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This episode of the Moral Imagination Podcast is a talk I gave at AmPhil’s Center for Civil Society conference in November, 2023 on the “Rise of the Nones.” According to Pew Research, those who declare no religious affiliation - None - are now the largest religious category in the United States.
In this talk I address several overarching reasons for the decline of Christianity and address how five dominant visions of the human person including person as a cog or scourge, transhumanism & transgenderism, plastic anthropology, and the person as a commodity — also play a key role not only in despair and anxiety, but contribute both to the decline of Christian belief and the rise of secularism and pantheism/new paganism.
This talk is a thematic overview and distillation of two longer lectures I give on five false anthropologies and 10 reasons for unbelief and the decline of Christianity. Some of the topics I address include Breakdown of the Family - specifically decrease in fatherhood participation, and its impact on religious practice Sexual Revolution - disorients the person and relationships between men and women Feminism & Smashing the Patriarchy — “Flight from Woman” Egalitarianism and Pantheism - Tocqueville’s prediction of the rise of pantheism in democratic societies Technology + Technological Society: Practical: use of technology and propaganda Theoretical: Empiricist rationality is incoherent and severs relationship between affectivity and reason Scientism: vision of a technical solution to evil, sin, suffering Humanitarianism and what I call “Almost Christianity” Failures of the Church: scandal, corruption, assimilation, and failure to teach and catechize Loss of non-linguistic catechesis When people are leaving Christianity today, do they know what they are leaving? Confusion about the nature and destiny of the human person and what it means to be an embodied person Plastic Anthropology —malleable based on feelings Transhumanism / Transgenderism - combination of biology and technology Person as Cog Person as Scourge Person as Commodity — Everything becomes an object of trade. Del Noce’s concept of Pure Bourgeois Conclude with several suggestions to address the loss of faith and confusions over anthropology Re-affirm that Being is good and intelligible - Our bodies are good Each person is a subject and not simply an object Defend Reason and Freedom We are embodied and Embedded Persons— our bodies are not accidental Thinkers I address include Augusto Del Noce, Joseph Ratzinger, C.S. Lewis, Henri DeLubac, Carrie Gress, Karl Stern, Christopher Palmer, Jaron Lanier, Max Scheler, Joseph Pieper, John Paul II See www.themoralimagination.com for book links and related podcasts. AmPhil Center For Civil Society - Nonprofit Educational Leader Leading educational provider for nonprofit fundraising learning the Center for Civil Society is the go to for major gifts, campaigns, strategy, and... Time to read 8 minutes Dec 22nd, 2022 AmPhil Rise Of The Nones Nonprofit Conference Nov 7-8 Scottsdale. AZ Leading scholars, philanthropists, and nonprofit leaders will discuss the rise in secularism, decline in church attendance, and other related trends, and... (352 kB) https://amphil.com/event/c4cs-riseofnones/ Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project Religious ‘Nones’ in America: Who They Are and What They Believe 28% of U.S. adults are religiously unaffiliated, describing themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” when asked about their religion. Written by Gregory A. Smith, Patricia Tevington, Justin Nortey, Michael Rotolo, Asta Kallo and Becka A. Alper -
In this episode of the Moral Imagination Podcast I speak with Hungarian Ambassador to the Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta, Ambassador Eduard Habsburg, about his book The Habsburg Way: Seven Rules for Turbulent Times. We discuss a number of themes including some history of the Habsburg Dynasty, the life and death of Blessed Charles of Austria, the last Austro-Hungarian emperor, including the remarkable tradition of the funeral for Habsburg emperors. We also discuss themes of marriage, children, religion, technology, liturgy, and especially the importance of family and tradition to provide rootedness in a time of individualism and “liquid modernity.” Other themes and topics include: Different Visions of Subsidiarity — Catholic Social Teaching vs. European Union Decentralization and localism vs. Devolution of power from a central state Technocratic Politics Alexis de Tocqueville on Individualism and Centralization Robert Nisbet on the Quest for Community Joseph Ratzinger — What it means to be a Christian Liturgy as non-linguistic catechesis The Human Person as Embodied and Embedded and more Biography
Ambassador Eduard Habsburg is the Hungarian Ambassador to the Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta. He is the author of The Habsburg Way. 7 Rules for Turbulent Times from Sophia Press and Dubbie: The Double-Headed Eagle. Full Quiver Publishing, 2020. You can connect and follow him on Twitter at @EduardHabsburg X (formerly Twitter) Eduard Habsburg (@EduardHabsburg) on X Ambassador of Hungary to the Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta.
Book: THE HABSBURG WAY
https://t.co/vMufBgoJGE -
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In this episode of the Moral Imagination Podcast I speak with Seth Kaplan about his book Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society One Zip Code at a Time. Seth has spent his career working in fragile states around the world — countries that are unstable and prone to violence, war, and political problems. About 10 years ago Seth was increasingly asked if the US was becoming fragile. As he turned his attention to studying the United States, he concluded was that while the US is not fragile as a country, there are many areas and neighborhoods throughout the country that are very fragile — where poverty rates are high, there is crime, and instability, and social capital, family stability, and economic and educational opportunities are low. Seth explains that depending on the neighborhood where you live in the United States it can mean a shorter lifespan of over 20 years. Kaplan speaks about two faces of poverty, material and social, and how they are both a problem of broken relationships. He argues: “I think the real question you have to ask about the United States we have many things going very well in our country but something has gotten worse in the last couple of generations: the politics, the trust, the social breakdown, the deaths of despair, the health crisis the depression, and the rise of suicides. The big question that we have to ask ourselves is what has changed in our relationships that lead us to have so many social and political problems?” Themes and Topics we discuss include: Family Stability Social Capital Bonding vs. Bridging Social Capital Relationships and Community The role of religion and religious practice in communities Associationalism vs. Individualism vs. Collectivism Biography Seth D. Kaplan is a leading expert on fragile states. He is a Professorial Lecturer in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Adviser for the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), and consultant to multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, U.S. State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, and OECD as well as developing country governments and NGOs. Resources
Chris Arnade Podcast on his book Dignity
Communio — Communio is a nonprofit that trains and equips churches to evangelize through the renewal of healthy relationships, marriages, and the family.
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In this episode I speak with Fr. Cajetan Cuddy O.P. about Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophic Analysis of the Nature of Man, by Fr. Robert Edward Brennan, O.P., edited and with an introduction by Fr. Cuddy.
Aristotle wrote that “to attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.” We often read psychology because we want to understand ourselves and our behavior- and the behavior of others. While we don’t normally think of St. Thomas Aquinas as a psychologist, as a serious philosopher, theologian, and student of the human person, St. Thomas gives us deep insight into human psychology — the study of the psyche or soul — our intellect, memory, will, emotions, and our embodied, embedded existence.
Fr. Brennan’s book on Thomistic Psychology provides a good accessible introduction to Aquinas’ reflections on psychology. As. Fr. Cuddy notes, some of the science in Thomistic Psychology is a bit out of date, but the key principles and ideas are still applicable and provide an important contribution, especially in a time when so many struggle with anxiety, depression, sadness and other mental health challenges. These have many causes to be sure, but the impact of modern theories of materialism, spiritualism and other reductionist visions of the person makes people even more confused about who they are and how to live well.
One of the ideas central to the work of St. Thomas and Fr. Brennan is the idea of truth — conforming the mind to reality — and how taking truth seriously combined with a solid, non-reductionist philosophy of the person can have practical, positive impact on our mental and psychological health. Thomistic Psychology presents an integrated vision of the person that helps us the better to understand ourselves and others, and provides clear models and practical advice on addressing our problems, how to fight bad habits and build good ones, how to address our emotions, disappointments, and successes, and a roadmap on how to live well.
