Pope Francis On Wonder As The Beginning Of Philosophy

The beginning of every philosophy is wonder, and only wonder leads to knowledge. Notice that moral and cultural degradation begin to arise when this capacity for wonder is weakened or cancelled or when it dies. The cultural opiate tends to cancel, weaken, or kill this capacity for wonder. Pope Luciani [Pope John Paul I] once said that the drama of contemporary Christianity lies in the fact that it puts categories and norms in the place of wonder. But wonder comes before all categories; it is what leads me to seek, to open myself up; it is what makes the answer—not a verbal or conceptual answer—possible for me. If wonder opens me up as a question, the only response is the encounter, and only with the encounter is my thirst quenched. And with nothing else is it quenched more.

-Pope Francis (formerly Jorge Mario Bergoglio), "For Man" in A Generative Thought: An Introduction to the Works of Luigi Guissani