Introduction

In this series, I'll be talking through an edited and expanded version of my master's thesis that I wrote for my MA at the University of St. Thomas (MN). I'll be presenting it "conference style," meaning I'll be mostly reading my paper and interjecting various comments or extra clarification as needed.

Abstract

Society's vision for "the good" has become disconnected from action—Callicles can no longer agree with Callicles. What accounts for this? The human Self has been relegated by Modern culture, the phenomena characterized by post-Enlightenment positivism . A return to the Self, by drawing upon mythoi, can revivify the Self's re-constitution towards others and the realm of "the gods," towards koinonia and kosmia.

The systems of Modernity are critiqued by an engagement with Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment, shedding light on the Self's reification and alienation due to Modernity's overarching scientistic and consumeristic kulturindustrie.

Charles Taylor, in Sources of the Self and A Secular Age, moves the argument from deconstruction to reconstruction through communal iterative reasoning. This reasoning is may allow room for the mythological by what is typified by an exploration of Newman's illative sense found in the Grammar of Assent.

Finally, the mythos of St. Francis of Assisi is brought to center stage, examining his character as one who finds himSelf through the Ascetic and Hierarchic Way.