It is well to remember that even at the time of Nietzsche and Evola, 'Christianity' had largely been reduced to mere therapeutic deistic sentimental moralism. Even in the great Bastion of Rome, for every serious anti-Modernist, there were three or four Teilhard de Chardins, everyone knew that given Rome's surrender on Geocentrism, a surrender on Creation and the Resurrection was only a matter of time.
General Christian praxis then was a great bourgeois unprincipled exception, the spiritually lazy of the time went through the motions, because that was what was done; it was good form, a noble lie, pious nonsense. Few believed and shuddered, for science, progress, industry, and electricity had seemingly conquered the world for man's comfort and pleasure. A world of a White Man's burden, that couldn't conceive that trying to turn Africa and Asia into new Europes could only ever end in blood and tears despite all the generic humanistic good will in the world. It was the age of Darwin and Freud, Marx and Wells and dreams of a never ending Faustian frontier, never mind that Dr Faustus was a tragedy.
It is my firm opinion, that all the criticisms of 'slave morality' and 'exoteric counter initiation' should be read in that very specific context, and in that context, are in fact extremely lucid, apt, and biting. If you put them in Medieval Europe, with Castles and Crusades, saintly cults at baptised local god's shrines, martial hero worship, and ruthless elite competition that accepted their own death as part of the game, the table stakes for entering play, they would have been right at home.
What they couldn't seem to do was find a way to be medieval in a modern world.
I agree. I think one can read Nietzsche, as Seraphim Rose did, for his critique of the shallow spirituality of the time, and his longing for something more real. And I think that accepting that challenge, to be medieval in the modern world, is the main difference between the conservative and the true reactionary. The former accepts the premises of the modern liberal world and seeks accommodation within them. He appeals to democracy and equality because his imagination is stunted and he mistakes them for timeless principles. He reads them into history and the Bible because he cannot imagine living in a different way, so comprehensive is his acceptance of liberalism. He creates a false dichotomy between the ‘classical’ liberalism (the word is telling) and ‘progressivism,’ and wants to roll the rock back up the hill a bit until them world looks like he thinks he remembers it from his childhood. The reactionary, the true rightist, understands that truth is the same yesterday and today and tomorrow, and we as individuals have varying capacities for understanding and processing that truth, and that the quest for truth is fundamentally spiritual, and thus, necessarily alienates one from one’s fellow men to the degree that they embrace lesser things. The modern world was not made by learning but by forgetting, and the past and our possibilities haunt us.
This reply and the comment above are both excellent.
I think one great challenge is aligning the transcendental Truth we find in Thomism with the quotidian disappointments and irritations of normal life. It can give rise to a temptation to Utopianism, which for the reactionary is often driven by nostalgia.
We are, however, prisoners of time. And so nostalgia is a dead end, just as the arc of history is for the progressive.
Augusto Del Noce makes some interesting points about this subject, but I think ends up being too enamoured with liberalism (for good historical reasons), at least emotionally though certainly not intellectually.
Personally I have come to prefer counterrevolutionary to reactionary: it accepts that time cannot be reversed, but that facts can be changed.
Another way of phrasing the challenge I mention above is bringing eternity into time. The liturgy, of course, is designed to do this (I will say nothing about the Mass wars).
Perhaps our task is to imbue time with eternity in modern circumstances, just as the medieval Catholics did in their own?
Where does Nicolas Gomez-Davila say that monks are the true aristocrats? I’d love to read more on what he thinks about that. Really any of us work would be great, actually. He’s been coming up a lot lately
A really excellent piece. You have summarised everything I think in one place. We either do this or our civilisation is doomed. Money, status and sex are not enough. Pleonexia is not a virtue…
It is well to remember that even at the time of Nietzsche and Evola, 'Christianity' had largely been reduced to mere therapeutic deistic sentimental moralism. Even in the great Bastion of Rome, for every serious anti-Modernist, there were three or four Teilhard de Chardins, everyone knew that given Rome's surrender on Geocentrism, a surrender on Creation and the Resurrection was only a matter of time.
General Christian praxis then was a great bourgeois unprincipled exception, the spiritually lazy of the time went through the motions, because that was what was done; it was good form, a noble lie, pious nonsense. Few believed and shuddered, for science, progress, industry, and electricity had seemingly conquered the world for man's comfort and pleasure. A world of a White Man's burden, that couldn't conceive that trying to turn Africa and Asia into new Europes could only ever end in blood and tears despite all the generic humanistic good will in the world. It was the age of Darwin and Freud, Marx and Wells and dreams of a never ending Faustian frontier, never mind that Dr Faustus was a tragedy.
It is my firm opinion, that all the criticisms of 'slave morality' and 'exoteric counter initiation' should be read in that very specific context, and in that context, are in fact extremely lucid, apt, and biting. If you put them in Medieval Europe, with Castles and Crusades, saintly cults at baptised local god's shrines, martial hero worship, and ruthless elite competition that accepted their own death as part of the game, the table stakes for entering play, they would have been right at home.
What they couldn't seem to do was find a way to be medieval in a modern world.
This, is the struggle.
I agree. I think one can read Nietzsche, as Seraphim Rose did, for his critique of the shallow spirituality of the time, and his longing for something more real. And I think that accepting that challenge, to be medieval in the modern world, is the main difference between the conservative and the true reactionary. The former accepts the premises of the modern liberal world and seeks accommodation within them. He appeals to democracy and equality because his imagination is stunted and he mistakes them for timeless principles. He reads them into history and the Bible because he cannot imagine living in a different way, so comprehensive is his acceptance of liberalism. He creates a false dichotomy between the ‘classical’ liberalism (the word is telling) and ‘progressivism,’ and wants to roll the rock back up the hill a bit until them world looks like he thinks he remembers it from his childhood. The reactionary, the true rightist, understands that truth is the same yesterday and today and tomorrow, and we as individuals have varying capacities for understanding and processing that truth, and that the quest for truth is fundamentally spiritual, and thus, necessarily alienates one from one’s fellow men to the degree that they embrace lesser things. The modern world was not made by learning but by forgetting, and the past and our possibilities haunt us.
This reply and the comment above are both excellent.
I think one great challenge is aligning the transcendental Truth we find in Thomism with the quotidian disappointments and irritations of normal life. It can give rise to a temptation to Utopianism, which for the reactionary is often driven by nostalgia.
We are, however, prisoners of time. And so nostalgia is a dead end, just as the arc of history is for the progressive.
Augusto Del Noce makes some interesting points about this subject, but I think ends up being too enamoured with liberalism (for good historical reasons), at least emotionally though certainly not intellectually.
Personally I have come to prefer counterrevolutionary to reactionary: it accepts that time cannot be reversed, but that facts can be changed.
Another way of phrasing the challenge I mention above is bringing eternity into time. The liturgy, of course, is designed to do this (I will say nothing about the Mass wars).
Perhaps our task is to imbue time with eternity in modern circumstances, just as the medieval Catholics did in their own?
Where does Nicolas Gomez-Davila say that monks are the true aristocrats? I’d love to read more on what he thinks about that. Really any of us work would be great, actually. He’s been coming up a lot lately
He’s one of my favorites.
A really excellent piece. You have summarised everything I think in one place. We either do this or our civilisation is doomed. Money, status and sex are not enough. Pleonexia is not a virtue…
Thank you