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The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity
This book is a learned essay at the intersection of politics, philosophy, and religion. It is first and foremost a diagnosis and critique of the secular religion of our time, humanitarianism, or the “religion of humanity.” It argues that the humanitarian impulse to regard modern man as the measure of all things has begun to corrupt Christianity itself, reducing it to an inordinate concern for “social justice,” radical political change, and an increasingly fanatical egalitarianism. Christianity thus loses its transcendental reference points at the same time that it undermines balanced political judgment. Humanitarians, secular or religious, confuse peace with pacifism, equitable social arrangements with socialism, and moral judgment with utopianism and sentimentality.
With a foreword by the distinguished political philosopher Pierre Manent, Mahoney’s book follows Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in affirming that Christianity is in no way reducible to a “humanitarian moral message.” In a pungent if respectful analysis, it demonstrates that Pope Francis has increasingly confused the Gospel with left-wing humanitarianism and egalitarianism that owes little to classical or Christian wisdom. It takes its bearings from a series of thinkers (Orestes Brownson, Aurel Kolnai, Vladimir Soloviev, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) who have been instructive critics of the “religion of humanity.” These thinkers were men of peace who rejected ideological pacifism and never confused Christianity with unthinking sentimentality. The book ends by affirming the power of reason, informed by revealed faith, to provide a humanizing alternative to utopian illusions and nihilistic despair.
With a foreword by the distinguished political philosopher Pierre Manent, Mahoney’s book follows Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in affirming that Christianity is in no way reducible to a “humanitarian moral message.” In a pungent if respectful analysis, it demonstrates that Pope Francis has increasingly confused the Gospel with left-wing humanitarianism and egalitarianism that owes little to classical or Christian wisdom. It takes its bearings from a series of thinkers (Orestes Brownson, Aurel Kolnai, Vladimir Soloviev, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) who have been instructive critics of the “religion of humanity.” These thinkers were men of peace who rejected ideological pacifism and never confused Christianity with unthinking sentimentality. The book ends by affirming the power of reason, informed by revealed faith, to provide a humanizing alternative to utopian illusions and nihilistic despair.
180 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 4, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
December 15, 2018
This was a good book but requires a knowledge of a great deal of background information from philosophy and theology to fully appreciate. It would also be good to have a good working knowledge of the philosophy of history/politics.
I think the premise of the book--that the religion of humanity subverts Christianity was well developed and is accurate.
I thought that the author did a great job of breaking down some difficult texts and passages from other works in order to give the reader an overview of those that would take a great deal more time to research and read independently. He uses examples from thinkers (Soloviev, Solzhenitsyn, Brownson) of the past and in the current age to make his argument. He writes about Auguste Comte and the positivism movement that began in the mid-19th century and its espousal of the religion of humanity and its inherent errors.
His commentary on Pope Francis and the Catholic Church was helpful. I learned some information about the Catholic Church's stance on issues (collectivism, nation formation, government) that I wasn't aware of prior to reading the book.
I do think this would be a difficult read for those who do not like a detailed analysis of history or philosophy.
Overall, I'd recommend this to those who are interested in a detailed analysis of the works of the thinkers who have been on the cusp of theology and philosophy and how they have also seen how humanitarianism subverts Christianity.
Christianity cannot be boiled down to simple humanitarianism. The divine is a necessity in Christianity--and cannot be unmoored from it. True Christian discernment means being able to separate what is right from what is almost right. The religion of humanity is deceptive and Christians and non-Christians alike continue to be confused. Jesus was not a social justice warrior in the modern sense of the concept.
I think the premise of the book--that the religion of humanity subverts Christianity was well developed and is accurate.
I thought that the author did a great job of breaking down some difficult texts and passages from other works in order to give the reader an overview of those that would take a great deal more time to research and read independently. He uses examples from thinkers (Soloviev, Solzhenitsyn, Brownson) of the past and in the current age to make his argument. He writes about Auguste Comte and the positivism movement that began in the mid-19th century and its espousal of the religion of humanity and its inherent errors.
His commentary on Pope Francis and the Catholic Church was helpful. I learned some information about the Catholic Church's stance on issues (collectivism, nation formation, government) that I wasn't aware of prior to reading the book.
I do think this would be a difficult read for those who do not like a detailed analysis of history or philosophy.
Overall, I'd recommend this to those who are interested in a detailed analysis of the works of the thinkers who have been on the cusp of theology and philosophy and how they have also seen how humanitarianism subverts Christianity.
Christianity cannot be boiled down to simple humanitarianism. The divine is a necessity in Christianity--and cannot be unmoored from it. True Christian discernment means being able to separate what is right from what is almost right. The religion of humanity is deceptive and Christians and non-Christians alike continue to be confused. Jesus was not a social justice warrior in the modern sense of the concept.
August 1, 2019
In The Idol of Our Age, Daniel Mahoney argues that since the nineteenth century our Christian moral and intellectual inheritance has been gradually and surreptitiously subverted by an immanentized, godless, and superficially “humanistic” secular ideology, which Mahoney, following Auguste Comte, refers to as the “religion of humanity”. This humanitarianism has subtly but profoundly corrupted our moral and political discourse, and has even begun to parasitize the Church itself.
Beginning with Auguste Comte and the positivist movement of the mid nineteenth century, the ideology of humanitarianism rejects any theistic or metaphysical foundations for social order, instead taking “humanity as such” as its sole point of reference. Moral judgements are made not in accordance with any transcendental concepts of good and evil, but instead with vaguely-defined and self-contradictory notions of equality, liberty, and progress.
The overarching theme, which Mahoney traces through the works of such neglected but prescient thinkers as Orestes Brownson, Vladimir Soloviev, and Aurel Kolnai, is that a humanitarianism which disregards that which is beyond the human ends up subverting itself, producing the most inhuman totalitarianisms. If humanity, conceived of in the abstract, becomes one’s “god”, humanitarianism ends up becoming a sort of ideological prison; thought and action become subordinated to some ideologically-defined imperative of collective human progress and wellbeing. Nazism and Communism were not characterized by their commitment to an absolute moral reality, as many believe, but rather by a perversely “humanitarian” eschewal of such a reality in favor of the purely material and relative demands of the race war or class struggle. Only with the light of God, accessible through a learned cultivation of conscience, can a genuine human flourishing be known and achieved.
Beginning with Auguste Comte and the positivist movement of the mid nineteenth century, the ideology of humanitarianism rejects any theistic or metaphysical foundations for social order, instead taking “humanity as such” as its sole point of reference. Moral judgements are made not in accordance with any transcendental concepts of good and evil, but instead with vaguely-defined and self-contradictory notions of equality, liberty, and progress.
The overarching theme, which Mahoney traces through the works of such neglected but prescient thinkers as Orestes Brownson, Vladimir Soloviev, and Aurel Kolnai, is that a humanitarianism which disregards that which is beyond the human ends up subverting itself, producing the most inhuman totalitarianisms. If humanity, conceived of in the abstract, becomes one’s “god”, humanitarianism ends up becoming a sort of ideological prison; thought and action become subordinated to some ideologically-defined imperative of collective human progress and wellbeing. Nazism and Communism were not characterized by their commitment to an absolute moral reality, as many believe, but rather by a perversely “humanitarian” eschewal of such a reality in favor of the purely material and relative demands of the race war or class struggle. Only with the light of God, accessible through a learned cultivation of conscience, can a genuine human flourishing be known and achieved.
July 6, 2023
ENGLISH: The chapter on Soloviev's story about the anti-Christ is very interesting. The chapter on Solzhenitsyn's huge series of novels (The Red Wheel) is also interesting, although it tells about the Russian Revolution and is intended as a defense of modern states and nationalities against Tolstoi-style pacifism.
He reproaches Pope Francis mainly three things: a) His defense of immigration without limitations and without borders. b) His defense of globalization and a world government. c) What he has not said in his publications and speeches. Mainly, that he does not espouse nationalism, which Mahoney asserts is an essential part of European Christianity. He is also annoyed by for some of his appointments, which may be debatable, but are not directly related to the defense of the faith.
I think Mahoney is too "nationalistic." He views Western-style nationalism as inextricably linked to Christianity. I find this idea dangerous. In my opinion, Christianity should not be linked to a political system, not even to democracy. On the other hand, I don't want a world government, which I consider extremely dangerous (especially today), as I have discussed in this post on my blog: https://populscience.blogspot.com/202...
For Besançon, Dostoevsky was too complacent about evil: wrongheadedly, he hated burgeois indifference more than genuine evildoing. What about Rev.3-15-16? I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. Perhaps Dostoevsky wasn't so far from the truth as Besançon (or Mahoney) seem to think.
ESPAÑOL: Muy interesante el capítulo sobre el cuento de Soloviev sobre el antiCristo. El capítulo sobre la gran serie de novelas de Solzhenitsyn (La Rueda Roja) también es interesante, aunque habla de la Revolución Rusa y se enfoca principalmente como una defensa de los estados y nacionalidades modernos contra el pacifismo a lo Tolstoi.
