POLITICAL parties must value general welfare over personal interests, a theologian said during the first Conference on Medieval Philosophy at the Ecclesiastical Faculties Martyrs’ Hall last March 7 to 8.
“There is an increasing political and social polarization between interest groups that is so great that the ability to seek compromise and to promote the common good of all is jeopardized and is sometimes lost,” said Fr. Michael Mascari, O.P., dean of the Aquinas Institute of Theology in Missouri, in his keynote speech.
Stressing the need for social structures to facilitate progress, Mascari recalled that St. Thomas Aquinas had taught that the government should be a means of building a just society.
“The human being is a social and political creature who lives in a community. We are not self-sufficient like other animals, but we depend on one another in order to flourish,” he explained.
Philosophy professor Jovito Cariño warned that social media and post-modernism has led to the rise of the culture of individualism and indifference to social issues.
“Instead of engagement, what we see around us is a widespread displacement of meaningful conversation by our penchant to withdraw into the seclusion of an enclosure which Plato once referred to as cave before we learned to call it ‘social media'” Cariño said.
He challenged the participants to heed Aquinas’s call to respond to sociopolitical issues “armed with discursive prowess and intelligent faith.”
Echoing Cariño, Mascari said prioritizing virtual reality over the physical world leads to weakened relationships and loss of direction among the youth.
“The experience of living without intellectual, moral or spiritual compass that gives purpose and significance to our life has given rise to increasing rates of suicide, to an experience of depression and social anxiety,” he said.
Mascari was given the UST-Chile Gerardo Rocha Professorial Chair in Ecclesiastical Studies and Bioethics.
The conference, organized by the Faculty of Philosophy Students’ Forum, coincided with the 745th death anniversary of St. Thomas Aquinas and the 40th foundation anniversary of the Forum.
