Nobody’s Fault but Mine

 

It's nobody's fault but mine

Nobody's fault but mine

If I don't read it, my soul will be lost

 

I have a Bible in my home

I have a Bible in my home

If I don't read it, my soul will be lost

-          Blind Willie Johnson (Video)

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Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

-          Voltaire

Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, by Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose

The present age is, in a profound sense, an age of absurdity.

This book offers an appendix, entitled “The Philosophy of the Absurd.”  It was written by Fr. Rose during the time he was working on this chapter on Nihilism, but it is a separate essay.  Nevertheless, it fits nicely with the theme of the chapter; you will find overlap in some of this work.

Fr. Rose offers as an example of striking absurdity Hitler, who could, at the same time, both appreciate and interpret Bach and murder millions.  Hitler’s world may be of the past, but the age of absurdity certainly is not (and even more in 2022 than in the early 1960s).  We have moved into a more advanced – though much quieter – stage of the same disease.

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

-          Marcus Tullius Cicero

Philosophers and other supposedly responsible men in governmental, academic, and ecclesiastical circles…usually do no more than rationalize the incoherent state of contemporary man and his world….

“Temporarily quieter,” per Fr. Rose.  And, with the benefit of hindsight, he was quite correct.  Everything around us has become irreconcilable, and to an even greater extreme that anything contemplated sixty years ago.  The totally absurd exists even in the same soul: the tired, but useful, example of men posing as women, and vice versa, should suffice.

The whole world, it almost seems, is divided into those who lead meaningless, futile lives without being aware of it, and those who, being aware of it, are driven to madness and suicide.

Why do men not break out of this trap?  Why do they do nothing more than try to get by, day to day?  Fr. Rose offers that it is because they do not think.  One cannot blame them: the realities of the present day are better left in spaces unexamined.

What is this absurd philosophy?  It is entirely negation – it exists only in opposition to something; its character is wholly determined by that which it desires to negate.  it cannot exist except in opposition to something that is wholly not absurd.

Absurdism cannot be understood apart from its Christian origins.

For the genuine Christian, divine coherence is found in every aspect of life and thought.  Not so for the absurdist, for whom everything falls apart.  The philosophy is not merely an error and self-contradiction.  Yes, it is these, but it is much more. 

The New World Man

 

NB: regular readers will note generous amounts of sarcasm in my comments.  For irregular readers, if anything sounds like I am praising the current nihilistic age, I am not.

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He’s a rebel and a runner

He’s a signal turning green

He’s a restless young romantic

Wants to run the big machine

-          New World Man, Rush

In all justice, then, we must examine the other side, the “positive” view.”

Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, by Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose

Fr. Rose, aware that many believe that there is a positive side to this nihilism – one that even overwhelms the negative – chooses to examine this.  He notes the parallel current of optimism and idealism that has “produced its own ‘new man.’”

These are idealistic, yet practical, young men, ready to tackle the problems of the day; enthusiastic scientists, pushing back frontiers everywhere with exciting research and experimentation; non-violent idealists (I think we have certainly lost these since the time of Fr. Rose’s writing); a possibility of overcoming age-old hatreds; young writers angry for the cause of justice.

And supporters of all of these, with visions of the glorious new world that such men will usher in:

…is it not just possible that, if the “spirit of the age” is favorable, their dreams may after all be realized?

But what is the nature of their faith and hope?  Perhaps this should be understood before answering the above question.

It is entirely a faith and hope in this world.  Sure, some might consider this new man as defeated and denatured; take, for example C.S. Lewis and his Abolition of Man.  However, there is the other side – this new man will change the world! 

…in this image there is no more conflict, for man is well on the way to being thoroughly refashioned and reoriented, and thus perfectly “adjusted” to the new world.

Worldliness has triumphed over faith.  As God is now dead, the man who is made in God’s image is also dead – he has lost his nature and fallen into some form of sub-humanity.  And this point from Fr. Rose is worth considering further.

Genesis 2: 7 Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living person.

We know that God did not breath into any other of His creations.  No other animal received this kindness.  Hence, absent God, this is the resultant sub-humanity of which Fr. Rose writes.  Whatever one believes of evolution and man coming from apes, this certainly is a de-evolution.

Fr. Rose labels this time “beyond nihilism.”  He considers that nihilism’s project was to destroy Christian Truth.  As he sees this has been accomplished, there is now a new phase – the thing that comes after the emptiness, the thing that will fill the vacuum. 

Man will not live god-less.  Absent the True God, man will replace Him with something of his choosing, of his creation – man will create god in man’s image.  After all, can the clay complain to the potter about the form the potter chooses?

