In a very nice article at The Federalist today, Nathanael Blake uses an article by Nicholas Kristoff to launch into some reflections on the key connection between sexual ethics and the greater good—the human flourishing—of society.
Within the preamble of our Declaration of Independence is the phrase: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
It has been said that the foundation of the Bill of Rights added to our constitution is "...that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...". Some will say that there is no Creator, therefore we have no unalienable rights. Others will say that even if there is a Creator, there is no way to establish that the Creator did indeed endow us '...certain unalienable Rights..."
Still others posit that Man has a nature and that that nature can be determined through man's power of reasoning. Man can determine the nature of a tree, of a cow, of a horse and of a man. Some attributes of the nature of man includes pro-creation, self defense, raising of children and so forth.
It is this nature of man that establishes "..certain unalienable Rights..." and to violate these rights strips him of his very nature and reduces him to meaningless existence.
Our rights so established by 'natural law', are in grave danger in our modern times. It is not in our nature to surrender these rights, but many do so during fleeting moments of passion and/or weakness.
Our society and civilization will suffer greatly until our nature, our very foundation, is once again recognized and our way of life is reestablished.
Mark, I have never seen the statement you quote from Ratzinger before. It’s bizarre and strikes me as flatly opposite to what many consider to be key statements of his early pontificate — namely regarding the marriage of faith and reason in Christianity, especially insofar as it maintains the philosophical tradition of the Greeks — the infamous Regensburg Address, for instance. Do you think Ratzinger changed his tune once he became Pope?
"Do you think Ratzinger changed his tune once he became Pope?"
Not at all. Ratzinger has never, ever, revised any of his many publications--not even his infamous "Intro to Christianity." He's been totally consistent. Moreover, that address is far from the only place he has expressed similar to identical views--those views are central to his thought, which is highly philosophical. The Regensburg address is almost entirely misunderstood. In fact Ratzinger was suggesting that the Islamic rejection of reason in favor of a sort of fideism forms the basis for a possible dialogue with the West, which has been infected with similar fideistic attitudes since the late Middle Ages--he specifically cites Duns Scotus in that regard, who was famous for his Voluntarist position. The Regensburg address was definitely NOT and anti-Islamic tract per se, but equally a critique of the West. HOWEVER, that does not mean he favored a return to the metaphysical tradition of, say, Aquinas--which he rejected from his seminary days and throughout his life. He basically sees the West in an impasse but offers no philosophically based solution--which is why he ends up invoking the heretic Pascal.
Matthew Crawford has a provocative essay on sex and politics that I think complements the approach taken in Mark’s post: namely, arguing that “sexual revolution” is an establishment psy-op designed to politically neuter the population.
“Keeping the appetites at a high pitch of activity, stimulating desire and then satisfying it, can serve as a political soporific. Porn may function as a soma of the masses and in particular of the male— that toxic element in society that has lately attracted special interest from the organs of political therapy. Untoward eruptions of ascetic self-command are inconvenient to the governing anthropology; they would seem to cast doubt on both the need for, and the means of, social management. Reciprocally, for men and women both, the experience of self-command can create a taste for more, and possibly even lead to curiosity about a corresponding political possibility long thought obsolete — that of self-government.”
Hello again: Mark; I can not even begin to understand how your writings can be so varied, insightful and stimulating! Thanks, it's all I got...
This posting rooted deeply into what I've found and believed to be a core tenant to Western Civ's descendance. Yes, there are severe attacks on said Western Civilization as represented by Christianity but empowered, or perhaps better put, allowed success in the demise of sincere, genuine Christian virtues.
I fear the many wars taught in modern history as fought for 'religion' (which there were many, of course) while removing sound reasoning in defense of the Spiritual battle such wars represented as been used as a cornerstone of the Communist/Marxist necessity to remove true Faith as foundational in the promotion of the 'socialist' world we're seeing promogulated.
Many fronts are being fought on: from evolution to 'there is no human nature' - collectivism is the end game. The biggest casualty, amazingly ignored by so many lost souls today, is indeed Man's Soul. Not a loss if there were no Creator so I suppose that tool is of significant importance to God's enemies.
Thank you again for stimulating deep thought, Mark. I'll redundantly repeat myself again - your sharing of your writing is truly amazing and blesses me enormously.
For Kant God is a postulate, a place marker required by Kant's theory of practical reason--although in his posthumous writings Kant seems to play with the idea that the human subject IS God. As for the real world created by God, Kant is famously agnostic. Subjective and Objective are separate and the twain never meet. This is antithetical to Aquinas' thought. See my translation of Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge, which is an examination of attempts to reconcile Aquinas with Descartes and/or Kant.
