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The Crisis of Modernity
In his native Italy Augusto Del Noce is regarded as one of the preeminent political thinkers and philosophers of the period after the Second World War. The Crisis of Modernity makes available for the first time in English a selection of Del Noce's essays and lectures on the cultural history of the twentieth century. Del Noce maintained that twentieth-century history must be understood specifically as a philosophical history, because Western culture was profoundly affected by the major philosophies of the previous century such as idealism, Marxism, and positivism. Such philosophies became the secular, neo-gnostic surrogate of Christianity for the European educated classes after the French Revolution, and the next century put them to the practical test, bringing to light their ultimate and necessary consequences. One of the first thinkers to recognize the failure of Marxism, Del Noce posited that this failure set the stage for a new secular, technocratic society that had taken up Marx’s historical materialism and atheism while rejecting his revolutionary doctrine. Displaying Del Noce's rare ability to reconstruct intellectual genealogies and to expose the deep metaphysical premises of social and political movements, The Crisis of Modernity presents an original reading of secularization, scientism, the sexual revolution, and the history of modern Western culture.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 2014
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January 4, 2023
This was an exceptional although not always easy to read, book. The author was a renowned Italian philosopher who died in the early 1990s, and the essays in the book range from the 1960 through around the 1980s.
Del Noce attempts to explain why modernism, which he says represents a revolution, has led to socio political problems, because modernism erases tradition, casts religion aside, and does away with concepts such as the soul, and thus reduces man to a bundle of wants that can be satisfied by materialism/consumerism, by discussing what modernism is and why it inevitably led to what he views is a breakdown of morality, nihilism, etc.
Del Noce identifies the present-day crisis of modernity with the promotion of a Freud-Marx cultural conjunction in movies, books, magazines etc., such that the idea of sexual repression as the source of fascism or the authoritarian personality, is then joined to the Marxist concept of class struggle, so that sexual liberation or libertinism, as Del Noce would say, becomes part of the political struggle, or modernist revolution.
Del Noce believes the 20th Century revolution started with the two world wars, which he sees as one war with a twenty-year pause. Socio political hierarchies were turned upside down and replaced by Freudo-Marxism - even among bourgeois capitalist countries, the same trend exists, the trend to explain everything thru science or trust only material reality.
He says that Marxism did triumph worldwide, but not the way Marx hoped: Materialism was adapted by mankind except that in the West or bourgeois democracies it was pushed as consumerism. Any transcendental analysis or framework - such as through religion - was therefore pushed aside both in the communist East and the capitalist West under the influence of Marx, and this resulted in the marked decline of religious faith since the War. Del Noce crucially says that gnosticism or neo-gnosticism, that is the attainment of a spiritual insight by an alienated class, or an enlightened leader, who then proceed to push their revelation or utopian insight as possible, is the foundation of both communism and fascism, Nazism as well as positivism. This viewpoint depends on the concept of immanentism, that is, that a life-force, or vitality, is present in everything and that ¨heaven on Earth¨ can be attained in the here and now, rather than the religious transcendent viewpoint, which says that heaven is only possible in the afterlife. And so the neo-gnostics of whatever stripe will say things like a communist revolution will lead to heaven on earth, will solve everything, or treating nationalities as favored or disfavored categories will result in ¨heaven on earth¨ for the ¨purified¨ society, which is what the Nazis said. The neo-gnostic believers don´t consider the possibility of calamity of their philosophies of both left and right - they become enmeshed and committed to bringing about ¨heaven on earth¨ as they see it, and this commitment led to the tragedies such as the Holocaust, the many deaths under communism in the Soviet Union and China, the tragedies in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge etc.
The above is a rather poorly-written, clumsy attempt at summation of Del Noce´s really elegantly written and complex ideas about modernism in the second half of the 20th Century. He also discusses the importance of surrealism as a harbinger of the materialist revolution that would overtake the West eventually. He says that for the common folk, philosophical considerations were absent as they dove headlong into the liberated second half of the 20th Century, but that writers, film directors, journalists and cultural leaders in general, were well aware of the social implications of modernism and understood how the anti-traditional trend, pushed in all media since the War, would affect society.
Although Del Noce is not exactly a right-wing philosopher, and was a communist in his youth, he is a critic of the vapidity or banality of present day socio political developments, of their flimsiness and one-dimensionality. Also, that they tend to result in an ethical trap - if tradition is all wrong, then what is the basis for judgments of right or wrong? Modern man is reduced to his physical wants - food, clothing, and shelter, and even sex is eventually is another want or requirement, not necessarily linked to any ethical framework in particular.
Del Noce sees the revolution of the 20th Century that resulted in the victory of modernism as the most significant change in world history, the beginning of history´s third period, after antiquity and the Age of Christianity (in the West of course) which ended around the time of the Enlightenment.
He sees the writings of Wilhelm Reich as extremely influential with respect to the popularization of the doctrine of sexual repression as the source of many social ills, a view that resulted in reducing man´s essence to vitality alone - no longer would he be seen as having a soul. Of course, the concept of original sin had to be excised, along with a religious outlook in general.
As noted above, the idea of sexual repression was then tied to fascism, that is, the idea that fascists were viewed as sexually repressed (although Del Noce wryly notes that was far from the case for Mussolini, who was a famous womanizer) and so the anti-authoritarians had to be sexually liberated or libertines even.
Del Noce deals with the many consequences of the modernist ¨assault¨ on tradition, in the Catholic church, with the adaptation of adjustments to modernity, that he generally decries, and in society in general. But Del Noce is really considering the impact of modernism from a philosophical standpoint; his main thesis is that certain doctrines were transmuted in the first half of the 20th Century into modernism that is, the rejection of tradition, and that these doctrines were based on Marxist materialism combined with Freudianism, that they were widely disseminated one way or another worldwide via popular media such as motion pictures, magazines, books and newspapers and that the result was what he calls the crisis of modernity, because it resulted in a curiously atomized or simplified ¨new man¨ who just consists of wants that need to be satisfied: Food, clothing, shelter, sex - as if one was no different than the other in the hierarchy of wants, because they all are tangible, material, and can be satisfied in the real world - and most importantly, that this analysis is all there is to life, there is no hereafter, no afterlife, no heaven or hell.
If the consumerist form of materialism can fulfill all these material wants, consumerism then became the way to ¨heaven on earth¨ thus the overwhelming social pattern in the wealthy industrialized West since the War.
Ironically, the world is now going through a global warming crisis, which Del Noce would not have heard of, or not heard of much, by the time he died around 30 years ago - rampant consumerism, the hallmark of modernity, extended to newly developing Asian countries, pushed by both capitalism and the Chinese CP, may have brought about the global warming that may ultimately lead to a catastrophic fourth period for mankind, when all bets may be off, a period whose consequences are impossible to predict. So much for the miracles of modernity.
