Infinite Errors
Hegel, Absolute Idealism, Dialectical Materialism, Historical Materialism and Marxism
Photo by Natalya Letunova on Unsplash
“Hegel thought he was defending the Spirit, but caught himself in the most infinite errors ever seen, and incalculably harmed the cause of the Spirit” …
– Giuseppe Capograssi
The Theatre of the Absurd – our Modern and Post-Modern World which is increasingly decoupled from Reality - can be traced back to the Age of Reason – the Cult of Reason – the emergence of – Temples of Reason - and - Cult of Supreme Being.
The Awakening of Man — a Nietzschean Übermensch and a Will to Power.
The death of God and the rise of the Phenomenon of the Will.
A Primacy of Human Consciousness– Conscious Self – Ego.
The increasingly decoupling of Man ( the Created) from God ( the Creator).
The endemic embracement by a Globalist Secular Liberal Orthodoxy of the Theology of Marxism.
Nominalism, Materialism, and Nihilism.
“The more of himself man attributes to God, the less he has left in himself”…
— Karl Marx
Hegel and Absolute Idealism
“Reason is negative and dialectical because it resolves determinations of understanding into nothing; it is positive because it generates the universal and comprehends the particular therein”…
— Hegel, Science of Logic
Hegel’s notion of Absolute Idealism was not only based on the rationality of Man but posits that Reality is an unfolding of a rational, universal process, the “Absolute.”
The culmination of the journey of Spirit (Geist) toward self-consciousness (a certainty of unconditional self-knowing) and understanding of Reality as a unified, rational organic whole.
An all-encompassing emergent Reality that manifests itself through history, nature, and human consciousness.
An Absolute Knowing that Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit presents in three modes: art, religion, and philosophy.
A state of Being “not dependent on, conditional on, relative to or restricted by anything else; self-contained, perfect, complete”.
Oneness between the experiencing Agent and the Ground of experience.
The Object known is the Subject who knows.
“Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer”…
— Heinz von Foerster
The integration of Idealism and Materialism – the Observer and the Observed.
“Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends on what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we think depends on what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality”…
— David Bohm
The emergence of an Absolute Self — an Actualisation of Existence.
A modern utopian vision of humanity shaped by the universe spiralling towards its final destination – an Omega point and Singularity.
The ultimate unification of mind and matter.
“The time has come to realise that an interpretation of the universe – even a positivist one – remains unsatisfying unless it covers the interior as well as the exterior of things; mind as well as matter. The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world” …
– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man
Atheism, Secularism, Marxism, and the emergence of a New Totalitarianism
“Western society realises the essence of Marxism: radical atheism and materialism, internationalism and universal non-belonging, the primacy of praxis and the death of philosophy, the domination of production and the universal manipulation of nature”…
– Augusto del Noce
As outlined in Reality Beyond Thought – The Limits of Thought – the orientation of Western Philosophical thought towards the Primacy of Human Consciousness of Man not only ultimately led to the deconstruction of Modernity via the ideas of Post-Modernity (a contextual relativism that rejected concepts of rationality, objectivity, and universal truth), but also led to Modern and Post-Modern Society redefining the nature of Reality.
“Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible” …
– Jean Baudrillard
Reality was now mind-dependent and anchored in the Contingent Being of Man.
A Reality as a Social Construct that could be materially transformed via the Marxist, Leninist, and Stalinist methodology of Dialectical Materialism and Reflexive Alchemy.
A Reality where human ideas and beliefs could be shaped, controlled and manipulated via semiotic signs distributed by the Media, Social Media, and the adoption of Semiotic Sign Machines (e.g. Computers, Smart Phones etc ).
“Eric Voegelin defined totalitarianism with the apparently very simple formula: “the prohibition of asking questions”…
- Augusto del Noce
A New Totalitarianism where questions that challenged the prevailing progressive liberal intellectual orthodoxy could no longer be asked.
“Totalitarianism and secularism are inseparable … the totalitarian danger can present itself today in a new form, more dangerous because it does not call itself such” …
— Augusto del Noce
A will to power and a Post-Truth Reality imposed by force and social, cultural & political transformation – the Simulacrum, HyperReality, HyperNormalisation, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality.
Utopian Dreams and a New World Order.
