I argue at Catholic World Report that secularist commitments simply mean that the established religion will be irrational.
thoughts in and out of season
I argue at Catholic World Report that secularist commitments simply mean that the established religion will be irrational.
Autonomous individual
Greetings from Australia again! Great article. I suppose if our essential (albeit flawed) notion of Man is an “autonomous individual” and public life is “engineered” to facilitate and promote the notion of free choice as the ultimate end (of course this assumes an end but who decides!?) then all the matters raised in your article follow. It really is an example of what happens when you start off with incorrect notions of reality.
Obviously, by stealth, Man as autonomous individual is qualified by the liberal state insofar as those who don’t agree with it are not free to publicly espouse differing views.
The result is an inhuman society where human nature, differences between the sexes, the significance of place and time, community, obvious differences between people are done away with. Nature itself becomes not something to be received (as gift) but something to be utilised for the further purposes of the will. This is of course facilitated by technology and scientism all of which tend to “decontextualise” and reduce Man to something less than he actually is.
The result is a hollowed out culture where only things such as careerism and consumerism matter. If you are not successful in these areas, your identity and success are in question.
Not a pretty picture. Your thoughts Mr Kalb?
I think that’s pretty much
I think that’s pretty much the way things have been going. One way or the other it won’t be sustainable but how bad things get and what happens when they go crash can’t really be predicted.