Al Papa Francisco le echa en cara sobre todo tres cosas: a) Su defensa de la inmigración sin limitaciones y sin fronteras. b) Su defensa de la globalización y de un gobierno mundial. c) Lo que no ha dicho en sus publicaciones y sus discursos. Especialmente que no defienda el nacionalismo, que según Mahoney es parte esencial del cristianismo europeo. También le reprocha algunos de sus nombramientos, que pueden ser discutibles, pero no tienen relación directa con la defensa de la fe.
Creo que Mahoney es demasiado "nacionalista". Considera el nacionalismo al estilo occidental como indisolublemente ligado al cristianismo. Esta idea me parece peligrosa. En mi opinión, el cristianismo no debe ligarse a un sistema político, ni siquiera a la democracia. Lo que no impide que yo tampoco quiera un gobierno mundial, que me parece extremadamente peligroso (especialmente hoy día), como he indicado en este artículo de mi blog: https://divulciencia.blogspot.com/202...
Para Besançon, Dostoievski era demasiado complaciente con el mal: equivocadamente, odiaba la indiferencia burguesa más que la maldad genuina. Pero entonces, ¿qué hacemos con Ap.3-15-16? Yo conozco tus obras, que no eres frío ni caliente. ¡Ojalá fueses frío o caliente! Pero porque eres tibio, y no frío o caliente, te vomitaré de mi boca. Quizá Dostoievski no estaba tan lejos de la verdad como parecen pensar Besançon o Mahoney.
He reproaches Pope Francis mainly three things: a) His defense of immigration without limitations and without borders. b) His defense of globalization and a world government. c) What he has not said in his publications and speeches. Mainly, that he does not espouse nationalism, which Mahoney asserts is an essential part of European Christianity. He is also annoyed by for some of his appointments, which may be debatable, but are not directly related to the defense of the faith.
I think Mahoney is too "nationalistic." He views Western-style nationalism as inextricably linked to Christianity. I find this idea dangerous. In my opinion, Christianity should not be linked to a political system, not even to democracy. On the other hand, I don't want a world government, which I consider extremely dangerous (especially today), as I have discussed in this post on my blog: https://populscience.blogspot.com/202...
For Besançon, Dostoevsky was too complacent about evil: wrongheadedly, he hated burgeois indifference more than genuine evildoing. What about Rev.3-15-16? I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. Perhaps Dostoevsky wasn't so far from the truth as Besançon (or Mahoney) seem to think.
ESPAÑOL: Muy interesante el capítulo sobre el cuento de Soloviev sobre el antiCristo. El capítulo sobre la gran serie de novelas de Solzhenitsyn (La Rueda Roja) también es interesante, aunque habla de la Revolución Rusa y se enfoca principalmente como una defensa de los estados y nacionalidades modernos contra el pacifismo a lo Tolstoi.
Al Papa Francisco le echa en cara sobre todo tres cosas: a) Su defensa de la inmigración sin limitaciones y sin fronteras. b) Su defensa de la globalización y de un gobierno mundial. c) Lo que no ha dicho en sus publicaciones y sus discursos. Especialmente que no defienda el nacionalismo, que según Mahoney es parte esencial del cristianismo europeo. También le reprocha algunos de sus nombramientos, que pueden ser discutibles, pero no tienen relación directa con la defensa de la fe.
Creo que Mahoney es demasiado "nacionalista". Considera el nacionalismo al estilo occidental como indisolublemente ligado al cristianismo. Esta idea me parece peligrosa. En mi opinión, el cristianismo no debe ligarse a un sistema político, ni siquiera a la democracia. Lo que no impide que yo tampoco quiera un gobierno mundial, que me parece extremadamente peligroso (especialmente hoy día), como he indicado en este artículo de mi blog: https://divulciencia.blogspot.com/202...
Para Besançon, Dostoievski era demasiado complaciente con el mal: equivocadamente, odiaba la indiferencia burguesa más que la maldad genuina. Pero entonces, ¿qué hacemos con Ap.3-15-16? Yo conozco tus obras, que no eres frío ni caliente. ¡Ojalá fueses frío o caliente! Pero porque eres tibio, y no frío o caliente, te vomitaré de mi boca. Quizá Dostoievski no estaba tan lejos de la verdad como parecen pensar Besançon o Mahoney.
April 1, 2019
I happened to be in London (on vacation) when the Brexit brouhaha was coming to a head and a million or so Brits descended on the downtown streets to denounce it. It was an impressive show. What’s going on is an overriding “we are the world” sentiment. The question isn’t whether being in or out of the EU is economically the best thing for Britain, or even whether British sovereignty is in jeopardy. The question is whether Brexit moves us closer to a borderless, globalist world. The protestors were upset because the answer to that question is clearly “no.” In the minds of the anti-Brexiteers it’s all about removing barriers because everyone is good at heart. Trump’s wall is regarded by the opposition as a physical manifestation of everything about the evolution of human beings it disapproves. People who oppose the wall often oppose borders altogether.
The Idol of Our Age, by Daniel Mahoney, subtitled How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity, helps us understand all this. There’s a new religion in place. It’s the religion of humanitarianism – solidarity not with actual human beings, but with humanity at large. It is the absolute value, replacing its Christian antecedents. Your kinship is to be with people in the abstract rather than flesh-and-blood family, neighbors, city, and so in, in concentric circles of loyalty. Therefore with every initiative the new religion’s practitioners invoke the coercive government collective. It’s never about generous personal giving. It’s always about coerced collective taking.
In an excellent introduction, Pierre Manent summarizes what he describes as the pervasive and authoritative "ruling opinion" concerning humanitarianism as the religion of the age:
“Peace and unity belong to the natural condition of mankind; conversely, its fragmentation into separate political bodies solicitous of their independence is the toxic fountainhead of everything that is wrong in human circumstances. Thus the right thing to do, the worthy enterprise, is to bring about the pacification and unification of humanity through the erasing or weakening of borders, the acceleration of the circulation of goods, services, information, and human beings, the fostering of an ever stronger and wider fellow-feeling among countries and peoples. Accordingly, looking at human things from the perspective on one’s own community – its common good and the peculiar content and quality of its education and way of life – is intrinsically wrong because it amounts to turning one’s back on the rest of mankind.”
Exactly. I read an article on Celtic history recently and I couldn’t help thinking that this article was a bit of a transgression, appearing as it did in a far-left publication. It seems a little out of place to write in any way approvingly of any subset of human beings, especially white human beings, if we extend the “ruling opinion” to its natural boundaries.
Mahoney harkens back to Auguste Comte’s positivism, warning that it has the effect of washing out local allegiances in favor of humanity-as-such. We’re in danger of becoming ever more atomized, each equidistant from everyone else around us, because our loyalty is to humanity, not humans. As such, we exclude the Maker of humans in all their variety. “What is highest in man finds its ultimate source in what is higher than man,” Mahoney reminds us, but the ruling opinion excludes this point of view. Nothing is higher than mankind-as-such, in the new dispensation.
The Idol of Our Age, by Daniel Mahoney, subtitled How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity, helps us understand all this. There’s a new religion in place. It’s the religion of humanitarianism – solidarity not with actual human beings, but with humanity at large. It is the absolute value, replacing its Christian antecedents. Your kinship is to be with people in the abstract rather than flesh-and-blood family, neighbors, city, and so in, in concentric circles of loyalty. Therefore with every initiative the new religion’s practitioners invoke the coercive government collective. It’s never about generous personal giving. It’s always about coerced collective taking.
In an excellent introduction, Pierre Manent summarizes what he describes as the pervasive and authoritative "ruling opinion" concerning humanitarianism as the religion of the age:
“Peace and unity belong to the natural condition of mankind; conversely, its fragmentation into separate political bodies solicitous of their independence is the toxic fountainhead of everything that is wrong in human circumstances. Thus the right thing to do, the worthy enterprise, is to bring about the pacification and unification of humanity through the erasing or weakening of borders, the acceleration of the circulation of goods, services, information, and human beings, the fostering of an ever stronger and wider fellow-feeling among countries and peoples. Accordingly, looking at human things from the perspective on one’s own community – its common good and the peculiar content and quality of its education and way of life – is intrinsically wrong because it amounts to turning one’s back on the rest of mankind.”
Exactly. I read an article on Celtic history recently and I couldn’t help thinking that this article was a bit of a transgression, appearing as it did in a far-left publication. It seems a little out of place to write in any way approvingly of any subset of human beings, especially white human beings, if we extend the “ruling opinion” to its natural boundaries.
Mahoney harkens back to Auguste Comte’s positivism, warning that it has the effect of washing out local allegiances in favor of humanity-as-such. We’re in danger of becoming ever more atomized, each equidistant from everyone else around us, because our loyalty is to humanity, not humans. As such, we exclude the Maker of humans in all their variety. “What is highest in man finds its ultimate source in what is higher than man,” Mahoney reminds us, but the ruling opinion excludes this point of view. Nothing is higher than mankind-as-such, in the new dispensation.
April 24, 2019
Brilliant. An excellent defense of Christianity from the “religion of humanity” that so pervades many corners of the church.
