real people

231. There also exists a constant tension between ideas and realities. Realities simply are, whereas ideas are worked out. There has to be continuous dialogue between the two, lest ideas become detached from realities. It is dangerous to dwell in the realm of words alone, of images and rhetoric. So a third principle comes into play: realities are greater than ideas. This calls for rejecting the various means of masking reality: angelic forms of purity, dictatorships of relativism, empty rhetoric, objectives more ideal than real, brands of ahistorical fundamentalism, ethical systems bereft of kindness, intellectual discourse bereft of wisdom.

Pope Francis

Kierkegaard would (maybe?!) say that the single individual is more important than the abstraction. When it is flipped over, you have leveling. One step further would be to suggest that ideals (abstractions) can create reality – “if we can measure it, we can create it”.

So Francis is just a closet Kierkegaardian!