Del Noce is an extremely erudite, intelligent thinker. If you stick with this book, which is not easy to read, since it is rich with ideas, you will get another most interesting interpretation of reality, such as it existed back in the second half of the 20th Century, which was a critical turning point in history. I would say it is a critique of the prevailing viewpoint back then, which hailed the so-called new man, and his successful abandonment of religion, traditional social roles, women's liberation atc. At that time, nobody could imagine questioning the overwhelming modern ethos or spirit of the era. You were either ¨with it¨ or ¨square.¨ I myself lived through the period as a teen and I regarded the times as tremendously exciting, liberating, fraught with adventure. I was exactly the person Del Noce describes - so liberated.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a perceptive and highly erudite critique of modernity. Also, the translator's notes are extremely helpful and also add another humanistic touch to the work. The translator is extremely diligent and learned, precise, and his notes, always helpful.
Anyway, here are the many quotes, which I shall try to condense as much as possible in the interest of time/space: ¨From Translator's Introduction: ¨These [19th Century] philosophies [Idealism, Marxism, Positivism] had become the secular, neo-gnostic surrogate of Christianity for the European educated classes after the French Revolution...¨ ¨What was worse, [Del Noce wrote] ¨the various fashionable philosophies of that [1930s] period seemed to me attempts to accommodate violence.¨ Del Noce´s intuition was confirmed ¨by the outcome of the Second World War and by the advance of revolutionary violence, no longer described as barbaric... a form of thought spread that replaced the type of the philosopher with the one of the revolutionary. It absorbed ethics into politics, or denied... that any values are absolute, since all of them are covers for class interests and the will to power.¨ As a result of the war, large parts of the European intellectual class shifted from Idealism and historicism to Marxism.¨ ¨...by infusing Western culture with historical materialism and an attitude of radical rejection of religious transcendence, Marxism had succeeded in it pars destruens. ... [Del Noce:] ¨Marxism is the subject of contemporary history. More precisely, contemporary history is at the same time the story of its success and its failure...Marxism did realize itself, but by realizing itself at the same time it negated itself... Marxism succeeded in denying that values are absolute, and the nihilism that dominates the Western world reflects this ´success-failure´ of Marxism. Marxism paradoxically was instrumental in the rise of a new secular, relativistic, neo-bourgeois society that accepted all of Marx's metaphysical negations but rejected his religious/messianic message. Del Noce called this process a ¨heterogenesis of ends,¨ meaning that Marxism was bound to produce the exact opposite outcome of what Marx intended, due to an intrinsic contradiction in its metaphysical assumptions.¨ ¨In [Del Noce´s] ... judgment the affluent society is intrinsically totalitarian and anti-traditional because its underlying philosophy is a form of radical positivism that recognizes the empirical sciences as the only valid form of knowledge. Historically,¨it is the only possible bourgeois and secular answer to Marxism, and ... arises because of an intrinsic contradiction within Marxism itself...[it] defeats Marxism in the sense that it appropriates all its negations of transcendent values, by pushing to the limit ... the aspect of Marxism that makes it a form of absolute relativism. This has the result of turning Marxism upside down into an absolute individualism, which serves the purpose of giving the technological civilization the false appearance of being a ´democracy´ and the continuation of the spirit of liberalism.¨ ¨[According to Del Noce] Starting with Rousseau and Marx, total revolution ¨implies the replacement of religion by politics as the source of man´s liberation, since evil is a consequence of society ... and not of an original sin.¨ ¨[According to Del Noce:] ... ...Marxism was not merely a political doctrine but an all-encompassing world view based on ¨the rejection of every form of dependence and thus the extinction of religion, since God is the archetype of a worldly lord. Hence, the revolution represents a transition not just from one social situation to another, but from one stage of mankind to another... capable of transforming human nature itself.¨ Revolutionary thought had first surfaced in Jacobinism during the French Revolution, and had been diagnosed as such by Joseph de Maistre. It then reached its fullest form in Marx, and, according to Del Noce, Marxism (it its Leninist reinvention ) has been the protagonist of the historical period after the First World War.¨ ¨In [Del Noce´s] ... view, the cultural changes of the 1960s cannot be explained just in economic or sociological terms because they reflected a philosophical and cultural shift that had started in the 1950s. Del Noce describes it as a return to the mindset of the Enlightenment combined with a rediscovery of Marx, but Marx separated from his messianic-religious aspect in favor of his materialistic-relativistic aspect.¨ ¨Scientism is ¨the ´totalitarian´ conception of science, in which science is regarded as the ´only´ true form of knowledge.¨ It is the ideology of the affluent society and it is intrinsically totalitarian because it cannot rationally prove its ¨claim that science rules out all other forms of knowledge, and thus certain dimensions of reality which are declared to be either unknowable or non-existent.¨ ¨Del Noce´s assessment of the culture of the affluent society is sharply negative: it is a form of ¨absolute relativism,¨ it rejects every tradition, it reduces the human person to a ¨social atom,¨ its final outcome is ¨systematically organized mendacity¨ and ¨universal reification.¨ ¨...in a scientistic society ¨the abolition of every meta-empirical order of truth requires that the family be dissolved. No merely sociological consideration can justify keeping it.¨
From Part I: ¨Modernity, Revolution, Secularization:¨...what is called into question is not only the modernist view of the history of philosophy - the view that envisions a process toward complete liberation from the mythical mentality - but also the position that is usually called anti-modernistic, which views the development of the centuries of the modern age as a process toward catastrophe. On this matter, it is easy to point out that these two interpretations disagree only about the judgment of value, and the latter is the mirror image of the former...¨ ¨We also find [libertine thought] ... at the end of the Enlightenment, whose distinctive characteristic was that it brought together three lines of thought that in the first half of the eighteenth century seemed to be incompatible: the libertine critique of tradition; the trends in religion and natural law that - in light of this critique - switched from a conciliatory to a revolutionary attitude; and the spirit of the new science separated from metaphysics. When this synthesis broke down, which is how the Enlightenment came to an end, libertinism continued as decadentism, the revolutionary spirit as Marxism, and the scientistic spirit as positivism - the triad that defines today´s atheism.¨ ¨...the axiological concept of modernity understood as ¨it is no longer possible¨ must be replaced by a problematic concept: the centuries of the modern age are those in which the phenomenon of atheism manifested itself.¨ ¨Supposedly, what is modern is such not by continuity but by a radical break with the past, whose exhaustion should be emphasized. This is the idea of atheism as a result, which is well known because it was professed by theoretical Marxism. But...the revolution that was supposed to produce this result turned into the most extraordinary process of heterogenesis of ends that ever took place in history. It promised the transition from the reign of necessity to the reign of freedom, and it created, with totalitarianism, the most oppressive regime possible. It promised to abolish social classes, and it created a new class. It promised freedom from imperialism, and it brought about a new type of imperialism, such that the leading country can support itself only by fostering instability in other parts of the world." ¨The philosophical problem of violence is indeed typical of our century because only in it has an explicit ennoblement of violence taken place...¨ ¨Traditionally, ... violence was considered the radical evil (hubris, excess), even if it was justified as necessary under certain circumstances, reflecting a pessimistic assessment of the immutable nature of human beings.¨ ¨The idea of total revolution implies the elimination of ethics. Thought in terms of violence follows this elimination.¨ ¨...such an idea of revolution was already present in the young Marx...However, we must grant that the period from 1871 to 1914 was dominated by the attempt to reconcile the revolutionary idea with ethics (we could say that people tried, in various ways , to absorb the concept of revolution into the concept of progress: positivist socialism, Kantian socialism, Jaures´s personality which, within socialism, is the radical antithesis of Lenin´s, etc.) The two world wars and their transformation into revolutions marked the failure of such attempts and are ¨the antecedent form of the removal of the difference between peace and war. [M. Heidegger, The End of Philosophy]¨ ¨Instead, the revolution's goal is to obliterate the adversary; nothing of the old ¨eon¨ must remain in the new: ¨The Western world has hitherto, even in its darkest periods, granted the slain enemy the right to be remembered, as a self-evident acknowledgement of the fact that we are all men (and only men)...[The concentration camps] took away the individual's own death, proving that henceforth nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one. His death merely set a seal on the fact that he had never really existed.¨ [Rosmini, Principles of Ethics]¨
Del Noce attempts to explain why modernism, which he says represents a revolution, has led to socio political problems, because modernism erases tradition, casts religion aside, and does away with concepts such as the soul, and thus reduces man to a bundle of wants that can be satisfied by materialism/consumerism, by discussing what modernism is and why it inevitably led to what he views is a breakdown of morality, nihilism, etc.
