As we reflect on the activities of our intellectual knowing power, we come to recognize it as an inexhaustible dynamism of inquiry, ever searching to lay hold more deeply and widely on the universe of reality. It is impossible to restrict its horizon of inquiry to any limited area of reality, to any goal short of all that there is to know about all that there is (emphasis mine).
This same idea is expressed in another book I recently read, The Two Cities: A History of Christian Politics. First,
realism means that our reasoning about the world around us is a participation in the reason that is actually embedded in that world.
What's the alternative? That we are intelligent, but that our intelligence reveals nothing essential about the world?
Yes, that is the alternative: it's called nominalism, and not only is it alive and well, it has been kicking ass in various forms and iterations for several centuries. Nevertheless, what cannot go on will not go on.
As to its appeal, nominalism affirms that no natures or essences exist, which could hardly be more convenient if one wants to pretend men can be women, or that homosexuals can marry, or that we can't even know what a "woman" is, because for the nominalist there is no such thing as human (or any other) nature:
Mankind is not being prompted through his reason to steadily fulfill his nature. Rather, he is moving through the world in total freedom. There is no natural law... that emerges from within human nature itself and which provides a guide to how people ought to behave.
Superstition is a perennial temptation for fallen man, and in our day and age this superstition goes under the rubric of ideology. Every ideology is a pseudo-religion that is superimposed upon reality in order to provide a host of benefits, including a faux sense of meaning, and with it, a diminution of existential anxiety.
The ideology is also an inexpensive signal of "intelligence" (despite being stupid), redemption-innocence (despite its depravity), and "sanity" (despite being insane; it's really just conformity, so a kind of "quantitative sanity" or safety in numbers).
For that matter, ideology also signals virtue and caring despite being narcissistically self-enclosed, and pretends to be skeptical while being childishly credulous.
Conversely, (orthodox, which is to say, realist) Christianity
proposes a world in which the material and temporal are united with the spiritual and eternal, in which the particular is real and solid and yet finds its intelligibility and full realization in the universal. The drive of modernity was to undo this profoundly realist, and yet ultimately mysterious and incarnational worldview.
Modern ideologies emerging from the Enlightenment amount to the imposition of a material flatland by intellectual flatheads:
It is a world that is itself without mystery, without inherent symbols or sacramental implications. It is the merely material and the merely temporal...
Ideologies are catechisms of pseudo-control and pseudo-mastery to tame and ultimately disable the intellect, allowing it maintain its slumber:
They are attempts at categorizing the things within it so that the world can be seen to function within our thought, without remainder, with nothing left over. They are machines of thought... (emphasis mine).
In case you haven't noticed. And because they are machines, they are dead on arrival, and moreover, communicate this deadness to the sensitive soul, who will spontaneously rebel against them. (We see this happening all over the country, for example, with parents fighting back against progressive groomer ideology.)
Bottom line:
Ideologies are religious systems for the faithless, for people who deny mystery and refuse humility.
Conservatism, whatever else it may be, should be at antipodes to ideology, since there is no philosophical system rich enough to model reality. Every ideology is a model of the world, stripped of complexity, richness, vertical depth (and height), and sundry unknown (and unKnowable) unknowns. Ideology is the precise opposite of the Cosmic Person who renders intelligence and intelligibility possible.
Back to Clarke. The process of knowing all there is to know about all there is
continues indefinitely in ever-expanding and ever-deepening circles. As we reflect on the significance of this inexhaustible and unquenchable drive toward the fullness of all there is to know, we realize that the only adequate goal of our dynamism of knowing is the totality of all being.
Now, what -- or who -- could this be? -- this a priori present-absence that ceaselessly draws us into its vortex? One possibility is that
somewhere hidden within this unlimited horizon of being there exists an actually infinite Plenitude of Being, in which all other beings participate yet of which they are but imperfect images.
I'll buy that. And "If I accept and listen to this radical innate pull of my nature as intellectual being,"
I will affirm with conviction the existence of the ultimate Fullness and Center of all being, the lodestar that draws my intelligence ever onward..., the mystery of inexhaustible Light, a Light that with my present, body-obscured vision I cannot directly penetrate or master with my own powers, but that renders all else intelligible (Clarke).
