Homo cosmopoliticus: Adam Smith and Globalist Subjectivity

“The proprietor of stock is necessarily a citizen of the world” (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter II, Article II).

The perverted universality of globalism can be considered fulfilled in the verification of the logic that was already outlined by Smith in The Wealth of Nations:

The proprietor of stock is necessarily a citizen of the world, and is not necessarily attached to any particular country. He would be apt to abandon the country in which he was exposed to a vexatious inquisition, in order to be assessed to a burdensome tax, and would remove his stock to some other country where he could either carry on his business, or enjoy his fortune more at his ease (Book V, Chapter II, Article II).

Following Smith’s thesis, it goes without saying that the liberal Right of Money is cosmopolitan and vocationally non-border. Capital is, by its essence, stateless and deterritorialized (“not necessarily attached to any particular country”).

Moreover, if we venture beyond Smith, it is founded on the reduction of the whole world to its “homeland” of reference: it is cosmopolitan precisely because, in order to realize itself in an “ab-solute” form, it must neutralize national barriers and saturate the globe, reducing it to a smooth plane for the omnidirectional displacement of the flows of commodities and commodified persons, of speculative capital and consumer desires.

The possessor of capital is, therefore, “necessarily a citizen of the world,” free to move and circulate in order “carry on his business, or enjoy his fortune more at his ease.” And this, as is evident, according to that logic of profit which, if during a historical period coincided with the space of imperialist nationalism, today finds its own ubi consistam in denationalization and in the opening of all material and immaterial frontiers.

From this point of view, homo cosmopoliticus seems to be the most genuine product of that cosmomarket anthropology and of that rootlessness inscribed in its original code, against which De Maistre’s theorem remains largely valid, according to which we never find the “man” qua talis, but always the Frenchman, the Italian or the Russian (and since Montesquieu—De Maistre ironically added—we learned that the Persian also exists).

Once again, the Left of Custom, trapped in the “Ptolemaic phase,” deludes itself into thinking that it fights against power, when in reality it sustains it, fully defending its interests and intervening against any project of emancipation of the oppressed with respect to the auri sacra fames of turbo-capital.

It fights the very idea of national rootedness, confusing it with its pernicious and dangerous drift that was capitalist nationalism, without realizing that today it has been completely surpassed by the new non-border globocracy, which is the first to use the anti-nationalist rhetoric to demonize, no longer the nationalist imperialism that for a time it supported, but the very idea of Nation and, with it, of the Gramscian national-popular as the basis of cultural, identitarian, political and social resistance of the oppressed against the intrinsically undemocratic market cosmopolitanism.

In this scenario emerges, with clear outlines, the structural incompatibility of capitalist cosmopolitanism with proletarian internationalism or, more generically, of the classes today dominated. Internationalism implies a nexus of socialist solidarity inter nationes and, therefore, the opposite of the cosmopolitan annihilation of nations carried out by global-capitalism following Smith’s theorem and, if you will, according to Trotsky’s cosmopolitical perspective of communism, as deconstructed by Gramsci in the Prison Notebooks.

The internationalism of the national-popular Servant does not coincide, then, either with the conquering nationalism of the historical Right (which was the expressive function of imperialist capitalism in its dialectical phase), or with the capitalist cosmopolitanism of the de-sovereignized and post-national market (which is the project defended in our day, structurally, by the liberal Right of Money and superstructurally by the libertarian Left of Custom).

From what has been exposed, it is again inferred that, in order to break the yoke of liberal Glebalism, we must first of all deconstruct the hegemony of the single thought that sanctifies the really-given power relation. In particular, it is necessary to dismantle the ideological architecture of the champagne Left of Custom, which superstructurally legitimizes the structure of the dominance of the financial Right of Money.

The ideological fraud of the nationalist Right—if it still intends to use, for heuristic purposes, the obsolete and, in fact, “useless” Right-Left dichotomy—lies in presenting a certain authoritarian and non-democratic sovereignty, as if it were the real opposition to capitalist cosmopolitanism, which is precisely its other face (rectius, the culmination).

