Forest Poetry

“Modernity is hubris; decadence is its Nemesis.”

-Mark Anderson

With his book “Pure: Modernity, Philosophy, and the One” philosophy professor Mark Anderson gives a concise and powerful diagnosis of the problem of modernity and points towards a possible remedy within the framework of Platonic philosophy.  In just over 100 pages he moves from identifying the symptoms of modernity in current American culture to offering insightful guidance for those who wish to purify themselves of the degenerate elements that have surrounded them since birth.  By referencing only sparingly the eastern traditions that occupy the attention  of many traditionalists, Prof Anderson explores the decline from tradition to modernity in a purely western context.

For the purposes of his book Plato represents tradition and Nietzsche represents the modern.  The choice of Nietzsche as a representative of decadent modernity is a significant, perhaps even defining feature of the book.  The style of writing is clearly modeled more on Nietzsche than Plato, including aphorisms and word play that mimic the German philosopher (a good example of this is the quote given at the beginning of this review).  One of the book’s chapters is entitled “Nietzschean Reflections Contra Nietzsche,” and that description could very well characterize the entire book.  This focus is a result of Nietzsche at once being an extreme example of the disease of modernity and being painfully almost right on so many important questions.  Because of the latter quality Nietzsche often ensnares moderns who are beginning to awaken to the horrors of the current situation, leading them away from truly revolutionary thought with an intoxicating prose style (one which, with all due respect, Prof Anderson does not match) and impassioned, biting insights.  Given the amount of work that Prof Anderson has done on Nietzsche, one wonders if he initially followed this same path himself.

The author identifies as the root of Nietzsche’s error, and the root of modernity, the problem of misology.  He carefully emphasizes the fact that although misology is closely linked with modernity, misology, and indeed modernity itself, were present in antiquity.  Plato recognized this problem, and declared it to be the greatest evil.  Misology is defined as the hatred of logos, or the belief that rational thought and discussion are incapable of arriving at objective truth, and this is Nietzsche’s nihilism.   Misology is such a grave problem because it prevents all honest discussion of truth.  Objective truth is indeed a redundant phrase, for once there are multiple truths there is no truth at all.  This is the cause of modernity’s dishonesty when it comes to truth, as it at once wishes to discredit the idea of objective truth as primitive and naive, but at the same time to make statements that should be taken as true.  Only by declaring openly, joyously, and without embarrassment “this is true, and this is why it is true” can a philosophy have any validity.  Plato’s philosophy produces true health and freedom, and never for an instant doubts itself or the possibility of objective truth.  Prof Anderson points out that its freedom is not concerned with the freedom to do good but with doing good freely.  By describing Platonism in this way Prof Anderson turns the accusations that Nietzsche brought against Socrates and Plato back against the accuser.

Recognizing the falsity of modern assumptions and accepting the truth of Platonism through logical, discursive considerations is only the beginning of what a philosopher hopes to accomplish.  The true goal of philosophy is purification of the soul, and the structure of the book mirrors this progression, ending in a lengthy chapter providing a sketch of the Platonic practice of katharsis (purification).  Metaphysical knowledge can be accessed only by the soul and the purpose of purification is to render the soul clean and healthy in order to perform this function.  Only a healthy eye can properly access empirical knowledge and only a healthy soul can reach divinity.  For an eye to function properly it needs to be physically healthy, and for a soul to function properly it needs to be morally and intellectually healthy.  The result of these considerations is that a bad man cannot know metaphysical truth, although he can know truths about the physical world (or as the author says, “even a criminal can operate a microscope”).  This shows the vast gulf that separates the modern, scientific quest for knowledge and the search of the philosopher.  The main difficulty in explaining the problem of modernity to moderns is that they do not understand this difference, that when the ancient philosophers talk about “knowledge” they do not mean the accumulation of facts or even the physical laws abstracted from these facts that so fascinate today’s scientists.  Purification is a complete ordering of every facet of one’s life and a continuing project over many years that leads to the ultimate goal, union with God, in only a very few, select cases.