There was a positive spirit in National Socialism, in the French Revolution, in Bolshevism.  In all cases, a god to replace the God that was destroyed.  Whatever disorder in these systems, they have, to true believers, been a blessing in disguise.  Citing W.B. Yeats:

Love war because of its horror, that belief may be changed, civilization renewed…. Belief comes from shock…. Belief is renewed continually in death.

Lucky for us, we are living through another such experience in real time.  May we live in interesting times, indeed!

Living Free in a Gulag

 

What, more realistically, is this “mutation,” this “new man”?  He is the rootless man, discontinuous with a past that Nihilism has destroyed, the raw material of every demagogue’s dream; the “free-thinker” and skeptic, closed only to the truth…. the “rebel,” hating all restraint and authority because he himself is his own and only god.

Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, by Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose

Never before in history (or so it seems) has the relationship of man’s perceived liberty and his actual imprisonment been so tightly correlated.  The Nihilist program, as previously noted, is a war against God in order to bring on a reign of nothingness.  Therefore, first, the destruction of the Old Order must be the task.  Fr. Rose describes the Old Order as “the soil, nourished by Christian Truth, in which men had their roots.”  In other words, culture and tradition, and that of a specific type.

Effective war against God and His Truth requires the destruction of every element of this Old Order; it is here that the peculiarly Nihilist “virtue” of violence comes into play.  Violence is no merely incidental aspect of the Nihilist Revolution, but a part of its essence.

At the time of this writing, Fr. Rose was thinking of Communism and National Socialism.  But we have also seen this reality in our time in the West – violence by the state, by large corporations, and by peaceful rioters.

Fr. Rose notes Bakunin’s Revolutionary Catechism, written in 1866.  It is an interesting document.  I offer a couple of items from this work:

Replacing the cult of God by respect and love of humanity, we proclaim human reason as the only criterion of truth; human conscience as the basis of justice; individual and collective freedom as the only source of order in society.

One could certainly read this as a succinct description of Enlightenment ideals.

The internal reorganization of each country on the basis of the absolute freedom of individuals, of the productive associations, and of the communes. Necessity of recognizing the right of secession: every individual, every association, every commune, every region, every nation has the absolute right to self-determination, to associate or not to associate, to ally themselves with whomever they wish and repudiate their alliances without regard to so-called historic rights [rights consecrated by legal precedent] or the convenience of their neighbors.

A statement as libertarian as can be.

Of course, where Bakunin ends up is most certainly not a place respectful of property rights, for example:

The right of every man and woman, from birth to adulthood, to complete upkeep, clothes, food, shelter, care, guidance, education (public schools, primary, secondary, higher education, artistic, industrial, and scientific), all at the expense of society.

Consider…once God is “replaced,” and “human reason as the only criterion of truth,” will the non-aggression principle come to the fore, or will Bakunin’s vision dominate?  Yet removing God in favor of unhindered human reason is precisely what many libertarians, objectivists, and modern enlightened thinkers believe will usher in utopia.  It will certainly be a utopia, but not one conforming to the dreams of those favoring liberty.

Returning to Fr. Rose, he offers a quote from Joseph Goebbels from the last days of the war, which sounds too much like it could be ripped from today’s headlines:

Together with the monuments of culture there crumble also the last obstacles to the fulfillment of our revolutionary task.  Now that everything is in ruins, we are forced to rebuild Europe.

Sounds like Build Back Better, only possible when the former is purposely destroyed – as in war.  The past has been destroyed – not merely the structures, but, in Goebbels words, “everything old and outworn is gone.”

The Ultimate New Age Religion

 

We are Satan's people

Knights in Satan's service

-          Thanatorture

…the Revolution…has a theological and spiritual foundation, even if its “theology” is an inverted one and its “spirituality Satanic.”

Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, by Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose

What is at the root of the nihilistic doctrine?  What are its theological sources?  What is its ultimate program?  These are the questions that Fr. Rose intends now to explore.  And for this, he turns to two people: Nietzsche, who he describes as a “systematic Nihilist,” and Dostoyevsky, “whose insights strike to the very heart of Nihilism and strip aside its masks.”

Regarding Nietzsche, well-known phrases are offered: there is no truth, God is dead.  Nietzsche describes well the state of modern man.  “God is dead” means that we have lost our faith in God; “there is no truth” means that we have lost the divine and absolute.  But Fr. Rose offers that Nietzsche does more than merely observe the reality of the situation:

Zarathustra is a “prophet”; his words are clearly intended as a counter-revolution directed against the Christian Revelation.

