Catholic Social Science Review

Volume 22, 2017

Josef Pieper on the Festival in Light of Culture

The festival is an essential component of human cultural life. Amidst the emerging scholarship over the past century on the festival, we find that Josef Pieper provides a philosophical account of the festival accompanied by a sound account of the human person. This essay both reaffirms Pieper’s account of the festival and reintegrates his account within a larger context of culture. Fundamental to Pieper’s treatment is the human person’s power to love and be open to transcendence, without which true festivity is lost. In reintegrating Pieper’s account of festivity in light of a Dawsonian vision of culture, we find that the festival flows from the common vision of a people, that the change in a religious vision of culture results in the change of the festival, and that not just any shared vision of a people will engender a genuine festival.