St. Thomas’ philosophy and pyschology are also very important because he takes our embodiement seriously. We are not souls in a body or driving around in our body like we drive around in a car. Nor are we simply material beings determined by our neurobiology or genetics. Rather we are embodied persons our physical, moral, spiritual, emotional, and psychological life are intertwined. What we do and happens to us physically impacts our emotional and mental life and vice versa. St. Thomas’ suggested remedy for sadness is a perfect of example of his taking our physical and spiritual nature seriously.
We discuss a broad range of topics including:
What is a person
Divine Persons, Angelic Persons, Embodied persons
What it means for human to have a nature.
What is a soul?
What is a body?
Why the body matters
Free will
The proper use of the powers of man
The remedy for saddnes
St. Thomas on the Senses — sight, touch, hearing etc.
Memory
Imagination
St. Thomas idea of self-creation
Human formation
The person as passive and active agent
The role of happiness
Evil as a privation
Why we need to be careful about the music we listen to, the movies we watch, what we think about
Spiritual and/or Religious
The beginning of love according to John Paul II
Faith, Hope, Charity
How the Christian life is not to become an angel — but a human being fully integrated.
Liturgy
Fasting
Pray with our Bodies
Find show notes and links to books we discuss at www.themoralimagination.com
Biography:
Fr. Cajetan Cuddy, O.P., is a priest of the Dominican Province of St. Joseph. He serves as the general editor of the Thomist Tradition Series, and he is co-author of Thomas and the Thomists: The Achievement of St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters. Fr. Cuddy has a B.A. from Franciscan University, a M.Div./S.T.B., The Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, a S.T.L., The Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception and his doctorate, a S.T.D. from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He writes and lectures extensively on the philosophy and theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Thomist Tradition. Some of his selected publications can be found here.
Fr. Cuddy also lectures for the Thomistic Institute. For an excellent introduction to the philosophy and theology of St. Thomas Aquinas I recommend the Thomistic Institutenstitute.org/ and their series Aquinas 101
The late Fr. Robert Edward Brennan, O.P. was a Dominican Friar, professor, and the author of numerous books and articles including Thomistic Psychology and The History of Psychology: A Thomistic Reading, both published recently by Cluny Media.
Cluny Media
Thomist Tradition Series
Cluny Media
thomisticinstitute.org
Thomistic Institute
The Thomistic Institute exists to promote Catholic truth in our contemporary world by strengthening the intellectual formation of Christians at universities, in the Church, and in the wider public square.
aquinas101.thomisticinstitute.org
Aquinas 101
Aquinas 101 is a video course project of the Thomistic Institute, located in Washington, DC. The Thomistic Institute exists to promote Catholic truth in our contemporary world by strengthening the intellectual formation of Christians at universities, in the Church, and in the wider public square.
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In this episode I speak with Professor Vigen Gurioan about the revised and expanded edition of his book Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child’s Imagination. We discuss the power of stories, how they help can us develop self-knowledge, and how fairy tales and classic stories are essential for education and moral formation for children — and for adults. Fairy tales and classic stories can impress upon us profound philosophical and often theological insights about life and death, the good and beautiful, the value of courage and nobility, and importance of self-sacrifice for love. Stories, themes, and thinkers we we discuss include
Hans Christian Anderson
The Little Mermaid
Beauty and the Beast
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
George McDonald
Pinocchio, honor, honesty, and the responsibility of children to their parents
The Ugly Duckling, courage, and the desire for beauty
The Wind and the Willows, Charlotte’s Web, and friendship of equality and friendship of mentors
Good Wishes and Bad Wishes
Joseph Pieper and Dietrich von Hildebrand on joy as a the superabundant fruit of love and self-gift
Charles Dickens
C.S. Lewis
Edmund Burke
Aristotle on Friendship and more
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In this episode I speak with heart surgeon, Dr. Philip Ovadia MD, about metabolic health, diet, science, cholesterol, insulin resistance, the US government food pyramid, Ancel Keys and the cholesterol - saturated fat -heart disease hypothesis. We discuss medical education, health insurance, scientism, and some of the obstacles doctors and scientists face with “group think.” Dr Ovadia tells his story of how lost 100 pounds changed everything he learned about fat and food. He explains that while half of the patients who have heart attacks or heart surgery have normal levels of cholesterol, over 90% have insulin resistance. He argues that metabolic health is not only important for heart health, but for mental health, and plays a key role in preventing cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. We discuss a number of themes including
Gary Taubes: The Case Sugar and Why We Get Fat
Problems of Crony Capitalism and Subsidies
How the Government Food Pyramid makes you fat
Metabolic Health and Covid
The Campbell Effect and how bad science has dominated medicine
Weston Price
Insulin Resistance
Diabetes
Saturated Fat
Pharmacuetical Industry and Medication
Seed Oils
Health Insurance and the need for new models
The connection between metabolic health and mental health
This episode and podcast is for informational purposes and does not provide medical advice.
BiographyDr. Philip Ovadia MD is a board certified cardiac surgeon and founder of Ovadia Heart Health. He grew up in New York and graduated from the accelerated Pre-Med/Med progra at the Pennsylvannia State University and Jefferson Medical College. This was followed by residency in General Surgery at the University of Medicine and Dentistry at New Jersey and a fellowship in Cardio-thoracic Surgery at Tufts-New England Medical School. Learn more about Dr. Ovadia at www.ovadiahearthealth.com
ResourcesSee books below
Campbell’s Law
Dave Feldman on Cholesterol
Podcast with Jay Richards on Fasting and the Ketogenic Diet
Podcast with Diana Rodgers on Food, Meat and Health
Podcast with James Madden on Embodied, Embedded Persons
Podcast with Joel Salatin on Food and Farming
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In this episode I speak with Titus Techera about Dune, Bladerunner, science fiction, dystopian film, technocratic view of humanity, and the formative power of science fiction on the imagination. We discuss contemporary technological society, social breakdown, loneliness, men and women and decline in marriage, technology and trans-humanism/ transgenderism, and the predictive power of dystopian film. We talk about what it means to be human and the relationship between digital technology and humanity. Titus argues that much of sport, military, modern manliness and excellence has been reduced to science and creatures of technology.
He argues that one of the “catalysts for science fiction stories is disappointment with the world. The dead hand of the past is too powerful. People are always a problem; tradition gets in the way of radical innovation. Science fiction is aware of the problem of our decadence, but technical daring can solve it.” And yet in the science fiction societies like Bladerunner there is a wealthy technical class amidst brutality, societal decline where everyone has lost their humanity.
He writes
As with all science fiction set in the near future, Blade Runner is an attempt to make us look at ourselves as though we were strangers to ourselves, allowing for the possibility that serious changes can come suddenly and overcome our beliefs or preferences. Could we end up like Deckard, Harrison Ford’s character, a bounty hunter, or “blade runner?”
We need not embrace this kind of despair, but only need understand its appeal. The social landscape of Blade Runner seems plausible enough. The film presents American cities overrun by crime and poverty while technological corporations become immensely wealthy… A suitably dramatic expression of something we see around us quite often; indeed, perhaps exaggeration is necessary, since we have an excusable, but unfortunate tendency to ignore the misery of American cities.
Themes we discuss include
Science and scientism,
Atheism and religion,
Nihilism and utopianism,
Social engineering of people,
Medicine
Covid pandemic and vaccine mandates
Tension between scientific progress in digital technology and scientific and technological stagnation in other areas.