March 19, 2022
a hodgepodge of different writers' views on the topic of secular 'humanitarianism' with little in the way of original insight on the part of the author. Among those covered are:
--Orestes Brownson (a 19th c. American who went from liberal transcendentalist to conservative republican; a somewhat staid moralist whose main virtue seems to be his 'Americanness')
--Vladimir Soloviev (19th c. Russian religious writer and anti-positivist polemicist who also penned a ridiculous and rightfully obscure 'sci-fi' Antichrist-themed novel; Mahoney summarizes the novel but does not really discuss Soloviev's theology)
--Jürgen Habermas: gets chastised for being a godless cosmopolitan but Mahoney offers no real (sustained) critique of his brand of communitarian politics.
--Auguste Comte: panned as the progenitor of humanitarianism but again, very little in the way of an actual critical argument.
--Aurel Kolnai (20th c. Hungarian political theorist who is quoted approvingly and whose essay, 'The Humanitarian versus the Religious Attitude' is included as an appendix. This essay is compelling enough and probably the only thing in the book worth reading).
--Solzhenitsyn (whom the author is an authority on) also makes a brief appearance as a critic of Bolshevik totalitarianism (far removed from the 'liberal humanitarianism' the book is supposed to focus on, but there you have it...)
When not summarizing other people's theories (which does not at all make for a 'learned essay' -p.1-), Mahoney spends all his time praising Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and criticizing Pope Francis for being too soft on communism (and environmentalists).
Essentially the 'how' in this book's subtitle is never actually addressed except obliquely and through an unconvincing potpourri of bits and pieces culled from an idiosyncratic assemblage of 'religious authors'
--Orestes Brownson (a 19th c. American who went from liberal transcendentalist to conservative republican; a somewhat staid moralist whose main virtue seems to be his 'Americanness')
--Vladimir Soloviev (19th c. Russian religious writer and anti-positivist polemicist who also penned a ridiculous and rightfully obscure 'sci-fi' Antichrist-themed novel; Mahoney summarizes the novel but does not really discuss Soloviev's theology)
--Jürgen Habermas: gets chastised for being a godless cosmopolitan but Mahoney offers no real (sustained) critique of his brand of communitarian politics.
--Auguste Comte: panned as the progenitor of humanitarianism but again, very little in the way of an actual critical argument.
--Aurel Kolnai (20th c. Hungarian political theorist who is quoted approvingly and whose essay, 'The Humanitarian versus the Religious Attitude' is included as an appendix. This essay is compelling enough and probably the only thing in the book worth reading).
--Solzhenitsyn (whom the author is an authority on) also makes a brief appearance as a critic of Bolshevik totalitarianism (far removed from the 'liberal humanitarianism' the book is supposed to focus on, but there you have it...)
When not summarizing other people's theories (which does not at all make for a 'learned essay' -p.1-), Mahoney spends all his time praising Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and criticizing Pope Francis for being too soft on communism (and environmentalists).
Essentially the 'how' in this book's subtitle is never actually addressed except obliquely and through an unconvincing potpourri of bits and pieces culled from an idiosyncratic assemblage of 'religious authors'
January 1, 2019
A wonderful little book on the religion of secularism: humanitarianism. Mahoney is a wonderful reader of Solzhenitsyn’s work, and in particular, the liberal conservatism of French catholic, Manent. He spares no Christian from taking the task of Christianity seriously above and against radical egalitarianism, especially when those people happen to be the pope (the author is a catholic). If you are sick of the way people easily conflate bland humanitarianism with the rich complexity of the Christian Faith, this book is one you need to read.
July 13, 2025
I did not finish this book. It reached a point where it was all American Nationalism. I tried reading it several times. It was the book of the month for the Catholic Book Club. After 27 days and several starts I am giving up about 30% into the book.
July 6, 2023
I liked very much the chapters about Soloviev and his story of the AntiChrist, and about Solzhenitsyn’s March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 3. Now I want to read both authors.
The chapter about Pope Francis was also well done and balanced.
The chapter about Pope Francis was also well done and balanced.
March 29, 2020
This is a kind of "learned essay" on the problem of the "humanitarian religion" of our present age. Mahoney draws from thinkers as wide-ranging as Orestes Brownson and Aurel Kolnai, Vladimir Soloviev and Benedict XVI in his identification and condemnation of the pacifistic, human-centered religion that has grown from Christian soil in the West. This religion of humanity has replaced God with humanity and in so doing, has eliminated all transcendental reference points and metaphysical anchors. Humanitarianism thrives off the riches of Christianity: the uniqueness of the individual, the prohibitions against murder and slavery, the importance of compassionate love, etc. It is a thoroughly human-centered, egalitarian religion based on love and peace at all costs, especially of objective truth and beauty. The iconoclastic barbarism of the French Revolution, the bleak nihilism of Nietzsche, the horrific communism of Lenin and Stalin, and the individualistic post-modernism of our current era all dispense with God in an attempt to make "man the measure of all things." Yet when God is removed, as Mahoney points out again and again, humans begin to be worth less and less, to the point where "unfit" and unborn humans can be disposed of without harm to conscience. The religion of humanity, which has been on the rise since the Enlightenment, and most certainly since World War II and the breakdown of the very idea of nation-states, will continue to grow and grow in our 21st century until it reaches another breaking point. Right now clear-headed leaders and politicians with robust, religious views have the opportunity to save and rebuild the culture of the West.
This book is not exactly original; Mahoney quotes at length from primary and secondary sources, and several large portions of the book involve him closely reading passages of writers such as Solzhenitsyn and Pope Francis, but it is still a worthwhile book. The appendix is a brilliantly prescient 1944 essay from Aurel Kolnai that may be worth the price of the book. I'll include some of Kolnai's most profound observations to end my review.
- "The humanitarian attitude, then, takes its departure from the 'human needs' in a comprehensive sense of the word: what 'men' desire and what they fear, what 'men' appreciate and what they loathe, what promises to secure or enhance and what is apt to threaten or to stunt the 'development' and the 'happiness' of 'men' is to provide us with the basic data for our orientation."
- "Under humanitarianism, the judgment of crime will tend to degenerate into a mere protection of 'majority' interests: to shrink to a mere repression of the inconvenient - or again, perhaps, to expand into a suppression of whatever may be deemed inconvenient. The selfsame mentality that rejects the concept of punishing the evildoer as 'superstitious' or a 'mere disguise for the primitive urge of revenge' may glibly accept the 'elimination' of the 'unfit for life' or the 'maladjusted' as an act 'higher humanity" (142).
- "Moral 'inhibitions' in [the sexual] field, more than in any other zone of natural morality, are likely to be qualified by the humanitarian critic as superstitious, obsolete, 'hostile to life,' and 'opposed to happiness.' The reason is obvious. 'Lust' - that is, inordinate sexual pleasure - typifies, in the most exemplary and characteristic manner, the concept of 'sin' as such; and the valuation of purity is the very touchstone of 'material' (essential, intrinsic, objective) ethics. In other words, 'lust' comes nearest to the idea of a material element of life - or state of mind - 'evil by itself' (the word 'impure' is meant to express this) rather than evil of account of its impeding the gratification of more imperative needs or impinging upon more inviolable rights" (146).
- "With the destruction of morality par excellence, the psychological center of moral fastidiousness is obliterated, the ground prepared for further corrosive 'interpretations,' the leverage established for the destruction of morality pure and simple" (147).
- Kolnai predicts that in the West, people will be view the status of family with increasing indifference. He writes, "The willful and 'unplanned' multiplication of 'claimants,' with the attendant complication of 'actual needs,' is looked upon as irrational; the sovereignty of 'actual needs' is incompatible with the realization of a biological or historical continuum. Hence the tendency, not only to regard contraceptive practice as laudable, but to consider even artificial abortion as more or less justifiable" (148).
- "The truth is that man is as little equipped to be 'imaginative' of his own force as to maintain his moral level on the resources of his own nature. Creative and constructive imagination is consistent with disbelief in the existence of its object, or with a state of evanescent religious belief in general, but it is not consistent with a religious unbelief as a basic and stabilized state of mind; nor can it thrive in a social milieu sterilized of transcendent references" (150).
This book is not exactly original; Mahoney quotes at length from primary and secondary sources, and several large portions of the book involve him closely reading passages of writers such as Solzhenitsyn and Pope Francis, but it is still a worthwhile book. The appendix is a brilliantly prescient 1944 essay from Aurel Kolnai that may be worth the price of the book. I'll include some of Kolnai's most profound observations to end my review.
- "The humanitarian attitude, then, takes its departure from the 'human needs' in a comprehensive sense of the word: what 'men' desire and what they fear, what 'men' appreciate and what they loathe, what promises to secure or enhance and what is apt to threaten or to stunt the 'development' and the 'happiness' of 'men' is to provide us with the basic data for our orientation."
- "Under humanitarianism, the judgment of crime will tend to degenerate into a mere protection of 'majority' interests: to shrink to a mere repression of the inconvenient - or again, perhaps, to expand into a suppression of whatever may be deemed inconvenient. The selfsame mentality that rejects the concept of punishing the evildoer as 'superstitious' or a 'mere disguise for the primitive urge of revenge' may glibly accept the 'elimination' of the 'unfit for life' or the 'maladjusted' as an act 'higher humanity" (142).