22 comments:
Thanks Bob - good stuff. So what’s a succinct definition of ‘ideology’ that one can use in debate with nominalists? They would argue that even religious people subscribe to ideologies insofar as they seek a structure of meaning in their lives with a view to “a diminution of existential anxiety”. Is the actual difference, then, between spiritual versus secular views of reality such that “religious ideology” is a contradiction in terms?
That's a good question. Almost any system of thought can become an ideology when reified and superimposed upon the world. To quote our friend Nicolás from the sidebar, "Reality cannot be represented in a philosophical system."
Actually, I would propose a spectrum, with the divine person at the top (and thus intrinsically irreducible to system), universal metaphysics in between (which at least has a rational grounding in the Real), and ideology, which is often a human-demonic hybrid, e.g., Marxism, progressivism, National Socialism. etc.
I'm reading a book on the diabolical, and although I've just started it, it makes some intriguing points that touch on ideology, for example, "They [demons] can also give false clarity by actually darkening the intellect," which reminds me of my link yesterday to the American Psychological Association's descent into diabolical woke madness.
Conversely, they can also "cause elation of the mind in which the person experiences a kind of joy or pride within the intellect, almost like a euphoria." You know the type. Eight year olds, Dude.
It seems that the demons are interested in politics, and why not, since it can cause maximum havoc while also distracting them from their misery. Just like with progressive activists, come to think of it.
Here's another possible clue on the relationship between demons and ideology, i.e., the principle of inversion: "Since demons chose contrary to truth, everything they do inverts right order." So in every ideology you will notice that things are more or less upside-down, inside-out, and ass-backward.
But I'll keep thinking about the question and come up with a better answer.
I wonder if part of the difference is that faith in what is true can stand to be tested? In fact, over the course of one's life, it is tested, constantly.
Ideology, on the other hand, usually demands some level of unquestioning conformity. If someone disagrees with me about God's existence, there's no need to cover my ears and drown out the dissenting voice, nor to expend every effort to ruin his life on the chance that he might convince someone else to believe in nothing.
God is; if you don't believe me, ask Him, with an honest heart and an open mind. But be warned, it's a dangerous question...
Following on from those observations from Father Seraphim Rose that a reader shared the other day, maybe we can say that ideology is, in fact, a counterfeit spirituality intended to subvert and replace authentic religious knowledge grounded in divine reality. In that sense, perhaps a Christian perspective can become ‘ideological’ when it is unfaithful to its true vocation and succumbs to the forces of dissipating worldliness, as we see in so many liberal churches today. This would be a victory for demons insofar as “corruptio optimi pessima”.
Yes, there is ALWAYS the temptation to reduce Christianity to ideology. And I would say that ideology is always a counterfeit religion grounded in affluence, boredom, pride, and absence of meaning.
Ideology was, according to the Frenchy French dude who coined the term, Ideology was to be a 'science of ideas', which conjures up notions of calculating the square footage of a timeless truth. Not surprisingly, Jefferson was taken with the notion and brought it to America,
"... with truly good intentions in pursuit of seemingly logical directions of thought, via the works of a prominent Frenchmen named Destutt de Tracy, who in 1796, was the first person to coin the term: Ideology. More ironically, and with more than a little bit of poetic injustice, he devised it as being a new "science of ideas", which he latter incorporated into his work "A Treatise on Political Economy", which was greatly admired by no less a leading light of our Founding Fathers, than (sound the ironic drum roll please): Thomas Jefferson. In fact, Jefferson liked de Tracy's work so much, that he translated it into English himself, wrote an introduction to it, saw to it that it was published in America, and highly recommended it to all who'd pay attention..."
, and for me, Ideology always comes with inappropriately exact calculations of 'fact' and 'certainty', with few if any relevant premises identified or defined, and just as easily found on 'the Right' ('Free Trade!') as the Left.
Links to the original docs in the post.
David Mamet, another witness to the left's diabolical religio-ideology:
"Does anyone actually believe that men change into women and women into men who can give birth, that the Earth is burning, the seas are rising, and we’ll all perish unless we cover our faces with strips of cotton?
"No one does. These proclamations are an act of faith, in a new, as yet unnamed religion, and the vehemence with which one proclaims allegiance to these untruths is an exercise no different from any other ecstatic religious oath."
