism like the month of Christmas. I hope my story serves in some way to illustrate how this principle can motivate us both without our knowing it (my "two-for-one" woes) or with our knowing it (my attraction to the shiny). I invite any further reflection anyone might have on the matter with another gentle reminded that this is, hopefully, a place for discussion.
Also, this would be a good time to remind everyone of my lexicon post from a while back. I'll be revising this soon to add some new terms, like perceived obsolescence. Since I sometimes do get technical around here, everyone should know that this post can be easily accessed at any time by clicking the Terms label in the sidebar. Should it seem necessary at a later date, I'll add a permanent link somewhere. For now, I'm trying to keep the sidebar tidy.
Showing posts with label Terms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Terms. Show all posts
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Just a Quick One
I know this is old news in its way, but in an email I got today reference was made to the joint pastoral letter written on health care by the Archbishop of Kansas City and the Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph. The letter contains a very interesting statement which I somehow passed over before:
Subsidiarity is that principle by which we respect the inherent dignity and freedom of the individual by never doing for others what they can do for themselves and thus enabling individuals to have the most possible discretion in the affairs of their lives.Now, the reason this quote strikes me is because it isn't, really, the definition of subsidiarity. While this extrapolation may be just - while the meaning the Bishops derive from the teaching could be argued to be implicit in what has been said about the principle - I'm not aware of a precedent for applying subsidiarity in a lateral way like this. Now, in context, the letter is speaking about the higher order of the State not interfering in the functions of lower orders (such as the health care industry privately run, or families, etc.), and that notion is a strict interpretation of subsidiarity. But the sentence above doesn't really say that. It doesn't make clear the traditional "vertical" understanding of this principle, and seems to argue it on a "horizontal" plane.
The reason I bring it up is that it interests me. I wonder if it's fair to bring this horizontality into the discussion of subsidiarity, or whether a separate principle within the realm of solidarity is really meant for this application. Again, I'm not concerned with the broader point in the context of the letter, but I'm concerned with the exact meaning of this quotation (which, such as it is, is actually irrelevant to the context in which it is found if you want to get technical). Personally, I prefer keeping very closely to the Church's traditional language on subsidiarity and its application primarily to the question of the justice due to individuals on the part of the whole of society and the political organizations therein. But the "we" in this quotation might be, say, a next door neighbor. And is that relationship, and the demand "not to do for the other what the other might do himself," properly governed under the principle of subsidiarity as it has been explicated in Magisterial writings? Thoughts, anyone?
Friday, July 18, 2008
Words, Words, Words: My Working Lexicon
The identifications proposed below are not to be seen as definitive. This is NOT a glossary or dictionary. Rather, I have compiled here my own working lexicon; as I grow in my own understanding of the concepts, terms, and persons involved in Catholic Social Teaching, I will continue to update this list and nuance the content.
This is a working lexicon. Each time an item on the list is revised, the first part of the definition will reflect this fact and the date given, thus: [Revised mm/dd/yy]. Consequently, when considering the various content on this site and cross-referencing the lexicon, the date of the post (or date of latest revision) will be important to understanding that I may have interpreted a given concept or term in a slightly different way. [Nota bene: Sometimes, the content of posts on the blog will be updated or revised; this date will be reflected in the text of the post (rather than the timestamp), at the very bottom the particular post.]
Persons or general concepts are in bold; subjects reflecting proprietary works or ideas (reflected by a term “coined” by a specific thinker) will be listed as an italicized title.
The lexicon is divided into four sections for ease of reference: Economical, Philosophical, Theological, and Biographical/Bibliographical.
FEEDBACK GREATLY DESIRED, in order to gain clarity and instruction about terms which may be vague or where I am lacking in understanding.
ECONOMICAL
Capitalism – A society in which a free minority are owners of the means of production in the form of private property, with a proletarian mass of non-owners who work under freely engaged social contract with the owners [i].
Communism – (1) A specified type of socialism which denies the right to “private” property even on the distribution side of economic exchange; all property is to be shared in common based on need [ii]; (2) in practical terms, a denial of the individuality of the person, who is seen chiefly as he relates to the community, thus impacting all social institutions even beyond the economic sphere.
Consumerism – (1) An attitude in the individual or society which seeks fulfillment in the consumption of material goods; (2) a philosophy, deliberately mechanized by political and corporate bodies for the stimulation of the economy, whereby the consumption of goods is stimulated and promoted as a way of life and happiness for the State [iii].