- "Moral 'inhibitions' in [the sexual] field, more than in any other zone of natural morality, are likely to be qualified by the humanitarian critic as superstitious, obsolete, 'hostile to life,' and 'opposed to happiness.' The reason is obvious. 'Lust' - that is, inordinate sexual pleasure - typifies, in the most exemplary and characteristic manner, the concept of 'sin' as such; and the valuation of purity is the very touchstone of 'material' (essential, intrinsic, objective) ethics. In other words, 'lust' comes nearest to the idea of a material element of life - or state of mind - 'evil by itself' (the word 'impure' is meant to express this) rather than evil of account of its impeding the gratification of more imperative needs or impinging upon more inviolable rights" (146).
- "With the destruction of morality par excellence, the psychological center of moral fastidiousness is obliterated, the ground prepared for further corrosive 'interpretations,' the leverage established for the destruction of morality pure and simple" (147).
- Kolnai predicts that in the West, people will be view the status of family with increasing indifference. He writes, "The willful and 'unplanned' multiplication of 'claimants,' with the attendant complication of 'actual needs,' is looked upon as irrational; the sovereignty of 'actual needs' is incompatible with the realization of a biological or historical continuum. Hence the tendency, not only to regard contraceptive practice as laudable, but to consider even artificial abortion as more or less justifiable" (148).
- "The truth is that man is as little equipped to be 'imaginative' of his own force as to maintain his moral level on the resources of his own nature. Creative and constructive imagination is consistent with disbelief in the existence of its object, or with a state of evanescent religious belief in general, but it is not consistent with a religious unbelief as a basic and stabilized state of mind; nor can it thrive in a social milieu sterilized of transcendent references" (150).
October 14, 2019
Brilliant, deeply-thoughtful, and skillfully written. I don't even remember where I first heard of Mahoney's book (I think it was the CRB), but I am so glad I picked this up. It's a tiny little thing, but it packs such an intellectual punch, I could only do about one chapter off-and-on for a few weeks.
Although Mahoney gives a very thoughtful presentation of each of his subjects, for me the chapter on Orestes Brownson was the best. Pick up this book for that chapter alone. Other individuals explored in this tiny book are Jurgen Habermas, Alexander Soltzhenitsyn, and Pope Francis (among others).
I highly recommend this book. I feel like I'm a more well-informed person for having read it.
Although Mahoney gives a very thoughtful presentation of each of his subjects, for me the chapter on Orestes Brownson was the best. Pick up this book for that chapter alone. Other individuals explored in this tiny book are Jurgen Habermas, Alexander Soltzhenitsyn, and Pope Francis (among others).
I highly recommend this book. I feel like I'm a more well-informed person for having read it.
April 27, 2020
Mahoney is good, but I feel like I wasted my time once I read Aurel Kolnai's seminal article "The Humanitarian vs the Religious Attitude" which Mahoney reproduces in full in the appendix. Kolnai is able to do in 25 pages what Mahoney attempts in 130. Additionally, his introduction is much too vitriolic towards Pope Francis, though he backs down in his later discussions.
May 21, 2019
This was a 3.5 ⭐ read
The idea and the topic was interesting but I felt the topic could have been explored a bit deeper. It almost felt incomplete leaving much more to think about. The chapters on Russian literature made me want to pick up Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky again !
The idea and the topic was interesting but I felt the topic could have been explored a bit deeper. It almost felt incomplete leaving much more to think about. The chapters on Russian literature made me want to pick up Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky again !
October 2, 2020
I didn’t read this book based on any personal religious conviction but rather out of an interest in The West’s increasing distance from its Christian roots and what that means for society. Intelligently written and very interesting.
February 27, 2020
WHAT A READ!! helped me to wrestle with how to understand one lives with their ideas.
June 30, 2025
Very interesting! I’m not Catholic but I am a Christian and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My major takeaway from this book is: for Christians it’s important to understand that the Church is not just a huge humanitarian organization and Jesus Christ is not a social justice warrior. To think of Him as such is to horribly misunderstand His mission on Earth. He didn’t come to just save us from our earthly problems but to save our souls.
The “religion” of humanity or secular religion makes humankind supreme and has no need of Jesus Christ or spirituality. Even though humanitarianism gets its start from Christianity.
The “religion” of humanity basically says there are no moral absolutes. What they are really saying is that there is no sin, that “whatsoever a man [does is] no crime,” as long as people go along with it. So messy.
The words of Jeremiah came to my mind while I was reading about the religion of humanity: “But have walked after the imagination of their own heart…”
The “religion” of humanity or secular religion makes humankind supreme and has no need of Jesus Christ or spirituality. Even though humanitarianism gets its start from Christianity.
The “religion” of humanity basically says there are no moral absolutes. What they are really saying is that there is no sin, that “whatsoever a man [does is] no crime,” as long as people go along with it. So messy.
The words of Jeremiah came to my mind while I was reading about the religion of humanity: “But have walked after the imagination of their own heart…”
March 14, 2025
He's a great humanitarian, he's a great philanthropist
He knows just where to touch you, honey, and how you like to be kissed
Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
He'll put both his arms around you
You can feel the tender touch of the beast
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.
-Bob Dylan
I had heard appreciation expressed for Daniel Mahoney's The Idol of Our Age before, but my interest was especially piqued when I read praise for the book in "My Ten (Or So) Favorite Cultural Critics" by Bruce Riley Ashford on the First Things website. It promised to fill a need because I have been perseverating about faith and literary humanism's relation anew, especially after being frightened again by the beauty of two essays by Emerson, an early haunt of mine. It turns out that many of the works Mahoney draws on in the book I have read before and it is like a return to old stomping grounds, at the same time serving to broaden my range and interest in these areas and underscoring questions I have yet to address adequately myself.
Mahoney observes that doctrinaire egalitarianism and humanitarianism reveal the destructive face of utopia when it is cut off from God and the natural order of things. A passage from the Gospel According to John which I just read recurs to my mind: "Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), says, 'Why was this ointment not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?'" (John 12:4,5). Judas is complaining about Mary's lavishing the expensive perfume on Jesus rather than giving it to the poor, an ostensibly a humanitarian qualm, and he incurs a rebuke. Elsewhere it says he was actually stealing from the disciples' fund and of course he sold Jesus for 30 silver pieces to those bent on killing him. He seems to me in this way a parallel to the corruption of Soviet corruption in the name of humanitarianism: Judas as the humanitarian disciple and the USSR as the humanitarian state.
Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that we are in need of an "education in the sublime" but ever since the French Revolution, Western people have worked at cross purposes to such an awareness, seeking to organize themselves without reference to a divine Law, but rather in accord with human rights. But rights based on what? As Pierre Manent notes in the foreword, "…once humankind has become the farthest and most authoritative horizon of human action, the idea of Humanity necessarily becomes the highest and most authoritative idea." This then is the idol of our age, and it is our way of looking exclusively at humanity which makes it the idol. The destructive face of utopia cut off from God and a natural order of things, manifests in various forms, one being the form of Marxist-Leninism, another being the fanatical efforts to efface natural sexual difference, making it anti-human in decisive ways. Of late the perversities in moral discrimination on a mass level seem to be abounding.
As I mentioned, I especially found Mahoney's book attractive because there was a coalescence in it of various authors I have been attending to and the promise of addressing several persistent questions: the nation and morality; and how to deal with the lure of humanism as religion. The author draws on Pierre Manent, Eric Voegelin, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Alain Besancon, and Vladimir Soloviev, all writers whose works and thought I prize. In addition, he introduced me to the thought of Orestes Brownson and Aurel Kolnai and gave me valuable tips where to look for more of Brownson's insights on how he dealt with American Transcendentalism.
Mahoney also brings out more the importance of French philosopher and sociologist Auguste Comte in establishing this de facto Western religion of humanity. Mahoney claims that unbeknownst to ourselves we are his adherents. Perhaps. Though Freud's reputation receded, his influence persists. Though the Normans conquered England, the Anglo-Saxon societal structures persisted. In Comtean religion, humanity becomes its own paramount theme. Manent suggests our intellectual elites, like Comte, "can only see human unity." Mahoney, in a formulation which echoes the Biblical admonition, "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom", writes, "Men are not gods, and that affirmation is the beginning of all wisdom, secular and religious." Voegelin called Comte's view an "inter-mundane eschatology… a divination of word-immanent entities" and an enemy of all transcendent reality. It is an "apocalypse of man" built on "the murder of God." In it, our souls are no longer directed to any transcendent reality. But this is the most superficial of anthropologies, since it is ignorant of the drama of good and evil in the human soul. Raymond Aron was convinced that Comte, and Marx after him, had terribly underestimated the political, imperial, and tragic dimensions of human history. The humanitarian and the totalitarian lies are rooted in the same contempt for the political nature of man and the same ignorance of the human soul. At the center of the ideological lie is a willful denial of the political and spiritual nature of man in any substantial sense of the terms.