Del Noce identifies the present-day crisis of modernity with the promotion of a Freud-Marx cultural conjunction in movies, books, magazines etc., such that the idea of sexual repression as the source of fascism or the authoritarian personality, is then joined to the Marxist concept of class struggle, so that sexual liberation or libertinism, as Del Noce would say, becomes part of the political struggle, or modernist revolution.
Del Noce believes the 20th Century revolution started with the two world wars, which he sees as one war with a twenty-year pause. Socio political hierarchies were turned upside down and replaced by Freudo-Marxism - even among bourgeois capitalist countries, the same trend exists, the trend to explain everything thru science or trust only material reality.
He says that Marxism did triumph worldwide, but not the way Marx hoped: Materialism was adapted by mankind except that in the West or bourgeois democracies it was pushed as consumerism. Any transcendental analysis or framework - such as through religion - was therefore pushed aside both in the communist East and the capitalist West under the influence of Marx, and this resulted in the marked decline of religious faith since the War. Del Noce crucially says that gnosticism or neo-gnosticism, that is the attainment of a spiritual insight by an alienated class, or an enlightened leader, who then proceed to push their revelation or utopian insight as possible, is the foundation of both communism and fascism, Nazism as well as positivism. This viewpoint depends on the concept of immanentism, that is, that a life-force, or vitality, is present in everything and that ¨heaven on Earth¨ can be attained in the here and now, rather than the religious transcendent viewpoint, which says that heaven is only possible in the afterlife. And so the neo-gnostics of whatever stripe will say things like a communist revolution will lead to heaven on earth, will solve everything, or treating nationalities as favored or disfavored categories will result in ¨heaven on earth¨ for the ¨purified¨ society, which is what the Nazis said. The neo-gnostic believers don´t consider the possibility of calamity of their philosophies of both left and right - they become enmeshed and committed to bringing about ¨heaven on earth¨ as they see it, and this commitment led to the tragedies such as the Holocaust, the many deaths under communism in the Soviet Union and China, the tragedies in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge etc.
The above is a rather poorly-written, clumsy attempt at summation of Del Noce´s really elegantly written and complex ideas about modernism in the second half of the 20th Century. He also discusses the importance of surrealism as a harbinger of the materialist revolution that would overtake the West eventually. He says that for the common folk, philosophical considerations were absent as they dove headlong into the liberated second half of the 20th Century, but that writers, film directors, journalists and cultural leaders in general, were well aware of the social implications of modernism and understood how the anti-traditional trend, pushed in all media since the War, would affect society.
Although Del Noce is not exactly a right-wing philosopher, and was a communist in his youth, he is a critic of the vapidity or banality of present day socio political developments, of their flimsiness and one-dimensionality. Also, that they tend to result in an ethical trap - if tradition is all wrong, then what is the basis for judgments of right or wrong? Modern man is reduced to his physical wants - food, clothing, and shelter, and even sex is eventually is another want or requirement, not necessarily linked to any ethical framework in particular.
Del Noce sees the revolution of the 20th Century that resulted in the victory of modernism as the most significant change in world history, the beginning of history´s third period, after antiquity and the Age of Christianity (in the West of course) which ended around the time of the Enlightenment.
He sees the writings of Wilhelm Reich as extremely influential with respect to the popularization of the doctrine of sexual repression as the source of many social ills, a view that resulted in reducing man´s essence to vitality alone - no longer would he be seen as having a soul. Of course, the concept of original sin had to be excised, along with a religious outlook in general.
As noted above, the idea of sexual repression was then tied to fascism, that is, the idea that fascists were viewed as sexually repressed (although Del Noce wryly notes that was far from the case for Mussolini, who was a famous womanizer) and so the anti-authoritarians had to be sexually liberated or libertines even.
Del Noce deals with the many consequences of the modernist ¨assault¨ on tradition, in the Catholic church, with the adaptation of adjustments to modernity, that he generally decries, and in society in general. But Del Noce is really considering the impact of modernism from a philosophical standpoint; his main thesis is that certain doctrines were transmuted in the first half of the 20th Century into modernism that is, the rejection of tradition, and that these doctrines were based on Marxist materialism combined with Freudianism, that they were widely disseminated one way or another worldwide via popular media such as motion pictures, magazines, books and newspapers and that the result was what he calls the crisis of modernity, because it resulted in a curiously atomized or simplified ¨new man¨ who just consists of wants that need to be satisfied: Food, clothing, shelter, sex - as if one was no different than the other in the hierarchy of wants, because they all are tangible, material, and can be satisfied in the real world - and most importantly, that this analysis is all there is to life, there is no hereafter, no afterlife, no heaven or hell.
If the consumerist form of materialism can fulfill all these material wants, consumerism then became the way to ¨heaven on earth¨ thus the overwhelming social pattern in the wealthy industrialized West since the War.
Ironically, the world is now going through a global warming crisis, which Del Noce would not have heard of, or not heard of much, by the time he died around 30 years ago - rampant consumerism, the hallmark of modernity, extended to newly developing Asian countries, pushed by both capitalism and the Chinese CP, may have brought about the global warming that may ultimately lead to a catastrophic fourth period for mankind, when all bets may be off, a period whose consequences are impossible to predict. So much for the miracles of modernity.
Del Noce is an extremely erudite, intelligent thinker. If you stick with this book, which is not easy to read, since it is rich with ideas, you will get another most interesting interpretation of reality, such as it existed back in the second half of the 20th Century, which was a critical turning point in history. I would say it is a critique of the prevailing viewpoint back then, which hailed the so-called new man, and his successful abandonment of religion, traditional social roles, women's liberation atc. At that time, nobody could imagine questioning the overwhelming modern ethos or spirit of the era. You were either ¨with it¨ or ¨square.¨ I myself lived through the period as a teen and I regarded the times as tremendously exciting, liberating, fraught with adventure. I was exactly the person Del Noce describes - so liberated.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a perceptive and highly erudite critique of modernity. Also, the translator's notes are extremely helpful and also add another humanistic touch to the work. The translator is extremely diligent and learned, precise, and his notes, always helpful.
