Leviathan (2): The Futile 'Freedom' Of Transgressive Postmodernism

I’ve spent pretty much a lifetime trying to convince disbelieving fellow Americans that philosophy matters—in the real world, in daily life. Philosophy is not an “ivory tower” exercise. What I’ve found is that most people seem to be vaccinated against taking ideas seriously, against accepting that ideas matter and have consequences. The result is that most normal people are utterly baffled at the way our culture has gone haywire. They seem to think that things just happen, that people start behaving in unaccountable ways … just because. But that’s not the way life works. People really are influenced by ideas, even if not consciously.

I have argued regularly that the sources for the dissolvent ideologies that have transformed our culture into a sort of freak show are philosophical. They can be traced, most proximately, back to the nominalist philosophy of the late Medieval theologians and philosophers (Luther was a professor of nominalism), which is the source of all modern ideologies. We’re talking about a radical skepticism that severs the connection between the human mind and the real world—things happen, but we are held to be unable to draw any necessary connections or to know the nature of things. The implication is that only the individual exists, and that only within his mind—think of Descartes’ famous Cogito ergo sum, Humes effete skepticism, Kant’s agnosticism about the real world.

This trend of thought began to come into its own in the secular world during the Enlightenment, with figures such as the above mentioned Descartes, Hume, and—above all—Kant. It has now, several hundred years later, become the foundation for our public orthodoxy, according to which no one is allowed to maintain certitude on ultimate issues but, increasingly, on any matters life matters of the individual. We are mandatorily non-judgmental—except, quite unself-consciously, on those who would pass judgment. Those we are mandated to condemn out of hand. The implications of this dominant skepticism have been metastasizing in Western culture for several centuries, while ordinary people have tended to be only slowly dragged down the slope of skepticism’s implications—a slope that becomes slipperier the further down we slide.

In this second installment of Henri Hude’s critique of the way we live now, he begins by discussing the debilitating effects of inequality, the lack of life prospects for the young, in our societies. He sees that “globalization” is a cause for our socio-economic malaise, but then he proceeds to argue that “postmodernism”—the ideological descendants of the radical skepticism at the heart of the post-Enlightenment West—is also a contributing factor to a cultural malaise. In other words, while there is much talk among the chattering classes of the alienation of young people, in fact, in a very real sense, the young people are very much integrated into the dominant postmodern culture—the implications of which their elders often still wish to deny. Hude argues that, if only the individual has being and meaning, and if the real world is inherently unknowable (if it exists) then the truly logical implication is not something like Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. Rather, if reason is meaningless, then freedom—previously held to be based in reason—can only mean an exercise of the will. The more meaningless the more free.

But there’s more. Hude argues that the ruling classes cynically take advantage of this cultural malaise to stifle resistance.

Overcoming the Cage of Civilization: Transgression as Freedom

The social democratic pact has been broken by the globalization of the economy, and it is impossible to reestablish it or replace it with something else. It is impossible to see how to get out of it. The current marasmus is not sustainable, but it is perfectly in line with the principles of the dominant postmodern culture. Inequality is lower in France than in the United Kingdom or the United States, countries we model ourselves after and systematically align ourselves with. France lives far above its means by printing money and going into endless debt. For the moment we can still spend without doing the math. When the system stalls and we need to return to reality, there will be Revolution. What we have today is nothing but the “Flour Wars” that preceded the French Revolution.

As far as integration policies are concerned, I think that these young people are, unfortunately, much more integrated to the current French culture than people say. They are integrated to the culture of the arbitrary freedom of the deified individual, thanks to an integration policy that works perfectly. We hear the Minister of Justice scolding parents for not exercising their authority, when all politics for decades has organized the destruction of authority and the family! With the family out of the picture, that left the school. Hegemonized by pedagogical leftism, it became a model of an ideal society: without authority, without power, without discipline, without tradition. It perfectly fulfilled its mission to impose and transmit a culture whose result is complete intellectual and moral anarchy. This postmodern culture has a perfectly clear ideological function: it justifies the economic arbitrariness of neoliberal elites and protects them by injecting into the people an impotence to act rationally, organize and decide. It should only be added that it is not the bureaucrat-class that is doing so much harm to the people. It has been content to take advantage of the absurdities, especially pedagogical ones, invented by a “social-traitors” left that, having closed any historical horizon of emancipation outside of increasingly monstrous sexual extravaganzas, retreats into its neurosis and claims to retreat the people into it. Let’s say that postmodern pedagogues are subjectively at the service of their egalitarian neuroses and objectively at the service of monstrous inequality.