Jordan Peterson
Contemporary interest in stoicism
Utiltarianism and hedonism
Sports and Science
Spiderman
BiographyTitus Techera is the executive director of the American Cinema Foundation, host of the ACF podcasts, a film critic for Law & Liberty and the Acton Institute, contributor to Modern Age, columnist for Return and European Conservative, and editor-in-chief of PostModern Conservative. Techera studied liberal arts at Bard College Berlin and political science at the University of Bucharest and the Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
ResourcesTitus Techera essay: The Tale of Two Dunes
Titus Techera essay on Bladerunner
Follow Titus on Twitter
Listen to the ACF Film Podcast
Titus Techera Substack
Titus Techera on Novak Djokovic, Excellence, and Covid Rules
Caveats: These science fiction books and films because they deal with dystopian futures and social decadence have material that is not suitable for children.
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Pope Benedict XVI / Joseph Ratzinger passed away on December 31 at the age of 95 years old. His writing and teaching have been a major influence on my thinking. So in honor of his memory and gratitude for his example, this episode is a talk I gave on Pope Benedict XVI on Five Crises of Culture and the Intellectual sources of Secularism and the New Evangelization. I go through five intellectual themes/crises that Benedict identifies in the West “where the roots of Christianity are deep but who have experienced a serious crisis of faith due to secularization."
Truth and the Dictatorship of Relativism
Reason
Progress
Freedom
Beauty
I examine how he describes and explains the challenges of our age; how he addresses each of them on their own terms, and the proposes a Gospel response. One element of the crisis of faith is grounded in intellectual sources. We think, and too often live, like secularists and adopt often without thinking a secular framework. But secularism is not neutral. As Benedict argues, “We must develop and adult faith.”
An "adult" faith is not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest novelty; a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceit from truth. We must develop this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith - only faith - that creates unity and is fulfilled in love.”
In this talk I provide a lot of quotes and references. You can find show notes, links, and outline of the talk at www.themoralimagination.com
ResourcesSee the outline / handout of the talk below.
Also see Amazon links to books I refer to in the talk below. I also provide Amazon link to the encyclicals, but you can get all the encyclicals for free at vatican.va
There a lot of books listed and if you are unsure where to start I would suggest you begin with the following:
Books: Jesus of Nazareth Vol 1, Milestones, and Last Testament
Collection of more complex essays: Values in a Time of Upheaval
Encyclicals Spe Salvi and Deus Caritas Est
Short Readings: Here are some links
Homily before the Conclave — “Dictatorship of Relativsm”
Regensberg Address — on the crisis of reason in the west
Cardinal Ratzinger on Europe’s Crisis of Culture at Subiaco
Benedict XVI Paris Lecture Meeting with Representatives from the World of Culture
Additional Links mentioned in talk
Roger Scruton: Beauty and Desecration
Roger Scruton: Kitsch and the Modern Predicament
I Grateful to Authenticum and Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish for the invitation to speak and for recording and providing me with the audio of this lecture. You can learn more about the Authenticum Lecture Series
OUTLINE/HANDOUT Benedict XVI—Five Crises of Culture and the Intellectual sources of Secularism and the New EvangelizationMichael Matheson Miller
The New Evangelization
Re-Propose the Gospel "to those regions awaiting the first evangelization AND to those regions where the roots of Christianity are deep but who have experienced a serious crisis of faith due to secularization." Benedict XVI
Theme: Think Like Christians
Focus on Intellectual roots of secularization and the crisis of faith and the work of Benedict XVI We must not approach the social and political order in a purely secular manner. Benedict is I think a model for new evangelization because he takes the situation of our current time on its own terms and then addresses it in light of reason and the Gospel.
Paul VI: Evangelii Nuntiandi
"The conditions of the society in which we live oblige all of us therefore to revise methods, to seek by every means to study how we can bring the Christian message to modern man. For it is only in the Christian message that modern man can find the answer to his questions and the energy for his commitment of human solidarity."
John Paul II: Redemptoris Missio
“I wish to invite the Church to renew her missionary commitment.”
“…it is the primary service which the Church can render to every individual and to all humanity in the modern world, a world which has experienced marvelous achievements but which seems to have lost its sense of ultimate realities and of existence itself. "Christ the Redeemer," I wrote in my first encyclical, "fully reveals man to himself.... The person who wishes to understand himself thoroughly...must...draw near to Christ.... [The] Redemption that took place through the cross has definitively restored to man his dignity and given back meaning to his life in the world."
Benedict XVI
“Throughout the centuries, the Church has never ceased to proclaim the salvific mystery of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, but today that same message needs renewed vigor to convince contemporary man, who is often distracted and insensitive…
“For this reason, the new evangelization must try to find ways of making the proclamation of salvation more effective; a proclamation without which personal existence remains contradictory and deprived of what is essential. Even for those who remain tied to their Christian roots, but who live the difficult relationship with modernity, it is important to realize that being Christian is not a type of clothing to wear in private or on special occasions, but is something living and all-encompassing, able to contain all that is good in modern life.”
BXVI to Participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization
“We…have this mission: to encounter our contemporaries so as to make His love known to them. Not so much by teaching, never by judging, but by being travelling companions. Like the deacon Philip, who – the Acts of the Apostles tell us – stood up, set out, ran towards the Ethiopian people and, as a friend, sat down beside them, entering into dialogue with the man who had a great desire for God in the midst of many doubts”
—Pope Francis: International Meeting for Academic Centers and Schools of New Evangelization
Five Crises of Culture and Key Themes in the Thought of Bendict XVI 1. Truth and the Dictatorship of Relativism“How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth. Every day new sects spring up, and what St Paul says about human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error (cf. Eph 4: 14) comes true.
“Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine", seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.”
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Mass Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice
After fall of Soviet Union relativism did not die but combined with desire for gratification to form a potent mix. (CF to Augusto Del Noce on the shift from Christian Bourgeois to Pure Bourgeois)
Is Relativism Coherent?
Denial of Truth is self-refuting
Truth exists and is knowable
But this does not mean we know it
Relativism can be nothing other than a dictatorship
Relativism leads to ideology
St. Thomas Aquinas: Truth is conforming the mind to reality
Josef Pieper: Seeing the World as it is and acting accordingly
Gospel Response -
In the homily where he speaks the Dictatorship of Relativism Benedict does not stop at intellectual refutation. He responds with the person of Jesus. He says:
“We, however, have a different goal: the Son of God, the true man. He is the measure of true humanism. An "adult" faith is not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest novelty; a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceipt from truth.
We must develop this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith - only faith - that creates unity and is fulfilled in love.”
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Mass Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice
2. ReasonRegensburg Address
Crisis of Reason—which is a crisis of politics which is a crisis of humanity
We have limited reason to the empirical
This is incoherent on its own terms because one cannot verify this claim empirically
Must expand reason beyond the empirical otherwise it is not rational
The problem goes beyond incoherence. It leads to what C.S. Lewis has called “the abolition of man.” Empiricist rationality takes all the fundamental human experiences – love, beauty, goodness, hope, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, and justice and relegates them outside the realm of reason. Love and justice then are no longer rational but pure emotion or chemical reactions.
But this is false. In contrast we have what Lewis calls “reasonable emotions,” what Karol Wojtyla (St. John Paul II) calls “spiritual emotions” and what Dietrich von Hildebrand calls “intelligible spiritual affectivity.” Love is not simply raw emotion or chemical reaction. It includes that because we are embodied persons, but it also is reasonable. This is why the tradition defines love as an “act of the will” that “seeks the good of the other.”
“Critical Thinking” Exercise (Thanks to Professor Mark Roberts for this insight)
__JS Bach was born in 1685
__JS Bach wrote beautiful music
__Pope Pius XII was the Bishop of Rome
__Pope Pius XII was a good Pope
__Bell Bottoms were popular in the 1970s
__Bell Bottoms are cool
__ ____________________________________
__ Murder is Bad…
And here we see the problems arise.
First, the opposite of a fact is not an opinion. The opposite of a fact is a false proposition. Opinions are justified belief. Opinions could be classified as good or bad depending upon how reasonable they are. Opinions are true or false if they align with a true proposition. Second, as C.S. Lewis explains in The Abolition of Man, this type of exercise deforms our intellects and our moral sensibilities. He writes:It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all.”
