Is it a sin to read modern philosophy?

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samuraivader

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Hi! I was researching some history and I found the list of books banned by the Church in the ‘Index Librorum Prohibitorum’ (index of forbidden books).

Some of them were expected authors, but I was surprised to find in it that thinkers like Maimonides, Montaigne, Kant, Rousseau, Locke or even Pascal and Descartes had books prohibited by the Index.

Thus, I want to ask: Is there something sinful with modern philosophy? Can we believe in principles of modern philosophy -or at least just even read them- and still be good catholics?

Don’t take me wrong, I’m just surprised by the fact.
 
I hope you’re reading modern philosophy! If you don’t, how else will you be prepared to respond to it as a Catholic?

My priest actually did a fascinating adult ed series on the the philosophical roots of modern atheism.
 
samuraivader said:
Hi! I was researching some history and I found the list of books banned by the Church in the ‘Index Librorum Prohibitorum’ (index of forbidden books).

Some of them were expected authors, but I was surprised to find in it that thinkers like Maimonides, Montaigne, Kant, Rousseau, Locke or even Pascal and Descartes had books prohibited by the Index.

Thus, I want to ask: Is there something sinful with modern philosophy? Can we believe in principles of modern philosophy -or at least just even read them- and still be good catholics?

Don’t take me wrong, I’m just surprised by the fact.
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The ILP no longer has legal binding force, but it retains its moral force. Nonetheless, even back in the day when it was legally binding, a scholar could still be permitted to read works from it, for educational purposes. So the prohibition was never absolute.

I would say to study what you need to, and be strong enough in your own faith, not to be swayed by the errors in these texts. Back in the day, you would have needed a dispensation from a priest, but today, if you asked a priest for permission to read books on the Index, any but the most hardcore sedevacantist (and that is not a priest whose counsel you should be seeking in the first place) would probably look at you kind of funny. A mature scholar, solid in the Faith, is perfectly capable of knowing what to read, and what not to read.
 
Just me, and I’m a dimwit, but I would rather not spend irreplaceable life on detailed reading some men’s personal opinions - particularly those who have been identified as being in error for various reasons. Rather, there are certainly synopses available which can summarize, compare and contrast their views.

If there is a seminary in the vicinity (or even online), call or email them and inquire of their philosophy department if they can recommend such a book.

Again, just me.
 
The Index belongs to a very different period of the Church’s history than the one in which we now live. The Index was a product of a time when the Church sought to uphold the orthodoxy of its teachings and the fidelity of its members by restricting access to potentially challenging ideas. For over half a century now, the Church has adopted a very different approach and we are encouraged to engage with the world and with secular ideas. It is also worth pointing out that outside of the Papal States the Index was enforced pretty haphazardly.

As you rightly identify, the Index prohibited Catholics from reading virtually all of the most important works in the history of western philosophy from the 17th to the 20th centuries, including works by many of the most important British and French thinkers of the late Renaissance and the Enlightenment, as well as, perhaps most notably, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. To be ignorant of these writers would be to be ignorant of the past four centuries of western thought and history. There is certainly nothing sinful about broadening your intellectual horizons by allowing yourself to engage with and understand the ideas that have shaped the modern world.
po18guy said:
Rather, there are certainly synopses available which can summarize, compare and contrast their views.
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Book III of Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy is a good start for the general reader who does not already have a background in philosophy. The second half or so of Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder covers the same period, although one has to read the first half as well as the book takes the form of a novel.
 
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Is it a sin? Not unless we’re forcing our seminarians to sin merely by completing their homework! My diocese requires our seminarians to study philosophers like Kant and Nietzsche, and I’m pretty sure that any other seminary will require it ever since JPII’s reform for seminary study.
 
I don’t know how important it is for the average Joe and Jane, but a person who studies philosophy at the graduate+ level who isn’t exposed to some of these authors doesn’t have a very complete training. It’s valuable to study these philosophers, including (and perhaps especially) the parts that most strongly conflict with the Church.
 
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HomeschoolDad said:
today, if you asked a priest for permission to read books on the Index, any but the most hardcore sedevacantist (and that is not a priest whose counsel you should be seeking in the first place) would probably look at you kind of funny.
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😂 too true!

In answer to the OP, I did a whole course in modern philosophy in the seminary and it was basically a lightbulb moment, realising “my God, this is how the world actually thinks”. In order to understand the world around us we need to understand how they think and the best way to do that is to go to the roots - philosophers like Descartes, Kant and Hulme.
 