Anyway, here are the many quotes, which I shall try to condense as much as possible in the interest of time/space: ¨From Translator's Introduction: ¨These [19th Century] philosophies [Idealism, Marxism, Positivism] had become the secular, neo-gnostic surrogate of Christianity for the European educated classes after the French Revolution...¨ ¨What was worse, [Del Noce wrote] ¨the various fashionable philosophies of that [1930s] period seemed to me attempts to accommodate violence.¨ Del Noce´s intuition was confirmed ¨by the outcome of the Second World War and by the advance of revolutionary violence, no longer described as barbaric... a form of thought spread that replaced the type of the philosopher with the one of the revolutionary. It absorbed ethics into politics, or denied... that any values are absolute, since all of them are covers for class interests and the will to power.¨ As a result of the war, large parts of the European intellectual class shifted from Idealism and historicism to Marxism.¨ ¨...by infusing Western culture with historical materialism and an attitude of radical rejection of religious transcendence, Marxism had succeeded in it pars destruens. ... [Del Noce:] ¨Marxism is the subject of contemporary history. More precisely, contemporary history is at the same time the story of its success and its failure...Marxism did realize itself, but by realizing itself at the same time it negated itself... Marxism succeeded in denying that values are absolute, and the nihilism that dominates the Western world reflects this ´success-failure´ of Marxism. Marxism paradoxically was instrumental in the rise of a new secular, relativistic, neo-bourgeois society that accepted all of Marx's metaphysical negations but rejected his religious/messianic message. Del Noce called this process a ¨heterogenesis of ends,¨ meaning that Marxism was bound to produce the exact opposite outcome of what Marx intended, due to an intrinsic contradiction in its metaphysical assumptions.¨ ¨In [Del Noce´s] ... judgment the affluent society is intrinsically totalitarian and anti-traditional because its underlying philosophy is a form of radical positivism that recognizes the empirical sciences as the only valid form of knowledge. Historically,¨it is the only possible bourgeois and secular answer to Marxism, and ... arises because of an intrinsic contradiction within Marxism itself...[it] defeats Marxism in the sense that it appropriates all its negations of transcendent values, by pushing to the limit ... the aspect of Marxism that makes it a form of absolute relativism. This has the result of turning Marxism upside down into an absolute individualism, which serves the purpose of giving the technological civilization the false appearance of being a ´democracy´ and the continuation of the spirit of liberalism.¨ ¨[According to Del Noce] Starting with Rousseau and Marx, total revolution ¨implies the replacement of religion by politics as the source of man´s liberation, since evil is a consequence of society ... and not of an original sin.¨ ¨[According to Del Noce:] ... ...Marxism was not merely a political doctrine but an all-encompassing world view based on ¨the rejection of every form of dependence and thus the extinction of religion, since God is the archetype of a worldly lord. Hence, the revolution represents a transition not just from one social situation to another, but from one stage of mankind to another... capable of transforming human nature itself.¨ Revolutionary thought had first surfaced in Jacobinism during the French Revolution, and had been diagnosed as such by Joseph de Maistre. It then reached its fullest form in Marx, and, according to Del Noce, Marxism (it its Leninist reinvention ) has been the protagonist of the historical period after the First World War.¨ ¨In [Del Noce´s] ... view, the cultural changes of the 1960s cannot be explained just in economic or sociological terms because they reflected a philosophical and cultural shift that had started in the 1950s. Del Noce describes it as a return to the mindset of the Enlightenment combined with a rediscovery of Marx, but Marx separated from his messianic-religious aspect in favor of his materialistic-relativistic aspect.¨ ¨Scientism is ¨the ´totalitarian´ conception of science, in which science is regarded as the ´only´ true form of knowledge.¨ It is the ideology of the affluent society and it is intrinsically totalitarian because it cannot rationally prove its ¨claim that science rules out all other forms of knowledge, and thus certain dimensions of reality which are declared to be either unknowable or non-existent.¨ ¨Del Noce´s assessment of the culture of the affluent society is sharply negative: it is a form of ¨absolute relativism,¨ it rejects every tradition, it reduces the human person to a ¨social atom,¨ its final outcome is ¨systematically organized mendacity¨ and ¨universal reification.¨ ¨...in a scientistic society ¨the abolition of every meta-empirical order of truth requires that the family be dissolved. No merely sociological consideration can justify keeping it.¨
From Part I: ¨Modernity, Revolution, Secularization:¨...what is called into question is not only the modernist view of the history of philosophy - the view that envisions a process toward complete liberation from the mythical mentality - but also the position that is usually called anti-modernistic, which views the development of the centuries of the modern age as a process toward catastrophe. On this matter, it is easy to point out that these two interpretations disagree only about the judgment of value, and the latter is the mirror image of the former...¨ ¨We also find [libertine thought] ... at the end of the Enlightenment, whose distinctive characteristic was that it brought together three lines of thought that in the first half of the eighteenth century seemed to be incompatible: the libertine critique of tradition; the trends in religion and natural law that - in light of this critique - switched from a conciliatory to a revolutionary attitude; and the spirit of the new science separated from metaphysics. When this synthesis broke down, which is how the Enlightenment came to an end, libertinism continued as decadentism, the revolutionary spirit as Marxism, and the scientistic spirit as positivism - the triad that defines today´s atheism.¨ ¨...the axiological concept of modernity understood as ¨it is no longer possible¨ must be replaced by a problematic concept: the centuries of the modern age are those in which the phenomenon of atheism manifested itself.¨ ¨Supposedly, what is modern is such not by continuity but by a radical break with the past, whose exhaustion should be emphasized. This is the idea of atheism as a result, which is well known because it was professed by theoretical Marxism. But...the revolution that was supposed to produce this result turned into the most extraordinary process of heterogenesis of ends that ever took place in history. It promised the transition from the reign of necessity to the reign of freedom, and it created, with totalitarianism, the most oppressive regime possible. It promised to abolish social classes, and it created a new class. It promised freedom from imperialism, and it brought about a new type of imperialism, such that the leading country can support itself only by fostering instability in other parts of the world." ¨The philosophical problem of violence is indeed typical of our century because only in it has an explicit ennoblement of violence taken place...¨ ¨Traditionally, ... violence was considered the radical evil (hubris, excess), even if it was justified as necessary under certain circumstances, reflecting a pessimistic assessment of the immutable nature of human beings.¨ ¨The idea of total revolution implies the elimination of ethics. Thought in terms of violence follows this elimination.¨ ¨...such an idea of revolution was already present in the young Marx...However, we must grant that the period from 1871 to 1914 was dominated by the attempt to reconcile the revolutionary idea with ethics (we could say that people tried, in various ways , to absorb the concept of revolution into the concept of progress: positivist socialism, Kantian socialism, Jaures´s personality which, within socialism, is the radical antithesis of Lenin´s, etc.) The two world wars and their transformation into revolutions marked the failure of such attempts and are ¨the antecedent form of the removal of the difference between peace and war. [M. Heidegger, The End of Philosophy]¨ ¨Instead, the revolution's goal is to obliterate the adversary; nothing of the old ¨eon¨ must remain in the new: ¨The Western world has hitherto, even in its darkest periods, granted the slain enemy the right to be remembered, as a self-evident acknowledgement of the fact that we are all men (and only men)...[The concentration camps] took away the individual's own death, proving that henceforth nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one. His death merely set a seal on the fact that he had never really existed.¨ [Rosmini, Principles of Ethics]¨
July 17, 2022
The life of Augusto Del Noce closely coincided with what Eric Hobsbawm called the “short twentieth century”: the period between the First World War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, which saw the end of European Christendom—the concept of Europe as a loosely cohesive civilization with a tradition of shared metaphysical ideals—and its replacement by secular totalitarian ideologies that, because of their materialist immanentism and their ungroundedness in tradition, could exercise no authority, but only generate raw power through uninhibited violence. The writings collected in this volume reflect a time in some respects quite different from our own, in which Marxism-Leninism was a major world-historical force rather than a consumer brand for mustachioed American hipsters, and the Iron Curtain ran right through the heart of Italian politics. Nonetheless, many of Del Noce’s ideas and prognostications on left-wing ideology and the phenomenon of modernity have become commonplaces of conservative and reactionary discourse in the West.