“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
Limiting reason to the empirical has disastrous impact on politics and justice. The end of politics is (or should be) justice – but justice is not empirical. As Ratzinger explains:
“Politics is the realm of Reason, not of a merely technological, calculating reason, but of moral reason, since the goal of the state, and hence, the ultimate goal of politics, has a moral nature, namely peace and justice.”
Limiting reason to the empirical relegates all questions about truth, beauty, goodness, justice, and morality to the realm of subjective opinion and emotion (Regensburg Address)
Return to Plato’s Thrasymachus: Justice is merely the right of the stronger:
Power equals truth—or in our situation it is power, efficiency or consensus equals truth.
“…the majority cannot be an ultimate principle since there are values that no majority is entitled to annul. It can never be right to kill innocent persons, and no power can make this legitimate. Here too, what is ultimately at stake is the defense of reason. Reason—that is moral reason—is above the majority.” “Political Visions and Political Praxis”
Gospel Response: Faith purifies and heals reason. Reason must be expanded and additionally purified by Faith and the Church’s teaching Faith can contribute to correct politics. It can “illuminate and heal” reason.
In the last century…it was the testimony of the martyrs that limited the excess of power, thus making a decisive contribution to the convalescence of reason”
Joseph Ratzinger: To Change or to Preserve? Political Visions and Political Praxis
“Reason only becomes truly human when it is open to the saving forces of faith and if it looks beyond itself.”
Spe Salvi 23
Progress and Eschatology
Myth of Progress—the kingdom of heaven on earth.
o Progress is good – we are called to complete creation. But we cannot be saved by progress
o The problem is a “faith in progress” and a kingdom of man, not the kingdom of God.
o Progress will lead, through new vision of reason, to total freedom.
o Eric Voegelin: “Immanentization of the Eschaton” Trying to create heaven on earth
o Real error is found in misunderstanding of nature of man.
o Politics built on false concept of progress are illusory and ultimately deny human freedom and man himself
o Progress unhinged from morality and the truth about man is dangerous.
o No longer about what I ought to do, but simply what I can do
o Modern concepts of Progress derive from limitation of reason and “new correlation between science and praxis.”
“Now this “redemption”, the restoration of the lost “Paradise” is no longer expected from faith, but from the newly discovered link between science and praxis. It is not that faith is simply denied; rather it is displaced onto another level—that of purely private and other-worldly affairs—and at the same time it becomes somehow irrelevant for the world. This programmatic vision has determined the trajectory of modern times and it also shapes the present-day crisis of faith which is essentially a crisis of Christian hope. Thus hope too, in Bacon, acquires a new form. Now it is called: faith in progress. For Bacon, it is clear that the recent spate of discoveries and inventions is just the beginning; through the interplay of science and praxis, totally new discoveries will follow, a totally new world will emerge, the kingdom of man[16]. He even put forward a vision of foreseeable inventions—including the aeroplane and the submarine. As the ideology of progress developed further, joy at visible advances in human potential remained a continuing confirmation of faith in progress as such.”
Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi paragraph 17
Response: Hope Tempers and Orders Progress
Reflect on the Last Things
1. Politics is the realm of reason—and it is concerned with the present, not the future.
2. But man is not merely oriented to the present—man is destined for eternal life with God—beyond politics.
3. As Christians we must keep the last things in our view. Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell are real and death escapes no man.
True Hope: In place of the myth of progress which enslaves we need a true understanding of Christian Hope--True hope can only be found in God Spe Salvi # 27
A Proper Eschatology helps us avoid Utopianism
o “A definitely ideal society presupposes the end of freedom”
o The only person who could actually do this is God—and even he doesn’t do that: God takes us seriously cf Light of the World
“Within this human history of ours the absolutely ideal situation will never exist and a perfected ordering of freedom will never be achieved… the myth of the liberated world of the future in which everything is different and everything will be good is false
We can only ever construct relative social orders which can only ever be relatively right and just. Yet this very same closest possible approach to true right and justice is what we must strive to attain. Everything else, every eschatological promise within history fails to liberate us, rather it disappoints and therefore enslaves us.
Joseph Ratzinger: Truth and Tolerance
“The right state of human affairs, the moral well-being of the world can never be guaranteed simply through structure alone, however good they may be. What this means that every generation has the task of engaging anew in the arduous search for the right to order human affairs; this task is never simply completed.”
Spe Salvi
Politics has a place but as Christians we must remember that Politics is not the answer to our problems.
4. FreedomTruth and Tolerance: Freedom is the dominant theme of modernity.
o “Everybody wants to talk about freedom, but no one wants to talk about truth”
o If we can question truth – we should be able to question freedom
Dominant idea: Nominalist concept of freedom severed from reason and truth. “Diabolical Freedom”
“An irrational will is not a free will”
Freedom must be re-united to reason and oriented to truth
Response: Freedom is for Love
The purpose and end of freedom is love – to seek the good of the other in self-donation
Logos and Love
Christian Hope leads us to Love in the person of Christ—Logos and Agape
The purpose of Politics is peace and justice—and allowing the space for individuals and families to live out their freedom and responsibilities.
Man is not redeemed by science or progress. Man is redeemed by love.
Two themes have always accompanied me in my life…the theme of Christ and the living, present God, the God who loves us and heals us through suffering, and on the other hand, the theme of love…the key to Christianity.
Light of the World
“Love—caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbour is indispensable”
Deus Caritas Est
5. BeautyWhen Beauty is reduced merely to the subjective—merely in the eye of the beholder this undermines objective beauty. This has profound effect on morality, politics, and liturgy. It also takes the sublime insight that each person is unique and un-repeatable and has unique insight into a piece of art or a beautiful landscape and takes this sublime truth and turns it into the banal that everybody has his own opinion.
Beauty is separated from reason and truth and reduced to subjective opinion and expression
The crisis of beauty has led to the proliferation of ugliness, crassness, obscenity, pornography, violence, and disregard for children, women, and life itself.
In response Benedict offers a Catholic understanding of beauty instantiated in the liturgy and sacraments.
“The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced and the art which as grown in her womb. Better witness is born to the Lord by the splendor of holiness and art…than by clever excuses which apologetics has come up with to justify the dark sides which, sadly, are so frequent in the Church’s human history. If the Church is to continue to transform and humanize the world, how can she dispense with the beauty in her liturgies, that beauty which is so closely linked with the radiance of the resurrection? No. Christians must not be too satisfied. They must make their Church into a place where beauty—and hence truth—is at home. Without this the world will become the first circle of Hell.” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Truth - Jesus Christ
Reason - Faith
Progress - Hope
Freedom - Love
Beauty - Worship and Liturgy
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In this episode I speak with Flagg Taylor about the life and writing of Vaclav Benda, and his idea of the parallel polis, decentralization, and creating space in society for culture, the family, charity, education, and human flourishing. Though he was writing under communist regimes, Benda’s writings are very relevant today in light democratic pressures to conformity, de-platforming, and especially as a new ontology of the person is being written into law — and dignity is used as weapon against religious and cultural liberty. Benda’s idea of the parallel polis was not a siege mentality, nor so much a reform existing structures that had ossified or were corrupted, but a call to build new, innovative, and better structures and social institutions that would activate people’s participation in civil, cultural, and commercial life, and give people a sense of purpose and agency. Examples today include decentralized technologies or classical education - which is not running away, but creating better alternatives to mediocre state run schools.