It isn’t just that God no longer exists; men wish Him to no longer exist.  Men are not merely agnostic; the death of God is not merely some kind of “cosmic catastrophe.”  Men are also not merely atheist.  No one is atheist, as no one denies God except to accept and serve another false god in His place.

Citing Pierre-Joseph Proudhon:

The first duty of man, on becoming intelligent and free, is to continually hunt the idea of God out of his mind and conscience.  For God, if he exists, is essentially hostile to our nature… Every step we take in advance is a victory in which we crush Divinity. …God, if there is a God, is [humanity’s] enemy.

Albert Camus and Mikhail Bakunin are cited as well, with similar sentiments.  In men such as these, the theological forerunners of today’s nihilism, Fr. Rose sees as faith as strong as one will find in Christian faith: “its success, and its exaggerations, are explicable in no other way.”

This faith and its distinctive spirit give meaning and power to Nihilistic doctrine.  But what is the nature of this Nihilist faith?  As opposed to a Christian faith which is “joyous, certain, serene, loving, humble, patient, submitting in all things to the will of God,” the Nihilist faith is contrary in every aspect: “full of doubt, suspicion, disgust, envy, jealousy, pride, impatience, rebelliousness, blasphemy….”

In other words, a total dissatisfaction with this world, a repudiation not merely of God (as if this isn’t enough), but of everything good seen around them.  It is a spiritual attitude; and, as should be clear, animated by a dark spirit:

It was well described by Bakunin as “the sentiment of rebellion, this Satanic pride, which spurns subjection to any master whatever, whether of divine or human origin.”

To seek the origin of this animating spirit anywhere or in anyone other than “the primal Satanic will to negation and rebellion” will lead us down a wrong path.

If I may interject…here we find “the prince of the power of the air,” with whom “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Returning to Fr. Rose, this systematic campaign, which he labels Bolshevik (accurate for his time, but fully Westernized in ours), is not satisfied with merely uprooting the Christian faith.  It has achieved this long ago.  This continuing drive “has no rational explanation”:

The Nihilism of Destruction

 

Four centuries and more of modern thought have been, from one point of view, an experiment in the possibilities of knowledge open to man, assuming that there is no Revealed Truth.

Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, by Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose

We are living in the conclusion of this experiment.  As Fr. Rose puts it, “if there is no Revealed Truth, there is no truth at all….”  It can’t be, you say.  Well, when a man can choose to be a woman, and vice versa, when a flu can cause the world to panic, when box cutters can lead to the greatest (at least until then) power grab in human history, when the right to choose overcomes the right to life…. there is no truth.

But there are those who continue to seek truth from the bottom, unaccepting of revealed truth.  This is the path of modern philosophy.  “Common sense” and the current opinions of the “in crowd” – whether that in crowd is made up of fellow academicians or cocktail party companions.

In fact, no one lives but by the light of some revelation, be it a true or a false one, whether it serve to enlighten or obscure.

And false revelations lead to the abyss.  It is not logic that stands as an obstacle to this Revealed Truth – logic tells us that men are men, and women are women, after all.  It is, instead, an opposed faith – call it an alternative narrative.  Man lives in a story.

As one who embraces the non-aggression principle, I once believed that factual and logical arguments would win the day for this proper, Christian, method by which to determine when violence is justified.  Yet, if all it takes are facts and logic, libertarian political theory would win in a landslide.  But this is insufficient – we live in a story.

We see this even in the Christian Church, divided on the social justice warrior and critical theory lines of today.  Facts and logical arguments make clear the situation, but these don’t win the day.  Instead, there are distortions of truth offered in the various causes promoted by those claiming to seek racial reconciliation, affirmation of alternative choices, etc.  But there is not complete Truth.

Fr. Rose continues with an examination of the stages of the nihilist dialectic.  He offers the French Revolution, Communism, and National Socialism as episodes that exemplified the successes of nihilism, but these examples have not dissuaded men from continuing on the path.  But, how did we get here?  For this, he considers four steps.

Fr. Rose sees the first step in Liberalism.  This will be tough sledding, but it is ground previously covered at this blog – ground that suggests that libertarianism (or liberalism) without a proper cultural grounding in Christian ethics and Natural Law leads us away from, not toward, liberty.

The Liberalism we shall describe in the following pages is not – let us state at the outset – an overt Nihilism; it is rather a passive Nihilism, or, better yet, the neutral breeding-ground of the more advanced stages of Nihilism.