Distributism (or Distributivism) – The system in which so large a number of citizens are invested of the means of production in the form of private property as to generally characterize the State; that is, a “Proprietary State” in which property, especially the means of production, is well distributed amongst the larger part of the working population [iv].
Economics – (1) The study of how wealth is produced, consumed, and distributed [v]; more specifically, the study of the material limitations and laws (i.e., necessary relationships between existents) governing the processes of goods production, consumption, distribution, and exchange.
Marxism – Marx and Engel’s theory of communist socialism heavily influenced by materialism and evolutionistic sociology; here, the struggle between classes is seen as the impetus for societal change and balance [vi].
Proprietary State (see Distributism).
Property – (1) “The name for a control of the Means of Production” [vii]; (2) Control by an agent (an individual or community) over wealth, which control implies inclusion of the means to produce wealth [viii].
Socialism – A theoretical society in which the means of production belong to the State, which would redistribute the goods produced to the commonwealth; in theory, “private property” in terms of consumption goods could still be maintained, and that in less or equal division amongst the citizenry.
Value – (1) A thing’s usefulness; (2) a thing’s worth in exchange [ix].
Wealth (see also Value, #2) – (1) A thing’s exchangeable value, the real measure of which is “the toil and trouble [to a person] of acquiring it” [x]; or, (2) “values attaching to material objects through the action of man” which are exchangeable [xi].
ECONOMICAL NOTES
[i] cf. Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State, Section I.
[ii] cf. Belloc, Economics for Helen, Part II, Socialism.
[iii] cf. Retailing analyst Victor Labeau, quoted in The Story of Stuff by Annie Lennox (time appx. 11:54): “Our enormously productive economy... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction in consumption.... We need things consumed, burned-up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”
[iv] cf. Belloc, Economics for Helen, Part II, The Distributive State.
[v] Belloc, Economics for Helen, Part I, Introduction.
[vi] cf. John Paul II, Dominum et vivicantem 56: His Holiness calls “dialectical and historical materialism” the “essential core of Marxism.”
[vii] Belloc, The Restoration of Property, Chapter I.
[viii] Belloc, Economics for Helen, Part II, Property.
[ix] Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Part I, Chapter 4.
[x] Ibid., I, 5.
[xi] Belloc, Economics for Helen, Part I, “What is Wealth?”
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PHILOSOPHICAL
Commutative Justice – One of the species of justice (see Distributive Justice): “[T]he order of one part to another, to which corresponds the order of one private individual to another [...] is directed by commutative justice, which is concerned about the mutual dealings between two persons” [i].
Darwinism – Commonly used term to describe any system of evolutionary theory which uses materialist principles such as random selection (to the exclusion of other explanatory notions, such as teleology) as a basis for describing observed phenomena.
Distributive Justice – One of the species of justice (see Commutative Justice): “[T]he order of the whole towards the parts, to which corresponds the order of that which belongs to the community in relation to each single person [...] is directed by distributive justice, which distributes common goods proportionately” [ii].
Materialism – Broad term describing any philosophy holding as a basic principle that all real phenomena are a result of material objects and relations.
Personalism – A philosophy centering on the value and uniqueness of the person, growing from a confluence of pragmatism and phenomenology among other philosophies, but distinct in its “axiological” scheme which proposes the person as an “absolute.” (See Christian Personalism.)
Social Darwinism (or Evolutionistic Sociology) – The reduction of social phenomena (such as economics) to a biological or physiological explanatory principle; the belief that “all social phenomena [...] must each and all be seen as intrinsically related phenomena of the science of life in its most highly evolved form” [iii].
PHILOSOPHICAL NOTES
[i] Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae IIa IIae, Q61, a1.
[ii] Aquinas, op. cit.
[iii] Benjamin Kidd, quoted in Heinrich Pesch, Liberalism, Socialism and the Christian Social Order, Book 1: The Philosophical Roots of Economic Liberalism, trans. Rupert J. Ederer (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), 189.
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THEOLOGICAL
Christian Personalism – Proponents argue that this philosophy best captures the dynamic reality of the human person as socially ordered and made in the image and likeness of God; the “absolute” here is slightly modified to encompass the Divine Communion of Persons and, secondarily, man’s relations with the Divine, thus maintaining the ethical and phenomenological centrality of man, but emphasizing the imago Dei over the individual; (For its opponents, however, this philosophy is seen as a corruption of Thomism toward relativism, heavily influenced by Immanuel Kant’s ethical focus on “rights” [i]).