We discuss Benda’s ideas in the context of Czech communism and also in contemporary America, especially the overlap with Alexis de Tocqueville’s warnings about individualism, centralization, and soft-despotism. We examine his engagement with various thinkers including Roger Scruton and J.R.R. Tolkien, and talk about contemporary movements towards decentralization including The Network State by Balaji Srinivasan and its relation to the idea of a parallel polis. We discuss the need for social and commercial alternatives built on a rich understanding of the human person and the family including healthcare, mutual aid societies, banking, payment, insurance and more. Benda’s idea of the parallel polis demonstrates that the solution to totalitarianism and centralization is not more centralization or another totalitarianism, but de-centralization and humanization. We discuss a number of Benda essays including: The Parallel Polis, The Meaning Context Legacy of the Parallel Polis, The Family and Totalitarianism, A Critique of the Idea of a Christian State, and his personal reflections that illustrate the constant social pressure of living under communist totalitarianism.
Themes and Topics include
Albert Hirshman: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty
Peter Berger on Plausibility Structures
Vaclav Havel: Power of the Powerless
Greengrocers of the World Unite!
Aristotle’s Moral and Intellectual Virtues
Vaclav Havel Living in Truth
Benda focus on resisting the lies of totalitarianism by inhabiting a social spaces and plausibility structures that make living in truth possible.
MMM Lecture How to Build a Moral Imagination — new and better ways of live are actually plausible
Provide space for dissidents and their children who were excluded by the official social spaces
Balaji - The Network State - Network Union - Network Archipelago — cloud first, then land
Catholic Variation: Land - Cloud -Land
New Ontology of the Person
Totalitarian redefinition of biology and sociological realityDignity as a weapon against religious liberty
Testing the Limits in Communism vs Testing the Limits in Modern Democracy
De-platforming
Cancel Culture
Underground Seminars led by Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton and Jan Hus Foundation
Ortega y Gassett: The Spoiled Child of History
Second Culture
Charter 77 Essay at Foreign Policy Magazine
VONS Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted
Religious practice in Slovakia vs Czech Republic vs. Poland
Church Persecution by Communists in the 40s - 70s
Communist infiltration of Church and official Church collaboration with Communists 70s and 80s.
Critique of the Christian idea of a state
How politicalization of religion can lead to unbelief
Benda compared to contemporary Catholic integralists / post liberal thinkers
Pappin, Ahmari, Pecknold on Cultural Christianity and Politics
MMM commentary to this essay: Political Catholicism, Liberalism and the Myth of Neutrality
Secularism is not neutral
J.R.R Tolkien —Benda on the Lord of the Rings as as an analysis of totalitarianism
The Scouring of the Shire — See Jay Richards and Jonathan Witt The Hobbit Party link in Resources
The family is always a thorn to totalitarian states
Marriage and family as essential
The Family as the source of 3 fundamental gifts that a person can receive
Fruitful fellowship of love
Freedom
Dignity and unique role of the individual
Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II) and George Orwell on tenderness as a resistance to totalitarianism
Family as a space for freedom, failures, learning
How rebellion against parents is modern fashion that the totalitarian or centralizing state desires
Authority and Hierarchy
Hannah Arendt on Authority and Education (see link in resources)
BiographyDr. F. Flagg Taylor IV is an Associate Professor of government at Skidmore College serves on the Academic Council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in political science from Fordham University and a B.A. from Kenyon College. Taylor’s specialty is in the history of political thought and American government, especially the question of executive power. He is the co-author of The Contested Removal Power, 1789-2010, author of numerous articles, and editor of The Great Lie: Classic and Recent Appraisals of Ideology and Totalitarianism and The Long Night of the Watchman: Essays by Václav Benda, 1977-1989.
Resources Flagg Taylor WebsiteVaclav Benda Biography
The Enduring Interest Podcast on Apple Flagg Taylor Podcast at Podbean
MMM talk at Catholic Crypto Conference: Building a Parallel Polis: Social and Technological Decentralization
Peter Fiala
Flagg Taylor podcast interview on Hannah Arendt
Key QuotesFrom “The Meaning Context Legacy of the Parallel Polis”
There is, however, a fundamental difference between the natural resistance of life to totalitarianism and the deliberate expansion of the space in which the parallel polis can exist.
The former is a cluster of flowers that has grown into place accidentally sheltered from the killing winds of totalitarianism and easily destroyed when those winds change direction. The latter is a trench whose elimination depends strictly on a calculated move by the state power to destroy it.
Given the time and means available only a certain number of trenches can be eliminated. If, at the same time, the parallel polis is able to produce more such trenches than it loses ,a situation arises that is morally dangerous for the regime; it is a blow at the very heart of its power — that is, the possibility of intervening anywhere without limitation. The mission of the parallel polis is to constantly conquer new territory to make its parallelness constantly more substantial and more present. Benda p. 233
From “The Family and Totalitarianism”
I consider marriage and the family to be so essential that I am unwilling to accept the regular clichés about liberation from these obligations. So, in the Christian version as we know it, which for centuries dominated the western world, the family was, as well as many other good things, a visible embodiment of the three most fundamental gifts or dignity is that a person could receive…
Benda lists three gifts:
“Fruitful fellowship of love in which we are bound together with our neighbor without pardon by virtue simply of our closeness; not on the basis of merit rights and entitlements, but by virtue of mutual need and its affectionate reciprocation”
“Freedom and the ability to make permanent, eternal decisions … and acts of fidelity…that stand in radical defiance of our finitude”
“Dignity and the unique role of the individual
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In this episode I speak with Jonathan Bi about the ideas of Rene Girard, social pressure, authentic and false desires, victims and scapegoats, persecution, and Girardian theories on imitation and violence. We also discuss how Girard’s work sheds light on woke capitalism, right and left totalitarianism, Max Scheler, Hannah Arendt, Alexis de Tocqueville, and more. We discuss many themes including:
Christianity and Girard’s theory and the secularization and falsification of Christian values such as how humanitarianism and pacificism replace charity and peace and justice and more.
Evangelical Counsels and The Rule of St. Benedict as a response to metaphysical desire
Different views of the problem of evil: Hegel, Rousseau, Ratzinger, Solzhenitsyn, Girard
Human Perfectibility and Utopianism
Hope and Progress
Benedict XVI Spe Salvi
On the goodness of being in the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and St. Augustine.
There is no technical solution to the problems of evil, suffering, of death
Embedded complexity, the dignity of labor, linear time, and how we live in a Christian civilization
Girard’s explanation of how scapegoating others for their behavior reveals that we too would be guilty — and why it is folly to think with confidence that we would not go along with the crowd if we lived under the Nazis or a slaveholding society
We begin a discussion on the atonement, Girard’s views and how to think about sacrifice — that we’ll have to finish in more detail
We also have a discussion about Christianity and Buddhism and religious belief. I hope you enjoy.
BiographyJonathan Bi is an entrepreneur working on a startup in FinTech and a philosopher focusing on Buddhist philosophy, Continental philosophy, and specifically the work of Rene Girard. Among his many projects he and David Perell have created a seven session video course on the ideas of Rene Girard. Originally from China, Jonathan also grew up in Canada, and studied computer science at Columbia.
https://johnathanbi.com/
ResourcesJonathan Bi and David Perell Lectures on Girard
On the Atonement — we just got into this briefly, but didn’t have enough time or preparation to address it sufficiently. I am going to have another episode on the atonement, and also on Girard and the atonement, but here are two links to Catholic resources view of the atonement
New Advent
Catholic Catechism
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In this episode I speak with Rachel Ferguson about her book Black Liberation Through the Marketplace: Hope, Heartbreak, and the Promise of America, co-authored with Marcus Witcher. The book address issues of social justice, exclusion, opportunity, race and discrimination, classical liberalism, and the economic history of African Americans since the civil war.
