Culture at a Crossroads
Nietzsche vs. Aristotle
Which way, Western man? You’ve seen the memes. Everyone senses that we’re at a crossroads. That’s what our cultural crisis — from the Greek krisis, literally a ‘turning point in a disease, that change which indicates recovery or death’ — is ultimately about. But it’s not primarily political since political philosophy is simply a branch of metaphysics. Politics aims at organising society to achieve what is good for man, but what is good for man depends on what man is. Inevitably, that’s a metaphysical question.
The answer? MacIntyre famously argues in After Virtue that only two are possible: Aristotle or Nietzsche. In other words, will man walk the way of virtue or the way of the will to power? That is the crossroads modern man faces. Do we believe in truth and goodness? Or is the world merely a chaotic clash of competing power narratives?
These questions shake Western civilisation to its foundations.
Fear and Loathing of Logos
Traditionally, Western civilisation has been seen as an expression of Logos or rationality. Man, said Aristotle, is the rational animal, and Philo’s ‘On the Creation’ echoes this standard view in saying that ‘every man in regard of his intellect is connected with divine reason [logos]’. Marcus Aurelius, too, said that ‘if the intellectual capacity is common to us all, common too is the reason [logos], which makes us rational creatures.’
Western civilisation, then, is logocentric. Of course logocentrism isn’t Logos itself, but man is the only logocentric animal because man is the only rational animal. Unlike other animals, who are ‘without understanding’ (Ps 31:9), man has the power of conceptual thought and engages in syntactical speech. So-called “intelligent” animals don’t do this. The great apes can’t grasp abstractions like justice or beauty. Dolphins don’t read or write philosophy.
Now, however, logocentrism is under attack. Nietzsche and his post-modern descendants argue that man is not fundamentally rational at all. In fact, according to Nietzsche’s core doctrine of Perspectivism, there is no truth. Thus Bronze Age Pervert, a current populariser of Nietzsche, says that ‘logocentrism must die.’ (Caribbean Rhythms, episode 44).
That is Satanic, and it’s easy to explain why. If ‘nothing is true,’ Nietzsche says, then ‘all is permitted.’ And in abandoning virtue for mere ‘will,’ BAP abandons objective morality since virtue is rational action whereas sin is irrational. Thus whereas Scripture says ‘turn away from evil and do good’ (Ps 36:27), BAP says ‘do great deeds, for good or evil’.
In essence, that’s no different from Crowley’s dictum: ‘do what thou wilt’
It’s a license to lust. And like Nietzsche, BAP says men should be driven not by reason but by ‘innate blood and desire,’ making them ‘wolfish.’ When Nietzsche was first committed to an insane asylum, he kept asking for women to be brought to him. Covered in his own excrement after a night alone in his room, he announced that he’d been with twenty-four prostitutes. Lust, said St. Remigius, damns the most souls — the traditional Christian view. Thus St. Paul warns, ‘there dwelleth not…in my flesh, that which is good.’ (Romans 7:18). And Christ sent his disciples out ‘like sheep,’ not wolves. (Matt 10:16).
But Nietzsche believed the Hobbesian vision that man is wolf to man. For him, strife is the basis of civilisation: man is ‘soaked in blood.’ Echoing this, BAP says that ‘underlying things’ is ‘demoniac and violent madness.’ Yet Christianity says ‘all things desire peace’ (Augustine), not war. God ‘makes war to cease’ (Ps 45:10) whereas to ‘soweth discord’ (Prov 6:19) and ‘make dissensions’ (Romans 16:17) is the Devil’s work.
Since BAP believes a demoniac madness underlies all life, he believes ‘the key to the meaning of life’ is the secret desire ‘to be worshipped as a god.’ That’s pride.Whereas the Devil ‘wanted to be as God’ (Aquinas), Christ ‘emptied himself’ (Phil 2:7). We must ‘rather worship God than be worshipped as God’ (Augustine). Aquinas says the Devil, too, wanted 'to create things by his own power’. He wanted ‘command over others in a way proper to God alone.’
Desiring this God-like command over others, BAP’s ideal man has an ‘unquenchable lust for power’ and is ‘lord over life and death.’ He advocates ‘boundless cruelty’. By contrast, God says ‘the course of the wicked shall end in ruin’ (Ps 1:6) because ‘their sword shall pierce their own hearts’ (Ps 36:15). He ‘savest the weak from the strong’ (Ps 34:9), whose ‘strength…shall be broken’ (Ps 36:2)
Christianity or Idolatry?
Anyone who denies God always ends up idolising something, and for BAP it’s race. He believes in a ‘true hierarchy of biological types’ and wants to ‘rebreed the original Aryan race.’ But Christianity says all human beings share a common ancestor, form one family and are equally made in the image of God. ‘All are one in Christ’ (Galatians 3:28).
BAP also says that ‘reincarnation is fundamentally true.’ That is hippy nonsense and incompatible with the resurrection of the body. And if ‘nothing is true’ (Nietzsche), reincarnation isn’t true. Nor is BAP’s ‘true hierarchy of biological types’. Nor is anything else Nietzsche or BAP say true.
This level of stupidity is usually seen only in the creative writing of edgy pre-teens.
