Gregorio Luri (Navarre, 1955), is one of the most sought-after philosophers and pedagogues of today. He needs no introduction. And with prior notice, we caught him on the AVE, coming from Barcelona to Madrid, at least a week before the war in Ukraine. He answers from the platform of a carriage, which is much appreciated. His twitter account @gregorioluri is very visited, and you can complete there, and naturally in his numerous publications, his thought, which always has strength and renewed ideas, some certainly surprising.
A few weeks ago, Gregorio Luri has intervened in a colloquium presentation of the Master's Degree in Christianity and Contemporary Culture, which is being launched by the University of Navarra, and which will be launched next academic year 2022-2023. It took place at the Madrid Campus, together with Lupe de la Vallina, photographer; and Ricardo Piñero, professor of Aesthetics and professor of the Master. It was attended by more than 400 people, both in person and online, and that's where we started this conversation.
Let's talk about the Master's degree that you and your colleagues presented in Madrid. What would you highlight?
- Few things are more urgent today than to give value to what is human. And to value the human from a humanist point of view, which for me means the affirmation of human nature. Man is not only history, but he is also nature. Or if you want, in other words, that there are ahistorical components in human historicity.
The feeling that I have, at least, is that today it seems that man has become tired of himself, as if when we realize that the promises we made to ourselves during the Enlightenment have not been fulfilled, what we are opting for is a technological modification. To value human nature seems to me to be basically a question of hygiene in our times. That is why I participated enthusiastically in the presentation of this Master's program. I believe that few things are more essential than to reclaim the nobility of what is human.
At the beginning of your speech, you quoted some words of St. John Paul II to the young people in Chile. And you spoke of fear, and of God's love, something that surprised me right off the bat.
- Let's see. Everyone sees the present from their own point of view. From a pedagogical point of view, what I see is that today, even school children are being educated in fear of the future. All the progressive ideology elaborated throughout the 19th century seems to have drifted towards pessimism. What is going to become of the world? What is going to become of us? There is, so to speak, a certain catastrophist impulse in the present. In other words, there is an atmosphere of pre-apocalypse. What is going to happen to the world, what is going to happen to everything?
Well, faced with this situation, faced with the fear of the future, I think that the Christian has something important to say, not so much to others, but to himself. That is what the Epistle of St. John says: We have come to know the love of God. The love of God precedes us. Before. It is not a promise for the future. It is something we have already experienced. God loves us. And therefore, if this is a fact, if we have already known God's love, why should we be afraid of it?
You also spoke towards the end, and others picked it up at the table, about beauty. How can we best show faith? And you agreed, through beauty and love.
- If you read the Gospels in a naive way, which I think is how you have to read them, and you come across the Birth of Jesus, is there a more beautiful story than that? The fact that you are going to kneel not before an ideology but before a newborn, I think, is profoundly beautiful. On the other hand, the Christian tradition is complex, and there are moments that are difficult to be proud of. But if we take into account what has been permanent in the Christian tradition, that approach to beauty seems essential to me.
If you will allow me to tell you an anecdote, here it goes. It sums up a little of what I want to say. I have a special weakness for religion teachers. When they call me, I always try to go. First, because they are having a hard time. And second, because they need to know that there are people willing to help them. And once, in a place, I'm going to omit the name, where I was going to be with religion teachers from a community, I said: Look, the power we have is extraordinary. I am going to summon God right now and he is going to appear right here. You can imagine the surprise that this provoked. Because I am going to say: Lord manifest yourself, and he is going to manifest himself. A great expectation was created.
I had already prepared the following with another person. When I said, "Lord, manifest Yourself," the Locus Isteby Bruckner. That beauty of Bruckner when he is saying, what place is this? It is the place where God manifests himself. That beauty, when you heard it, it's impossible not to be moved by that. And in those moments, Benedict XVI had just said something that I totally believe in. If there is something divine in beauty, it is because it is a manifestation of God. I think it is impossible not to be moved by beauty. And in that emotion there is an aftertaste of something that goes beyond the object. And that aftertaste of what goes beyond the object is transcendence.
I'm going to give a low down, Don Gregorio, with two topics.
- Let's see.
First. For years we have been witnessing ideologies such as gender ideology, or this culture of cancellation, 'woke', of which Rémi Brague spoke in Madrid. How to face these phenomena of social antagonisms, of confrontation...?
- What modern ideologies aim at is a radical reduction of the complexity of the world of life, of the world in which we live, where we manifest the various dimensions of the human.
Ideologies reduce the world of life to what from their principles things should be. And what does not fit in those schemes, in their schemes, is considered perverse. In such a way that when an ordinary person tells you: I believe that..., they say: no, no, you do not believe that, you believe something else, what happens is that you are an alienated person, and then you must think as I tell you.
I believe that today the elementary things in the world of life are in danger. And that means that the common man's sanity is in danger. That's why I find Chesterton's claim about laughter, marriage and beer more and more revolutionary.