Themes we discuss include
Racism and exclusion from justice, property, and rule of law
Classical Liberalism
Property Rights
Freedom of Contract
Education
History of Injustices post Civil War
Convict Leasing
Lynching
Jim Crow
Progressivism
Eugenics
Sterilization
Minimum Wage and its racist and eugenic underpinnings
Urban Renewal
Highways, transportation and the breakdown of African American and ethnic communities
Eminent Domain
African American towns and civil society
1619 Project and its errors
Family and the Sexual Revolution
Contraception
Entrepreneurship
Civil Society
Alexis de Tocqueville
Applied economics
Criminal Justice reform
Black Churches as a central part of community
Decentralization, Associational Life, and Welfare before the Welfare State
We discuss a number of writers including
Fredrick Douglass
Zora Neale Hurston
Booker T. Washington
Malcom X
Friedrich Hayek
Anthony Bradley
BiographyRachel Ferguson, Ph.D. is an economic philosopher and Director of the Free Enterprise Center at Concordia University, Chicago. She has published in Discourse, The Journal of Markets and Morality, and the Library of Economics and Liberty. She has a Ph.D. in philosophy from St. Louis University. She is actively involved in community building and empowering marginalized entrepreneurs through LOVEtheLOU and Gateway to Flourishing
https://www.rachelfergusononline.com/
ResourcesWe mention a lot of books during the podcast. See below for links. Other things discussed include:
Rachel Ferguson Essay: Let’s do Philanthropy that Actually Works
Robert Woodson and the Woodson Center
Podcast with Anthony Bradley on Over-criminalization
MMM on Eugenics is Back
Benefits Cliffs
Russell Hittinger on Technology and Contraception
Podcast with Mary Eberstadt on the Sexual Revolution
Poverty, Inc.
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peak with Bill Rivers about this novel, Last Summer Boys. The novel is about a rural Pennsylvania family and the adventures of three boys and a cousin and set in the tumultuous summer of 1968 with the Vietnam war, the assignations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
“Summer 1968. When thirteen-year-old Jack Elliot overhears the barbershop men grousing, he devises a secret plan to keep his oldest brother, Pete, from the draft. If famous boys don’t go to war, he’ll make his brother their small town’s biggest celebrity. Jack gets unexpected help when his book-smart cousin Frankie arrives in their rural Pennsylvania town for the summer. Together, they convince Jack’s brothers to lead an expedition to find a fighter jet that crashed many winters ago―the perfect adventure to make Pete a hero.”
We discuss a number of themes including
Family
Justice
Honor
Civil Society
Principle of Subsidiarity
Anger
Tensions between economic progress and family and social stability
Tensions between rural and urban communities
Writing and story development
Moral imagination
1968 Cultural and Sexual Revolutions
Alexis de Tocqueville
Robert Nisbet
Louis L’amour
Property
Crony capitalism, eminent domain and more
ResourcesBill Rivers on Instagram
Bill Rivers on Twitter
Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
Related Podcasts
Mary Eberstadt: Who are You? Conversation on the sexual revolution, family and her book Primal Screams
Carlo Lancelotti on Augusto Del Noce —Shift from Christian Bourgeois to Pure Bourgeois
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In this episode I speak with two psychologists, Paul McLaughlin PsyD and Mark R. McMinn PhD, about their book A Time for Wisdom. The provide a unique perspective by examining wisdom from a psychological viewpoint.
They divide it into 4 categories, both to explain and provide a guide to develop wisdom in our lives.
Knowledge
Factual Knowledge,Know-How, self-knowledge and what they call “Enriched Knowledge,” the core of wisdom.
Detachment
Not only from material things, but from ideas and ideology. Detachment enables mental freedom, strengthens our capacity grieve, and is the bridge between knowledge and tranquility
Tranquility
Not apathy, but shifting our inner equilibrium, and helps us regulate our emotions
Tranquility helps us to cultivate awe, gratitude, peace, and what C.S. Lewis calls “reasonable emotions.”
Transcendence
Ability to go beyond ourselves and avoid the temptation to individualism
We discuss a number of themes including:
Is wisdom a state or a trait? Can it be developed? Is it domain dependent?
The tension between solidity and fluidity, between rigid thinking and relativism. How do we keep our minds open and not fall into what Benedict XVI has called the “dictatorship of relativism.”
The positive and negative parts of Jordan Peterson’s idea about exploring our dark side compared to mystical Catholic writers
Psychedelics as ersatz religion
You are not every thought you have
Anxiety
Obsessive Compulsive thoughts
Forgiveness and the goodness of being
Positive psychology
Narcisism
Mike Tyson’s theory that “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
How to think about increases anxiety and depression
My critique of the Individualism / Collectivism dichotomy
Tocqueville’s analysis of individualism and centralization
Can you measure wisdom?
Does wisdom increase over time?
Aristotle’s concept of phronesis
Gnosticism and Materialism as an obstacles to wisdom
Teleology — ends and purposes. Aristotle — the human person has an end and purpose to give you self direction
Transcendentals — goodness, truth, beauty
How suffering and sitting with people who suffer helps us grow in wisdom
The tension between holding onto your deeply held beliefs and yet remaining open to new ideas
Confirmation Bias vs. Epistemic Humility
Related Podcasts
James Madden Podcast, Embodied and Embedded Persons
James Poulos: Digital Politics and Spiritual War
Carlo Lancellotti: Augusto Del Noce and the shift to pure bourgeois
Jaron Lanier on Technology and Behavior Modification
Luke Burgis on Mimetic Desire, Rene Girard, and commercial society
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In this episode of The Moral Imagination Podcast I speak with Deion Kathawa about his essays at Public Discourse Technology and Dignity. We discuss a number of topics including digital technology social media biotech genetic engineering CRISPR post and trans-humanism transgenderism technology and power how tech effects the rich and the poor and middle class Kathawa argues that the new digital and biotechnology threaten our human in explicit and implicit ways from distraction to liquidation to degradation and that we need not only better law, but authentic religious practice, liturgy, and human friendship to resist these threats.
We discuss the religious and philosophical sources of transhumanism from materialism to gnosticism, and human perfectibility and various thinkers including C.S. Lewis and Robert P. George. We also discuss the difference between transhumanist / transgender philosophy which sees the body as either malleable that needs perfection or the body and sexuality as something to escape from in contrast to the Christian view of the being and the body as good and part of who we are as embodied, embedded persons. Biography
Deion Kathawa is a law clerk at the Michigan Supreme court he has a law degree from the University Of Notre Dame and an undergraduate degree from the university of Michigan. He writes for numerous outlets including The American Mind, Public Discourse, and his Substack Sed Kontra -
In this episode I speak with Jeffrey Bloom and Rabbi Jeremy Kagan about the book Spinoza, Strauss, and Sinai: Orthodox Judaism and Modern Questions of Faith published by Kodesh Press . The book is a collection of essays edited by Jeffrey Bloom, Alec Goldstein, and Gil Student.
Jeffrey Bloom grew up secular, Jewish family and the idea of actually practicing Orthodox Judaism was outside of the realm of possibility. He studied at University of Chicago where he took a class with Professor Leon Kass on Genesis. (see book link below) This was the first time that he took religion seriously. He notes that as a child of divorce— he wanted stronger family life, and he was attracted to Orthodox Judaism, but still questioned whether it was reasonable. This led him to read Strauss critique of Spinoza’s critique of religious belief. The Enlightenment philosopher, Baruch Spinoza argued that religious belief was irrational. But in his book, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, Leo Strauss argued that while the enlightenment with Spinoza and his heirs claimed to refuted orthodox belief, they in fact did not. Strauss claimed that as long as orthodoxy is willing to make the concession that they can’t “know” and only “believe” the tenets of Judaism, then it is plausible and no weaker a position that rationalism because that is precisely what Spinoza is doing—when pressed, Enlightenment rationalism, like religion, rests on acts of “faith” in tenets that it cannot prove.
