NEWS
19 FEB
2024
.
Dialectic Medal Awarded to Pope Francis
Pope Francis
has been awarded the Dialectic Medal by the Institute for Advanced
Dialectical Research in Seattle, Wash. The Pope received the award
at the conclusion of his weekly General Audience at the Vatican last
Wed. from the institute’s director, Dr. Justin Burke. A statement
on the institute’s website described Francis as one of the world’s
best known religious leaders, who also brings to his position as head
of the Catholic Church an uncompromising humanitarianism, a sense
of social justice and a commitment to dialectical thinking, with which
he tirelessly advocates for world peace, human equality and protection
of the environment.
Vatican
Undersecretary for Culture and Education, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, has
known Francis for many years, and says, in a word, “The Pope is volcanic;
he likes to enter into dialogue, to open doors and windows, do an
abrupt turn, but above all enter into a dialectic... His type of reasoning
isn’t based on abstract concepts, but is a reflection and an exchange
about real life.”
In one of these dialogues, the Pope told Fr. Spadaro: “Opposition
opens up a path, a road to travel down... I love oppositions... Oppositions
help. Human life is structured in oppositional form.” Dr. Burke says:
“Francis is known for seeking out opposition, difference, polarity,
tension, and so on, not in order to eradicate or cancel them out,
but, in true dialectical fashion, to maintain and preserve them on
what he describes as ‘a higher plane’.” “Differences are creative,”
says the Pope, “they create tension, and in the resolution of tension
lies humanity’s progress.”
An eclectic thinker who is not associated with any particular school
of theology, Francis is instead inspired by particular ideas. There
is one, he says, that “has fascinated me ever since I was a young
theology student. In Latin it is called coincidentia oppositorum;
that is, the unity of opposites”—what the philosopher Hegel (1770–1831)
described as “the grasping of opposites in their unity, or of the
positive in the negative.”
A longtime friend of the Pope’s, the late Fr. Diego Fares, wrote that
“the most creative way of receiving Francis’s words is to listen to
them when dichotomies appear, and to be attentive to where he invites
us to look, so that what at first seemed contradictory becomes instead
a creative tension."
Another guiding idea has been that of the periphery. Francis, in fact,
has been called the “Pope of the Peripheries.” He is fond of saying
that "reality is better understood from the peripheries than
from the center.” According to Hegel: “The center has no significance
without the periphery, nor the periphery without the center… Each
aspect is necessary, but one-sided when taken alone.”
“Once we become aware of Francis’s dialectical framework,” says Dr.
Burke, “we begin to see examples of it throughout his writing, speeches,
homilies and even in his impromptu remarks: it’s clear that he’s always
thinking in terms of the dialectics of parts and whole, the individual
and the collective, humanity and nature, local and global—concepts
he’s not trying to bring together (in a 'synthesis'), but, instead,
to show how attempting to separate them leads to one-sided thinking.”
Dr. Burke describes the Pope as: “an unpretentious, thoughtful man
who generally eschews awards and distinctions, so we feel it is significant
that he chose not only to accept the Dialectic Medal, but also to
receive it in person—showing his commitment to dialectical thinking.”
The Dialectic Medal was established in 2020 to recognize and foster
dialectical thinking in diverse fields of theory and practice worldwide.
Its inaugural recipient was German philosopher Jürgen Habermas.
The 2023 award was announced on Pope Francis’s 87th birthday (17 Dec.
2023).