Even some of the most intelligent critics of liberalism sometimes do not make a clear enough distinction between the terms in which the question arose in the the 19th century, and the terms in which it arises today.
In the 19th century, "liberalism" operated in the context of secularized Christianity (e.g. Kantian ethics) and attempted to separate morality from metaphysics and religion. As such it led to relativism, subjectivism and various other ills.
But after 1917 we have entered the stage of the expansion of political atheism which rejects classical (Aristotelian and Christian) ethics in favor of the "ethics of the direction of history" (Del Noce), which in turn leads inevitably to various forms of totalitarianism.
In this context the question of liberalism changes radically. By the very fact of being anti-totalitarian, Christian political thought cannot help being in some sense "liberal." The question is to define precisely what this means.
Inevitably, this definition will require a critical assessment of various modern "liberal" strands (there is more than one), to sort out the aspects that are worth preserving and can be used to find political common ground.
This critical work is necessary but hard, and seems to have just started. But one should at least recognize that there is an open question which is not the question people faced in the 19th century.

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More from @_CLancellotti

29 Aug
Historically Fascism was born as a revolutionary movement that rejected Marxist historical materialism (the link between the revolution and the necessary logic of history) while keeping the dialectical aspect (man as creator, politics as true religion, the primacy of praxis).
So, the Fascist type (Mussolini) was an "activist without a plan," who valued action and personal power as ends in themselves but had no vision of the future. This is why he ended up an ally/instrument of conservative forces that gave Fascism the appearance of being reactionary.
In that sense, some of today's "revolutionaries" seem more Fascist than Marxist. The "other half" of Marxism (sociologism, secularism, technocracy) is the ideology of the professional classes (so called "liberals" who are economically quite "conservative.")
Read 4 tweets
18 Aug
This is a very nice essay, which could be qualified in various ways from a "Del Nocean" perspective:

quillette.com/2020/08/16/the… via @Quillette
1) What is acting today is actually "half-Marxism" because it has mostly shed Marx's philosophy of history, thus becoming "irrational." The "revolution" does not fulfill the plan of history but just a will to power, and is entirely "intra-bourgeois" like 1968 in Europe.
2) Conversely, liberalism has shed its 19th century Kantian or Protestant aspects, and has embraced the "other half" of Marxism: materialism, sociologism, relativism etc What DN calls "objectivized" Marxism without the revolutionary impulse.
Read 7 tweets
7 Jun
My Sunday thoughts: the question of the moment is whether the protests will push for *reform* or pursue the mirage of *revolution*. I think the jury is still out, but the academic-journalistic complex is clearly pushing in the second direction, which matches their world view.
"Reform" recognizes that we must strive as hard as we can to realize permanent values (e.g. justice) which transcend us, and which we can achieve only imperfectly because evil (e.g. racism) lurks within everyone (original sin) and cannot be ultimately eliminated, only contained.
By contrast the "revolution" thinks that evil can be eliminated, because it resides NOT IN US but in "the system" and the system can be changed by the exercise of power. Thus it expresses a dualistic, non-biblical (gnostic) type of religiosity (modern prototype: Marxism).
Read 7 tweets
18 May
From DN's' "Problem of Atheism" (1963): "The historical result of Marxism is, on the one side, Communist reality, in the way it has become realized, and on the other the affluent society ... In a certain sense, Marxism has already completely won, but negating itself most totally.
Because of this victory, there is the tragic situation of Christianity today, such as it never happened before: it is in a vise between two opposite types of society, which share a common origin, neither one of which is Christianizable. A parallel situation holds for liberalism..
The affluent society is characterized by 'natural irreligion,' by the 'loss of the sacred,' by the rejection of the dimension of tradition and of the past, because all values have been found to be relative to specific historical situations.
Read 4 tweets
17 May
The modern opposition of universal/timeless vs. national/historical (Enlightenment vs. Romanticism) is really another manifestation of rationalism, namely of the denial of the transcendent. If truth transcends us, ideals must always find new partial historical realizations.
Thus, from a more traditional perspective ("Christendom") each "nation" corresponded to one implementation of a universal, inexhaustible call (embodied by the founding saint/king/evangelizer) which could take many historical forms while remaining universal.
By contrast, the modern idea of nation is, as DN says, a reduction of the idea of tradition, because it no longer refers to an ideal (which by nature is universal, although amenable to many "incarnations") but simply to a historical past that does not carry a universal value.
Read 4 tweets
20 Aug 19
Observing the birth of 1960s progressivism DN noted that it was not based on a philosophy, but exclusively on a vision of European history in which "Fascism" was the culmination of centuries of irrationalism, authoritarianism, jingoism etc..
Being the synthesis and fulfillment of EVERYTHING wrong in modern European history, Fascism was thus elevated from being one contingent historical evil to the rank of absolute, ultimate evil. This had two consequences:
a) the necessity to break radically with the past, since even its apparently positive achievements were tainted by the association with proto-Fascism

b) the expectation that the elimination of Fascism would coincide with the radical liberation from evil in the political sphere.
Read 5 tweets

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