I offer the following, from Murray Rothbard:

What I have been trying to say is that Mises’s utilitarian, relativist approach to ethics is not nearly enough to establish a full case for liberty. It must be supplemented by an absolutist ethic – an ethic of liberty, as well as of other values needed for the health and development of the individual – grounded on natural law, i.e., discovery of the laws of man’s nature.

Liberalism, without this objective ethic, has no defense against nihilism – it is, as Fr. Rose writes, a neutral breeding ground.  This is the point made by Rothbard, and it is the point made by Fr. Rose (although Fr. Rose will not use the term “natural law”). 

Yet we see many defenders of this Liberal order – free markets and trade, travel, free speech, property rights – fighting to hold on to these values while ignoring the foundation on which these were built.  Returning to Fr. Rose:

The incompetent defense by Liberalism of a heritage in which it has never fully believed, has been one of the most potent causes of overt Nihilism.

We have seen the results of this in the liberal Bret Weinstein and Evergreen State College, or the liberal Jordan Peterson at the University of Toronto, attempting to defend the liberal order they rightly cherish without leaning on the foundations upon which it was built.

Nihilism

 

That there is no truth; that there is no absolute state of affairs – no ‘thing-in-itself.’  This alone is Nihilism, and of the most extreme kind.

-          Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, by Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose

In 1962, the young Eugene Rose undertook to write a monumental chronicle of the abandonment of Truth in the modern age.  Of the hundreds of pages of material he compiled for this work, only the present essay, on Nihilism, has come down to us in completed form.

-          From the back cover

Although he was not Fr. Rose when he wrote this work (he was still Eugene), this is how I will refer to him throughout my review of this book.

Nihilism, Fr. Rose offers, is the belief that there is no Absolute Truth; all truth is relative.  The heart of this philosophy is expressed most clearly by Nietzsche and a character of Dostoyevsky: ‘God is dead, therefore man becomes God and everything is possible.’

Keep in mind, he wrote this before the nihilism of the 1960s came to full blossom – for which I will point to 1967 as the milestone year: the release of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album (which I label the start of their drug-induced era, whether or not they were taking hallucinogenics), and the release of the first Pink Floyd album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (who only had a drug-induced era).

Fr. Rose regularly turns to Hitler, Bolshevism (both Lenin and Stalin), and the Dadaist attack on art as examples of this nihilism.  He looks at poets, revolutionaries like Bakunin, and what he labels “prophets” like Nietzsche.  But he describes all of these as “the spectacular surface of the problem of Nihilism.”  These are just extreme examples.

We have examples around us every day, in everyday people.  Fr. Rose does not excuse them as innocent victims, because “No one, in the last analysis, serves Satan against his will.”

Nihilism has become so pervasive in our time (his time, almost sixty years ago), that there is no longer any front on which it may be fought.  It is deeply engrained in the hearts and minds of all men living today; even those who believe they are fighting it are using nihilism’s own weapons.

Few of nihilism’s even most ardent opponents believe in the possibility that there is Absolute Truth – objective, unchanging Truth.  Even many of its ardent opponents will lean on relative truth – some truths are better than others; some truths lead to less evil than others.  We use arbitrary scales to judge the relative truth of different truths.

Some will perhaps object…that we have set our net too wide; that we have exaggerated the prevalence of Nihilism….

I am certain that in the early 1960s this was true; I am even more certain that even a few short years ago I am not sure that I understood this to be true.  But Fr. Rose (Eugene) understood it several years before Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Fr. Rose will describe the nihilist mentality, offer a sketch of its historical development, and then probe more deeply into its meaning and historical program.

“Relative truth” is primarily represented, for our age, by the knowledge of science….”

Wow!  Consider that.  Our most supposedly objective discipline offers only relative truths.

It is always discursive, contingent, qualified, always expressed in “relation” to something else, never standing alone, never categorical, never “absolute.”

An honest scientist recognizes that the science is never settled.  In other words, science never arrives at Absolute Truth.  It is always standing on something that is subject to challenge, and to have that challenge be successful.

…the absolute cannot be attained by means of the relative.

“All truth is empirical,” the scientist will say; but this is a metaphysical statement.  “All truth is relative”; but this statement is absolute.  This is the world science offers, and in its proper place, it is a valuable world.  But when placed at the top of the pyramid, it falls short of the standard set by those who have transformed science into scientism. 

…the first principles of any system of knowledge cannot be arrived at through the means of that knowledge itself, but must be given in advance; they are the object, not of scientific demonstration, but of faith.