Diagnosis...

While completing my philosophical studies, I used to imagine myself pushing the "Dumb Ox" (Thomas Aquinas) carrying a large shield in front of me, warding off the arrows of modern philosophers. Indeed, the image was generated because of the famous words of Leo XIII who said that Aquinas wrote in such a principled manner that he effectively put to route every error that could come before him or after him. (See the encyclical Aeterne Patris). Leo XIII, like Chesterton would just a few years later realize, the problem of modernity was a thinking problem, not a moral one. The two, however, are inseparably linked. Truth, as we Thomists are taught, is simply the adeqatio mentis rei -- making the mind commensurate with the thing. Truth is the recognition, as we relate to the outer world, (ens reale in Thomistic terms) of being in its essential order. In order to do the good, we must first know it; we must first recognize the order that actually exists in the outer world (ens reale). For human beings, this order was apply described by Thomas in what is probably his most famous ethical passage on the natural law. (I-II q.94 a.2) Of course, he borrowed a lot from Cicero, but nevertheless in the typically precise Thomistic way, he refined and purified.

Nonetheless, at this point I am not here to discuss the natural law. We need merely make mention of it because it represents an adequate case of a philosopher naming things as he knew them, rather than knowing them as he named them, which incidentally is the problem with all of modern philosophy and its solipsistic tendencies post-Descartes. To develop an ethic, there must be knowable being, and that being must be intelligible. When you destroy metaphysics, ethics quickly follows. As moderns and even post moderns, we have destroyed metaphysics, which is why we find ourselves in the ethical malaise of Nietzschean relativism.

If we are going to root out the enemy, if we are going to diagnose post-modernity, we must first recognize the poison by its symptoms. Then we must catch the snake in order to provide the antidote. Finally, we must administer the antidote. Fortunately for us, 27 years ago a Scottish analytic philosopher diagnosed our modern culture, and his name was Alasdair MacIntyre. After Virtue is a must read for anyone who wishes to understand our modern ethical landscape and how to deal with nihilism in its true form.

MacIntyre demonstrates that the world has fallen into 'emotovist' morality because of losing the common language provided by the Aristotelian philosophical corpus. In moral controversies today, MacIntyre argues that our argumentation, indeed even our words, come from disparate traditions and as a result of having no common foundation upon which to argue, we talk past each other. After Descartes convinced his contemporaries to jettison Aristotle, the Enlightenment philosophers, one by one, attempted justifications for morality without recourse to any form of teleology (purpose) in nature. He says that, in order to have a rationally justified ethics, there needs to be consideration of 1) man as he is in an imperfect state, 2) man as he can be when perfected, and 3) rational justification for getting from point 1 to point 2.

Hidden in what MacIntyre claims is an idea that Catholic thinkers for the last 100 or so years have alluded to, and that is that religion is the basis of culture. Christopher Dawson is the first that I am aware of to promote this thesis, and he does it everywhere, but the best example comes from his Progress and Religion. Chesterton is perhaps the most famous proponent of this thesis. Nonetheless, this idea is echoed in MacIntyre because he says that following Protestant and Jansenist theologies, each of the Enlightenment philosophers abandoned the notion of purpose in ethics. For Kant, following the categorical imperative was the cold answer to ethical dillemas (ultimately for him happiness was beyond our reach and provided to telos for human action); for Hume, the emotions led the way, and on and on.

So there was an "Enlightenment project" of justifying morality, but on MacIntyre's account it failed. Indeed, on Nietzsche's account, it failed. And so, MacIntyre rightly relates that Nietzsche was the first philosopher to recognize the failure and that he took that as a failure of morality as such, and so he ushered in the age of personal preference morality.

In a book that I have been writing, I trace the fundaments of our culture ultimately to the Protestant religious narrative, as that provided the framework for liberalism (in the classical sense of that term), and that Nietzsche's philosophy represents the most radical extension, the place where liberalism without proper relations to any kind of truth, will extend. Indeed, Nietzsche's philosophy is the fate of all liberalism if it ignores metaphysical and religious truth. Nietzsche is liberalism without truth. It may, prima facie, seem a mischaracterization because the fundaments of liberalism are the dignity of each human being; they are democracy and freedom without interference. Democracy without orientation to truth represents nothing but a will to power. When the blathering politician argues on the evening news that 'we have to agree to disagree' he recommends Nietzschean relativism. The dialectic, without any bearing on truth, simply becomes a clash of competing wills where the most powerful is the winner. Truth, in this situation, is self-created. Democracy lends itself to the domination of the weak by the strong when there is no orientation to the truth of the human person. Following Nietzsche, we have all become self-creators of our own natures, which entails self-creators of our own morality; we have become natureless. Without nature; without internally directed order to our beings; without the natural law; personal preference morality becomes the only philosophical orientation we can have.

The question of whether Nietzsche was that influential, or if the state of our western cultural ethic is the result the natural progression of liberalism, we may never know. Nietzsche, the greatest atheist genius there ever was, certainly has readers. Nonetheless, most people are unconscious to the fact that they are living his ethic.

So let us take this as the diagnosis. What is Nietzsche's philosophy? In a nutshell, being is unintelligible; there is no metaphysical truth because there exist no metaphysical objects; metaphysics is but a chimera of the human imagination. All existence is merely a haphazard becoming, a burgeoning of a more powerful thing overcoming a weaker thing. It is the human mind that imposes order on reality, but in actuality, there is no order. Seeking to know for human beings is a "Socratic optimism.' That is, all intellectual pursuits are merely a game because existence is unintelligible outside of a will to power. He is known as the inverted Platonist -- I would call him the inverted Christian.

In his ethics, there is a dialectic battle between the golden aristocrat and the beastly slave. The slave morality on Nietzsche's account is that of the priestly castes, and those who are simply weak. The slaves invent things like justice and truth, only to hold the true aristocrat down. The aristocrat is the man who lives for action, the hunt, the prowl, the orgies; in short, he is the person who does that for which he is strong enough. He is a 'happening.'

What it really comes down to, though, is that a person is free to choose to do whatever they want with the only limitation being their own weakness. With Nietzsche and the other existentialists, order is merely imposed by the human mind on what is ultimately a haphazard becoming in reality. As such, there are no "natures" in reality. As human beings, we are only what we make ourselves. We are self-creators. This ethic is the foundation of personal preference morality; a emotivist morality; a selfish-relativism. This I argue, along with MacIntyre, is western humanities modern common cultural ethos. This, unbeknownst to Nietzsche, is the real nihilism.

We have heard the term "cafeteria Catholic," but what modernity is really facing is "cafeteria morality." This plague; this disease; this inhuman scourge has reached even into the depths of the Catholic Church. This "will to power" liberalism, seeks to intimidate our shepherds. As someone with dyspepsia over the haters, blind to their own Nietzchean outlook, have taken seats of power, whispering with their forked tongues into the ears of our bishops and priests. They have taken over, in many instances, the institutions of culture. Knowing that human beings are great imitators, the beast was wise in taking over diocesan Catholic newspapers, Catholic colleges, and in some cases even archdioceses. The makers of our culture are moral self-creators, and these liars have taken some of the seats of power even in the Catholic Church.

I have often dreamt of starting this "Soldiers of the Magisterium" as a press organization for the orthodox. I have dreamt of being the eyes and the ears of the bishops from an orthodox perspective. In order to do this, though, is to be soldiers of the First among equals. That is why I propose and organization of Catholics who are tired of the power brokers of our day silencing dissent for anti-Catholic behavior in Catholic institutions. The dream may never be realized, but let us hope; let us dream.