Philosophy Now Forum

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 4:51 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 3:03 pm Of course you did not mention "injustices of the upper echelons"! You would not mention that fact would you!

You are flipping out but without a sound reason. My interest in or admiration for established Catholic social philosophy is first concern with “general grounding”. Social justice and well-being, within Catholic social doctrine, are definitely relevant. But not the topic of my recent posts.

You had better mention the injustices of the "upper echelons", because human nature is such that if the rich and powerful are not curbed their tendency will be to conserve their wealth and power to the detriment of the poorer less powerful people.

I have no reason to disagree. But again, my previous assertions had to do with hierarchies of knowledge and a critique of the influence of ‘mass man’ (which Ortega y Gasset does not localize in a specific class, though degeneracy can flow from top to bottom by bad example).

Indeed the rich and powerful legitimate their authority by appeals to religion, even when in so doing they distort faith to rationalize their own interests.

As well [men, elites, and masses] make appeals for social justice, fairness, brotherhood, respect of the individual, and many other qualities.

Belinda wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 6:37 pm Hierarchies of knowledge too are divisive. Knowledge is power, when mass man' s knowledge is restricted by an authority blocking mass man's opportunities to learn. You must know that religious and secular authoritarian regimes deliberately curtail education for girls and women, and other demographics too. We have seen all this before and you must know it!

You say "degeneracy". Do you mean cultural, racial, ethnic, or genetic degeneracy?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 6:55 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 6:37 pm Hierarchies of knowledge too are divisive. Knowledge is power, when mass man' s knowledge is restricted by an authority blocking mass man's opportunities to learn. You must know that religious and secular authoritarian regimes deliberately curtail education for girls and women, and other demographics too. We have seen all this before and you must know it!

You say "degeneracy". Do you mean cultural, racial, ethnic, or genetic degeneracy?

Belinda, you need to review my previous posts and try to understand them.

You have gone ‘round the bend with arbitrary interpretations! You are not just misunderstanding but doing so with concentrated will.




I’d also suggest trying to understand even a bit of Ortega y Gasset’s perspectives since my use of the term mass man derives from him.

The mass-man is he whose life lacks any purpose, and simply goes drifting along.

We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but does not know what to create. Lord of all things, he is not lord of himself.

José Ortega y Gasset: The Revolt of the Masses

Belinda wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 7:14 pm How would you propose the mass man be educated? While I appreciate rote learning for training , education is not training but is for creating ideas and subjecting those ideas to sound judgement. Appeals to authority pertain to training not to education.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 8:23 pm

We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but does not know what to create. Lord of all things, he is not lord of himself.

José Ortega y Gasset: The Revolt of the Masses

Belinda wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 7:14 pm How would you propose the mass man be educated? While I appreciate rote learning for training , education is not training but is for creating ideas and subjecting those ideas to sound judgement. Appeals to authority pertain to training not to education.

I cannot answer such a question without first establishing the purpose and value of life on this plane of existence. This conversation takes place on a thread touching on traditionalist Catholic philosophy, dogma, and social teaching. I am writing, sort of, in relation to that perspective, you see. So, if you (if we) have established our valuation within such a framework, then education can be talked about. But if you are asking me how mass-man of the American Walmart sort (or his unfortunate European variety), I cannot contribute much. I wonder if you intuitively understand why that is?

The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, that is excellent, individual, qualified, and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated. And it is clear that this "everybody" is not "everybody." "Everybody" was normally the complex unity of the mass and the divergent, specialized elite groups. Nowadays, "everybody" is the mass alone.

José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses

In this work, Ortega traces the genesis of the "mass-man" and analyzes his constitution, en route to describing the rise to power and action of the masses in society. Ortega is throughout quite critical of both the masses and the mass-men of which they are made up, contrasting "noble life and common life" and excoriating the barbarism and primitivism he sees in the mass-man.

He does not, however, refer to specific social classes, as has been so commonly misunderstood in the English-speaking world. Ortega states that the mass-man could be from any social background, but his specific target is the bourgeois educated man, the señorito satisfecho (satisfied young man, or Mr. Satisfied), the specialist who believes he has it all and extends the command he has of his subject to others, contemptuous of his ignorance in all of them.

Ortega's summary of what he attempted in the book exemplifies this quite well, while simultaneously providing the author's own views on his work: "In this essay an attempt has been made to sketch a certain type of European, mainly by analyzing his behaviour as regards the very civilization into which he was born". This had to be done because that individual "does not represent a new civilisation struggling with a previous one, but a mere negation ..."

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 9:08 pm Is "mass-man" what you would call a male Catholic? And why are there so many "mass-men" at Walmart? Is it because they're eating too much and need to lose weight?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 10:51 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 9:08 pm Is "mass-man" what you would call a male Catholic? And why are there so many "mass-men" at Walmart? Is it because they're eating too much and need to lose weight?

You say dumb things from time to time, but here you exceed yourself.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Tue May 13, 2025 12:21 am
Poor AJ. Everyone sees his nonsense, except for himself.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 8:23 pm

We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but does not know what to create. Lord of all things, he is not lord of himself.

José Ortega y Gasset: The Revolt of the Masses

Belinda wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 7:14 pm How would you propose the mass man be educated? While I appreciate rote learning for training , education is not training but is for creating ideas and subjecting those ideas to sound judgement. Appeals to authority pertain to training not to education.