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do_justly_love_mercy said:
Book III of Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy is a good start for the general reader who does not already have a background in philosophy. T
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It’s unfortunate, though, that Russell barely mentions Pascal. It seems he can’t forgive him for sinning against mathematics: “Pascal sacrificed his magnificent mathematical intellect to his God” (p. 735).
 
If I read Descartes or Nietzsche, etc., being a loyal student of Thomas Aquinas and faithful Catholic, I will see them clearly.
If I am wandering and unknowing of what is what, seeking to know the meaning of life and being, then I can easily be led afield to missing truth.
 
A good friend of mine who is now a priest converted after studying modern philosophy, he realized the Church had a lot better answers.

I remember what one professor told me once about some if the modern German philosophers:. They intentionally write in a style to be difficult to understand, because most people, if they understood it, would dismiss it out of hand.
 
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HomeschoolDad said:
The ILP no longer has legal binding force, but it retains its moral force.
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To be fair, all that means is that the Church still says “the stuff in these books isn’t all that great, from the perspective of building up your faith”.
 
John_Martin said:
If I read Descartes or Nietzsche, etc., being a loyal student of Thomas Aquinas and faithful Catholic, I will see them clearly.
If I am wandering and unknowing of what is what, seeking to know the meaning of life and being, then I can easily be led afield to missing truth.
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And you raise the precise issue that is troubling here. A typical student enrolls in freshman core courses at a community college or university. Those courses may include philosophy, or they may not — it’s usually not required, whereas courses such as freshman composition and psychology (oh, they get psychology up front and center right off the bat!) are generally required. The new student is immediately assailed on all fronts by professors who consider it their bounden duty — you would think they were given an agenda to follow! — to dislodge any remnants of “dogmatic” or “narrow” thinking, to assert that “everything is relative and there is no such thing as absolute truth” (how many times I heard that one!), and then to rattle off the liberal, modern, secular humanist litany which contains many “dogmas” itself. Where I went to undergraduate school, they drew from a student body where many were from small towns and rural areas, most of these areas fairly poor, and brought with them various flavors of fundamentalist Christianity. It was the faculty’s “job one” to jar all of this loose and replace it with their own secular orthodoxy. And that’s their plan.

A student who has been “rattled loose”, or is going through a painful process of “finding oneself” (and many college undergraduates are doing precisely that — it’s part of life), is going to be prey to adopting whatever errors of modern philosophy they stumble across, that address the questions that are now in their mind. My advice, for what it’s worth, would be to immerse yourself deeply in the campus Newman Center, and take any concerns you might have to the priest. That’s what he’s there for. It’s a far more worthy pursuit to “find oneself” and seek clarification of one’s values, than to do as so many underclassmen (underclasspersons?) do, to seek out the craziest parties and the places where the beer and booze flow freely. I have already put my son on notice, I am not paying for you to go party for four years — if that becomes your top priority, you’ll have to find a way to pay for it yourself, because I’m not going to.
 
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HomeschoolDad said:
everything is relative and there is no such thing as absolute truth
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At my university, relativism was widely regarded as illogical. Every ethics class I took pretty much started with saying relativism wouldn’t be accepted, explaining why it was illogical, and making sure people knew the difference between it and tolerance. One guy actually quit a mandatory class because he insisted relativism be accepted. Granted, I think he just wanted to try to find another professor who’d agree with him. The problem is that I had had the only other professor teaching the class in another course, and that professor was arguably more adamant that relativism is wrong.

With that said, some ideas still floated around that I think would be difficult for any unprepared Christian to deal with. Relativism just wasn’t one of them.
 
Thom18 said:
My diocese requires our seminarians to study philosophers like Kant and Nietzsche, and I’m pretty sure that any other seminary will require it ever since JPII’s reform for seminary study.
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Fair enough. But let us bear in mind that a seminarian is not the same as a vulnerable layperson. A seminarian is preparing the protect the flock.
 
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If it might hurt your faith I would advise against it. That’s the moral force still in place from the index.
 
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StudentMI said:
If it might have your faith I would advise against it. That’s the moral force still in place from the index.
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True.
Perhaps one student can drink alcohol in moderation, but another cannot.

If you know that you are heavily prone to getting caught up in the secular culture, don’t read it. Or at least don’t read it till you have extensively studied Catholic philosophy.

The problem with modern philosophy is that you don’t know the context, the assumptions. The crucial points are the ones taken for granted. That you don’t know.
 
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I tried to read the Critique of Pure Reason a couple of times.

Needless to say I didn’t make it the whole way through.

8/
 
I don’t think it’s a sin. But you should probably be well catechized before reading some of the modern stuff that way you have the intellectual tools you need to not be swayed by it.
 
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