Ignorant of the tragic dimensions of the human condition, humanitarianism reduces religion to a project of this-worldly amelioration. Mahoney and Manent observe that the religion of humanity in its dominant forms is "not productive of community." All that is demanded is the love of Humanity through a vague and undemanding sentimentality. It creates a world that has no place for magnanimity or true statesmanship. Where can it place the supreme virtue of Plutarchs' heroes, or Churchill, or de Gaulle , or the humility of saints like Mother Teresa? What is the worth of a system supposedly adulating Humanity but blunting and cutting its limbs off in the process? Mahoney urges, "We must make more of an effort to see virtue in all its amplitude, in the person of the hero and the statesman as well as the saint. In the modern world, heroes and saints stand or fall together."
Mahoney makes a valuable point on pg. 21, noting the danger of the worldly or pagan reductive ideological sense of siding with the poor versus the Christian siding with the poor. The poor, like all groups and classes, are prone to sin and selfishness. Blinkered leftists who treat the poor as if they can do no evil do not know their recent history in which tens of millions of innocent human beings- kulaks, merchants, the bourgeoisie, aristocrats, religious believers, and independent thinkers of all sorts - were killed in the name of the proletarian revolution.
Orestes Brownson was a revealing "case of a great mind and thinker who liberated himself from an early version of liberation theology and pantheistic humanitarianism." Brownson was one of the transcendentalists before he turned to the Catholic faith and reading his autobiographical account The Convert, or Leaves from My Experiment (1857) promises to directly address part of the reason I decided to read Mahoney's book, which was to deal directly with the lure of transcendentalism myself and how error could produce such eloquence, and what exactly the error is. Mahoney calls Brownson the preeminent American Catholic political thinker of the nineteenth century. He classes him with Zoloviev as the two deepest Christian critics of everything entailing a reduction of Christianity to mere humanitarianism. Before his Catholic conversion, Brownson saw no meaningful distinction between the human and the divine and believed the "Incarnation" revealed the truth of pantheism. Later he would come to conclude that pantheism and the religion of humanity are the ultimate theoretical and practical challenge to freedom, rightly understood. He would argue too that the democratic principle has no place for a common good that mediates between the conflicting claims of the few and the many and the rich and the poor. He diagnosed political atheism as being at the heart and soul of the democratic or humanitarian principle because it excludes the moral element, founds the state on utility, and "tends to materialize the mind."
Soloviev is one of those great minds that left a large mark despite an early death, in his case when he was 47. Mahoney recounts how Soloviev gradually came to see the moral optimism of the Enlightenment as terribly inadequate in its grasp of the power of evil on the human, political, and eschatological levels. Many cultural critics like Dr. Jordan Peterson have remarked on how many on the left have an inadequate grasp of malice. Soloviev also stuck to a golden mean between a chauvinistic nationalism and a cosmopolitanism that ignored one of the fundamental traits of the human person: the flourishing of the soul within a national framework. The Democrats in the United States, not least by embracing an open borders policy, have indicated they hew to an excessive cosmopolitanism, considering themselves citizens of the world rather than citizens of a nation, a cosmopolitanism so alienated from their own nation that the American flag has often seemed to many a Democrat a sign of the enemy.
I've read Soloviev's War, Progress, and the End of History once or twice, and I was delighted to see Mahoney use Alain Besancon's Falsification of the Good: Soloviev and Orwell (1985) to elucidate the text, a book I have also recently read. (I was drawn to read Besancon's book after an indelible impression of profundity and uncommon depth of insight left in me by reading his book A Century of Horrors). Mahoney and Besancon note how Tolstoyan heterodoxy insisted on reducing Christianity to passivity, the imperative of not resisting evil with violence and rejecting all wars. (I think in this context of how it is said that before Charlemagne, there was no Europe as a unified concept. It was because of Charles Martel and Charlemagne after him that the Islamic conquests were halted. But now a passivity, whether liberal or Christian in kind, allows the conquest to proceed and there is the denatalite or un-birthing of Europe.) Tolstoy took a Marcionite-like view of the Bible and the Jews, repudiating the Mosaic Law and treating the Christian Church and the Jewish people as permanent twin sources of corruption. His excessively "spiritualized" religion is too confident in the inexorable victory of good over evil in the immanent world.
When Besancon highlighted some of Soloviev's differences with Dostoevsky, I found it especially interesting because I revere Dostoevsky. Besancon thought Dostoevsky too complacent about evil, hating bourgeiose indifference more than genuine evil doing. He perceived a romantic attitude in Dostoevsky toward evil, which he said inevitably contributes to the falsification of the good. If true, this contrasts with Soloviev, who regarded evil as a deadly threat to the integrity of creation and of every human soul.
Mahoney is helpful in bringing out the anti-Christ nature of the religion of humanity and how its Enlightenment moral optimism runs counter to biblical witness, as can be seen in Tolstoy's heterodox rejection of the authority of Scripture. Soloviev, in contrast to Tolstoy, is an eloquent and forceful defender of the morality of military self-defense, and goes so far as to say that when the Spanish of the middle ages defended the Christian West against Islam, "They did not retreat from the Spirit of Christ in this and their military exploits were Christian exploits." Mahoney noted that for Soloviev, a Christian is always obliged to love his enemies but, unlike some Christians today who seem to believe we have no enemies, Soloviev knew we sometimes had to fight. The Anti-Christ in Soloviev's tale is a humanitarian benefactor and a philanthropist.
In contrast to Tolstoy, Soloviev still believed that nations still have a central role to play in the Christian dispensation.
After reading Mahoney's book, I more keenly wish to read Pierre Manent's A World beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State and Politics, Law, and Morality: Essays by V.S. Soloviev, as both promise to illuminate for me morality with regard to the nation-state. I'd also like to read Orestes Brownson's The Convert: Or, Leaves from My Experience (1837) soon for its personal account of his thraldom and liberation from the religion of humanity, particularly in relation to the American transcendentalists.
In chapter four Mahoney elaborates on what he means by "the religion of humanity". If secular modernity has a religion, he writes, it is this religion of humanity. It is characterized by a tendency to reduce Christianity to concern for "social welfare" and the alleviation of poverty and suffering. It's morality tends to "lose sight" of, or neglect, or avoid the capacious natural and supernatural destinies of human beings. More emphatically than democratic humanitarianism, totalitarian secular religions such as Communism and National Socialism repudiate the moral law and are radically anthropocentric in character. The more moderate versions of humanitarianism, however, are vulnerable to appropriation by the more radical and heartless and consistent versions of atheism, materialism, and humanitarianism.
Humanitarianism ultimately impairs moral cognition, because it establishes a horizon which deifies undifferentiated "human needs" and thereby has a hard time acknowledging things like malice and baldly willful evil. Philosopher Aurel Kolnai stressed that humanitarian and religious morality must always be different in quality. Without the religious appreciation for the full range of human needs rather than the "cacophony of human wants posited by humanitarian materialism", the spiritual dimensions of human life are forgotten, and this of course is a threat to humanity's freedom. Humanitarianism refuses to acknowledge the fundamental moral scissure in the human soul which the notion of evildoing describes, and instead tries to explain evil by social origins. As Kolnai observed, humanitarianism may not encourage evil directly, but it soon abandons ethical criteria necessary for a life well lived and a genuine political common good.
Societies imbued with humanitarianism paradoxically have a hard time reproducing themselves and maintaining a healthy level of biological continuity. The French aptly speak of denatalite- the "unbirthing of France".
Perhaps it is illuminating, in this context, to look at the birth of Europe in relation to its current threat of "unbirthing."
Human beings have a need for a meaning of life that transcends reductive accounts of human needs, but all humanitarianism offers is a reductive account of human needs, leading to the unbirthing of humanity.
Mahoney then turns to the great Christian witness Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and in particular to his series of historical novels called The Red Wheel. I am grateful for this reminder and these signposts for further exploration of Solzhenitsyn's work. In the series Tolstoy's substitute doctrine of love for the Christian doctrine of love is exposed for what it is. In his pacifist, rationalist understanding of Christ's teaching, Tolstoy forgets that every human being and citizen has moral and political responsibilities, and to ignore these, especially in the face of evil, is not a commitment to a higher summons but a betrayal of man and God. The character Sanya Lazhenitsyn visits Tolstoy's estate but instead of Tolstoy's heterodox notions, he becomes attracted to the ideas of Vehki (Landmarks or Signposts), the great intellectual manifesto published in 1909 by a group of independent Christian pluralist thinkers (Berdyaev, Struve, Bulgakov, and Frank). This book sounds intriguing. I have read some books by Berdyaev and Bulgakov and I wonder if Frank is the great biographer of Dostoevsky by that name.
It was interesting to hear Mahoney's treatment of his pope, Pope Francis, and I began to read the chapter by coincidence right when word that Pope Francis was very ill reached my ears. Mahoney observed a tendency in Francis to conflate the Gospel with the requirements of a humanitarian moral message. He remarked it was perhaps the greatest failing of his pontificate and one that boded ill for the future of the Church and its ability to moderate democratic modernity's drift to softness and relativism. He observes that Pope Francis tends to conflate divine mercy and democratic compassion.
Mahoney then turns to the philosophy of Jurgen Habermas, who he calls "the theorist of post-national democracy." Habermas's position is dead set against the nation and regards it as an atavism, an anachronism which must jettison stubborn claims to sovereignty and autonomy. He probably found Brexit very distasteful. He thinks "national particularisms" must be overcome. He presents his readers with a choice between democracy and capitalism. He is a true believer in the triumph of emancipatory cosmopolitanism. Nonetheless, he has a fundamental decency as a person in contrast to some of the theorists like Zizek who embrace the depredations of totalitarian dictators.
