| Yet the positive results achieved must not obscure the fact that reason, in its one-sided concern to investigate human subjectivity, seems to have forgotten that men and women are always called to direct their steps towards a truth which transcends them. Sundered from that truth, individuals are at the mercy of caprice, and their state as person ends up being judged by pragmatic criteria based essentially upon experimental data, in the mistaken belief that technology must dominate all. It has happened therefore that reason, rather than voicing the human orientation towards truth, has wilted under the weight of so much knowledge and little by little has lost the capacity to lift its gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being. Abandoning the investigation of being, modern philosophical research has concentrated instead upon human knowing. Rather than make use of the human capacity to know the truth, modern philosophy has preferred to accentuate the ways in which this capacity is limited and conditioned. -Blessed Pope John Paul II (Fides et Ratio) |
Similarly, our common work to improve economic and social structures becomes less an act of problem-solving ingenuity on the part of those with resources or skills, and more an opportunity for a reciprocal exchange through which we discover all the ways in which we have been created as “gift” for one another. - Amelia Uelmen Caritas in Veritate and Chiara Lubich: Human Development from the Vantage Point of Unity