Strauss’ argument opened up questions about reason, belief, truth, access to reality and more, and what it did for Bloom was make orthodox Judaism rationally and intellectually plausible. As Rabbi Jeremy Kagan puts it, “carved out a space for the Torah” and religion belief and practice.
Yet Bloom had another question—Strauss opened the door to religious belief, but what did Orthodox Jews think about the arguments of both Spinoza critique of religion, and Strauss’ critique of Spinoza? Bloom gathered a group of Orthodox believers, Rabbis, computer scientists, philosophers, to address the question: Is the argument of Strauss any good? Are there better replies to the critique of religion than Strauss provides?
This book is relevant for many reasons— There is a sense that the Enlightenment and science and empiricism has proved that orthodox religion, Judaism and Christianity, is intellectually unserious and untenable, and many people hold this to be the case. Secular thinkers and atheists often critiques religion for its faith but they don’t realize they that rely on a host of non-empirical assumptions that uphold their beliefs. For example, why is reason is better than non - reason and how can one prove it in empirical means?
We discuss several essays including those by Jeffrey Bloom, Rabbi Kagan, Rabbi Shalom Carmy who argues that Strauss’ arguments are not compelling, and Moshe Koppel’s essay, “Why Revelation and not Orbiting Teapots” which makes the distinction between orthodox belief and superstition and more.
This is a complex discussion that addresses some of the big underlying questions about faith and science, reason and belief, different forms of knowledge, the value of religious observance, and some of the main themes of the Moral Imagination Podcast. I hope you enjoy.
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In this episode, I speak with Jeremy Tate, the founder of the Classic Learning Test about school testing, curriculum, and the classical versus industrial models of education. Jeremy argues that the current testing regime of the SAT and ACT have a tremendous influence on the curriculum taught in public and private schools. They promote a utilitarian vision of learning and drive students away from the classical Western tradition and serious reflection on what makes a good life. In response, Jeremy and his team developed the Classic Learning Test not only to be a better, more rigorous test, but to positively influence the curriculum toward more serious reading, and introduce students to the classic texts of the Western Tradition and those which shaped the founding of the United States, By ignoring these texts, the current testing and curricula regimes exclude students from engagement with the tradition. One of Tate’s colleagues noted that she could go from Kindergarten through a Ph.D. without reading Homer, Plato, or Shakespeare. This unfamiliarity with the tradition makes people unaware of history and complexity, unable to make distinctions, and thus more susceptible to propaganda and manipulation. It excludes the poor from opportunity and indoctrinates the elites into utilitarian and progressive ideas that they think are simply facts. As C.S. Lewis described, “10 years hence” we can find ourselves on the side of the philosophical controversy that we didn’t even know was up for debate.
We discuss a number of themes including
The revival of classical education
Whether you should go to college or not?
Education and virtue
Human Formation
C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man
Eustace Scrubb and the Chronicles of Narnia
Elite students focus on test scores rather than on learning
Scientists with no sense of history or complexity
The problems with critical thinking
The false dichotomy of Facts vs. Opinions
How moral and value judgments are reduced to opinions and more.
BiographyJeremy Tate is the founder and CEO of the Classic Learning Test. Jeremy is also the host of the Anchored Podcast, CLT's top 2% global podcast that features discussions at the intersection of education and culture. Prior to founding CLT, Jeremy served as Director of College Counseling at Mount de Sales Academy in Catonsville, Maryland. He received his Bachelor of Science in Secondary Education from Louisiana State University and a Masters in Religious Studies from Reformed Theological Seminary. Jeremy and his wife Erin reside in Annapolis, Maryland with their six children. You can find Jeremy on Twitter @JeremyTate41.
ResourcesClassic Learning Test
For more on C.S. Lewis The Abolition of Man - See my interview with Michael Ward
For more on classical education see my interview with Heidi White and the importance of reading good books, my interview with Elizabeth Corey
Jeremy Tate: Not Another Test, The Right Test
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In this episode, I speak with Michael Ward about his book, After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis The Abolition of Man. I think The Abolition of Man is of the most important books in the twentieth century. It addresses important issues that are relevant today — from what it means to be human, reason, passion, and the emotions, to how to think about technology, power, and beauty. It’s a short book but can be a bit difficult to understand at times, and Michael Ward does a great service by going through the book line by line and explaining and providing context to make the book easier to follow.
We discuss key themes of The Abolition of Man:
whether beauty and morality are objective or purely subjective education power and authority honor nobility sacrifice for others, dystopian fiction technology and technocracy contraception and how man’s power over nature ends up being man’s power over other menWe also discuss the relationship between the Abolition of Man, Eustace Scrubb, and Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia and the space trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength.
Word on Fire Special Offer: After Humanity + Abolition of Man
Biography
Michael Ward is an English literary critic and theologian. He works at the University of Oxford where he is a member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion. He is the author of the award-winning Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford University Press) and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis (Cambridge University Press).
Though based at Oxford in his native England, Dr Ward is also employed as Professor of Apologetics at Houston Baptist University, Texas, teaching one course per semester as part of the online MA program in Christian Apologetics.
On the fiftieth anniversary of Lewis’s death (22 November 2013), Professor Ward unveiled a permanent national memorial to him in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey. He is the co-editor of a volume of commemorative essays marking the anniversary, entitled C.S. Lewis at Poets’ Corner.
Michael Ward presented the BBC television documentary, The Narnia Code, directed and produced by BAFTA-winning filmmaker, Norman Stone. He authored an accompanying book entitled The Narnia Code: C.S. Lewis and the Secret of the Seven Heavens.
Michael was resident Warden of The Kilns, Lewis’s Oxford home, from 1996 to 1999. He studied English at Oxford, Theology at Cambridge, and has a Ph.D. in Divinity from St Andrews. He was Senior Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford (2012-2021). He has been awarded honorary doctorates in Humane Letters (Hillsdale College, Michigan, 2015) and Sacred Theology (Thorneloe University, Ontario, 2021).
Visit https://www.themoralimagination.com/episodes/ward for show notes and resources.
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In the episode I speak with Mary Eberstadt about her latest book Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics. She argues that the revolutionary changes to family structure across the western world: fatherlessness, divorce, abortion, single parent homes, the shrinking of the family –have caused deep hurt in people and that many of the social problems we face today are manifestations of a “primal scream” for belonging.
Eberstadt explains that the breakdown of the family has resulted in a widespread subtraction: we have a much smaller protective infrastructure around us than our ancestors did. While many people connect family decline to individual things like loneliness or educational achievement, it also has large macro impacts. She argues that primary cause of political rage, identity politics, gender confusion, and more is rooted in the breakdownof the family and people’s struggle to answer the question “Who am I?”
Primal Screams is a very important book that combines an empirical examination with a real empathy for people who suffer from the impact of the sexual revolution and the break down of the family.
We discuss a number of issues including:
Loneliness in the elderly and the young
The rise in psychiatric problems among Generation Z and Millennials
What we can learn from animal behavior and family structure
How the sexual revolution harms women and children and only benefits predatory men.
Transgenderism
The #MeToo Movement
The role of abuse and sexual dysphoria
The lack of siblings and the problem of social learning
The Myth of the Lone Wolf
The Trend of Incels
The Great Resignation
How Feminism creates problems for both girls and boys
Masculinity and Decline of Males
Declines in Fertility
Contraception
Critiques and replies to her argument by Mark Lilla, Peter Thiel, and Rod Dreher
BiographyMary Eberstadt holds the Panula Chair at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, DC, and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute. Her latest book is Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics, with commentaries by Rod Dreher, Mark Lilla, and Peter Thiel.
