Reflection Theology 3.26.2008
Inner-City Healthcare and Higher Education: A Partnership in Catholic Social Teaching
The presentation I sat through was about an educational free hospital that was out of state. Most of the presentations were about the hospital itself, and how the hospital is giving back to the community. The panel that spoke had their own little presentations involving catholic social teaching and the actual clinic, but there was one speaker who struck a chord more than the rest. Each presenter talked about the pursuit for the common good of the people, but one stressed its universality by comparing the Catholic social teaching to Kant... yes, Kant. The presenter apparently had to get permission from the university to discuss Kant and he was clearly more nervous then the other presenters. I am not sure if he thought the "crowd" of seven people in the cinema was going to boo him, but he was very careful with her choice of words. He wanted to prove a point that Catholic Social Teaching is so universal, even Kant's Philosophy can be linked with it. Although he anticipated the people at a "Catholic Social Teaching and Healthcare" lecture series would be familiar with Kant, it was clear with every failed joke in his presentation that I was the only one who knew what he was talking about. This was the first presentation I went to that was relevant to out discussion. Although the title was "Inner-City Healthcare and Higher Education: A Partnership in Catholic Social Teaching," it did not really discuss inner-city healthcare problems at all--just this hospital that happened to be in a city.
A slide of his presentation was titled "Why Kantian in Philosophy?" which he described why he used Kant as a way of showing how universal the fight for human dignity is. The points he made about that were: Kant channeled, and perhaps epitomized, liberal thought up to his time, Kant has been a powerful and fundamental influence, and Kant proposed a concept of human dignity that does not rely upon Imago Dei, but rather upon the temporal property of human reason and autonomy. All of these things were very interesting, but I think his point would have been proven more if he talked about other religions as well. I did think it was a very interesting perspective and I was excited that he did use a theologian/philosopher that we discussed. For the rest of his presentation, he focused on how Pure Reason may be impossible for humans to achieve and how Practical Reason is within the capability of humans according to Kant. These main points of Kant's philosophy were used to link him to the main point that Catholic social thought and teaching presents a clear call to provide healthcare to all. The problem I had with this is he just breezed over the definitions of pure and practical reason--nobody else in the Cinema seemed to even know who Kant was. I think if he didn't assume everyone knew who Kant was; his points would have been clearer because I know he had good intentions. Every time he would say something about Kant in a joking manner like "well, I know Kant is quite the rebel but..." NOBODY else reacted, let alone laughed. Like I said before, he really should have discussed more than just Kant or at least discussed Kant better because his points were really lost among the very few people that attended the lecture.