The Will thing has its roots in late medieval Voluntarism and Nominalism--which began and continued in Catholic thought--still does in some circles. That led directly into Lutheranism (Kant), since Luther was a fanatical Nominalist. This is the stuff that Ratzinger, correctly, was comparing to Islamist theology at Regensburg. But Ratzinger, self admittedly, had no solution for the hyper-rationalistic irrationalism of these positions, which used reason to discredit reason. All he could offer was another version of irrationalism--Pascal's (another very rational man who attacked reason). Cf. Chesterton "The Blue Cross", Gilson, esp. "The Unity of Philosophical Experience."
Aquinas' theory of "rights" is fundamentally different from the modern liberal notion of "human rights." Aquinas' moral philosophy is rooted in the law of human nature, of objective good and evil. This is utterly different from Enlightenment views.
"Whether subjective rights in general and human rights in particular exist in the classical legal tradition is a vexed question that most contemporary Thomists answer in the negative. In 2019, however, Fr. Dominic Legge OP, Director of the Thomistic Institute, published “Do Thomists Have Rights?,”[1] an article of some popularity in integralist circles that presents Aquinas as a human rights forerunner.[2] These lines are offered in a spirit of constructive criticism of that article."
No. "Practical reason" according to Aquinas is utterly different from Kant's version--the difference stems from diametrically opposed metaphysics. Suarez was absolutely no Thomist and Tierney is widely viewed as tendentious. One does not suspect anything of the sort about B16's discourse, but I suspect you didn't follow the links to my previous blog posts.
Disagree, but seem unable to articulate a critique of what I wrote. Ratzinger was totally upfront about where he was coming from. He was a fan of Teilhard, even speaking--both before and after he became Benedict--of "cosmic transubstantiation" and such other Teilhardian Neognostic concepts. His Kantian based opposition to the Church's traditional--and by that I mean, rooted in Apostolic Tradition--philosophia perennis (meaning, metaphysics) is on the record and spans his published lifetime. Wojtyła and Ratzinger were responsible for the appointment and promotion of all the worst elements who now control the Conciliar Church. What we see today is the Church they built.
Within the preamble of our Declaration of Independence is the phrase: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
It has been said that the foundation of the Bill of Rights added to our constitution is "...that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...". Some will say that there is no Creator, therefore we have no unalienable rights. Others will say that even if there is a Creator, there is no way to establish that the Creator did indeed endow us '...certain unalienable Rights..."
Still others posit that Man has a nature and that that nature can be determined through man's power of reasoning. Man can determine the nature of a tree, of a cow, of a horse and of a man. Some attributes of the nature of man includes pro-creation, self defense, raising of children and so forth.
It is this nature of man that establishes "..certain unalienable Rights..." and to violate these rights strips him of his very nature and reduces him to meaningless existence.
Our rights so established by 'natural law', are in grave danger in our modern times. It is not in our nature to surrender these rights, but many do so during fleeting moments of passion and/or weakness.
Our society and civilization will suffer greatly until our nature, our very foundation, is once again recognized and our way of life is reestablished.
Mark, I have never seen the statement you quote from Ratzinger before. It’s bizarre and strikes me as flatly opposite to what many consider to be key statements of his early pontificate — namely regarding the marriage of faith and reason in Christianity, especially insofar as it maintains the philosophical tradition of the Greeks — the infamous Regensburg Address, for instance. Do you think Ratzinger changed his tune once he became Pope?
"Do you think Ratzinger changed his tune once he became Pope?"
Not at all. Ratzinger has never, ever, revised any of his many publications--not even his infamous "Intro to Christianity." He's been totally consistent. Moreover, that address is far from the only place he has expressed similar to identical views--those views are central to his thought, which is highly philosophical. The Regensburg address is almost entirely misunderstood. In fact Ratzinger was suggesting that the Islamic rejection of reason in favor of a sort of fideism forms the basis for a possible dialogue with the West, which has been infected with similar fideistic attitudes since the late Middle Ages--he specifically cites Duns Scotus in that regard, who was famous for his Voluntarist position. The Regensburg address was definitely NOT and anti-Islamic tract per se, but equally a critique of the West. HOWEVER, that does not mean he favored a return to the metaphysical tradition of, say, Aquinas--which he rejected from his seminary days and throughout his life. He basically sees the West in an impasse but offers no philosophically based solution--which is why he ends up invoking the heretic Pascal.
Matthew Crawford has a provocative essay on sex and politics that I think complements the approach taken in Mark’s post: namely, arguing that “sexual revolution” is an establishment psy-op designed to politically neuter the population.
https://unherd.com/2022/12/the-politics-of-masturbation/
Also see E. Michael Jones book, Libido Dominandi.