I disagree that nobody believes it. Certain people I know are as terrified of all these things as a newly-minted Christian is of burning in hell for all eternity. To the extent that they get all the shots, muzzle their children, avoid anyone "unclean", and break down in tears of anxiety over the people they love who don't show their obeisance.
I've always suspected that the elites are totally cynical and just manipulate the NPC masses, who are the true believers. The problem for the Dems is that the latter have taken over the party, driving it over the cliff. Same with the GOP, which is why populist Trumpism poses an existential threat to the elites.
Concur with Z:
Like in France, American politics is deeply cynical now. Elections are viewed with disdain by the politicians. It is something they must endure so they can get on with what they view as the important parts of politics. The important part of politics is advancing an agenda that serves the narrow interests of the managerial elite. This is why elections have no bearing on public policy. The office holders may change and the parties may swap positions, but the elites never change...
In modern American political jargon, messaging is a form of crowd control. The crowd is the mass media, which takes its cues from the inner party. The e-mails go out, the spokesmen give pressers and this is what shapes the daily narrative in the press. This is then supposed to herd the public in the direction of the official policy. Good polls confirm to the political class that their messaging is working.
Yes. I wonder what it means to them, then, when the polls are as terrible as they are? Do they have any worry that their control will fall apart, or are they now so confident in their ability to make people do what they want that they don't care at all what those people think?
I'm reminded of all the times in history where foreigners were brought in to reign over a people they despised.
The liberal is capable of sacrificing even his interests to his resentment.
Happy Acres: "The Left is rebelling against the human condition and will lose."
Human nature always takes the progressive by surprise.
True, which is why they always ultimately fail. Even - or especially - when they succeed.
Tips for demon watchers:
"The first and overriding principle of all principles that demons function by is: anything but God....
"Another overarching principle is the demonic principle of inversion (as mentioned above).
"This is connected to another diabolic principle which is: lie even when the truth sounds better...
"Another exclusionary principle is: anything but moderation... demons are always trying to incite people to the excess or to the defect in their behavior....
"Demons envy the life enjoyed by human beings in the world, and therefore will try to destroy any normalcy of life, which includes the moderated enjoyment of legitimate goods."
... but enough about the MSM.
The false knowledge of the learned has always been a problem, but the easy access to higher education makes it a real crisis, i.e., credentialed hordes of low IQ and low-fo ideologues running things.
Ratzinger:
"This combination of expert knowledge and deep ignorance certainly causes us to ponder. It reveals the whole problem of knowledge that remains self-sufficient and so does not arrive at Truth itself, which ought to transform man.
"Clearly this mixture of knowledge and ignorance, of material expertise and deep incomprehension, occurs in every period of history.... Are we not blind precisely as people with knowledge? Is it not on account of our knowledge that we are incapable of recognizing Truth itself, which tries to reach us through what we know?"
Outstanding rant:
Isn’t it obvious by now that pervasive dishonesty is the foremost crisis of many crises in Western Civ generally and American life in particular?
Satan, Father of Lies, is Western Civ’s paragon of disgrace, and so American life appears more and more Satanic and disgraceful.
Half the nation doesn’t believe anything it is told by those in authority and the other half revels in its reckless abuse of authority.
The failure of authority on campus is cosmic. Can you name a single college president who has raised a voice against such manifest idiocy as men competing in women’s sports, the invention of ersatz fields of study, the re-segregation of dormitories and graduation ceremonies, the shouting down of invited lecturers, the persecution of free-thinking faculty, the kangaroo courts for sex disputes, and a hundred other violations of intellect and decency?
All this coerced insanity has been nurtured by social media’s sly mechanisms for bending narrative into propaganda: their beloved algorithms, all fine-tuned to destroy anything that touches on truth. The result is a country so marinated in falsehood that it can’t construct a coherent consensus of reality, and can’t take coherent actions to avert its own collapse.
"The result is a country so marinated in falsehood that it can’t construct a coherent consensus of reality"
True. We have one political party now whose prime litmus test is accepting the Big Lie... no different than Putin telling his minions that his flagship sunk 'due to a fire.'
You seem to think that the only purveyor of lies in the current conflict is Russia - how very naive…
NPCs gonna NPC.
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