Is There Such a Thing as Non-Christian Philosophy?

"No," writes Pieper in response to his own question, "there is no non-Christian philosophy."

So that settles it. You've been a great audience, and drive home safely.

But how can this be, for as we know,

philosophizing means [or used to, anyway] asking what is the meaning of all that we call "life" or "reality" or simply this "totality." 

Now, if someone already has an answer to this question about meaning, if one "believes," if one is Christian: how can he still use his reason in the very radical way mentioned? How could he still be able to philosophize?

Hmm?

He's got a point: when someone knows the answers prior to the questions, that's what we call ideology (or even ideolatry), not philosophy. Looked at this way, Christianity is not even a philosophy. 

Nevertheless, Pieper persists in his absurd claim, and now I'm curious.

Is our argument with progressives just an intrafamilal squabble between different sects of Christianity?

Well, if, for example, "trans rights are human rights," what are the latter, and where do they come from? It so happens that the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain played a central role in the development of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and "his defense of natural rights"

influenced several of the members of the Drafting Committee of the UN Commission on Human Rights. Moreover, not only were some of Maritain’s key writings read in advance by the Drafting Committee, but one of its key members, Charles Malik, followed Maritain’s political thought closely in several respects. It is not surprising, then, that the Declaration has close parallels with the rights enumerated [by Maritain].

Now, I detest the U.N. as much as the next guy, but not because it's too Christian. 

At any rate, "trans rights" cannot be natural rights, for what could be more unnatural? Of course, members of the the Alphabet Brigade still have the same natural rights as the restavus, but it makes no sense to use Christianity to abolish Christianity.

Or does it? For if I were Satan, that is precisely what I'd do. Recall Landes' definition of the demopath: "enemies of human rights invoking them in order to destroy them." Not to mention "dupes of demopaths," i.e., "people with no ear for hypocrisy who accept demopathic argument as sincere."

Dupes, like the NY Times, and sincere, like the Mayor of Gaza City:

Why can’t Palestinians be treated equally, like Israelis and all other peoples in the world? Why can’t we live in peace and have open borders and free trade?

Gosh. We may never know the answer!

Along these lyin's, Landes' glossary of terms has another good one he calls the Human Rights Complex, which ignores "victimizers of color" and obsesses "about 'white' ones." Moreover, there is Humanitarian Racism, which makes "no moral demands of those designated as 'victims,'" and Underdogma, the "dogmatic assertion of humanitarian racism."

As we said before, to call our terror-supporting progressives "anti-Semitic" is giving them far too much credit. Rather, they have simply assimilated a vile and stupid ideology that transforms Jews into White Victimizers as surely as 2+2 = 4. 

Their hatred of the Zionist Entity is perfectly rational once one accepts the insane premises of the PoMo-PoCo (postmodern and postcolonial) cult. These zombified progbots suffer from "Masochistic Omnipotence Syndrome," the belief that "everything is our fault" (ibid.).

Any ideology is a closed system. Which is what distinguishes it from philosophy per se, which is open to everything. Now, this everything must include the most consequential phenomenon of all, which is to say, the human subject (or even just subjectivity as such); nor will it exclude God on an a priori basis, because this is just a tautology: there is no God because there is no God:

The first element of the Greek concept "philosophy" has, in principle, a simple relationship to theology -- an openness, in principle, to theology (Pieper).

I want to say that to have an "open mind" is already prima facie evidence of God. For if we accept the evidence of natural selection -- which we do -- then you will agree that it is impossible for it to account for human traits such as our openness to transcendence, free will, objectivity, conformity to reality, sensitivity to beauty (itself an adequation to the Real), boundless creativity, etc.

Or just say human nature. And to say human -- to say it and mean it -- is to say God. We won't go so far as to say that God-human is a complementarity. Then again, we will say that the First and Second Persons of the Trinity are eternal complements, and that if we accept the Incarnation in principle, then we are given the opportunity to be participants in this nonlocal goround of reality. 

Seems like a good place to pause, because at this point my stream of thought iterates into various creeks, babbling brooks, & windy riverruns that deserve posts of their own, so to be continued...