Solidarity – (1) When interdependence becomes recognized “as a system determining relationships in the contemporary world, in its economic, cultural, political and religious elements, and accepted as a moral category [...], the correlative response as a moral and social attitude, as a ‘virtue,’ is solidarity” [ii]; (2) “The principle of solidarity, also articulated in terms of ‘friendship’ or ‘social charity,’ is a direct demand of human and Christian brotherhood [...] dictated and imposed both by our common origin and by the equality in rational nature of all men, whatever nation they belong to” [iii].
Subsidiarity – The principle, firmly upheld by the Church, that “a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good” [iv]; negatively, the principle which sees such interference as “a grave evil and disturbance of right order” [v].
THEOLOGICAL NOTES
[i] This amalgamation, which Stanley Jaki has called “Aqui-Kantism,” opponents say can be found in various modern theologians’ works, notably the writings of Pope John Paul II and several passages from the Second Vatican; for a consideration and apologetic against such critiques, see “Personhood as Gift and Task: The Place of the Person in Catholic Social Thought” by Gregory Beabout.
[ii] John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei socialis 38; emphasis added.
[iii] CCC 1939.
[iv] John Paul II, Centesimus annus 48.
[v] Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno 79.
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BIOGRAPHICAL/BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
Centesimus Annus – Encyclical of John Paul II on the hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, dated 01 May 1991, in which the Holy Father proposes a “re-reading” of that former document in order to “confirm the permanent value of such teaching,” and to “manifest the true meaning of the Church's Tradition” [i].
Laborem Exercens – Encyclical of John Paul II on the ninetieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, dated 14 September 1981; the Pope here calls for “the discovery of the new meanings of human work” and “the formulation of the new tasks that in this sector face each individual, the family, each country, the whole human race, and, finally, the Church herself” [ii].
Mater et Magistra – Encyclical of John XXIII, dated 15 May 1961 (the seventieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum); at great length, the Pope celebrates the Leonine encyclical as a “compendium of Catholic social and economic teaching” of “perennial validity and inexhaustible worth” [iii]. He then “pass[es] in review [over]... the various problems of our modern social life” and provides “principles and directives” for the Bishops of the day to enact [iv].
Pacem in Terris – Encyclical of John XXIII, dated 11 April 1963, investigating the laws which govern man’s relations: one with another; individuals with the State; and, individuals and States with the world community.
Quadragesimo Anno – Encyclical of Pius XI on the fortieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, dated 15 May 1931; celebrating and updating Leo XIII’s doctrines – including a remarkable exposition of the principle of “subsidiarity” – Pius XI excoriates the evils both of Socialism and Capitalism, while proposes the “reform of Christian morals” as “the only way to sound restoration” [v].
Rerum Novarum – The magna carta of Catholic Social Teaching, a “peerless” encyclical by Leo XIII published 15 May 1891 [vi]. While upbraiding the evils of Socialism, Leo XIII provides sound religious basis for the dignity of workers; he extols workers’ rights to just wages, proper division of labor, organization, Sabbath rest, and property enfranchisement; he identifies the proper role of the State, particularly in terms of distributive justice; he calls for laws favoring ownership; and he calls for an end to enmity between classes.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
[i] John Paul II, Centesimus annus 3.
[ii] John Paul II, Laborem exercens 2.
[iii] John XXIII, Mater et Magistra 15, 42.
[iv] John XXIII, op. cit., 261.
[v] Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno 15; see also, on Socialism, #56: “the division of goods which results from private ownership was established by nature itself;” and, on Capitalism, #103: “[Capitalism] has invaded and pervaded the economic and social life of even those outside its orbit and is unquestionably impressing on it its advantages, disadvantages and vices.”
[vi] cf. Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno 1.
[top]
This is a working lexicon. Each time an item on the list is revised, the first part of the definition will reflect this fact and the date given, thus: [Revised mm/dd/yy]. Consequently, when considering the various content on this site and cross-referencing the lexicon, the date of the post (or date of latest revision) will be important to understanding that I may have interpreted a given concept or term in a slightly different way. [Nota bene: Sometimes, the content of posts on the blog will be updated or revised; this date will be reflected in the text of the post (rather than the timestamp), at the very bottom the particular post.]
Persons or general concepts are in bold; subjects reflecting proprietary works or ideas (reflected by a term “coined” by a specific thinker) will be listed as an italicized title.
The lexicon is divided into four sections for ease of reference: Economical, Philosophical, Theological, and Biographical/Bibliographical.
FEEDBACK GREATLY DESIRED, in order to gain clarity and instruction about terms which may be vague or where I am lacking in understanding.