I believe that defending laughter, marriage and beer today is the main argument against these ideological reductionisms. We must defend laughter, marriage and beer, and we must defend the common sense of the ordinary person.
I also say, and I repeat and insist, that a normal family is a psychological bargain. As it is. I am absolutely convinced. While you find so many people ready to criticize the family because it is not perfect, I think we have to claim that this normal family, with its imperfections, of course, is a psychological bargain.
However, sometimes we Christians do not make it easy. The abuse of minors, the damage to the reputation of priests, and of the Church itself.
- I believe that all that can be said about abuse was said by Jesus in one sentence: Woe to anyone who scandalizes them! I think there is no need to add anything else.
You say on your Twitter account that the loser in a dialogue is the one who wins. Explain it to me, because now we all want to be right, don't we?
- The loser is the only one who has learned something in the dialogue. If you are going to defend thesis A, and at the end of the dialogue you maintain thesis A, what have you learned? You have learned nothing. You may have succeeded, and then there is the ego's vainglory. Now, if you are going to defend thesis A, and in the course of the dialogue you discover that this thesis has to be rewritten, you are the one who has learned. In a dialogue, it seems elementary to me. The one who wins is the one who loses, or if you want, the one who has lost is the one who has won. That seems essential to me. Christians are losers who never stop winning.
You claim memory. It doesn't seem to be very fashionable. As an educator, what can you say?
- Fashions, as their name indicates, are seasonal issues. There was a philosophical group in Soria -now no longer exists, unfortunately-, wonderful, that the first time they invited me, they told me: we are only interested in the eternal. I was moved by those words. The question, for me, is: fashions are important, but you can't gauge them if you don't see them from outside the fashion. To judge a fashion you have to see it from outside, with a certain distance, don't you?
What does all this have to do with memory? First, without memory there is no interiority. Because memory is the great refuge that allows you to isolate yourself a little from your surroundings, to be able to think, to ruminate, all that you carry with you, even the awareness of the dark parts that we always carry with us.
Second, I am convinced that what is not in the memory has not been learned. If you have read Don Quixote and absolutely nothing has remained in your memory, you have not read it. In the end, you keep from Don Quixote what has remained in your memory.
Third, you can't reflect on absent knowledge. Therefore, when we encourage kids that the important thing is to relate, to think, to be critical, I say: yes, but if you don't know something that allows you to think, what the hell are you thinking about?
And finally, I have never met anyone in my life who wants to have less memory than they have. Moreover, what I see is that people of a certain age who begin to lose memory live that as a drama. Therefore, if memory loss is a drama, memory gain is a party.
You don't hear about this.
- It doesn't worry me at all. I am interested, as I said before, in people who lose, win.
A word about education. We have a new education law (LOMLOE). Tell me one aspect that you would redirect, if possible.
- It would bring everything back on track. I think a return to sanity is absolutely urgent. Sanity is, to me, the ability to learn from your own experience. Let's see what we do well, and let's learn from that. And we're going to see what we do wrong, and we're going to improve it. What doesn't make sense is to apply to our education system the criteria, for example, of Agenda 2030, and turn them into competencies and try to fit our reality into those criteria.
Because, do you know what the problem is with those who always want to start from scratch? They can't learn from their experience. Because since they always have to learn from scratch, if there is one thing I am convinced of, it is that it is much more useful to learn a little from your experience, than to try to wipe the slate clean.
On the other hand, with the LOMLOE we are witnessing a very hypocritical spectacle. Because in the Ministry of Education they act as if they were governing, when those who govern are the Ministries of Education of the Autonomous Communities. But in practice they are not governing either, because we are witnessing an extraordinary methodological anarchy. Precisely because this methodological anarchy is real, and each center does what it deems appropriate or convenient, freedom of choice is essential.
A freedom of choice that is hindered, isn't it?
- But let's see, if we give autonomy to the centers, so that each one can be what it believes it has to be, and I have no choice, and I have to take my child to the school in my neighborhood, what good is that autonomy to me? If all the stores in Madrid sold exactly the same thing, autonomy would not be necessary. If each store sells different products, I want to have the possibility to choose where I want to buy...
We end the conversation with Gregorio Luri. We ask him to recommend a couple of books he considers interesting, and he answers: "I never do this. I don't like to recommend books. The reading biography of each one is sacred. Each one has to build his own reading path, his own reading process. I prefer not to say anything. And this despite the fact that I have just set up an essay publishing house in Barcelona".
We are not going to listen to him, and we give you the link: Rosameronalthough Gregorio Luri states: "I don't even recommend mine. The reader has to build his own reading story, his own reading memory. Culture does not live in books, it lives in the subjectivization of what is in books, television, Internet, etc. Everyone can build his own reading path. Because every interesting book will refer you to other books".
We would continue chatting for a long time with the master, but it is not possible. Have a good trip.
