Photo by James Lee on Unsplash
“The greatest kindness one can render to any man consists in leading him from error to truth”…
— Thomas Aquinas
“Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
“The nature of a thing cannot be changed; whoever tries to “alter” its nature destroys the thing. Man cannot transform himself into a superman; the attempt to create a superman is an attempt to murder man. Historically, the murder of God is not followed by the superman, but by the murder of man: the deicide of the gnostic theoreticians is followed by the homicide of the revolutionary practitioners”…
― Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics & Gnosticism
“Men will learn eventually, and if they insist on rejecting the received wisdom of generations past, they do not thereby succeed at invalidating it; they merely condemn themselves to learning it, time and again, by ever grimmer experience”…
— Hilaire Belloc
The modern-day University emerged from the medieval Scholastic tradition, shaped by European Theologians and Philosophers of the Middle Ages.
Cathedral Schools [LINK] and Monastic Learning Centres that embraced the Scholastic Method, including the synthesis of Faith and Reason that integrated Christian Theology and Ancient Greek Philosophy.
“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves”…
— Encyclical letter of Fides Et Ratio of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II To The Bishops of the Catholic Church on the relationship between Faith and Reason
[LINK]
Exploring the ideas of the leading intellectuals of Western Civilisation, including Augustine, Aristotle, Euclid, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Bonaventure, and Albertus Magnus.
Embracing the Trivium (Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric) [LINK] and Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Astronomy). [LINK]
[LINK]
While the Renaissance, Reformation [LINK], and Enlightenment transformed Universities by shifting the focus from theology to broader humanistic and scientific disciplines, the institutional form, academic degrees, and commitment to open inquiry remained grounded in the Scholastic tradition and its Theological legacy [LINK].
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Modern and Post-Modern University - Marxification of Education
“American universities were once the envy of the world, as lively academies of intellectual debate and devoted to the pursuit of knowledge are now factories of indoctrination. Their law, medical, engineering, and business schools have also been transformed into political instruments that advance the “Party Line””…
— James E Fanell and Bradley A Thayer
[ LINK ]
“Europe for five centuries & more has been deceiving itself, trying to establish a reign of humanism, liberalism, and supposedly Christian values on the basis of an increasingly sceptical attitude towards Christian truth. Absurdism is the end of that road; it is the logical conclusion of the humanist attempt to soften and compromise Christian truth so as to accommodate new, modern, that is to say, worldly, values. Absurdism is the last proof that Christian truth is absolute and uncompromising, or else it is the same as no truth at all; and if there is no truth, if Christian truth is not to be understood literally and absolutely, if God is dead, if there is no immortality — then this world is all there is, and this world is absurd, this world is Hell”…
— Fr Seraphim Rose
“Marxism has been the culture of the transition from the Christian-bourgeois society—of which we find the insuperable example in the work of Benedetto Croce—to the bourgeois society in its pure state. We could even say that Marxism represented the “transition to the worst” in the sense that, through Marxism, bourgeois society has shed every residual moral and religious sense, unburdening itself of all “impurities” that still tied it to traditional society, thus presenting itself as full materialism and full secularism. The West has realised everything of Marxism, except its messianic hope. “Socialism” Veneziani writes “has not inherited capitalist society, but has become included, entangled in capitalism itself; in many respects, it has been the intermediate stop on the journey from capitalism to neo-capitalism”…
— Antonio del Noce
[LINK]
Despite the theological Christian foundations of the modern University, by the early part of the 21st Century, the secular progressive globalist orthodoxy’s long march [LINK] through all Western Civilisation Institutions [LINK] saw Education increasingly Marxified [LINK] [LINK].
“The British state is unaccountable and opaque. In Ten Years to Save the West, I outlined my experiences as a Minister for a decade – eight years of which were in Cabinet. I assumed that the situation would improve as I took on more senior roles. It didn’t. Essentially, there is a permanent network of people who are at best holding back conservative policies, and in some cases actively working against them”…
— Liz Truss, Former British Prime Minister
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Why would our Western Civilisation Education Institutions be dominated by a Neo-Gnostic [LINK] Secular Progressive Liberal Orthodoxy?
[ LINK ]
Post-Truth Universities [LINK] and a Post-Truth Society [LINK] as Western Civilisation had increasingly entered the Theatre of the Absurd [LINK] [LINK].
“Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose…
… Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless”…
— quote from Eugene Ionesco
An increasing embracement of Post-Modern ideology [LINK] [LINK], the rejection of Common Sense [LINK] and where Truth at all times must be managed [LINK].
[ LINK ]
The decline and fall of our Degreed Experts [LINK].
A Legitimation Crisis [LINK] in Education [LINK] and our Institutions [LINK].
Noting that Atheism undermines Reason itself [LINK] and that a serious Education requires God [LINK].
[LINK]
“It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since, as Swift says, it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought” …
- Roger Scruton
[ LINK ]
Please read - Why Universities must choose one Telos: Truth or Social Justice? [LINK] - and - American Universities are Post-Truth [ LINK ] - and - Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason: F.A. Hayek [LINK] - and - Our Present Dark Age, Part 1 [ LINK] - and - Tribal delusions in academia: the treason of the intellectuals? [ LINK ]
The Restoration of Faith and Reason & Wisdom (Ratio et Sapientia) in Education
Given the endemic embracement of Marxist Ideology [LINK] across Western Civilisation was leading to its own Self-Destruction [LINK], various Group’s were beginning to emerge to restore sanity.
A restoration of a Divine Order [LINK] from Chaos.
A restoration of Faith and Reason & Wisdom (Ratio et Sapienta).
[LINK]
One such long-standing Group is the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas [LINK].
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“St Thomas Aquinas, with farsighted wisdom, succeeded in establishing a fruitful confrontation with the Arab and Hebrew thought of his time, to the point that he was considered an ever up-to-date teacher of dialogue with other cultures and religions.
He knew how to present that wonderful Christian synthesis of reason and faith, which today too, for the Western Civilisation, is a precious patrimony to draw from for an effective dialogue with the great cultural and religious traditions of the East and South of the world”…
— Oportet veritatem esse ultimum finem totius universi
(translates as “Therefore, truth must be the ultimate end of the whole universe”)
[LINK]
Another group is the Manhattan Institute [LINK] that on the 15th July 2025 issued a Statement (a Manifesto) on saving Western Civilisation Education [LINK].
[LINK]
Some key excerpts follow.
“The universities have capitulated to the radical Left’s “long march through the institutions,” which has converted them into laboratories of ideology, rather than institutions oriented toward truth”…
[LINK]
DEI and American University Education - please watch - [LINK]
“The universities have violated their commitment to serve in a position above day-to-day politics and, instead, have adopted a narrow political agenda and engaged directly in partisan activism, with particularly disastrous results for the humanities and social sciences”…
[LINK]
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“The universities have degraded the liberal arts with reductive ideologies that no longer aim to preserve and discover what is highest in man, but to unleash resentments against Western civilization, from the Greeks and Romans, to the English and the Americans”…
[LINK]
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“The universities must adhere to the principle of freedom of speech, not only in theory, but in practice; they must provide a forum for a wider range of debate and protect faculty and students who dissent from the ruling consensus”…
[LINK]
“The universities must advance truth over ideology, with rigorous standards of academic conduct, controls for academic fraud, and merit-based decision-making throughout the enterprise”…
[LINK]
Conclusion
Whilst this recent critique [LINK] of contemporary Western Civilisation Education can be viewed as a positive development that at the same time recognises the critical role of these Education Institutions in Society, without Western Civilisation recognising the fundamental Theological, Philosophical and Metaphysical crisis of Modernity [LINK) and Post-Modernity [LINK], these developments will be futile.
Now is the time to restore, renew and develop the ideas of the Medieval Scholastics that synthesised Ancient Greek Philosophy and Christian Theology, that were the very foundation of the University and Western Civilisation.
The Thomistic Philosophy [LINK] of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
The Real Distinction that was the core principle of Aquinas’ Metaphysics. [LINK]
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The Univocity of Being that was developed by John Duns Scotus. [LINK]
[LINK]
Further developing via Triadic Semiotic Realism - [LINK] - the Conceptual Moderate Realism of John Duns Scotus [LINK].
A Serious Education Requires God. [LINK]
The Self-Destruction of the West
World War One Destruction, Altar in the church of Segusino — Photo by Austrian National Library on Unsplash