From Spiritual Autism to Cosmic Communion: Reading St. Francis in the Key of Modernity

John Caruana, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Toronto Metropolitan University

The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor laments that the defining feature of modern subjectivity is that “we are too much in our heads.” Modernity, he argues, has trained us to imagine ourselves as detached—from one another, from the natural world, and even from the depths of our own embodied life. This estrangement, which Thomas Berry calls a “spiritual autism,” underlies many of our present crises, not least the ecological one. In this context, St. Francis of Assisi stands out as a guide for our disoriented age. A slow, attentive reading of the Umbrian mystic’s famous Canticle of the Creatures invites us to recover a sense of gratitude and belonging that speaks to both believers and nonbelievers alike. To read Francis in this manner, I turn also to writers who have extended his vision into new idioms: his spiritual heir, the poet Dante Alighieri, and, more recently, the philosopher Massimo Cacciari, whose reflections help us discern how Francis’s cosmic praise may still resonate within the modern soul.

Zoom link: https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/81730003190