Talking about the identity rift brings us closer to the most important issue, but we need to understand it well. Every society needs a common substantive culture to make strong decisions of general interest. In France there were two, Catholicism and the Enlightenment. They clashed, but both were serious and universalist. Both now have been marginalized for the benefit of neoliberal, libertarian arbitrariness and its ghosts. The “identity-rift” lies here, between two strong, serious, tested cultures and the great absurdity, the great nothingness of the irrational individual living in his bubble, immoral and moralistic, anarcho-Orwellian.

In the following passage, addressing the idea of secularism, Hude is referring to the key Enlightenment goal—the deconstruction of authoritative social institutions that hampered the arbitrary freedom of the individual. This means, above all, religious institutions that inculcated meaning in life—that is what Voltaire’s famous slogan means: écrasez l'infâme. The idea of thinkers like Hobbes and the French philosophes was to insure social harmony by banishing religion from public life in favor of a secular state. That secular state, of course, is in fact a religion itself—secular humanism. Think, for example, of the way in which the free exercise of religion in the US Constitution became gradually a “wall of separation” that has become a sword against religious freedom. Secularism was intended to replace religion in public life, but offers no substance—only an empty “formalist and proceduralist”—and, above all—intolerant counterfeit of culture. Hude, of course, offers the example of French history:

In the absence of a common substantive culture, we need a common political culture that enables a modus vivendi among substantive cultures. Secularism was intended to be something like that. But to tell the truth, in France it was rather a way of establishing the Enlightenment as the state religion of the Republic, at the expense of Catholicism. But some accommodation existed. Having become postmodern (in the rest of the world more generically), secularism no longer holds back as it used to have the decency to do. A purported formalist and procedural culture has become an intolerant substantive culture. And this culture is a dogmatic nihilism. It has, in caricatured form, all the defects that the Enlightenment held against religions: dogmatism, intolerance, persecution, absurd superstitions, etc.

We also need a minimum of dialogue between cultures, which also presupposes a common reference to philosophical principles accepted by all. A certain humanism could fulfill this function. But today humanism coincides with the monstrosity of the Superman and subhumans. So, the real divide lies here: between the self-proclaimed superhumans à la Macron, and the subhumans, the “deplorables,” the “savages,” etc. I am not surprised that the subhumans hate the superhumans who shower them with contempt. It has been said that young people do not express demands. This is true. They practice a barbaric ritual of the barbaric religion they learned in school. They express their will and sheer violence—this is their freedom.

What people like Macron have not understood is that postmodern libertarian deregulation cannot be limited to economics and sex. The Nazis, who were as postmodern as Trotsky, knew this well: libertarian deregulation must release the violence of the beast that suffocates in the cage of civilization. Sex then is no longer an end in itself; it is the warrior’s repose—the right is that of the strongest, amassing quick fortunes and building empires while quenching a thirst for cruel transgression and destruction.

So, if we wanted to reduce the identity divide, we would need nothing less than a new culture. If we preserve the one that currently dominates us, we will die. Benedict XVI said, “We need a new humanist synthesis.”

And so the result of this historical evolution is the self destructive rage at the heart of the West. You could argue that this rage also lies behind the postmodern need to identify enemies—Trump, Putin—against whom to vent their raging self hatred.

Postmodern culture makes one mad, because individual freedom no longer accepts objective truth. Intended to free the individual from all constraints, this culture on the contrary develops a fatal set of frustrations in him. Absolutized individual freedom, detached from all reference to the good and the true, the beautiful and God, the Absolute, nature, reason, society—kills love, kills freedom, kills free love and pure pleasure. Law without the divine Lawgiver kills.

The good [as conceived now in postmodern ideologies], then, consists in surviving, in spite of everything, through transgression, which becomes the only form of freedom. The virtual world kills the sense of the real and replaces the real. The art of governing becomes that of administering an asylum of madmen. But the rulers are also insane. So, it is this world that makes us crazy.

This is where and how we live now, as we go to the polls.