I cannot answer such a question without first establishing the purpose and value of life on this plane of existence. This conversation takes place on a thread touching on traditionalist Catholic philosophy, dogma, and social teaching. I am writing, sort of, in relation to that perspective, you see. So, if you (if we) have established our valuation within such a framework, then education can be talked about. But if you are asking me how mass-man of the American Walmart sort (or his unfortunate European variety), I cannot contribute much. I wonder if you intuitively understand why that is?

Belinda wrote: ↑Tue May 13, 2025 10:21 am I respect the Roman Catholic schools and teachers where I have worked and made friends. I respect the disciplined atmosphere which helps the pupils to learn. All the RC teachers I have met, two of whom I counted among my friends and including two nuns, carried their religion lightly and were liberal in their attitudes.

By "carried their religion lightly " I mean they didn't talk about RC doctrine as authoritative but were open minded modern graduates in principles and practice of education and in arts. The pupils who were courteous and disciplined received liberal educations besides physical training and sound social principles by example from the teachers of how to practice these principles. (North of England 1960s -2000)

However an English teacher whom I met more recently claimed that she had to teach some of her pupils to see beyond religious doctrine before they could be objective enough to understand novel ideas.

Purpose and value of life can't be properly understood by people whose minds are not free to think and feel.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue May 13, 2025 1:44 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Tue May 13, 2025 10:21 am I respect the Roman Catholic schools and teachers where I have worked and made friends. I respect the disciplined atmosphere which helps the pupils to learn. All the RC teachers I have met, two of whom I counted among my friends and including two nuns, carried their religion lightly and were liberal in their attitudes.

By "carried their religion lightly " I mean they didn't talk about RC doctrine as authoritative but were open minded modern graduates in principles and practice of education and in arts. The pupils who were courteous and disciplined received liberal educations besides physical training and sound social principles by example from the teachers of how to practice these principles. (North of England 1960s -2000)

Since I was not educated in private Catholic schools, I cannot say much about the issue that concerns you.

What I think I can say is that, at bottom, a Catholic viewpoint is incisive and strict in some, core definitions, and these have to do with a picture, a description, an ideology, dealing with the reasons for our life in this plane of existence. The better Catholic theological writing that I have been influenced by (see the pdf book I linked to as an example) deal on the principles at this rational-intellectual level.

Now, what if one did not share this basic (Catholic-Christian) view about the value or purpose of life? What if a student did not agree? I am uncertain how they would or should be accommodated. Simply because there are sets of first principles in the Catholic-Christian viewpoint.

I can say that I am aware of Catholic colleges either a Catholic-values oriented program (Wyoming Catholic College for example) but this is not primary education where, certainly in your view, “indoctrination” would occur.

My view about “indoctrination” is that: all education, and any platform of education, has as its purpose in-doctrination. The entire issue hinges on what comprises the “doctrine”. So, all education has to do influence and imparting value. These are decided on before the curriculum is established. One assents to the program (or the parents assent) because their values concord).

My present view is that Catholic social doctrines are rational and sound. However, yes, I had to arrive at the intellectual locality where I believed that. And belief involves assent.

“Carried their religion lightly” is a problematic valuation on your part. It is what you desire or think is right, no? But my view is that one cannot take one’s core and principle values “lightly”. One either believes them or one does not. They are either true or they are false. There is the age-old problem of either/or.

However an English teacher whom I met more recently claimed that she had to teach some of her pupils to see beyond religious doctrine before they could be objective enough to understand novel ideas.

Any secular enthusiast involved in paideia will, quite naturally, assume they are doing right if they recondition a student to disavow, let’s say, those basic terms of spiritual or metaphysical assent at the core of the (in this instance) Catholic-Christian orientation.

Your efforts — because you do not give your assent to a Divine Authority and do not “believe in” such — will be to inculcate your auditors in such a viewpoint. Your “enemy” would be one who presents a contrary argument (especially if successfully).

Novel ideas you say? That is a loaded term! If for example your novel idea were that the traditional concept of marriage as a sacrament had been superseded by the “novel” assertion that a man could marry a sheep and a woman a donkey — how should your novel idea be dealt with?

I trust you understand the point I wish to make?

Purpose and value of life can't be properly understood by people whose minds are not free to think and feel.

It really depends on how the term (concept) of freedom is taken. Everything hinges on defined values: a dogma of valuation if you will.

Belinda wrote: ↑Tue May 13, 2025 3:13 pm I am sorry that you don't understand the difference between indoctrination and education. If you understood that freedom includes freedom of thought then perhaps you would understand that authoritative is not the same as definitive.

Belinda wrote: ↑Tue May 13, 2025 3:13 pm … when knowledge is imparted with the stamp of divine or of secular authority that knowledge is indoctrinated knowledge.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun May 11, 2025 7:58 pm

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sun May 11, 2025 5:37 pm Would you take these principles as decidedly Catholic, or as older, deeper principles that were necessarily codified by Catholics?

My view is that in the area of justice, social justice, fair ethics, and a universal vision, that Hebrew ethics (which combined with Greek rational philosophy) have the defining advantage. I have not come across a religion so far that defined those values so thoroughly.