Her other books include It's Dangerous to Believe; How the West Really Lost God; and Adam and Eve after the Pill. Mrs. Eberstadt’s writing has appeared in many magazines and journals. [Her 2010 novel The Loser Letters, about a young woman in rehab struggling with atheism, was adapted for stage and premiered at Catholic University in fall 2017. Seton Hall University awarded her an honorary doctorate in humane letters in 2014. During the Reagan administration, she was a speechwriter to Secretary of State George Shultz and a special assistant to Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick at the United Nations. Updates about her work can be found on her website, maryeberstadt.com
ResourcesMary Eberstadt Website: maryeberstadt.com
Podcast interview with Carrie Gress on Feminism
Podcast Interview with Noelle Mering on Awake Not Woke
My lecture on Robert Nisbet and the decline and quest for community
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What is Justice? What do we owe to each other? The theme of justice is core issue of all human societies and pervades myth and philosophy. Plato’s Republic and Gorgias are reflections on justice and the right ordering of the soul and society. So is Aristotle’s Politics. The Hebrew Bible, the Tao Te Ching, the Analects of Confucius, the writings of Buddhism, and the Stoics all contain reflections on justice. C.S. Lewis notes in his appendix to the Abolition of Man that in every land and every culture there is a “Tao,” a way of being in the world that affirms what is good and condemns what is bad. Despite the universal hungering for justice, injustice seems to be the way of man. Against Plato stands Thrasymachus and Callicles, the tyrant and the sophist who want to reduce justice to power.
In this episode I speak with Marcel Gaurnizo about the nature of justice. We discuss the definition of justice — giving each what is due. We discuss how justice is not simply a social or political condition but a human virtue that requires a consistent act of the will.
Marcel explains how the shift from metaphysical view of justice to political justice opens the door to the dictatorship and tyranny of the majority or injustice through procedural methods. We discuss the Plato’s story of the ring of Gyges which makes the wearer invisible just like Bilbo and Frodo in the Lord of the Rings — and thus free from any punishment. Would we have strength to do the right thing even if we would never get in trouble for doing what is wrong? As Marcel notes, the ring of Gyges is all around us. There are many things that are legal—that we will not be punished for — but which are evil and unjust.
Marcel also walks us through different species of justice — commutative (exchange) and distributive. He explains how many of the errors we make about legal, economic, and social justice —both on the right and the left — often come from a misunderstanding of the difference between commutative and distributive justice, e.g. we apply commutative justice to the family.
Marcel argues that one of the problems we have today on the right and left is that we are not formed in correct thinking about justice is that In this conversation there are some detailed discussions, but in a time where there the word “justice” is used so frequently and where there is so much confusion, I think it is very worthwhile.
Some of the themes and thinkers we discuss include:
Justice as a virtue
Economic justice of exchange
Social Justice
Family vs. Market
Gary Becker and the error of applying commutative justice to the family
John Rawls and the shift to political and procedural justice
Socialist view of justice
Marxism
Philosophical Materialism
Aristotle’s Politics
Plato’s Republic
St. Thomas Aquinas Treatise on Justice
Friedrich Nietzsche
Monasteries
Catholic Social Teaching
John Rawls and the transformation of justice into political justice.
Relativism
Post-Modernism
Human Nature — what kind of thing we are
Individualism, the market, and the state
Poverty and Distribution
BiographyMarcel Gaurnizo is a philosopher and theologian. He spent many years in Europe and has founded a number of institutions including an academy in Austria to teach philosophy, ethics, and politics, and was president of Aid to the Church in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.
ResourcesWhittaker Chambers: Big Sister is Watching You
The Second Coming, Poem by William Butler Yeats
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In the episode, I speak with Professor Margarita Mooney about her time in Nicaragua and how these experiences shaped her scholarly work and teaching at the intersection of sociology and philosophy.
Margarita tells a story of her time in Nicaragua and how a weekend trip to a political rally in a small community where she almost was kidnapped challenged her assumptions about elite education in the United States. Margarita explains how her engagement with poor women farmers and micro-entrepreneurs helped her realize the power of small acts of love and solidarity to help alleviate the problems of violence from the bottom up – and how these things are neither taught nor accounted for at elite universities where a technocratic approach reigns. Margarita discusses how sociology does not address the problem of evil but rather sees it as a social or structural problem, but this does not align with ethnographic studies and the real work of talking to people about their experiences of war and violence.
Margarita talks about her founding of the Scala Foundation to address questions of meaning, beauty, and wisdom because she was worried that many Ivy League and other universities are creating a culture of resentment and anger for people who are genuinely concerned about justice but don’t have a framework to understand justice, subsidiarity, solidarity, truth, and law outside of power and politics.
As she explains in her essay “Why Choose Mystery over Ideology”
“The void left by the denigration of beauty and a classical liberal arts education is directing more and more people to “woke” social justice activism or alt-right movements because those movements offer them meaning, purpose, and hope, as well as community and a sense of belonging. Others burn out psychologically or resort to social isolation because trust and intimacy are hard to experience. Yet others resort to drugs, pornography, or another temporary pleasure to fill the void. Still, others pursue ambitious and demanding careers without reflecting on how they should live or why they exist to begin with. The result is skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide. Educational institutions have not succeeded in addressing these problems, leading many people to seek alternatives to feed their minds and souls.”
Any conversation with Margarita Mooney is interesting and wide-ranging and we discuss a number of broad themes and thinkers including:
Subsidiarity and Solidarity Fascination with Violence Rene Girard Jacques Maritain Participation as a remedy to alienation The Nicaraguan Civil War -- Contras and Sandinista Haiti St. Thomas Aquinas on just war, violence, and pacifism Solidarity as a means to inclusion Solidarity Structures, institutions, property rights, law, exchange, are required to serve families Family as a place of moral formation The proper role of government The Bruderhof Communities and Plough Magazine Edmund Burke’s ideas about society as a “partnership” among the living, dead, and yet to be born Commutative Justice — exchange John Paul II on participation The documentary, Poverty, Inc. Rwandan Genocide and Rwandan reconciliation Integration of the Virtues Moral Formation Sin and Redemption Law and Justice Beauty Ideology and the closed systems that close of access to the transcendent Hopelessness Critique of utilitarianism that reduces the value to the economic value The dangers of cultural imperialism Virtues –Cardinal Virtues, Daughters of Virtues and Vices Augusto Del Noce Luigi Giussani on Education Karl Stern –poetic knowledge in The Flight from WomanBiography
Margarita Mooney is an Associate Professor in the Department of Practical Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. She teaches courses on the philosophy of social science, Christianity and the liberal arts tradition, aesthetics, research methods for congregational leaders, and sociology of religion.
Margarita founded Scala Foundation in 2016 and continues to serve as Scala’s Executive Director. Scala’s mission is to infuse meaning and purpose into American education by restoring a classical liberal arts education. At Scala’s conferences, reading groups, seminars, webinars, student trips, intellectual retreats, and intensive summer program, Scala equips students, writers, artists, intellectuals and teachers with the ideas and networks needed to revitalize culture.
Margarita’s most recent book with Cluny Media, The Love of Learning: Seven Dialogues on the Liberal Arts (2021), grew out of her decades of experience as a teacher and scholar. Her book Faith Makes Us Live: Surviving and Thriving in the Haitian Diaspora (University of California Press, 2009) demonstrated how religious communities support the successful adaptation of Haitian immigrants in the U.S., Canada and France, and she’s the co-author (with Camille Z. Charles, Mary S. Fischer, and Douglas S. Massey) of Taming the River: Negotiating the Academic, Financial, and Social Currents in Selective Colleges and Universities (Princeton University Press, 2009).
Margarita received her B.A. in Psychology from Yale University and her M.A and Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University. She has also been on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Yale University, Princeton University, and Pepperdine University.
https://www.bruderhof.com/
https://www.povertyinc.org/
https://www.themoralimagination.com/episodes/carlo-lancell
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