“The most striking difference between the ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality. In other words, one destroyed the dignity of human thought, whereas the others destroy the dignity of human action. The old manipulators of logic were the concern of the philosopher, whereas the modern manipulators of facts stand in the way of the historian. For history itself is destroyed, and its comprehensibility — based upon the fact that it is enacted by men and therefore can be understood by men — is in danger whenever facts are no longer held to be part and parcel of the past and present world, and are misused to prove this or that opinion”…
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
A Reality where these Modern intellectual ideas would ultimately lead to the endemic embracement of a Theology of Marxism, Scientific Gnosticism(Scientism), the notion of Historical Materialism, the emergence of Trans Humanism, Artificial General Intelligence, Hegel’s Second Nature, Socialism, Communism, Fascism (Dengism and Corporatism), and ultimately a New Totalitarianism.
“Marx’s idea is that materialism, in order to be consistent, must forgo presenting itself as a philosophy of comprehension and must interpret thought not as revelation but as activity that transforms reality” …
—Augusto del Noce
The Fundamental Role of Truth
“Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question” …
– Charles Sanders Peirce
In Entering the Theatre of the Absurd – A Globalist Marxist Will to Power or the return of the Platonic Guardians? the unfolding Self-Destruction of the West was explored.
The emergence of a Post-Truth Society and Post-Truth Education anchored in the Theology of Marxism ( Man as God) and a Will to Power.
Man’s ultimately futile attempts to decouple from Reality – The Decoupling from Reality — by ignoring the eternal nature of Truth.
It was a Society that was the antithesis of Plato’s The Republic where the Platonic Guardians and Philosopher King's telos were focused on the common good, the pursuit of truth, and wisdom.
It also resulted in an emergent Legitimation Crisis as our leaders and institutions could no longer navigate a complex emergent World.
The Triadic foundations of Western Civilisation – Judeo Christian Theology, Ancient Greek Philosophy and Roman Law & Governance and its worldview of the Nature of Reality – were being deconstructed and redefined by a primacy of the Contingent Being of Man.
Secularism replacing the Divine.
A Reality that was mind-dependent and grounded in the Primacy of Human Consciousness.
A failure to recognise a Reality beyond Thought – the Primacy of Existence — the foundations of knowledge.
A failure to recognise the fundamental relationship between the Contingent Being of Man ( the created ) and the Necessary Being of God (the creator) – the Logos.
A failure to recognise that a serious education required God.
A failure to recognise the central role of Truth in revealing Reality.
Truth as the guiding north star that radiates outwards from the individual’s inner soul to the family to the city to the state.
Truth as the essence of just law.
“To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law”…
– Martin Luther King Jr.
A Higher-Order Eternal Reality that required vertical forms of metaphysics (Realism), transcendent metaphysics, and belief in God.
“I believe in order to understand”…
– Saint Augustine
Truth is the recognition of Reality and it was through the Gift of Reason – a combination of Faith and Reason as explored by Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas — that Man had the innate capacity to reveal the Truth, Knowledge and the essence of Reality.
“The Study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is”…
― St. Thomas Aquinas– St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
A recognition that nominalism and a horizontal form of metaphysics [for example, empiricism and logical positivism – that reflected Man’s physical entanglement with the Natural World] — were simply inadequate to comprehend the Nature of Reality.
“Truth is exact correspondence with reality”…
— Paramahansa Yogananda
Metaphysics is the Science of Reality (the Study of Being) and Truth is the correspondence of one’s Beliefs to Reality.
Truth and the Nature of Reality — Laws, Legitimacy and Power
Giuseppe Capograssi – a distinguished 20th-century Italian philosopher of law – understood the fundamental role of truth in providing a Society with a sense of coherence as to the Nature of Being.
“Authority begins to live in the individual; as truth extends its domination, that is, puts its order in reality, authority rises, and, from the individual, extends its order to the family, and from the family to the city and the state” …
— Guiseppe Capograssi
Truth’s role in the creation of just laws.
“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law”…
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
Truth’s role in fostering a culture that provides the legitimacy of authority.
“Authority is truth as life and force of reality”…
– Guiseppe Capograssi
Truth’s role in the context of the imposition of Power without coercion.
Truth’s role as a guiding eternal light of illumination (Divine Will) for Man’s actions in a temporal material World.
“It is modern times that need eternal ideas, not the other way around” …
- Augusto del Noce