The Catholic Man Show - Festivals according to the Piepster

 

Josef Pieper strikes again! We talk about his book, In Tune with the World, and what ingredients Pieper says are required to have a true festival.

About our drink:

Octomore 11.1

Exposing the structural brilliance of our pure, unadulterated Octomore super heavily peated spirit, our 11.1 edition is powerful, understated and vibrant. Underpinned with a delicate balance of smoke and sweet vanilla from the ex-American oak casks, this single malt has spent just 5 years in contact with fresh first fill wood. The presence of peat on the palate is huge, and yet is incredibly balanced with clean fruit and floral notes. Distilled in 2014 from the 2013 harvest of 100% Scottish barley then filled into active ex-American oak, this high provenance, high peat single malt is a fitting embodiment of how quality ingredients demand less time to reach maturity.

About our gear:

In this stimulating and still-timely study, Josef Pieper takes up a theme of paramount importance to his thinking – that festivals belong by rights among the great topics of philosophical discussion. As he develops his theory of festivity, the modern age comes under close and painful scrutiny. It is obvious that we no longer know what festivity is, namely, the celebration of existence under various symbols

Pieper exposes the pseudo-festivals, in their harmless and their sinister forms: traditional feasts contaminated by commercialism; artificial holidays created in the interest of merchandisers; holidays by coercion, decreed by dictators the world over; festivals as military demonstrations; holidays empty of significance. And lastly we are given the apocalyptic vision of a nihilistic world which would seek its release not in festivities but in destruction.

Formulated with Pieper’s customary clarity and elegance, enhanced by brilliantly chosen quotations, this is an illuminating contribution to the understanding of traditional and contemporary experience.

About the Topic:

– Festivals can only arise from a working day (fast before the feast).

– It has to be leisurely – a realm of activity that is meaningful in itself.

– Ingredients of a festival:

– Play or leisurely

– Contemplation (“the simple intuition of reason. The mind’s eye resting on whatever manifests itself.”)

– Phenomenon of wealth (Existential richness – aka abundance)

– Affirmation – (Pieper says affirmation is the substance of festivity.) Festivals are impossible to the “naysayers”. The more money he has, and above all the more leisure, the more desperate is this impossibility to him.

– Joy (Joy is the response of a love receiving what he loves). A festival becomes a true festivity only when man affirms the goodness of his existence by offering a response of joy. 

– In concrete form. In reality.

– Public in nature; affairs of the community