The New Jacobins
Modernity, Post-Modernity , Marxism and Mass Libertinism
The statue on the place de la republique in Paris, France - Maarten Scheer on Unsplash
“The aim of constitutional government is to preserve the Republic.The aim of revolutionary government is to lay its foundation”…
— Maximilien Robespierre, 1793
“If the attribute of popular government in peace is virtue,the attribute of popular government in revolution is at one and the same time virtue and terror, virtue without which terror is fatal, terror without which virtue is impotent. The terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is thus an emanation of virtue”…
— Maximilien Robespierre
In some of the earlier articles, it was highlighted:
Western Civilisation Intellectual Triadic Architecture [LINK] - How Western Civilisation Intellectual Scaffolding was Triadic [LINK] in nature - for example - Thomism Philosophy [LINK] - Hypostasis - The Christian Trinity and Platonism’s Three Fundamental Realities [LINK] - Triadic of Reason [LINK] - Triadic of Being [LINK] - and - Triadic modes of Being [LINK];
Modernity & Post-Modernity’s attempted deconstruction of Western Civilisation’s Intellectual Triadic Architecture [LINK] [LINK] - How the emergence of Nominalism [LINK] [LINK] and the subsequent Schism in Christianity with the emergence of Protestantism [LINK] provided the fertile ground for the attempted re-orientation of Man’s understanding of Reality away from this Western Civilisation Intellectual Triadic Architecture (i.e. God, Conscious Man, Natural World) [LINK] to a Primacy of Human Consciousness (e.g. Cartesianism [LINK] [LINK], Modern Gnosticism [LINK], Nietzschean Perspectivism [LINK], Hegel’s Absolute Idealism [LINK]) and a Primacy of Man (Theology of Marxism [LINK]) noting Marxism was now endemic across Western Civilisation [LINK];
Liberation Theology - How the deconstruction [LINK] [LINK] of the Triadic Intellectual Scaffolding of Western Civilisation [LINK] leads to Liberation Theology [LINK] that manifests in various Modern & Post-Modern Marxist Revolutions [LINK] (e.g. French, Soviet, Chinese variants etc.). For example, the Liberation from God (e.g. God is Dead (Nietzsche) [LINK], Temples of Reason [LINK] & Cult of Reason [LINK] replace Temples of Prayer - French Revolution [LINK], Man as God (Marxism) [LINK]), Liberation from Nature (e.g. application of Industrial Age engineering discipline to complex dynamic living systems - Geo [LINK] - Bio [LINK] - Genetic [LINK] - Engineering - emergence of Philosophy of Mechanisation [LINK]), and Liberation from Himself (e.g. Transhumanism [LINK], Übermensch [LINK] & Universal Values [LINK], Artificial General Intelligence [LINK]); and
Three Waves of Modernity (Leo Strauss [LINK]) [LINK] - How the key metaphysical and philosophical ideas of Modernity, such as Individual Liberalism [LINK], inevitably morph into Socialism/Communism [LINK] and ultimately into a new Tyranny [LINK] - Fascism [LINK] and a New Totalitarianism [LINK]. Ideas grounded in the Political Philosophy of Hobbesianism [LINK] and an increasing concentration of power in the State & Trans National Organisations [LINK].
[LINK] - Speaker Johnson on United States Government Shutdown
Across Western Civilisation, were we seeing the rise of the New Jacobins [LINK]?
A phenomenon grounded in the original French Jacobins’ Liberation Theology and Ideology [LINK].
[LINK] - America’s embrace of Jacobin Theories [LINK]
Just as the Jacobins (e.g. Robespierre [LINK] and the Committee of Public Safety [LINK]) saw themselves as agents of universal emancipation: freeing humanity from tyranny, privilege, perceived superstition, and inequality, the New Jacobins seemed to be intent on creating a New World Order [LINK] through a Social, Political, Cultural & Economic Revolution [LINK].
“In sum, for the last four years, the world has watched aghast as the United States lost its collective mind and becamea radical Jacobin revolutionary society”…
— Victor Davis Hanson
[LINK]
However, similar to the original Jacobins, their concept of liberation was collectivist and shaped by a Nietzschean Will to Power [LINK], including a Marxist power-directed system of thought [LINK].
The Jacobins believed that the individual must subordinate private interests to the general will — a Rousseauan idea [LINK].
The State, as the embodiment of the general will, represented the collective moral and political unity of the people.
[LINK] - Freedom - Self-Governance under God
Freedom was redefined not as individual autonomy (i.e. Self-Governance under God), but as participation in the collective sovereignty of the Republic.
In other words, liberty existed only within the bounds of collective virtue and civic unity.
A Hobbesian centralisation and concentration of power in the State.
However, in practice this led to a paradox: the New Jacobins believed that people had to be forced to be free [LINK] — as Robespierre had centuries before had phrased it [LINK].
The Jacobins and New Jacobins both claim to be focused on liberation — but their understanding of liberation [LINK] was highly particular and grounded in Marxist Materialism [LINK] rather than Locke’s Universalism & Divine Order (i.e. Natural Rights and Moral Duties emanating from Divine Will) [LINK].