The imposture of the champagne and rainbow Lefts consists, on the other hand, in smuggling in as socialist internationalism what, strictly speaking, is liberal cosmopolitanism; that is to say, the sphere of conflict favorable to the competitivist Lord.

With an attitude that always oscillates between incomprehension of the power relation and its active legitimization, the champagne Left surreptitiously believes—and here is the core of its error—that “the contrast of cosmopolitanism implies a repudiation of internationalism;” on the contrary, it is socialist internationalism that carries implicitly a firm rejection of both imperialist nationalism and liberal cosmopolitanism. There can be no socialist internationalism in the absence of national States which recognize each other as free and brotherly.

By the way, it was the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 that certified the acknowledged “conversion of the Italian communists to neoliberalism.” On that occasion, the definitive and integrally cosmopolitan forma mentis of the market-friendly Left was forged, now convinced that any opposition to non-border globalism was no longer the possible defense of the dominated classes against the offensive of the unified market without borders, but the path of identitarian and regressive closure, which would necessarily have to be combined with the right-wing quadrant of politics.

Bobbio was undoubtedly right when, in his successful book, Destra e sinistra (Right and Left), he pointed to the “great problem of inequality between men and peoples” as the unresolved knot in the post-1989 world. However, this impeccable diagnosis coexisted, in Bobbio’s works, with the unreal ideal-typical identification of the Left with the defense of that equality, with respect to which the really-existing new Left, converted to liberal cosmopolitanism, had already said goodbye in an evident manner for some time.

If historically the Left—as Bobbio also admitted—was based on the connection between freedom and equality and used the action of the State as an instrument of action upon reality, with a view to implementing that end, how could the post-Marxist new Left still call itself “Left,” which to the questions of equality and labor rights had now placed individualist liberalization and the rainbow rights of the individual consumer before the questions of equality and labor rights; that to the struggle for equality and freedom of colonized peoples had preferred unconditional support for the abstractly humanitarian and concretely imperialist interventionism of the dollar thalassocracy; and that, even before the eticizing power of the State as a means to achieve equality, had chosen to adhere to the de-sovereignizing globalization which is the means that guarantees the ever growing hegemony of the ruling class?

Diego Fusaro is professor of the History of Philosophy at the IASSP in Milan (Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies) where he is also scientific director. He is a scholar of the Philosophy of History, specializing in the thought of Fichte, Hegel, and Marx. His interest is oriented towards German idealism, its precursors (Spinoza) and its followers (Marx), with a particular emphasis on Italian thought (Gramsci or Gentile, among others). he is the author of many books, including Fichte and the Vocation of the Intellectual, The Place of Possibility: Toward a New Philosophy of Praxis, and Marx, again!: The Spectre Returns. [This article appears courtesy of Posmodernia].

Featured: Folio 13 from The Nuremberg Chronicle, or the Schedelsche Weltchronik, or Liber Chronicarum (Book of Chronicles); published in 1493.

Russia In a Just War

The special military operation that Russia is conducting in Ukraine has drawn a lot of criticism in Western countries. As a rule, it is reduced to a few particular narratives: Russia has violated the norms of international law and the sovereignty of Ukraine, and war (use of force) is not acceptable to resolve any disagreements. At the same time, the West deliberately glosses over all precedents of aggression against other countries in which they participated, violated sovereignty and conducted occupation. Even relatively recent, such wars constitute a long list—Yugoslavia, the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army received support from NATO countries, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria. In other words, the implication is that wars fought by the West are just and those fought by the rest of us (regardless of their form or causes) are not.

Let us consider whether Russia has acted justly towards Ukraine. First of all, we should keep in mind that in the current postmodern paradigm, there is no single system of accountability and no universal measure for various spheres of activity, including political and military.