Mahoney ends the book with a look at reason and conscience, drawing on the work of Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Newman. Mahoney holds up Pope Benedict as an eloquent partisan of both reason and faith. Benedict lamented in the Regensburg address the "dehellenization" of Christianity, which Mahoney explains means its reduction to a humanitarian religion closed off to rational articulation of nature and reason. He sides with Cardinal Newman in rejecting any identification of conscience with subjectivism and relativism. Conscience rather means "the abolition of mere subjectivity when man's intimate sphere is touched by the truth that comes from God." Conscience is our portal, Mahoney writes, to the natural moral law, and is written "in the hearts of men." Ideological fanatics like Hitler and Stalin who arrive at "perverse convictions" do so by "trampling down the protest made by the anamnesis of one's true being."
In the Appendix, Mahoney provides an essay by Aurel Kolnai entitled "The Humanitarian versus the Religious Attitude". I thought this description of the situation under the religion of humanity illuminating: "Much more attention is paid to the problem of making everyone alike share in the 'good life' than to the query as to what the good life really is like; there is less and less care about the existence of standards of culture, but an enormous amount of thought and effort is devoted to the dissemination of culture through education; because the meaning and purpose of life are viewed as purely immanent, and therefore at once self-evident and insusceptible of definition, the technique of life (with a particular stress on technology) becomes
He knows just where to touch you, honey, and how you like to be kissed
Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
He'll put both his arms around you
You can feel the tender touch of the beast
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.
-Bob Dylan
I had heard appreciation expressed for Daniel Mahoney's The Idol of Our Age before, but my interest was especially piqued when I read praise for the book in "My Ten (Or So) Favorite Cultural Critics" by Bruce Riley Ashford on the First Things website. It promised to fill a need because I have been perseverating about faith and literary humanism's relation anew, especially after being frightened again by the beauty of two essays by Emerson, an early haunt of mine. It turns out that many of the works Mahoney draws on in the book I have read before and it is like a return to old stomping grounds, at the same time serving to broaden my range and interest in these areas and underscoring questions I have yet to address adequately myself.
Mahoney observes that doctrinaire egalitarianism and humanitarianism reveal the destructive face of utopia when it is cut off from God and the natural order of things. A passage from the Gospel According to John which I just read recurs to my mind: "Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), says, 'Why was this ointment not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?'" (John 12:4,5). Judas is complaining about Mary's lavishing the expensive perfume on Jesus rather than giving it to the poor, an ostensibly a humanitarian qualm, and he incurs a rebuke. Elsewhere it says he was actually stealing from the disciples' fund and of course he sold Jesus for 30 silver pieces to those bent on killing him. He seems to me in this way a parallel to the corruption of Soviet corruption in the name of humanitarianism: Judas as the humanitarian disciple and the USSR as the humanitarian state.
Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that we are in need of an "education in the sublime" but ever since the French Revolution, Western people have worked at cross purposes to such an awareness, seeking to organize themselves without reference to a divine Law, but rather in accord with human rights. But rights based on what? As Pierre Manent notes in the foreword, "…once humankind has become the farthest and most authoritative horizon of human action, the idea of Humanity necessarily becomes the highest and most authoritative idea." This then is the idol of our age, and it is our way of looking exclusively at humanity which makes it the idol. The destructive face of utopia cut off from God and a natural order of things, manifests in various forms, one being the form of Marxist-Leninism, another being the fanatical efforts to efface natural sexual difference, making it anti-human in decisive ways. Of late the perversities in moral discrimination on a mass level seem to be abounding.
As I mentioned, I especially found Mahoney's book attractive because there was a coalescence in it of various authors I have been attending to and the promise of addressing several persistent questions: the nation and morality; and how to deal with the lure of humanism as religion. The author draws on Pierre Manent, Eric Voegelin, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Alain Besancon, and Vladimir Soloviev, all writers whose works and thought I prize. In addition, he introduced me to the thought of Orestes Brownson and Aurel Kolnai and gave me valuable tips where to look for more of Brownson's insights on how he dealt with American Transcendentalism.
Mahoney also brings out more the importance of French philosopher and sociologist Auguste Comte in establishing this de facto Western religion of humanity. Mahoney claims that unbeknownst to ourselves we are his adherents. Perhaps. Though Freud's reputation receded, his influence persists. Though the Normans conquered England, the Anglo-Saxon societal structures persisted. In Comtean religion, humanity becomes its own paramount theme. Manent suggests our intellectual elites, like Comte, "can only see human unity." Mahoney, in a formulation which echoes the Biblical admonition, "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom", writes, "Men are not gods, and that affirmation is the beginning of all wisdom, secular and religious." Voegelin called Comte's view an "inter-mundane eschatology… a divination of word-immanent entities" and an enemy of all transcendent reality. It is an "apocalypse of man" built on "the murder of God." In it, our souls are no longer directed to any transcendent reality. But this is the most superficial of anthropologies, since it is ignorant of the drama of good and evil in the human soul. Raymond Aron was convinced that Comte, and Marx after him, had terribly underestimated the political, imperial, and tragic dimensions of human history. The humanitarian and the totalitarian lies are rooted in the same contempt for the political nature of man and the same ignorance of the human soul. At the center of the ideological lie is a willful denial of the political and spiritual nature of man in any substantial sense of the terms.
Ignorant of the tragic dimensions of the human condition, humanitarianism reduces religion to a project of this-worldly amelioration. Mahoney and Manent observe that the religion of humanity in its dominant forms is "not productive of community." All that is demanded is the love of Humanity through a vague and undemanding sentimentality. It creates a world that has no place for magnanimity or true statesmanship. Where can it place the supreme virtue of Plutarchs' heroes, or Churchill, or de Gaulle , or the humility of saints like Mother Teresa? What is the worth of a system supposedly adulating Humanity but blunting and cutting its limbs off in the process? Mahoney urges, "We must make more of an effort to see virtue in all its amplitude, in the person of the hero and the statesman as well as the saint. In the modern world, heroes and saints stand or fall together."
Mahoney makes a valuable point on pg. 21, noting the danger of the worldly or pagan reductive ideological sense of siding with the poor versus the Christian siding with the poor. The poor, like all groups and classes, are prone to sin and selfishness. Blinkered leftists who treat the poor as if they can do no evil do not know their recent history in which tens of millions of innocent human beings- kulaks, merchants, the bourgeoisie, aristocrats, religious believers, and independent thinkers of all sorts - were killed in the name of the proletarian revolution.
Orestes Brownson was a revealing "case of a great mind and thinker who liberated himself from an early version of liberation theology and pantheistic humanitarianism." Brownson was one of the transcendentalists before he turned to the Catholic faith and reading his autobiographical account The Convert, or Leaves from My Experiment (1857) promises to directly address part of the reason I decided to read Mahoney's book, which was to deal directly with the lure of transcendentalism myself and how error could produce such eloquence, and what exactly the error is. Mahoney calls Brownson the preeminent American Catholic political thinker of the nineteenth century. He classes him with Zoloviev as the two deepest Christian critics of everything entailing a reduction of Christianity to mere humanitarianism. Before his Catholic conversion, Brownson saw no meaningful distinction between the human and the divine and believed the "Incarnation" revealed the truth of pantheism. Later he would come to conclude that pantheism and the religion of humanity are the ultimate theoretical and practical challenge to freedom, rightly understood. He would argue too that the democratic principle has no place for a common good that mediates between the conflicting claims of the few and the many and the rich and the poor. He diagnosed political atheism as being at the heart and soul of the democratic or humanitarian principle because it excludes the moral element, founds the state on utility, and "tends to materialize the mind."
Soloviev is one of those great minds that left a large mark despite an early death, in his case when he was 47. Mahoney recounts how Soloviev gradually came to see the moral optimism of the Enlightenment as terribly inadequate in its grasp of the power of evil on the human, political, and eschatological levels. Many cultural critics like Dr. Jordan Peterson have remarked on how many on the left have an inadequate grasp of malice. Soloviev also stuck to a golden mean between a chauvinistic nationalism and a cosmopolitanism that ignored one of the fundamental traits of the human person: the flourishing of the soul within a national framework. The Democrats in the United States, not least by embracing an open borders policy, have indicated they hew to an excessive cosmopolitanism, considering themselves citizens of the world rather than citizens of a nation, a cosmopolitanism so alienated from their own nation that the American flag has often seemed to many a Democrat a sign of the enemy.
I've read Soloviev's War, Progress, and the End of History once or twice, and I was delighted to see Mahoney use Alain Besancon's Falsification of the Good: Soloviev and Orwell (1985) to elucidate the text, a book I have also recently read. (I was drawn to read Besancon's book after an indelible impression of profundity and uncommon depth of insight left in me by reading his book A Century of Horrors). Mahoney and Besancon note how Tolstoyan heterodoxy insisted on reducing Christianity to passivity, the imperative of not resisting evil with violence and rejecting all wars. (I think in this context of how it is said that before Charlemagne, there was no Europe as a unified concept. It was because of Charles Martel and Charlemagne after him that the Islamic conquests were halted. But now a passivity, whether liberal or Christian in kind, allows the conquest to proceed and there is the denatalite or un-birthing of Europe.) Tolstoy took a Marcionite-like view of the Bible and the Jews, repudiating the Mosaic Law and treating the Christian Church and the Jewish people as permanent twin sources of corruption. His excessively "spiritualized" religion is too confident in the inexorable victory of good over evil in the immanent world.