Who, after all, hasn’t heard it argued in some fashion that certain strands of revolutionary thought represent a secularized neo-Gnosticism, a “rebellion against being” (a-la Dostoyevsky’s Demons) that views one’s lived reality as the wholly corrupt, unfree, and irredeemable fabrication of a malevolent agency that must be replaced by a “totally other” reality which shares no continuity with the actually-existing world; and which places this “totally other” utopia not in some transcendent realm, as in ancient Gnosticism, but rather at the far end of the revolution, to be accomplished as an historical process?
Or that leftism replaces religion with politics, since it follows Rousseau in attributing human evil to a self-alienation imposed by society (rather than an innate proclivity for sin that can only be rectified by supernatural grace), and thus makes “total revolution,” an all-pervading societal leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom, the necessary vehicle for human emancipation and self-realization? (Though Del Noce saw further than many present-day rightists by rejecting both “conservatism”—as a critique of utopian idealism—and atavistic “reactionism” as inadequate responses to revolutionary leftism because neither properly articulates the cruciality of the metaphysical values from which tradition is derived.)
Or that contemporary bourgeois progressivism, in its embrasure of scientism—a kind of totalitarianism of science that precludes the possibility of any non-empirical way of knowing, despite the absence of empirical evidence to warrant this preclusion—and its “absolute relativism” of morality and values, which denies any transcendent horizon towards which human life might be oriented, is in actuality not “radical” or “subversive” at all, but is rather an arch-conservatism, or even a mere complex of taboos, the end of which is a completely static society in which there is no “ideal” or “platonic” standpoint from which to challenge the perpetual custodianship of technocrats, corporate elites, and career politicians?
Or that progressive thought is founded on a paradox, since it seeks to delegitimize traditional belief systems by revealing their historical contingency, and yet its own faith that the arc of human history necessarily bends toward the elevation of the immanent over the transcendent has its own intellectual genealogy, and is thus just as liable to “deconstruction” as the beliefs and values that it confidently claims to deconstruct?
One might be tempted to say that Del Noce was ahead of his time; but of course, he wasn’t. He was simply an astute observer of his present, which shares a place with our present in the eternal present of modernity: the perpetual crisis in which our turning away from the possibility of Truth has left us to flounder.
Who, after all, hasn’t heard it argued in some fashion that certain strands of revolutionary thought represent a secularized neo-Gnosticism, a “rebellion against being” (a-la Dostoyevsky’s Demons) that views one’s lived reality as the wholly corrupt, unfree, and irredeemable fabrication of a malevolent agency that must be replaced by a “totally other” reality which shares no continuity with the actually-existing world; and which places this “totally other” utopia not in some transcendent realm, as in ancient Gnosticism, but rather at the far end of the revolution, to be accomplished as an historical process?
Or that leftism replaces religion with politics, since it follows Rousseau in attributing human evil to a self-alienation imposed by society (rather than an innate proclivity for sin that can only be rectified by supernatural grace), and thus makes “total revolution,” an all-pervading societal leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom, the necessary vehicle for human emancipation and self-realization? (Though Del Noce saw further than many present-day rightists by rejecting both “conservatism”—as a critique of utopian idealism—and atavistic “reactionism” as inadequate responses to revolutionary leftism because neither properly articulates the cruciality of the metaphysical values from which tradition is derived.)
Or that contemporary bourgeois progressivism, in its embrasure of scientism—a kind of totalitarianism of science that precludes the possibility of any non-empirical way of knowing, despite the absence of empirical evidence to warrant this preclusion—and its “absolute relativism” of morality and values, which denies any transcendent horizon towards which human life might be oriented, is in actuality not “radical” or “subversive” at all, but is rather an arch-conservatism, or even a mere complex of taboos, the end of which is a completely static society in which there is no “ideal” or “platonic” standpoint from which to challenge the perpetual custodianship of technocrats, corporate elites, and career politicians?
Or that progressive thought is founded on a paradox, since it seeks to delegitimize traditional belief systems by revealing their historical contingency, and yet its own faith that the arc of human history necessarily bends toward the elevation of the immanent over the transcendent has its own intellectual genealogy, and is thus just as liable to “deconstruction” as the beliefs and values that it confidently claims to deconstruct?
One might be tempted to say that Del Noce was ahead of his time; but of course, he wasn’t. He was simply an astute observer of his present, which shares a place with our present in the eternal present of modernity: the perpetual crisis in which our turning away from the possibility of Truth has left us to flounder.
November 6, 2015
Del Noce says nothing radically new, but speaks with great clarity as to the philosophical assumptions and goals of modernity, scientism, and "revolution." The book is a series of reprinted essays, causing the chapters to be somewhat repetitive. But this allows his arguments to be more readily absorbed and retained. Most of the essays date from late sixties to 1970 and would reflect the European (Italian) outlook from that time (soon after the student riots of 1968, Student Riots, May 1968). Though now dated in Europe, his arguments have current relevancy in the U.S. Of most significance is his view that the advocates of modernity, or scientism, or revolution, (also called progressivism, “affluent” or “technological” or “permissive” society by Del Noce), (1) advocate a "new man" cut off from all prior tradition, morality, cultural and philosophical restraints, (2) that science has the only true knowledge, and (3) that Christians can believe what they want, but are not permitted to challenge the scientistic world view in the public forum. Del Noce makes clear the actual dichotomy between the scientistic world view and the Christian world view. Though terminology of these competing views is similar, the presuppositions and goals of the two views are opposed in fact. Del Noce speaks as a cultural Catholic, Thomist, Platonist, and accepts transcendental moral norms. Interestingly, he also classifies Puritans as a new form of Gnostics. But, his main value is in making it easy to understand how profound the change has been in the views of the academic elites towards the notions of tradition, morals, and truth.
