Open to current undergraduate students at the University of Chicago. Registration is capped at 20. Students who register after capacity has been reached will be put on a waitlist. All registrants will be provided with a free copy of the text. This seminar and the Nicklin Fellows are cosponsored by the First Analysis Institute.
“As they say in the United States: ‘to be different is to be indecent.’ The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified, and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated.”
We live in a world of mass media, mass markets, mass hysteria. It is no wonder, then, that we have become what the 20th century Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset called “mass man.” While we are constantly making the world around us a better place to live in, we neglect to make ourselves better persons. We have lost even the aspiration for excellence.
In this dinner-time seminar, we will read Ortega’s masterpiece, The Revolt of the Masses, in order to examine how our culture has lost something essential, and what it means to be more than a face in the crowd.
SCHEDULE
6:00 PM Dinner | 6:15 PM Discussion | 7:30 PM Close
October 11th: Who is the Mass Man?
Revolt of the Masses: § 1, 2, 3, 6
October 25th : Nobility and vulgarity
Revolt of the Masses: § 7, 8, 9
November 8th: Specialization and the State
Revolt of the Masses: § 11, 12, 13, 15
This event is part of Lumen Christi’s Fundamental Questions seminar, a quarterly reading group designed for undergraduate students at the University of Chicago. By fostering intellectually rigorous conversation around culturally resonant texts, we aim to allow students to experience the force of the deep existential concerns which animate our lives: “Where do my values come from? What is the good life? How can I become happy?” Our aim is not to answer such fundamental questions, but rather to equip students with the intellectual skills needed to recognize and articulate them for themselves. This group welcomes students from all religious and philosophical backgrounds because existential questions of being are of concern to all.
In addition, undergraduate students who participate in this seminar are eligible to become “Nicklin Fellows.” These fellows will have exclusive access to research and development grant funds to pursue their intellectual interests. Grants can be used to do things like the following:
- Organize a reading group
- Bring a speaker to campus
- Organize a movie night
- Develop and plan future fundamental questions seminars
- Write a paper for a journal
- And more!