In the final analysis, the will to power is idolatry. ‘The warrior is not saved by his great strength' (Ps 32:16), and ‘every man is but a breath’ (Ps 38:12). Trying ‘to achieve final beatitude without God's help’ is Satanic, as Aquinas said. Instead, ‘the greatest glory we can give to God is to do his will in everything’ (St Alphonsus de Liguori).
There is no masculinity without rationality, consistency and clarity. Men need to know what and where their boundaries are because delineating and defending boundaries — physical, cultural, spiritual —is what men do. Accordingly, Christ is crystal clear: ‘He that is not with me, is against me: and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth.’ (Matthew 12:30)
To side with the self-proclaimed ‘anti-Christ’ Nietzsche and his populariser BAP against Christ is therefore ultimately to side with Satan.
And that’s why it ends in incoherence, 'for other foundation no man can lay, but that which is laid; which is Christ Jesus.’ (1 Cor 3:11) In the second chapter of the Book of Wisdom, the sacred writer reads the hearts of the Satanists of his own time. And since human nature never changes, his words also read the hearts of the Satanists in our time, detailing what he calls their ‘vain reasonings’:
‘The time of our life is short and tedious, and in the end of a man there is no remedy, and no man hath been known to have returned from hell: for we are born of nothing, and after this we shall be as if we had not been: for the breath in our nostrils is smoke: and speech a spark to move our heart, which being put out, our body shall be ashes, and our spirit shall be poured abroad as soft air, and our life shall pass away as the trace of a cloud, and shall be dispersed as a mist, which is driven away by the beams of the sun, and overpowered with the heat thereof: and our name in time shall be forgotten, and no man shall have any remembrance of our works. For our time is as the passing of a shadow, and there is no going back of our end: for it is fast sealed, and no man returneth.’
Because of this nihilistic view of life, they seek wanton sensuality:
‘Come therefore, and let us enjoy the good things that are present, and let us speedily use the creatures as in youth. Let us fill ourselves with costly wine, and ointments: and let not the flower of the time pass by us. Let us crown ourselves with roses, before they be withered: let no meadow escape our riot. Let none of us go without his part in luxury: let us everywhere leave tokens of joy: for this is our portion, and this our lot.’
Masculinity, they believe, is about the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure — a ‘riot’ of food, frolicking and fornication.
Disregarding virtue, they care only for their own will to power:
‘Let us oppress the poor just man, and not spare the widow, nor honour the ancient grey hairs of the aged. But let our strength be the law of justice: for that which is feeble, is found to be nothing worth.’
Might makes right, they believe. And of course the irony here is that therefore whoever is in power is right. Nietzsche liked to imagine that the only reason his preferred ‘higher man’ didn’t rule was that he’d been unfairly tricked by cunning inferior men who didn’t deserve power. But by Nietzsche’s own logic, however, that’s nonsense. If power is indeed all that counts, there is no question of justice.
You got conquered by usury and porn? So what? According to you, there are no rules.
In fact, if the ‘inferior’ men dominate the ‘higher’ men, they prove that they aren’t inferior after all. They win. And if there is no truth but only power, as Nietzsche says, then there are no objective standards by which to judge the “higher man” — Nietzsche’’s ‘blonde beast,’ as in BAP’s Aryan fantasy — as objectively better anyway. You look like a Greek statue when you’re naked? Nobody cares.
Above all, however, the Satanists hate the just man because his life is a ‘constant censurer’ of their wickedness:
‘Let us therefore lie in wait for the just, because he is not for our turn, and he is contrary to our doings, and upbraideth us with transgressions of the law, and divulgeth against us the sins of our way of life. He boasteth that he hath the knowledge of God, and calleth himself the son of God. He is become a censurer of our thoughts. He is grievous unto us, even to behold: for his life is not like other men's, and his ways are very different. We are esteemed by him as triflers, and he abstaineth from our ways as from filthiness, and he preferreth the latter end of the just, and glorieth that he hath God for his father.’
The degenerate hates being called a degenerate. In matters of sexual morality especially, he shrieks when judged. The mere idea of degeneracy horrifies him. All he wants is sun, steel and sodomy.
And the sacred writer’s final comment makes the profound point that there is no talking the degenerate out of it. A corrupt mind cannot be reasoned with.
‘These things they thought, and were deceived: for their own malice blinded them. And they knew not the secrets of God, nor hoped for the wages of justice, nor esteemed the honour of holy souls. For God created man incorruptible, and to the image of his own likeness he made him. But by the envy of the devil, death came into the world: And they follow him that are of his side.’
Man is made in the image of God because he is the rational animal, as Aristotle said, possessing the spiritual powers of intellect and free will. And he is made to love and serve God in this life and be happy with Him in the next. But Nietzsche and his followers believe man is merely ‘something to be overcome.’ They want to create their own meaning and, ultimately, create themselves. It’s the old lie that Satan whispered in Eden: ‘ye shall be as gods.’
And so the crossroads that modern man faces turns out to be the Cross itself.
Which way, Western man?
This makes me question so many aspects of the neitzcheans that I’ve never even thought of. This was a great piece of writing.
As a child. I was taught that pride, greed and lust are the worst of the sins. The wisdom of that teaching is evident all around us. It’s no accident that one particular group adopted the sin of pride as the banner and symbol of their movement.