Sunday, April 5, 2009

The Western Dynamic

Leo Strauss’ fundamental point about Western Culture is that it is a dynamic of two irreconcilable elements: Greek philosophy and the Bible. The amalgam of materialism, relativism, positivism, darwinism, etc. with moralism however, is, or seems to be, such a reconciliation. Strauss warns that such combination is inevitably a degradation of one side or the other, with consequent enfeeblement of the crucial dynamic.
Contemporary moralism serves almost exclusively to brow-beat ideological adversaries into obedience. As for actual biblical morality, it subverts it.
The amoral quality of materialism & etc. is not faced, and the allegedly evident quality of moralism has a flimsy basis. Even Plato, not once, but again and again, questioned the evident quality of the most obvious tenets of moralism (equality and justice), in the mouths of such characters as Thrasymachus and Callicles. These men claimed that the natural law is the right of the stronger. Socrates confounds them in a context (the presence of other men they are forced to respect and who would hear Socrates out) which forces them to recognize incoherent aspects of thier thinking. But does this undo it altogether?
The biblical side invaded the philosophical side in the 19th century. The concept of progress, which is exclusively biblical, is the basis of Marxism in particular.

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