August 9, 2019
Meus ensaios sobre esta e outras obras de Del Noce:
https://cultura.estadao.com.br/blogs/...
https://cultura.estadao.com.br/blogs/...
https://cultura.estadao.com.br/blogs/...
https://cultura.estadao.com.br/blogs/...
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October 5, 2015Few of us have time to read serious books these days. Fewer still have the patience—or the discipline—to engage in the kind of rigorous philosophical analysis needed to understand the roots of the modern crisis. Rare indeed is the individual who can penetrate into deeper truths and reveal the underlying assumptions and conceptual distortions that obscure our view of social and political reality. The Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce (1910-89) was just such an individual.
Considered one of the most important political thinkers of postwar Italy, his works have escaped the attention of most non-Italian-speaking scholars. But in The Crisis of Modernity, Carlo Lancellotti, a mathematics professor at City University of New York, has carefully selected and translated 12 essays and lectures by Del Noce. For those interested in rigorous conservative critiques of modernity, this collection offers something exotic and new.
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
Considered one of the most important political thinkers of postwar Italy, his works have escaped the attention of most non-Italian-speaking scholars. But in The Crisis of Modernity, Carlo Lancellotti, a mathematics professor at City University of New York, has carefully selected and translated 12 essays and lectures by Del Noce. For those interested in rigorous conservative critiques of modernity, this collection offers something exotic and new.
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
July 6, 2022
Modern Italy is a land of contradictions. For all its reputation as a bastion of Catholicism (until of late, when secularism has been catching up there as well, though even now it is not nearly as dominant in Italy as it may be in France and northern Europe), during the nineteenth-century Risorgimento a countervailing current of Enlightenment rationalism registered itself (without which it would be impossible to understand Mussolini) and, after the second world war and the demise of fascism, the Communist party always made a surprisingly strong showing on the Italian political scene. In consequence, anyone who spends his formative years under such an environment must acquire a keen sense of how these contrasting forces play out in re their philosophical moment. Indeed, with Augusto del Noce we have just such a man, born in 1910 and thus a witness as a young university student of the fascist episode and its aftermath. That is why he has won recognition, not just in his native land, as a noted political philosopher and perceptive critic of the crisis of modernity and its accompanying secularization. The theoretical physicist Carlo Lancellotti has performed for us the service of translating del Noce’s major works into English. The present volume entitled the Crisis of Modernity (Lancellotti’s first translatorial effort, published in 2014) collects essays from throughout del Noce’s career, centering on the theme of twentieth-century cultural history, in particular, the progress of secularization and of the sexual revolution. In a companion review immediately to follow we shall also take a look at his Age of Secularization (published in 2017).
Wherein does the crisis of modernity consist, in del Noce’s account? As he explains in a series of concise theses in ‘The idea of modernity’ [pp. 3-18], what defines modernity is the exclusion of the supernatural, or religious transcendence. Del Noce reprises a number of trends in intellectual history since the Renaissance all tending to this outcome, which by the turn of the twentieth century manifested itself in the rise of atheism as a mass phenomenon. Hence, for del Noce, the central role of Marxism to understanding modernity. For he has two points to stress: first, how thoroughly atheistic Marxism is from the ground up; second, the significance of the failure of the predicted revolution. In his eyes what this means is that it indeed shows Marx to have been wrong but, at the same time, attributes to Marxism and its failure the key factor in bringing about the current predicament. For why did Marx’s prophesied proletarian revolution never come to pass? The proletarian class was co-opted by a brand of ‘market socialism’ – which, needless to say, Engels and Lenin despise! – that promises to relieve its misery and alienation by improving working conditions and the material standard of life in general. Perhaps Marx himself omitted to notice the revolutionary implications of technology. For increases in productivity made possible by technical advance mean that consumer goods, formerly luxuries, can be manufactured cheaply enough to become affordable to the masses.
Another point not generally recognized is the intrinsic connection between Marxism and violence, spelled out in three subsequent essays, ‘Violence and modern Gnosticism’ [pp. 19-48], ‘Revolution, Risorgimento, Tradition’ [pp. 49-58] and ‘The latent metaphysics within contemporary politics’ [pp. 59-72]. It hardly comes as a surprise that the disappearance of ethics in atheism leads to the acceptance, on principle, of violence as a means of furthering the revolution. But nobody seriously contemplates a Marxist revolution anymore; its enduring aspect remains a world-view premised on the preeminence of violence as the hermeutical key to disclosing the human condition which makes for the distinguishing mark of all thought on the liberal left and which is to be opposed to its very antithesis, the religious concepts of providence and peace.
Thus, instead of revolution and a dictatorship of the proletariat, we get a consumerist society characterized by never-before-seen affluence. Now, del Noce sees the spiritual crisis of modernity as the direct issue of this transformation. For it is responsible for secularization and the advent of the so-called sexual revolution, for which the upheavals of 1968 may serve as a bellwether. Several of his other essays in the present volume pursue the implications. For one, despite popular legends about the hippies, they had very little novel on offer, for ‘Wilhelm Reich said everything essential about the sexual revolution forty years ago [as of 1970] in a book bearing that very title [published in Vienna in 1930]’ [p. 158]. Del Noce goes on to document this claim in a careful analysis of all aspects of Reich’s work in ‘The ascendance of eroticism’ [pp. 157-186], in which he lays stress on the radically anti-Christian metaphysical presuppositions of today’s eroticism or specious sexual ‘liberation’. That is why ‘any “dialogue” with the advocates of sexual liberalization is perfectly useless, simply because they start by denying a priori the metaphysics that is the source of what they regard as “repressive” morality’ [p. 162] – a judgment no less true fifty years later, but del Noce is prescient enough to have discerned what was in the offing, the extirpation of any remnant of traditional modesty in adults and now the sexualization of grade-school children to which the liberal elite has committed itself.
Three further essays explore the significance of this reversal of moral standards, ‘The shadow of tomorrow’ [pp. 92-117], ‘The death of the sacred’ [pp. 118-136] and ‘The roots of the crisis’ [pp. 137-156]. After pondering these writings, perhaps the reader will understand how the ‘new permissivism’ and the ‘new totalitarianism’ go hand-in-hand! Perhaps the most illuminating essay of the lot, though, is the next to last, ‘Authority versus power’ [pp. 189-246], for what may account for the modern condition at its deepest level is the replacement of authority (in the genuine etymological sense, of course, which del Noce takes pains to elucidate) by naked power.
To be recommended as thought-provoking, but keep in mind that del Noce excels at analysis and critical diagnosis but enjoys no poetic gift for imagining what things could be like, if one were to seek to set aside the pathologies of modernity and to pursue eudaimonia as best one can under the circumstances. Three stars, deducting two stars for lack of originality. For it is not enough to diagnose the problems of modernity, but one ought to come forward with a constructive response to them, and this del Noce nowhere essays.