Many terms and vague concepts have emerged. Following the combatants are “neo-combatants,” “quasi-combatants,” “post-combatants,” and “other actors” involved in conflicts. Definitions such as “gray zone,” “hybrid warfare,” and “special operations” do not bring clarity to current forms of conflict. Even the classic of military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, said that “war is the realm of the untrustworthy; three-quarters of what the action of war is based on lies in the fog of the unknown. War is the domain of chance…. It increases the uncertainty of the situation and disrupts the course of events.”

Which is Why…

In our case it is necessary, first of all, to determine when and how a just war begins. The classics of jurisprudence have said the following about it.

The Roman philosopher and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero noted: “We have established by law that when a war is started, when it is waged and when it is stopped, the right and fidelity to one’s word should be of the greatest importance, and that there should be interpreters of this right and fidelity appointed by the state.”

Note that the word “law” in Latin (lex) contains the meaning and significance of choosing (legere) a just and true beginning.

Cicero also said that “unjust are those wars which have been started without cause. For if there is no cause in the form of revenge or by virtue of the necessity of repelling the attack of enemies, it is impossible to wage a just war…. No war is considered just unless it is proclaimed, declared, or started because of an unfulfilled demand for reparation.”

Undoubtedly, the special military operation had serious reasons. Russia has repeatedly demanded of both the collective West and the Kiev regime to stop shelling peaceful towns in the Donbas and to honor the Minsk agreements. They have not done so. And the Russian leadership has repeatedly warned of serious consequences.

And, as we see, it has kept its word.

Augustine, another major authority in the West, states that “the best state does not itself start a war, except when it does so by virtue of its word or in defense of its welfare.” Again, we see mention made of the need to keep one’s word. But to it is added the questionof preserving the welfare.

Thus, according to Augustine, Russia is the best state that 1) keeps its promise, and 2) protects its welfare. And it is impossible to argue against this.

If we talk about modern theorists of just war, we can also find theses justifying the measures that Russia has taken in relation to Ukraine.

Michael Walzer said that “states may resort to military means in the event of a threat of war whenever inaction would lead to a serious risk of violating territorial integrity or political independence.”

Brian Orend generally believed that “a government can launch a preemptive attack if it is in defense of human rights. Military action against an enemy that disregards morality and rights in its policies is not recognized as aggression.” It is assumed that he thus justified the actions of Western countries in relation, for example, to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, where there were problems with respect for human rights; in particular, the repression of the Kurds. However, it is clear that Orend’s formulation also fits the Ukrainian regime, which facilitated the formation of neo-Nazi battalions and ethnocide.

Orend also formulated the idea of a minimally just political community, which has three main criteria:

  1. It is recognized by its own citizens and the world community;
  2. It does not violate the rights of neighboring states;
  3. It ensures respect for the rights of its own citizens.

At least the first and second criteria were absent in Ukraine after the coup in February 2014, because some citizens did not recognize the new neo-Nazi regime, and their rights were not ensured by the central government and were diminished in every possible way.

And according to Orenda, “an attack on a government that does not meet the criteria of minimum justice and is unable to protect the rights of its own citizens or intentionally violates them does not constitute aggression and a violation of the principle of non-intervention.”

Consequently, Russia has not carried out any aggression. Although many politicians in the West would like to think otherwise.

Hence the interpretation of humanitarian intervention. And this is also a Western concept, which under the name of “Responsibility to Protect” was extended even to the UN. And if Western countries have repeatedly carried out such humanitarian interventions under a variety of pretexts, why can Russia not do so, especially since there was a need to protect civilians.

The same Walzer says that “when people are killed, we should not wait to see if they pass the self-help test before providing support.” Apparently, the DNR and LNR passed the self-help test and eight years later they were supported.

Nicholas Fouchin, a professor at Emory University (Atlanta, USA), defends the right to strike non-state groups (especially against terrorists). There were and still are plenty of such groups in Ukraine, from the odious Azov battalion to other paramilitary formations with foreign mercenaries.