ECONOMICAL
Capitalism – A society in which a free minority are owners of the means of production in the form of private property, with a proletarian mass of non-owners who work under freely engaged social contract with the owners [i].
Communism – (1) A specified type of socialism which denies the right to “private” property even on the distribution side of economic exchange; all property is to be shared in common based on need [ii]; (2) in practical terms, a denial of the individuality of the person, who is seen chiefly as he relates to the community, thus impacting all social institutions even beyond the economic sphere.
Consumerism – (1) An attitude in the individual or society which seeks fulfillment in the consumption of material goods; (2) a philosophy, deliberately mechanized by political and corporate bodies for the stimulation of the economy, whereby the consumption of goods is stimulated and promoted as a way of life and happiness for the State [iii].
Distributism (or Distributivism) – The system in which so large a number of citizens are invested of the means of production in the form of private property as to generally characterize the State; that is, a “Proprietary State” in which property, especially the means of production, is well distributed amongst the larger part of the working population [iv].
Economics – (1) The study of how wealth is produced, consumed, and distributed [v]; more specifically, the study of the material limitations and laws (i.e., necessary relationships between existents) governing the processes of goods production, consumption, distribution, and exchange.
Marxism – Marx and Engel’s theory of communist socialism heavily influenced by materialism and evolutionistic sociology; here, the struggle between classes is seen as the impetus for societal change and balance [vi].
Proprietary State (see Distributism).
Property – (1) “The name for a control of the Means of Production” [vii]; (2) Control by an agent (an individual or community) over wealth, which control implies inclusion of the means to produce wealth [viii].
Socialism – A theoretical society in which the means of production belong to the State, which would redistribute the goods produced to the commonwealth; in theory, “private property” in terms of consumption goods could still be maintained, and that in less or equal division amongst the citizenry.
Value – (1) A thing’s usefulness; (2) a thing’s worth in exchange [ix].
Wealth (see also Value, #2) – (1) A thing’s exchangeable value, the real measure of which is “the toil and trouble [to a person] of acquiring it” [x]; or, (2) “values attaching to material objects through the action of man” which are exchangeable [xi].
ECONOMICAL NOTES
[i] cf. Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State, Section I.
[ii] cf. Belloc, Economics for Helen, Part II, Socialism.
[iii] cf. Retailing analyst Victor Labeau, quoted in The Story of Stuff by Annie Lennox (time appx. 11:54): “Our enormously productive economy... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction in consumption.... We need things consumed, burned-up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”
[iv] cf. Belloc, Economics for Helen, Part II, The Distributive State.
[v] Belloc, Economics for Helen, Part I, Introduction.
[vi] cf. John Paul II, Dominum et vivicantem 56: His Holiness calls “dialectical and historical materialism” the “essential core of Marxism.”
[vii] Belloc, The Restoration of Property, Chapter I.
[viii] Belloc, Economics for Helen, Part II, Property.
[ix] Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Part I, Chapter 4.
[x] Ibid., I, 5.
[xi] Belloc, Economics for Helen, Part I, “What is Wealth?”
[top]
PHILOSOPHICAL
Commutative Justice – One of the species of justice (see Distributive Justice): “[T]he order of one part to another, to which corresponds the order of one private individual to another [...] is directed by commutative justice, which is concerned about the mutual dealings between two persons” [i].
Darwinism – Commonly used term to describe any system of evolutionary theory which uses materialist principles such as random selection (to the exclusion of other explanatory notions, such as teleology) as a basis for describing observed phenomena.
Distributive Justice – One of the species of justice (see Commutative Justice): “[T]he order of the whole towards the parts, to which corresponds the order of that which belongs to the community in relation to each single person [...] is directed by distributive justice, which distributes common goods proportionately” [ii].
Materialism – Broad term describing any philosophy holding as a basic principle that all real phenomena are a result of material objects and relations.
Personalism – A philosophy centering on the value and uniqueness of the person, growing from a confluence of pragmatism and phenomenology among other philosophies, but distinct in its “axiological” scheme which proposes the person as an “absolute.” (See Christian Personalism.)
Social Darwinism (or Evolutionistic Sociology) – The reduction of social phenomena (such as economics) to a biological or physiological explanatory principle; the belief that “all social phenomena [...] must each and all be seen as intrinsically related phenomena of the science of life in its most highly evolved form” [iii].
PHILOSOPHICAL NOTES
[i] Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae IIa IIae, Q61, a1.
[ii] Aquinas, op. cit.