Their ideas result in a range of paradoxes, forms of cognitive dissonance [LINK] and erosions in our sense of coherence [LINK], including inter alia:
a Paradox of Tolerance that leads to Intolerance ( Karl Popper) [LINK];
a New Totalitarianism ( Augusto del Noce) [LINK] where Reality must be imposed and managed by force (e.g. censorship, surveillance, propaganda, education indoctrination, managed truth, etc.) [LINK];
the embracement of a power-directed system of thought (Marx) [LINK] - in contrast with Christian Theology’s truth-directed system of thought;
a Hobbesian political system where power becomes increasingly concentrated in the State ( as opposed to a Lockean political system where the State serves the interest of the people, including protecting an individual’s natural rights and enabling moral duties that align with God’s Will) [LINK];
a Marxist ( i.e. reality as a social construct [LINK] ) justice system ( e.g. legal positivism) [LINK] in contrast to a justice system that aligns with natural & eternal laws (refer to Dr Martin Luther King) and the pursuit of Truth & Justice [LINK];
a Society that is shaped by a Nietzschean will to power [LINK] and Machiavellian technique of manipulation [LINK] [LINK], where apparently the “end justifies the means“ [LINK], in contrast to the judicious exercise of power to ensure peace and justice with the intention of the avoidance of evil [LINK];
a collectivist political system ( i.e. Leo Strauss’ three waves of modernity - communism, socialism, fascism) [LINK] that ignores the free will, agency, inalienable rights and moral duties of each individual (Locke) [LINK], together with a failure to recognise the non-ergodic nature [LINK] of human participation in reality; and
a Society where human rights are permitted by the State (e.g. United Nations) [LINK] that contrasts with self-governance of individuals with natural rights and moral duties endowed by God ( American Declaration of Independence [LINK] - Locke [LINK]).
[LINK] - Ego-focused trait of narcissism - and - The Nihilism of the West [LINK] - The Conscious Self (Ego) [LINK]
A liberation that fails to recognise
a Natural Order (Edmund Burke) [LINK] - Natural Rights & Moral Duties emanating from God’s Will (John Locke) [LINK] - Ordered Cognitived Liberty [LINK]); and
was not a Liberation at all [LINK].
[LINK] - The Illusion of Liberation - Man’s attempted Revolt against God, Nature and Himself
It reflected a profound shift and distinction in how Man understood the nature of Reality:
+2,000 Years of Western Civilisation (up until Modernity) - Man participates in Reality, which was a relationship between God, Conscious Man and the Natural World. A relationship between the Necessary Being of God (as Creator) and the Contingent Being of Man & Nature (as Created); and
Modernity & Post-Modernity - Reality is a Social Construct created by Man and grounded in a Primacy of Human Consciousness (e.g. Nominalism and Cartesianism - res Cogitans) and Primacy of Man (e.g. Marx - Historical Materialism).
[LINK] - Ordered Cognitive Liberty
Dangerous ideas [LINK] were destroying Western Civilisation [LINK].
[LINK] - The Dangerous Ideas destroying Western Civilisation
[LINK] - The Self-Destruction of the West
By anchoring our understanding of Reality in Nominalism [LINK], embracing the Theology of Marxism [LINK] and adopting Post-Modern Moral Relativism [LINK], it is inevitable that Reality must be imposed via force [LINK] (i.e. a Nietzschean Will to Power [LINK] - Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance [LINK]).
[LINK]
This may include soft forms of totalitarianism (refer Del Noce) such as ideological & political compliance [LINK], censorship [LINK], surveillance [LINK], propaganda [LINK], truth management [LINK], educational indoctrination [LINK] etc., implemented through a Technology Society [LINK] and Technology System [LINK].
Reality as a Marxist Social Construct [LINK] - Sociologism [LINK] - (e.g. Legal Positivism [LINK], Scientific Gnosticism or Scientism [LINK], Post-Modern Liberalism [LINK]).
“Was therea failure to recognise that nominalism’s truth claims are conventional rather than naturalwhich therefore inevitably leads to order being imposed by force— a will to power?”…
— The Complexity Void
A concept of liberation that becomes conventional, collectivist & ideological, rather than one that was natural, individual & morally grounded in a higher metaphysical Divine Order and the relationship between the Contingent Being of Man (Created) and the Necessary Being of God (Created) (a Univocity of Being (Duns Scotus) and Universality of Reason (Kant)).
****Note: Whilst the emergence of Jacobins was a response to the moral bankruptcy of the Aristocratic Libertinism, the Jacobins, in abandoning Metaphysical Laws and Divine Order [LINK], created their own Liberation Paradox where Reality must be imposed on the collective via force.
A concept of liberation where individual political dissent and cognitive liberty [LINK] become non-permissible to the Orthodoxy. [LINK] [LINK]
“ What istotalitarianism, if not theundue absolutisation of politics”…
— Augusto Del Noce
Hence, it would appear there was a Crisis of Modernity [LINK] - a Theological, Philosophical and Metaphysical Crisis [LINK] - noting Metaphysics is the study of Being - the science of Reality [LINK].
“Del Noce maintained thattwentieth-century history must be understood specifically as a philosophical history, because Western culture was profoundly affected by the major philosophies of the previous century such as idealism, Marxism, and positivism.Such philosophies became the secular, neo-gnostic surrogate of Christianity for the European educated classes after the French Revolution, and the next century put them to the practical test, bringing to light their ultimate and necessary consequences. One of the first thinkers to recognise thefailure of Marxism, Del Noce posited that this failure set the stage for anew secular, technocratic society”…
[LINK]