Since we are talking about humanitarian intervention, it is necessary to turn to the issue of international humanitarian law (IHL). And here we will immediately discover an interesting nuance. It turns out that international humanitarian law as we know it and as it is spread all over the world is nothing but Western humanitarian law. And, to some extent, even Anglo-Saxon.

Tania Ixchel Atilano, from Mexico, a specialist in international law, notes that in the standard account of IHL history, similarities with classical studies of revolution can be discerned. Traditional accounts of revolutions deal mainly with the revolutions of the United States and Europe. In her study of revolutions, Hannah Arendt deals exclusively with the revolutions of the United States, France, and Russia, completely ignoring Latin America. Even when she explains that all revolutions follow the model of the French Revolution as if it were a decisive process; she fails to note that the Mexican Revolution (1910), which actually occurred before the Russian Revolution (1917), does not follow the “organic process” of the French Revolution at all (the exception, of course, being the establishment of “one-party rule”). It seems that revolutions had to have certain characteristics that could only be fulfilled in certain “civilized” regions.

Even though these “other” revolutions early on provided rights that had not yet been granted to Europeans, such as the abolition of slavery (Haiti, 1793), equality before the law, universal male suffrage and freedom of expression. Above all, it gave hope of emancipation to people who were still colonized or suffering from some kind of oppression.

Exactly the same has happened with the study of IHL history. Perhaps because the “founding fathers” of humanity at war did not consider from the outset the events that took place in Latin America, historians have also reproduced this distortion. By doing so, scholars inadvertently reproduce the misconception that waging war according to the laws of war would only occur in “civilized” states. At the time, the history of IHL was a reflection of the “victor’s story,” or the history of powerful states and their interaction with the laws of war. In other words, without allowing for the existence of any other histories, we are dealing here with a pure “global epistemology.” Global means Western.

Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and now Ukraine are contemporary examples of the continuation of global epistemology.

Another example is the Caroline Affair, which served as the basis for the emergence of the Self-Defense Act during the 1837 war between Canada and Britain. The rebels in Canada were being aided by the US with the ship Caroline, so British troops entered the US territory to carry out a punitive action which resulted in the ship being burned.

This was followed by a discussion between the US Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, and the British government, where the issue of proportionality was discussed. The principle of proportionality was then introduced into the 1949 Geneva Convention and speaks of the need to balance military necessity with humanity.

This was originally just an Anglo-Saxon interlocution that had nothing to do with international affairs, but became part of IHL.

And there are many such examples when European-American codes in the field of criminal, humanitarian and international law were imposed on the overwhelming majority of the world’s states. And the imposition of the Western position continued to be actively imposed over the last 30 years, especially in the countries that the U.S. disparagingly called “developing countries” and implemented their own laws there with the help of USAID, the Carnegie Foundation and other structures.

In this respect, the Special Military Operation in Ukraine is also an incentive to revise a number of international instruments and to carry out necessary reforms. If this cannot yet be done at a truly international level, the vestiges of the influence of Western theories should be removed at least at the national level and within the framework of partnership agreements with friendly countries.

Leonid Savin is Editor-in-Chief of the Geopolitika.ru Analytical Center, General Director of the Cultural and Territorial Spaces Monitoring and Forecasting Foundation and Head of the International Eurasia Movement Administration. This article appears through the kind courtesy RUSSTRAT Institute.

Neoliberal Globalization: A New Religious Faith

Using Gramsci’s syntax, ideology exists when “a given class succeeds in presenting and having the conditions of its existence and of its class development accepted as a universal principle, as a conception of the world, as a religion.”

The culmination outlined by Gramsci is entirely relevant if reference is made to the ideology of globalization as a nature that has always been given, irreversible and physiological (globalismus sive natura). In the framework of the post-1989 New World Order and what has been defined as “the great chessboard,” it is presented to all intents and purposes as a “universal principle,” because it is indistinctly accepted in all latitudes of the planet (it is what we could call the globalization of the concept of globalization) and, at the same time, it is also embraced by the pole of the dominated, who should oppose it with the utmost firmness. It is presented as an unquestionable and universally valid truth, which only asks to be ratified and accepted according to the modality of an adaequatio that is both cognitive and political.