Concluding paragraph from Crawford’s essay:
“Keeping the appetites at a high pitch of activity, stimulating desire and then satisfying it, can serve as a political soporific. Porn may function as a soma of the masses and in particular of the male— that toxic element in society that has lately attracted special interest from the organs of political therapy. Untoward eruptions of ascetic self-command are inconvenient to the governing anthropology; they would seem to cast doubt on both the need for, and the means of, social management. Reciprocally, for men and women both, the experience of self-command can create a taste for more, and possibly even lead to curiosity about a corresponding political possibility long thought obsolete — that of self-government.”
Hello again: Mark; I can not even begin to understand how your writings can be so varied, insightful and stimulating! Thanks, it's all I got...
This posting rooted deeply into what I've found and believed to be a core tenant to Western Civ's descendance. Yes, there are severe attacks on said Western Civilization as represented by Christianity but empowered, or perhaps better put, allowed success in the demise of sincere, genuine Christian virtues.
I fear the many wars taught in modern history as fought for 'religion' (which there were many, of course) while removing sound reasoning in defense of the Spiritual battle such wars represented as been used as a cornerstone of the Communist/Marxist necessity to remove true Faith as foundational in the promotion of the 'socialist' world we're seeing promogulated.
Many fronts are being fought on: from evolution to 'there is no human nature' - collectivism is the end game. The biggest casualty, amazingly ignored by so many lost souls today, is indeed Man's Soul. Not a loss if there were no Creator so I suppose that tool is of significant importance to God's enemies.
Thank you again for stimulating deep thought, Mark. I'll redundantly repeat myself again - your sharing of your writing is truly amazing and blesses me enormously.
Wayne - 'Of Weiser' :^)
You could say symptom, but then as things get going causes and symptoms engage in a sort of dialectic.
I have an answer: No. :-) :-(
Thanks.
For Kant God is a postulate, a place marker required by Kant's theory of practical reason--although in his posthumous writings Kant seems to play with the idea that the human subject IS God. As for the real world created by God, Kant is famously agnostic. Subjective and Objective are separate and the twain never meet. This is antithetical to Aquinas' thought. See my translation of Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge, which is an examination of attempts to reconcile Aquinas with Descartes and/or Kant.
The Will thing has its roots in late medieval Voluntarism and Nominalism--which began and continued in Catholic thought--still does in some circles. That led directly into Lutheranism (Kant), since Luther was a fanatical Nominalist. This is the stuff that Ratzinger, correctly, was comparing to Islamist theology at Regensburg. But Ratzinger, self admittedly, had no solution for the hyper-rationalistic irrationalism of these positions, which used reason to discredit reason. All he could offer was another version of irrationalism--Pascal's (another very rational man who attacked reason). Cf. Chesterton "The Blue Cross", Gilson, esp. "The Unity of Philosophical Experience."
Aquinas' theory of "rights" is fundamentally different from the modern liberal notion of "human rights." Aquinas' moral philosophy is rooted in the law of human nature, of objective good and evil. This is utterly different from Enlightenment views.
Check out this:
http://www.nlnrac.org/classical/aquinas
Then compare that with this article in which the author critiques a priest who tries to claim Aquinas as a "forerunner" of "human rights" theories.
https://iusetiustitium.com/aquinas-and-human-rights/
"Whether subjective rights in general and human rights in particular exist in the classical legal tradition is a vexed question that most contemporary Thomists answer in the negative. In 2019, however, Fr. Dominic Legge OP, Director of the Thomistic Institute, published “Do Thomists Have Rights?,”[1] an article of some popularity in integralist circles that presents Aquinas as a human rights forerunner.[2] These lines are offered in a spirit of constructive criticism of that article."
No. "Practical reason" according to Aquinas is utterly different from Kant's version--the difference stems from diametrically opposed metaphysics. Suarez was absolutely no Thomist and Tierney is widely viewed as tendentious. One does not suspect anything of the sort about B16's discourse, but I suspect you didn't follow the links to my previous blog posts.
Disagree, but seem unable to articulate a critique of what I wrote. Ratzinger was totally upfront about where he was coming from. He was a fan of Teilhard, even speaking--both before and after he became Benedict--of "cosmic transubstantiation" and such other Teilhardian Neognostic concepts. His Kantian based opposition to the Church's traditional--and by that I mean, rooted in Apostolic Tradition--philosophia perennis (meaning, metaphysics) is on the record and spans his published lifetime. Wojtyła and Ratzinger were responsible for the appointment and promotion of all the worst elements who now control the Conciliar Church. What we see today is the Church they built.