Wherein does the crisis of modernity consist, in del Noce’s account? As he explains in a series of concise theses in ‘The idea of modernity’ [pp. 3-18], what defines modernity is the exclusion of the supernatural, or religious transcendence. Del Noce reprises a number of trends in intellectual history since the Renaissance all tending to this outcome, which by the turn of the twentieth century manifested itself in the rise of atheism as a mass phenomenon. Hence, for del Noce, the central role of Marxism to understanding modernity. For he has two points to stress: first, how thoroughly atheistic Marxism is from the ground up; second, the significance of the failure of the predicted revolution. In his eyes what this means is that it indeed shows Marx to have been wrong but, at the same time, attributes to Marxism and its failure the key factor in bringing about the current predicament. For why did Marx’s prophesied proletarian revolution never come to pass? The proletarian class was co-opted by a brand of ‘market socialism’ – which, needless to say, Engels and Lenin despise! – that promises to relieve its misery and alienation by improving working conditions and the material standard of life in general. Perhaps Marx himself omitted to notice the revolutionary implications of technology. For increases in productivity made possible by technical advance mean that consumer goods, formerly luxuries, can be manufactured cheaply enough to become affordable to the masses.
Another point not generally recognized is the intrinsic connection between Marxism and violence, spelled out in three subsequent essays, ‘Violence and modern Gnosticism’ [pp. 19-48], ‘Revolution, Risorgimento, Tradition’ [pp. 49-58] and ‘The latent metaphysics within contemporary politics’ [pp. 59-72]. It hardly comes as a surprise that the disappearance of ethics in atheism leads to the acceptance, on principle, of violence as a means of furthering the revolution. But nobody seriously contemplates a Marxist revolution anymore; its enduring aspect remains a world-view premised on the preeminence of violence as the hermeutical key to disclosing the human condition which makes for the distinguishing mark of all thought on the liberal left and which is to be opposed to its very antithesis, the religious concepts of providence and peace.
Thus, instead of revolution and a dictatorship of the proletariat, we get a consumerist society characterized by never-before-seen affluence. Now, del Noce sees the spiritual crisis of modernity as the direct issue of this transformation. For it is responsible for secularization and the advent of the so-called sexual revolution, for which the upheavals of 1968 may serve as a bellwether. Several of his other essays in the present volume pursue the implications. For one, despite popular legends about the hippies, they had very little novel on offer, for ‘Wilhelm Reich said everything essential about the sexual revolution forty years ago [as of 1970] in a book bearing that very title [published in Vienna in 1930]’ [p. 158]. Del Noce goes on to document this claim in a careful analysis of all aspects of Reich’s work in ‘The ascendance of eroticism’ [pp. 157-186], in which he lays stress on the radically anti-Christian metaphysical presuppositions of today’s eroticism or specious sexual ‘liberation’. That is why ‘any “dialogue” with the advocates of sexual liberalization is perfectly useless, simply because they start by denying a priori the metaphysics that is the source of what they regard as “repressive” morality’ [p. 162] – a judgment no less true fifty years later, but del Noce is prescient enough to have discerned what was in the offing, the extirpation of any remnant of traditional modesty in adults and now the sexualization of grade-school children to which the liberal elite has committed itself.
Three further essays explore the significance of this reversal of moral standards, ‘The shadow of tomorrow’ [pp. 92-117], ‘The death of the sacred’ [pp. 118-136] and ‘The roots of the crisis’ [pp. 137-156]. After pondering these writings, perhaps the reader will understand how the ‘new permissivism’ and the ‘new totalitarianism’ go hand-in-hand! Perhaps the most illuminating essay of the lot, though, is the next to last, ‘Authority versus power’ [pp. 189-246], for what may account for the modern condition at its deepest level is the replacement of authority (in the genuine etymological sense, of course, which del Noce takes pains to elucidate) by naked power.
To be recommended as thought-provoking, but keep in mind that del Noce excels at analysis and critical diagnosis but enjoys no poetic gift for imagining what things could be like, if one were to seek to set aside the pathologies of modernity and to pursue eudaimonia as best one can under the circumstances. Three stars, deducting two stars for lack of originality. For it is not enough to diagnose the problems of modernity, but one ought to come forward with a constructive response to them, and this del Noce nowhere essays.
October 29, 2022
Modernity can be encapsulated as a long and gradual process of man closing himself off from the spirit of tradition, transcendence, and the "world beyond". This was supposed to end in man's full liberation from the repressive shackles of the past, instead it is becoming increasingly undeniable that the real end of this process is the most oppressive form of totalitarianism ever seen.
As Del Noce states at the end of the lengthiest and arguably greatest essay in this collection -'Authority Versus Power' - the idea of "criticism" has almost always been associated with this process, freeing man from the last dogmatic remnants of classical metaphysics and the traditional worldview. Perhaps today our task is to invert this meaning of criticism. It is through the critique of the crisis of modernity that we will precisely be able to define the inadequate expression of classical metaphysics that led to the current crisis, and we may overcome it by expressing the tradition in an ever-more complete fidelity.
This book is a great introductory collection of essays to one of the most important Catholic intellectuals of the 20th century. Immense gratitude is owed to Carlo Lancellotti for bringing Del Noce's thought to the English-speaking world.
As Del Noce states at the end of the lengthiest and arguably greatest essay in this collection -'Authority Versus Power' - the idea of "criticism" has almost always been associated with this process, freeing man from the last dogmatic remnants of classical metaphysics and the traditional worldview. Perhaps today our task is to invert this meaning of criticism. It is through the critique of the crisis of modernity that we will precisely be able to define the inadequate expression of classical metaphysics that led to the current crisis, and we may overcome it by expressing the tradition in an ever-more complete fidelity.
This book is a great introductory collection of essays to one of the most important Catholic intellectuals of the 20th century. Immense gratitude is owed to Carlo Lancellotti for bringing Del Noce's thought to the English-speaking world.
November 28, 2020
There are a lot of insights in this book, many things explained in fundamental ways.
The most fundamental argument is that we generally believe we are trapped in our moment, cut off from any metaphysical permanence and guidance. The greatest problems we face are rooted in that false belief, and del Noce's essays endeavor to demonstrate how. That is the crisis of modernity. In his own way, by addressing related topics, del Noce is arguing what Richard Weaver did a few decades earlier. There are those to whom Weaver doesn't appeal who will perhaps listen to del Noce instead. He is very illuminating on anything he assays in his essays.
The most fundamental argument is that we generally believe we are trapped in our moment, cut off from any metaphysical permanence and guidance. The greatest problems we face are rooted in that false belief, and del Noce's essays endeavor to demonstrate how. That is the crisis of modernity. In his own way, by addressing related topics, del Noce is arguing what Richard Weaver did a few decades earlier. There are those to whom Weaver doesn't appeal who will perhaps listen to del Noce instead. He is very illuminating on anything he assays in his essays.
May 30, 2022
A heavy philosophical read. Del Noce is a master at taking ideas to their logical end. This collection of his work is so relevant for today as many of the ideas he explores are currently on full display. If one wants a deeper insight into Marxism, neo Gnosticism and why our society is in the state it is, this is the book for you.