[iii] Benjamin Kidd, quoted in Heinrich Pesch, Liberalism, Socialism and the Christian Social Order, Book 1: The Philosophical Roots of Economic Liberalism, trans. Rupert J. Ederer (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), 189.
[top]
THEOLOGICAL
Christian Personalism – Proponents argue that this philosophy best captures the dynamic reality of the human person as socially ordered and made in the image and likeness of God; the “absolute” here is slightly modified to encompass the Divine Communion of Persons and, secondarily, man’s relations with the Divine, thus maintaining the ethical and phenomenological centrality of man, but emphasizing the imago Dei over the individual; (For its opponents, however, this philosophy is seen as a corruption of Thomism toward relativism, heavily influenced by Immanuel Kant’s ethical focus on “rights” [i]).
Solidarity – (1) When interdependence becomes recognized “as a system determining relationships in the contemporary world, in its economic, cultural, political and religious elements, and accepted as a moral category [...], the correlative response as a moral and social attitude, as a ‘virtue,’ is solidarity” [ii]; (2) “The principle of solidarity, also articulated in terms of ‘friendship’ or ‘social charity,’ is a direct demand of human and Christian brotherhood [...] dictated and imposed both by our common origin and by the equality in rational nature of all men, whatever nation they belong to” [iii].
Subsidiarity – The principle, firmly upheld by the Church, that “a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good” [iv]; negatively, the principle which sees such interference as “a grave evil and disturbance of right order” [v].
THEOLOGICAL NOTES
[i] This amalgamation, which Stanley Jaki has called “Aqui-Kantism,” opponents say can be found in various modern theologians’ works, notably the writings of Pope John Paul II and several passages from the Second Vatican; for a consideration and apologetic against such critiques, see “Personhood as Gift and Task: The Place of the Person in Catholic Social Thought” by Gregory Beabout.
[ii] John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei socialis 38; emphasis added.
[iii] CCC 1939.
[iv] John Paul II, Centesimus annus 48.
[v] Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno 79.
[top]
BIOGRAPHICAL/BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
Centesimus Annus – Encyclical of John Paul II on the hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, dated 01 May 1991, in which the Holy Father proposes a “re-reading” of that former document in order to “confirm the permanent value of such teaching,” and to “manifest the true meaning of the Church's Tradition” [i].
Laborem Exercens – Encyclical of John Paul II on the ninetieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, dated 14 September 1981; the Pope here calls for “the discovery of the new meanings of human work” and “the formulation of the new tasks that in this sector face each individual, the family, each country, the whole human race, and, finally, the Church herself” [ii].
Mater et Magistra – Encyclical of John XXIII, dated 15 May 1961 (the seventieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum); at great length, the Pope celebrates the Leonine encyclical as a “compendium of Catholic social and economic teaching” of “perennial validity and inexhaustible worth” [iii]. He then “pass[es] in review [over]... the various problems of our modern social life” and provides “principles and directives” for the Bishops of the day to enact [iv].
Pacem in Terris – Encyclical of John XXIII, dated 11 April 1963, investigating the laws which govern man’s relations: one with another; individuals with the State; and, individuals and States with the world community.
Quadragesimo Anno – Encyclical of Pius XI on the fortieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, dated 15 May 1931; celebrating and updating Leo XIII’s doctrines – including a remarkable exposition of the principle of “subsidiarity” – Pius XI excoriates the evils both of Socialism and Capitalism, while proposes the “reform of Christian morals” as “the only way to sound restoration” [v].
Rerum Novarum – The magna carta of Catholic Social Teaching, a “peerless” encyclical by Leo XIII published 15 May 1891 [vi]. While upbraiding the evils of Socialism, Leo XIII provides sound religious basis for the dignity of workers; he extols workers’ rights to just wages, proper division of labor, organization, Sabbath rest, and property enfranchisement; he identifies the proper role of the State, particularly in terms of distributive justice; he calls for laws favoring ownership; and he calls for an end to enmity between classes.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
[i] John Paul II, Centesimus annus 3.
[ii] John Paul II, Laborem exercens 2.
[iii] John XXIII, Mater et Magistra 15, 42.
[iv] John XXIII, op. cit., 261.
[v] Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno 15; see also, on Socialism, #56: “the division of goods which results from private ownership was established by nature itself;” and, on Capitalism, #103: “[Capitalism] has invaded and pervaded the economic and social life of even those outside its orbit and is unquestionably impressing on it its advantages, disadvantages and vices.”
[vi] cf. Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno 1.
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