Solidarity:

Abstract

In Laudato Si, Pope Francis attributes global climate change to a destructive “technocratic paradigm” of thought and action. He then calls for a renewed educational program to resist the technocratic paradigm. This paper shows how reading C. S. Lewis’ Abolition of Man and Plato’s Republic alongside Laudato Si can help students better appreciate some of Francis’ central points. Abolition of Man illuminates the technocratic paradigm’s essential features: (1) a reduction of value-laden creation (which demands respect) to value-neutral “nature” (which does not) and (2) the development of techniques to transform nature—including human nature—according to the desires of the dominant class. The allegory of the cave and the tripartite account of the soul in Plato’s Republic help clarify the notion of “objective value” at play in Francis’ encyclical, and also give students tools to foster a critical perspective on consumerist culture. Cover Page Footnote The research and writing of this paper were made possible in part by a stipend from the Lilly Fellows Program and a Mellon summer research grant from the Saint Louis University College of Arts and Sciences. I am grateful for their support, as well as to the editors and two anonymous reviewers for extremely helpful comments on an earlier draft. Some material here, especially the discussion in section II, grew out of an early draft of my “Waking Up: Consumerism and Plato’s Republic,” Multifaceted Explorations of Consumer Culture and Its Impact on Individuals and Society, ed. David Burns (Hersey, PA: IGI-Global, 2019), 239-55. I am grateful to IGI-Global for permission to use any overlapping material. References to Pope Francis’ Laudato Si cite first the paragraph number (common to all editions of the work) and then, after the slash, the page number of the following online edition: https://theyear2015.wikispaces.com/file/detail/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_en.pdf/ 554210024. This article is available in Solidarity: The Journal of Catholic Social Thought and Secular Ethics: https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/solidarity/vol8/iss2/5 Resisting the Technocratic Paradigm: Laudato Si, The Abolition of Man and Plato’s