October 4, 2017
Wrote a review of 'The Crisis of Modernity' for Thermidor magazine here: http://thermidormag.com/augusto-del-n...
July 30, 2021
A challenging read but not difficult. Rewards slow read & reflection. Genuinely thought provoking and refreshing to take in the philosophical perspective on modernity & political thought from an Italian professor of the close post war European era. I took my time in order for the ideas to sink in and found it a very stimulating read. Among other things it elegantly rips apart the cancer that is Marxism.
July 6, 2022
Clarifies our cultural conundrum of ascendance of the feminine but with decline of the masculine, instead of establishing a balanced solution of both, ie.Yin and Yang. This as metaphor for abandonment of Father-figure (God), with whom to depend, vs.
being independent and free, but increasingly alienated and alone. Science becomes the replacement for God, now dead. The result is what he calls a “technological world”, with emphasis on material and sensory pleasure.
Interesting.
being independent and free, but increasingly alienated and alone. Science becomes the replacement for God, now dead. The result is what he calls a “technological world”, with emphasis on material and sensory pleasure.
Interesting.
March 29, 2020
Eye opening historical assessments of the ground motives of modern European and Western society. Fascism is inverted Marxism, for instance. Read what he means. Why social justice movements are what they are, Del Noce helps one to see; part of the currently operative religious drive of the West. An indispensable supplement to Voegelin and George Grant (d. 1989).
June 6, 2023
The Crisis of Modernity is an important work and perhaps deserves five stars, but it is very philosophically dense and I found it very difficult to follow. I certainly only recommend this book to the very philosophically literate.
September 27, 2023
“The Crisis of Modernity” ignited my interest in the philosophy of history and cultural politics. It whet my appetite, and it arouses my interest in Del Noce’s larger works.
One needs to understand the greater history of the 20th century to really appreciate these essays.
One needs to understand the greater history of the 20th century to really appreciate these essays.
December 7, 2022
Can't believe this guy. Quite the analysis. Important interpretation of Marxism, important interpretation of liberal democracy. Big recommend.
May 11, 2022
couple pages in and he's like "marxism is actually Gnosticism, the first great heresy, it's black magic!" this shit is so stupid lol grow up
September 5, 2023
A superlative study of 20th century intellectual development which explains exactly the metaphysical and historical roots of the current Left and Right. This book is a collection of essays intended as an introduction to Del Noce's work for an English-speaking audience. A quick summary:
The starting point of Marxism in the 19th century is the negation of transcendence and the affirmation of Man's autonomy. The implication of this is that there is no Platonic Good which exists meta-historically, no objective Order of Values. Everything is merely historical IE everything is the product of social/political environment and therefore created by Man. But if 'value' is created by man it is vested with Man's political interest and therefore morality is just an attempt to mystify class interest.
From here however Marxism smuggles in a sort of horizontal Gnosticism. History, replacing in a sense Divine Providence, points to a future where the Proletariat will gain consciousness of its own interest and overturn the ruling class. This will happen via a revolution which will see this world swept away and a new one brought in. Thus replace the ascetic Gnostic's evil/corrupted material present with the present bourgeious capitalistic system, and the promise of a heavenly afterlife with a communistic future.
The central argument developed in this book is that the West, though it defeated Communism politically, was culturally captured by it. But because it had already rejected its political (revolutionary) component, it inherited nothing but the negation of transcendence. Thus it had nowhere to go but toward the nihlistic hedonism which characterises the current epoch, which is no doubt cognisant of the problem (see the rhetoric around climate change) but is unable to ameliorate a problem whose root it cannot understand. To Marx was added Freud and the denial of the Family. This because the Family is the essential vessel through which Objetive Values are handed down (Del Noce is at pains to point out that 'tradition' derives from the Latin 'tradere' to hand down/over). Hence we get the Sexual Revolution and the 68 rebellion as revolt against 'repression', which allowed the bourgeiousie to shed any final concessions to a Christian conception of morality that it was hampered by, leaving the field free to an unbridled consumerism. (And yet only think how Leftists today associate racism, sexism, transphobia etc with Capitalism, even as they oppose the very forces which Capitalism itself destroyed and, like Capitalism, wish to abstract all human difference under the ultra-materialist umbrella of 'bodies'. Of course, today's Technocratic Right represented by people such as Rishi Sunak are equally deluded about what actual conservatism means.)
The result of all this is that we are no longer able to distinguish between Power and Authority. The idea of Authority - of an objective Good and derived set of moral laws that should be obeyed and handed down - is by nature a metaphysical proposition. If this is denied (without evidence, of course), you have only Power. Anyone who has studied the humanities in any Western University will instantly recognise this point and see at once its myriad ramifications to which students are subjected every year.
The starting point of Marxism in the 19th century is the negation of transcendence and the affirmation of Man's autonomy. The implication of this is that there is no Platonic Good which exists meta-historically, no objective Order of Values. Everything is merely historical IE everything is the product of social/political environment and therefore created by Man. But if 'value' is created by man it is vested with Man's political interest and therefore morality is just an attempt to mystify class interest.
From here however Marxism smuggles in a sort of horizontal Gnosticism. History, replacing in a sense Divine Providence, points to a future where the Proletariat will gain consciousness of its own interest and overturn the ruling class. This will happen via a revolution which will see this world swept away and a new one brought in. Thus replace the ascetic Gnostic's evil/corrupted material present with the present bourgeious capitalistic system, and the promise of a heavenly afterlife with a communistic future.
The central argument developed in this book is that the West, though it defeated Communism politically, was culturally captured by it. But because it had already rejected its political (revolutionary) component, it inherited nothing but the negation of transcendence. Thus it had nowhere to go but toward the nihlistic hedonism which characterises the current epoch, which is no doubt cognisant of the problem (see the rhetoric around climate change) but is unable to ameliorate a problem whose root it cannot understand. To Marx was added Freud and the denial of the Family. This because the Family is the essential vessel through which Objetive Values are handed down (Del Noce is at pains to point out that 'tradition' derives from the Latin 'tradere' to hand down/over). Hence we get the Sexual Revolution and the 68 rebellion as revolt against 'repression', which allowed the bourgeiousie to shed any final concessions to a Christian conception of morality that it was hampered by, leaving the field free to an unbridled consumerism. (And yet only think how Leftists today associate racism, sexism, transphobia etc with Capitalism, even as they oppose the very forces which Capitalism itself destroyed and, like Capitalism, wish to abstract all human difference under the ultra-materialist umbrella of 'bodies'. Of course, today's Technocratic Right represented by people such as Rishi Sunak are equally deluded about what actual conservatism means.)
The result of all this is that we are no longer able to distinguish between Power and Authority. The idea of Authority - of an objective Good and derived set of moral laws that should be obeyed and handed down - is by nature a metaphysical proposition. If this is denied (without evidence, of course), you have only Power. Anyone who has studied the humanities in any Western University will instantly recognise this point and see at once its myriad ramifications to which students are subjected every year.
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