When Besancon highlighted some of Soloviev's differences with Dostoevsky, I found it especially interesting because I revere Dostoevsky. Besancon thought Dostoevsky too complacent about evil, hating bourgeiose indifference more than genuine evil doing. He perceived a romantic attitude in Dostoevsky toward evil, which he said inevitably contributes to the falsification of the good. If true, this contrasts with Soloviev, who regarded evil as a deadly threat to the integrity of creation and of every human soul.
Mahoney is helpful in bringing out the anti-Christ nature of the religion of humanity and how its Enlightenment moral optimism runs counter to biblical witness, as can be seen in Tolstoy's heterodox rejection of the authority of Scripture. Soloviev, in contrast to Tolstoy, is an eloquent and forceful defender of the morality of military self-defense, and goes so far as to say that when the Spanish of the middle ages defended the Christian West against Islam, "They did not retreat from the Spirit of Christ in this and their military exploits were Christian exploits." Mahoney noted that for Soloviev, a Christian is always obliged to love his enemies but, unlike some Christians today who seem to believe we have no enemies, Soloviev knew we sometimes had to fight. The Anti-Christ in Soloviev's tale is a humanitarian benefactor and a philanthropist.
In contrast to Tolstoy, Soloviev still believed that nations still have a central role to play in the Christian dispensation.
After reading Mahoney's book, I more keenly wish to read Pierre Manent's A World beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State and Politics, Law, and Morality: Essays by V.S. Soloviev, as both promise to illuminate for me morality with regard to the nation-state. I'd also like to read Orestes Brownson's The Convert: Or, Leaves from My Experience (1837) soon for its personal account of his thraldom and liberation from the religion of humanity, particularly in relation to the American transcendentalists.
In chapter four Mahoney elaborates on what he means by "the religion of humanity". If secular modernity has a religion, he writes, it is this religion of humanity. It is characterized by a tendency to reduce Christianity to concern for "social welfare" and the alleviation of poverty and suffering. It's morality tends to "lose sight" of, or neglect, or avoid the capacious natural and supernatural destinies of human beings. More emphatically than democratic humanitarianism, totalitarian secular religions such as Communism and National Socialism repudiate the moral law and are radically anthropocentric in character. The more moderate versions of humanitarianism, however, are vulnerable to appropriation by the more radical and heartless and consistent versions of atheism, materialism, and humanitarianism.
Humanitarianism ultimately impairs moral cognition, because it establishes a horizon which deifies undifferentiated "human needs" and thereby has a hard time acknowledging things like malice and baldly willful evil. Philosopher Aurel Kolnai stressed that humanitarian and religious morality must always be different in quality. Without the religious appreciation for the full range of human needs rather than the "cacophony of human wants posited by humanitarian materialism", the spiritual dimensions of human life are forgotten, and this of course is a threat to humanity's freedom. Humanitarianism refuses to acknowledge the fundamental moral scissure in the human soul which the notion of evildoing describes, and instead tries to explain evil by social origins. As Kolnai observed, humanitarianism may not encourage evil directly, but it soon abandons ethical criteria necessary for a life well lived and a genuine political common good.
Societies imbued with humanitarianism paradoxically have a hard time reproducing themselves and maintaining a healthy level of biological continuity. The French aptly speak of denatalite- the "unbirthing of France".
Perhaps it is illuminating, in this context, to look at the birth of Europe in relation to its current threat of "unbirthing."
Human beings have a need for a meaning of life that transcends reductive accounts of human needs, but all humanitarianism offers is a reductive account of human needs, leading to the unbirthing of humanity.
Mahoney then turns to the great Christian witness Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and in particular to his series of historical novels called The Red Wheel. I am grateful for this reminder and these signposts for further exploration of Solzhenitsyn's work. In the series Tolstoy's substitute doctrine of love for the Christian doctrine of love is exposed for what it is. In his pacifist, rationalist understanding of Christ's teaching, Tolstoy forgets that every human being and citizen has moral and political responsibilities, and to ignore these, especially in the face of evil, is not a commitment to a higher summons but a betrayal of man and God. The character Sanya Lazhenitsyn visits Tolstoy's estate but instead of Tolstoy's heterodox notions, he becomes attracted to the ideas of Vehki (Landmarks or Signposts), the great intellectual manifesto published in 1909 by a group of independent Christian pluralist thinkers (Berdyaev, Struve, Bulgakov, and Frank). This book sounds intriguing. I have read some books by Berdyaev and Bulgakov and I wonder if Frank is the great biographer of Dostoevsky by that name.
It was interesting to hear Mahoney's treatment of his pope, Pope Francis, and I began to read the chapter by coincidence right when word that Pope Francis was very ill reached my ears. Mahoney observed a tendency in Francis to conflate the Gospel with the requirements of a humanitarian moral message. He remarked it was perhaps the greatest failing of his pontificate and one that boded ill for the future of the Church and its ability to moderate democratic modernity's drift to softness and relativism. He observes that Pope Francis tends to conflate divine mercy and democratic compassion.
Mahoney then turns to the philosophy of Jurgen Habermas, who he calls "the theorist of post-national democracy." Habermas's position is dead set against the nation and regards it as an atavism, an anachronism which must jettison stubborn claims to sovereignty and autonomy. He probably found Brexit very distasteful. He thinks "national particularisms" must be overcome. He presents his readers with a choice between democracy and capitalism. He is a true believer in the triumph of emancipatory cosmopolitanism. Nonetheless, he has a fundamental decency as a person in contrast to some of the theorists like Zizek who embrace the depredations of totalitarian dictators.
Mahoney ends the book with a look at reason and conscience, drawing on the work of Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Newman. Mahoney holds up Pope Benedict as an eloquent partisan of both reason and faith. Benedict lamented in the Regensburg address the "dehellenization" of Christianity, which Mahoney explains means its reduction to a humanitarian religion closed off to rational articulation of nature and reason. He sides with Cardinal Newman in rejecting any identification of conscience with subjectivism and relativism. Conscience rather means "the abolition of mere subjectivity when man's intimate sphere is touched by the truth that comes from God." Conscience is our portal, Mahoney writes, to the natural moral law, and is written "in the hearts of men." Ideological fanatics like Hitler and Stalin who arrive at "perverse convictions" do so by "trampling down the protest made by the anamnesis of one's true being."
In the Appendix, Mahoney provides an essay by Aurel Kolnai entitled "The Humanitarian versus the Religious Attitude". I thought this description of the situation under the religion of humanity illuminating: "Much more attention is paid to the problem of making everyone alike share in the 'good life' than to the query as to what the good life really is like; there is less and less care about the existence of standards of culture, but an enormous amount of thought and effort is devoted to the dissemination of culture through education; because the meaning and purpose of life are viewed as purely immanent, and therefore at once self-evident and insusceptible of definition, the technique of life (with a particular stress on technology) becomes
February 28, 2022
Over the years I have noticed that various popular movements have not only been embraced by Christians but have also attained the status of doctrinal requirement within some churches. In other words, if you don’t accept them, how can you possibly be a Christian? Consider environmentalism. Christians have rightly noted that God gave mankind stewardship over the earth and that we have a duty to take care of it. However, the science of what is environmentally sound is not always clear cut, and there is room for disagreement. Furthermore, by raising prices on essential goods and services, the proposed solutions often badly hurt the poor. Environmentalism is not built off a Christian worldview; rather it is built on different foundations, such as naturalism, which sees man as just another animal, a product of random evolutionary processes, and not created in the image of God, with inherent dignity and value. So, its solutions do not necessarily respect the dignity and value of man. Hence, a Christian who uncritically adopts the values, priorities and solutions of such a movement as his God-given duty risks serving another god, an idol, in the name of being a good steward of God’s creation. Instead, he must approach the issue on his own terms, on the basis of a biblical worldview.
While Dr. Mahoney doesn’t really get into Christian environmentalism, he deals with similar patters applicable to other issues. Consider pacifism, an issue he gets into using Tolstoy as an example. On the surface, pacifism seems very Christian. After all, Jesus is the Prince of Peace, and he commanded us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us and turn the other cheek. However, we are also commanded to love our neighbor and to stand up for and advocate for the weak and vulnerable. Is it loving to stand by turning our cheeks while the wicked are running roughshod over the weak and vulnerable? I can’t help thinking about young David, a man after God’s own heart, who confronted, killed and beheaded Goliath and then carried the severed head around like a trophy to show the Philistines that their champion was dead. If pacifism is how you honor God, I fail to see how David could be a man after God’s own heart if God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. So, doctrinaire pacifism is inconsistent with a biblical world view and should not be adopted by Christians. As Dr. Mahoney puts it, there is such a thing as a good war, in which the weak and vulnerable are protected by vanquishing the wicked, and a bad peace, in which the wicked exploit the vulnerable.
