The more I learn about the *intellectual* tradition of English-speaking liberalism, the more I get the impression that:

1) given its largely utilitarian and positivist set up, it is not equipped either to understand or criticize modern totalitarian politics. 2) that in fact the Anglo-American *moral* resistance to totalitarianism in the early 20th was much more a reflection of remnants of the English common law tradition and of American Protestant free-Church anti-authoritarianism than of intellectual liberalism.

It is interesting that while US academia was shaped much more, say, by Dewey than Gramsci, its general thrust (and both success AND failure) over the last several generations is well described by a passage in Gramsci's Prison Notebooks: "The position of the philosophy of praxis does not tend to keep the ‘simple’ in their primitive philosophy of common sense, but rather to lead them to a higher conception of life. If it affirms the need for contact between the intellectuals and the simple, it is not to limit

People are insufficiently aware of the philosophical import of questions like "Is she a woman?" Its tacit assumption is that there is a fixed, given reality and humanity is fulfilled in knowing it ("truth") and participating in it, even at the price of sacrifice and suffering. But this premise is radically rejected by bourgeois-therapeutic post-Marxist scientism. If the supreme value is psycho-physical well-being (Reich's "sexual happiness") by definition sacrifice and suffering are never acceptable, and "truth" is what makes you feel "authentic".

Thinking of the "top ten" follies perpetrated by the Western ruling class during my adult life:

1) Deindustrializing/impoverishing/oxycontifying vast regions of the US out of an entirely ideological commitment to "free trade." 2) Making most of Western Europe dependent on Russian energy imports, out an entirely ideological rejection of nuclear power etc

3) Trying to extend NATO to the Don basin out of ... only God knows what.

I have thinking why today's mega-corporations (Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple) seem so "creepy." A few (trivial?) thoughts:

1) They are not just plain old economic actors which somehow have to fit in a "given" cultural context. They aim at creating and shaping culture. 2) Their culture is the now familiar combination of scientistic technocracy and wokeness/pride etc. The resulting merge of the economic, political and cultural spheres can only be described as "totalitarian".

The most mind-opening lesson I learnt by translating DN's "problem of Atheism" is his idea that the decisive philosophical option that drives secular modernity towards nihilism is *rationalism*, and not *subjectivism* as is commonly taught. Everybody is taught that secular thought started from the "cogito." DN argues that the affirmation of the free subject is actually the *religious* aspect of Descartes which continues in Pascal and religious existentialism, whereas the *secular* aspect of Descartes which prepares

I think there are two reasons why DN today seems so prescient:

1) All the metaphysical premises of today's situation were firmly in place in the West by the mid-sixties, and an insightful philosophical mind like DN was able to extrapolate their future logical consequences.

https://twitter.com/1947Farmall/status/1381231416403505160

2) Some of these consequences (on the "Marxist" side of the equation) played out much earlier in Europe, which experienced a big ideological wave in the aftermath of 1968, which DN witnessed first hand.

Why the difference between the American and European trajectories?

"The second stage [of capitalism] is that in which the bourgeois spirit finally manifests itself in the pure state; in which it realizes fully what it had already achieved about nature, abolishing mystery and quality and replacing them with measurable, quantitative data. The spontaneous ideology of the bourgeoisie is pure materialism, positivism focused exclusively on raw facts, the denial of that any meaning exists that transcends the immediate phenomenon. At the neo-capitalist stage the bourgeoisie is so dominant that it no longer needs

Among other things, the events at the Capitol were a desecration of the main temple of American civic religion by a competing faith, and I think that contributed to it emotional impact.

(especially with the shaman etc.) One cannot look up at the fresco in the dome of the Capitol and fail to recognize its religious significance. A perfect replica of a baroque Church dome with the coronation of Mary replaced by the apotheosis of George Washington.

Been thinking about the radical opposition between the PC-progressive concept of *representation* and the classical concept of *recognition*.

(which has the same etymological structure as *respect*: mutual knowledge, mutual seeing). Every human being wants to be recognized *as human* by other humans. This is the root of true "inclusion": the recognition of a common humanity beyond our differences, where the word "humanity" has a metaphysical-religious significance (being relationship with the infinite).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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:

The clash about the JPII Institute is really revealing of a philosophical divide that has been going on sine at least the time of Vatican II.

lanuovabq.it/it/battaglia-d… On the one hand there is the view that the Christian revelation of God also "reveals man" and judges history. Man and history cannot be understood apart from a particular historical AND super-historical agent, Christ

I have finished @Chris_arnade 's excellent book "Dignity." I think its profound intuition is how the "misery of the rooted" is specular to the "uprootedness of the successful." They are just two sides of the same phenomenon. Namely, the ideology of the technocratic/affluent society. Having denied theoretically (scientism) and practically (bourgeois happiness) any ideal dimension/transcendence, it offers its people two irreconcilable sequences