“To begin with, we put the proposition: pure phenomenology is the science of pure consciousness.” Few terms in phenomenology are as complex as “consciousness”. In what follows we will attempt to introduce the reader to this complexity by offering a brief gloss on the above statement by the father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). The first word that warrants attention here is “science”. Husserl was a mathematician by formation, but early in his career he became conscious (!) of the limitations of the epistemology that was operative in the empirical sciences. He did not deny the legitimacy of this epistemology in so far as it goes, but was convinced that it did not go far enough. In other words he believed that there was much more to human knowledge than the empirical sciences were revealing. And so he undertook the monumental task of constructing a new, precise science (phenomenology) that would overcome these limitations. In order to understand phenomenology we need to pay close attention to a second word in the above quotation: “begin”. Husserl was convinced that the empirical sciences begin far too late, taking for granted much that warrants critical examination. So phenomenology can be understood as a…

           The French philosopher Gilles Deleuse (1925-1995) made a recording – available in French on Youtube – called L’Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuse in which he offers philosophical comments on terms beginning with a,b,c,d etc.             Inspired by this idea, I intend to do the same thing with a number of terms used in phenomenology.  These brief comments are designed for those who are curious about this relatively new branch of knowledge but who have not had occasion to study it.             We will begin with B for Body.  One phenomenologist who has concentrated considerable attention on the body is also French, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961).  What is his main insight into the body?  Maybe this could be expressed by saying that, for him, the body is not a mere object in the world but an openness or an opening to the world (the term “opening”, if taken as a verb, has the advantage of bringing out the dynamic nature of this contact).              When we say that the body is not a mere object we acknowledge that in a certain,  limited, sense the body is indeed also an object: if placed in a bath it will displace a certain amount of water…

Having considered the nature and manner of operation of populism in former posts (link1 – link2) we may now attempt to evaluate it morally.  There is very little to be found on populism in Catholic Social Teaching (CST) because it has only recently become such a manifest political problem (Fratelli tutti, n. 15 does not use the term but it is obviously dedicated to this phenomenon).  What we do find in CST is a certain vision of politics relative to which a moral evaluation of populism is possible.  In the course of the 20th century, CST gradually adopted a vision of politics which broadly corresponds to that of liberal democracy.  Some key characteristics of such a political system are free elections, the rule of law, the common good, the separation of powers, freedom of expression and respect for minorities.  A system with such characteristics may be considered not just politically sound but morally good.             When making a moral evaluation of a given form of populism we must ask ourselves to what extent it respects these values.  Only in extreme cases does populism openly reject these democratic values and when it does so it is moving towards totalitarianism.  More often…

            As indicated in a former post, the purpose of this reflection is to attempt to understand the extraordinary political success of populism over the last ten years (a success that is now seriously mitigated by inadequate responses to the pandemic). We will examine here just two aspects of this complex phenomenon: the theoretical basis of populism and its practical strategies.             Perhaps the most striking feature of populism is the manifest poverty of its theoretical basis. A few ideas (e.g. the people, national sovereignty, national identity), all of which are in themselves serious political themes, are preached with great superficiality and simple ignorance, in pursuit of the ideological objectives we considered in the last post. The key substantial theoretical issue, usually not clearly articulated, is representation. Those who vote for populist political positions are generally disillusioned with the current system of representation (usually via political parties) and believe that some form of direct democracy is a feasible alternative. Those of us who are not convinced of the feasibility of the alternatives proposed, would do well to take seriously this frustration – which is as old as democracy itself but has been accentuated by multiple factors in contemporary culture.            …

            In the ever more abundant literature on the theme, there is a debate as to whether populism is an ideology. Various authors reject the use of this term to describe populism because, unlike liberalism or socialism, this political and social trend is not based on an articulated theory or doctrine. This difference certainly exists but in my view the ideological elements evident in populism are so strong that it may be considered an ideology, at least sui generis.             To argue this point let us take a working definition of an ideology and attempt to apply it to populism. An ideology can be understood as the use of certain IDEAS, in a REDUCTIVE manner, on the part of a GROUP, with its own INTERESTS, which finds expression in a PROJECT, often political in nature.             Applying this definition to populism we can easily identify all these elements. The two key ideas in question are “the people” and “sovereignty”… in fact populism can be understood as a particular way of understanding the relationship between the people and sovereignty. The reductive element involved in populism concerns the manner in which it takes a part of the people to be the people……