ABSTRACT
In Gaudium et spes paragraph 60 the Conciliar fathers stated that ‘everything must be done to make everyone conscious of the right to culture and the duty one has of developing oneself culturally’. The substance of this ‘right to culture’ is, however, never defi ned. This particular aspect of the ‘explosive problematic’ thereby raises questions about what it means to ‘develop oneself culturally’ and how such a project fi ts within the Thomist tradition. It also raises the question of the relationship between ‘mass culture’ and the ‘exercise of the right to culture’. In this chapter it will be argued, fi rst, that the inherent ambiguity in this concept can be clarifi ed by a consideration of three rival versions of what it means to ‘develop oneself culturally’. These correspond to Alasdair MacIntyre’s three rival versions of moral enquiry: the Classical (Thomist), Enlightenment (Liberal) and Romantic (Nietzschean). Associated with each of these rival versions of moral enquiry is a rival version of culture – understood in the second sense to which reference was made in Chapter 1 – Bildung, self-formation or self-cultivation.