Dr. Mahoney covers a lot more ground that just this and goes into deep philosophy and history, delving into the writings of Orestes Brownson, Vladimir Soloviev and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. When you read this book, expect to be challenged and to be forced to think. He is also Catholic, citing various encyclicals and other papal documents. Because I am Protestant, I tend to be unfamiliar with such documents. Regardless, I appreciated his point of view and consider it beneficial to a Christian reader, whether Catholic or Protestant.
While Dr. Mahoney doesn’t really get into Christian environmentalism, he deals with similar patters applicable to other issues. Consider pacifism, an issue he gets into using Tolstoy as an example. On the surface, pacifism seems very Christian. After all, Jesus is the Prince of Peace, and he commanded us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us and turn the other cheek. However, we are also commanded to love our neighbor and to stand up for and advocate for the weak and vulnerable. Is it loving to stand by turning our cheeks while the wicked are running roughshod over the weak and vulnerable? I can’t help thinking about young David, a man after God’s own heart, who confronted, killed and beheaded Goliath and then carried the severed head around like a trophy to show the Philistines that their champion was dead. If pacifism is how you honor God, I fail to see how David could be a man after God’s own heart if God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. So, doctrinaire pacifism is inconsistent with a biblical world view and should not be adopted by Christians. As Dr. Mahoney puts it, there is such a thing as a good war, in which the weak and vulnerable are protected by vanquishing the wicked, and a bad peace, in which the wicked exploit the vulnerable.
Dr. Mahoney covers a lot more ground that just this and goes into deep philosophy and history, delving into the writings of Orestes Brownson, Vladimir Soloviev and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. When you read this book, expect to be challenged and to be forced to think. He is also Catholic, citing various encyclicals and other papal documents. Because I am Protestant, I tend to be unfamiliar with such documents. Regardless, I appreciated his point of view and consider it beneficial to a Christian reader, whether Catholic or Protestant.
August 13, 2019
What I would consider an undeniable thesis; could have done with some more original writing by Mahoney outside of the writers and thinkers he uses as case studies.
January 3, 2021
A challenging read, but, for me, worthwhile.
February 15, 2023
A book with a message that should reach as many people as possible. Although he mostly quotes other people's works, Mahoney has great ideas. But. Unfortunately, he expresses them in a convoluted way. While the concepts are not exceptionally hard to grasp (especially if you are at least a bit familiar with religion, history, and literature), the author overuses superfluous words. There's also the manner in which he (mis)uses syntax. The ideas themselves are not particularly difficult to follow, but I found myself rereading the same part a few times because of how knotty and mazelike the writing is.
I have read various religious or philosophical works from different authors, ranging from short essays to lengthy books, from plain language to academic style. Yes, every so often some of them can be difficult in terms of comprehending the concepts or notions themselves, but that is due to the complexity of the author's thoughts, not the way in which they are presented (as it should be).
Overall (not just in Mahoney's case), I think more people would be interested in these kinds of subjects and would learn something beneficial to themselves and, subsequently, to the world, if the authors did not focus on their own need to flaunt and be commended for their inflated, pompous, and sesquipedalian language.
I have come to believe this is an increasing trend that slows down the process of spreading knowledge. This especially applies in this modern age when people just want the gist of what they read and don't have enough patience to dig through pretentious language - and yes, this is also one of the downsides of modernity. But people generally prefer information conveyed in the clearest way possible - which I think it's the best way to ensure the snowballing of knowledge.
There are quite a lot of modern authors that should just put the bombastic, fancy-schmancy thesaurus aside and give priority to sending their message to as many people as possible, not just to mostly other grandiloquent scholars (sometimes it even seems to me some men of letters, at some point, form a clique of like-minded academia members that just applaud, congratulate and write forewords to each other).
As someone wise once said, genius is making complex ideas simple, not making simple ideas complicated.
[It's like you want or need to get from the UK to France, but first, you go a bit to Spain, pass through Italy, visit Switzerland, then go to Poland, then Norway, consider making a short trip to China, make a quick stop in Germany, visit Turkey and then, eventually, you get to France - yes, maybe you had some fun, but the goal was getting to France]
I have read various religious or philosophical works from different authors, ranging from short essays to lengthy books, from plain language to academic style. Yes, every so often some of them can be difficult in terms of comprehending the concepts or notions themselves, but that is due to the complexity of the author's thoughts, not the way in which they are presented (as it should be).
Overall (not just in Mahoney's case), I think more people would be interested in these kinds of subjects and would learn something beneficial to themselves and, subsequently, to the world, if the authors did not focus on their own need to flaunt and be commended for their inflated, pompous, and sesquipedalian language.
I have come to believe this is an increasing trend that slows down the process of spreading knowledge. This especially applies in this modern age when people just want the gist of what they read and don't have enough patience to dig through pretentious language - and yes, this is also one of the downsides of modernity. But people generally prefer information conveyed in the clearest way possible - which I think it's the best way to ensure the snowballing of knowledge.
There are quite a lot of modern authors that should just put the bombastic, fancy-schmancy thesaurus aside and give priority to sending their message to as many people as possible, not just to mostly other grandiloquent scholars (sometimes it even seems to me some men of letters, at some point, form a clique of like-minded academia members that just applaud, congratulate and write forewords to each other).
As someone wise once said, genius is making complex ideas simple, not making simple ideas complicated.
[It's like you want or need to get from the UK to France, but first, you go a bit to Spain, pass through Italy, visit Switzerland, then go to Poland, then Norway, consider making a short trip to China, make a quick stop in Germany, visit Turkey and then, eventually, you get to France - yes, maybe you had some fun, but the goal was getting to France]
May 1, 2019
Good understanding of our time
Mahoney gives a great history and applies it to our day. A great example of the fact that if we don't know our history we will certainly repeat it. That is a scary warning in this case.
Mahoney gives a great history and applies it to our day. A great example of the fact that if we don't know our history we will certainly repeat it. That is a scary warning in this case.
Read
July 6, 2019Thesis: the idol of our age is the religion of humanity (Auguste Comte’s term). Love of humanity, egalitarian social order, progress replaces belief in transcendent human goal in the vision of God. No evil or tragic dimension of life. Puts humanity in place of God. Rejects the God-man. Ideal of egalitarian, universal human society replaces nation, inherently pacifist, a-political, dictatorial. Virtue of love for inherent worth of individual lost to egalitarian self-sufficiency. Sentimental and self-satisfied. Does not require love of real humans through exercise of morality. Uses Orestes Brownson (1803-1876), Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900), Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Pope Benedict as prophets who denounce humanism. Critical of Pope Francis. Mahoney argues for a recovery of natural law ethics through formation of conscience. Appendix reprints Aurel Kolnai, “The Humanitarian versus the Religious attitude." Kolnai makes a good point on the weakening of creative drive to improve human condition because nothing above the ideal human to measure improvement. Mahoney’s Catholic Aristotelianism will not renew Christianity. His moderate conservatism based on apprehension of objective morality needs more work, but the critique of humanism is well documented. Good bibliography.
July 23, 2019
Fantastic
January 17, 2021
I really enjoyed this book, especially the chapter that compared and contrasted Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn
February 13, 2019
The great thing about this book is that it clearly defines the secular religion of humanitarianism and demonstrates its danger. This is the religion of the world’s elites, and knowing this explains much of their behavior. It is an important thing to realize and to understand, if nothing else for trying to understand what is happening in the world we inhabit.
What is not so great about this book is that all that it accomplishes is mostly done in Pierre Manent’s foreword. The book itself is not uninteresting, substantiating the claim. There are strong chapters too. There are long chapters, however, which tediously recount the arguments of neglected books which foresaw what we now have. The punch the book might otherwise pack is all preempted in the powerful foreword, and the rest feels like a letdown.
Mahoney’s target—he is a Catholic—is the present pope, Francis. Perhaps the book is accounted for in a kind of etiquette that requires certain preliminaries before direct and substantial accusations can be leveled. Direct and substantial accusations are certainly herein to be found, namely that Francis is mixing the Catholic religion indiscriminately and disastrously with the alien religion of secular humanitarianism.
What is not so great about this book is that all that it accomplishes is mostly done in Pierre Manent’s foreword. The book itself is not uninteresting, substantiating the claim. There are strong chapters too. There are long chapters, however, which tediously recount the arguments of neglected books which foresaw what we now have. The punch the book might otherwise pack is all preempted in the powerful foreword, and the rest feels like a letdown.
Mahoney’s target—he is a Catholic—is the present pope, Francis. Perhaps the book is accounted for in a kind of etiquette that requires certain preliminaries before direct and substantial accusations can be leveled. Direct and substantial accusations are certainly herein to be found, namely that Francis is mixing the Catholic religion indiscriminately and disastrously with the alien religion of secular humanitarianism.
dnf
July 5, 2023This is chilling reading although I am somewhat ready for it having read two by Robert Cardinal’s Sarah (published 2016 and 2019), Bishop Alexander Schneider, published 2019 and an early predictive “Lord of the World” (1907). I am looking for suggestions on what we can do about it and have only Bishop Schneider’s promise he will pray for Pope Francis.
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