Although Prof Anderson emphasizes throughout the book the importance of metaphysics, the work is not a detailed exposition of Platonic metaphysics.  It is unlikely to convince or inform those unfamiliar with the details of Platonic philosophy.  It is recommended that such individuals consult the works of Plato and Plotinus.  But it is not the goal of the book to give such an exposition.  Rather it seeks to give a picture of what it looks like to live and think as a Platonist, especially one living in modern times.  The author speaks tenderly and from experience about the intoxicating power of Platonism and its possibilities for health and wellbeing.  He does not shy away from asking the difficult question “can we really overcome our own modernity?”  He never doubts truth or the ability of Platonism to reach the truth, but questions whether we moderns can actually remove the ingrained traces of modernity that haunt our souls, especially considering the centuries that have intervened since the disappearance of Tradition in the West.  But in keeping with the Platonic spirit, the author never becomes gloomy or pessimistic, and reminds us that even if the fullness of metaphysical realization is beyond our grasp, the mere foretaste of such rewards that we gain through reading the great philosophers far exceeds anything that modernity has to offer.

“By God, we mean gods.
By gods, we mean the Olympians.
By the Olympians, we mean nature.
By nature, we mean the inscrutable forces of nature.
By the inscrutable forces of nature, we mean the metaphysical
reality that manifests itself in and through them; their source; the
One.
By the One, we mean God…”

-Mark Anderson

Link to the book

Mark Anderson’s home page

This time we introduce you Father Thomas Keating, a catholic Trappist monk who has dedicated his life to the study of contemplation not only in  Christianity, but also in the world’s most important religious traditions.

In this video, Father Thomas Keating discusses the experience of oneness and perpetuity of God through the dynamism of His temporal manifestations. Although the perspective of spiritual evolution in this video is not shared by the orthodox traditionalist school,  the approach Father Thomas Keating takes about to the non-dual nature of divinity is undoubtedly insightful, affable and very inspiring.

Traditionalists frequently criticize the current state of Western intellectual life and culture, arguing that our civilization lacks a genuine spiritual dimension. This fact is painfully obvious to many, including more moderate conservatives. But we can occasionally run into some difficulty when explaining that we believe this decline to have begun during the Renaissance. For many conservatives eras such as the Renaissance and the Enlightenment are the high points of Western civilization when great scientific discoveries and artistic achievements were made. In order to explain our position it is important to emphasize that for us the main goal of intellectual activity (reason) is closeness with the divine, or transcendence. We value many intellectual pursuits, but for us a modern mathematician is not as important as an ancient Pythagorean mathematician. They might both be equally capable of solving a particular mathematical problem, but the modern sees nothing beyond the numbers and the their relations with each other, while the Pythagorean sees the numbers and their relations as a symbolic language for theology.

A good analogy for this idea can be found in the realm of morality and personal behavior. A religious man and an atheist can share a moral belief, for example, that adultery is wrong, and they can both succeed in avoiding adultery because of this belief. But the moral belief and the associated behavior has an extra dimension for the man who acts in this way because God commands it, a dimension that is absent from the man who acts in this way merely because he does not wish to cause any distress to his fellow human beings, or whatever his mundane reason might be.

For the religious man, avoiding adultery is a spiritual exercise, a manifestation of God’s will in his own psyche and activity. Something on a higher metaphysical plain is gaining mastery over something on a lower plain (the human individual). In the case of the moral atheist there is no interaction between metaphysical levels, no transcendence. Rather there are two things on the same level interacting with each other, the desire for adultery and the desire for not causing distress. Both desires are concerned solely with mundane actions. The actions of the atheist are purely horizontal, while the actions of the religious man have a vertical dimension. The latter’s action exist on several different levels, and that which is viewed on this physical level is but a small part of the entire action. They are unified across the different vertically ordered hierarchical levels, and the part of the action on the lower level serves as a symbol for the corresponding parts on higher levels. Thus it turns out that the two actions, that of the religious man and that of the atheist, share a goal, avoiding adultery, but that the action of the religious man has the added goal of following God’s will. In the same way intellectual activity can have two goals, effecting a mundane change and making a connection with a higher level of reality.

It was during the Renaissance and especially the Enlightenment that Western intellectual life began focusing too much on the former goal and neglecting the latter, and in more recent times the latter has been vigorously attacked and deliberately removed. For this reason many see the decline of the West beginning at a much later period, when vociferous and explicit deniers or God became popular, but it is important to keep in mind the true root of the problem, for that is the only way to find an effective remedy.