Globalization shows itself then, as a “conception of the world;” that is, as an articulated and all-embracing system, because it has been structured in the form of a unitary and systematic perspective, centered on denationalizing cosmopolitanism and on the elimination of all material and immaterial limitations to the free circulation of commodities and marketized persons, to the flows of liquid financial capital and to the infinite extension of the competitive interests of the dominant classes.

Finally, it takes the form of a “religion,” because it is increasingly experienced as an unquestionable faith and largely situated beyond the principles of rational Socratic discussion: whoever does not unthinkingly and with fideistic credentials accept the new globalized order will be immediately ostracized, silenced and stigmatized by the language police and the gendarmes of thought as a heretic or as an infidel, dangerously threatening the stability of the mundialist catechesis and its main articles of faith (free movement, integral openness of all material and immaterial reality, borderless competitiveness, etc. ). Globalization thus coincides with the new idolatrous monotheism of the global market, typical of an era that has ceased to believe in God, but not in capital.

In general terms, globalization is nothing other than the theory that describes, reflects and, in turn, prescribes and glorifies the post-Westphalian class-based New World Order, which emerged and stabilized after 1989 and—to take up Lasch’s formula—was ideologically elevated to the rank of true and only heaven. Such is the world entirely subsumed under capital and under the American-centric imperialism of liberalized private capital markets, with collateral export of free market democracy and free desire, and of the anthropology of homo cosmopoliticus.

The symbolic power of the concept of globalization is so invasive that it literally makes it impossible for anyone who dares to question the concept to gain access to public discourse. It is, in this sense, more akin to a religion of obligatory creed than to a theory subject to free discussion and hermeneutics embedded in dialogical reason.

Through categories that have become cornerstones of the capitalist neo-language, any attempt to curb the invasiveness of the market and to challenge the absolute domination of the globalized and American-centric economy is demonized as “totalitarianism,” “fascism,” “Stalinism,” or even “rojipardismo” (red-fascism), the diabolical synthesis of all three. Liberal fundamentalism and globalist free-market totalitarianism also evidence their inability to admit, even ex hypothesi, the theoretical possibility of alternative modes of existence and production.

Any idea of a possible control of the economy and of an eventual regulation of the market and of the open society (with built-in financial despotism) would lead unfailingly, according to the title of a well-known study by Hayek, towards “The Road to Serfdom.” Hayek states it without euphemism: “socialism means slavery.”

Obviously, the theorem of von Hayek and his acolytes does not take into account the fact that totalitarianism is not only the result of political planning, but can also be the consequence of a private competitive action of political rules. In the present Europe, by the way, the danger is not to be identified with nationalism and the return of traditional totalitarianisms, but rather with Hayekian market liberalism and the invisible violence of the subtle club of depoliticized economics.

It is therefore imperative to decolonize the imaginary of current hegemonic conceptions of globalization and try to redefine its contents in an alternative way. To this end, it is necessary to re-understand Marxian social relations as mobile and conflictive, where the gaze flooded with ideology only registers things that are inert and aseptic, rigid and immutable.

In other words, it is necessary to deconstruct the hegemonic image of globalization, showing its non-neutral but class-based character.

When analyzed from the perspective of the globalist ruling classes, globalization may indeed appear enthusiastic and very worthy of praise and empowerment.

For example, Amartya Sen celebrates it most insistently for its greater efficiency in the international division of labor, for the fall in production costs, for the exponential increase in productivity and—to a decidedly more questionable extent—for the reduction of poverty and the general improvement in living and working conditions.

Suffice it to recall, at a first glance at the new millennium, that Europe has 20 million unemployed, 50 million poor and 5 million homeless; and all this while, in the last twenty years in the same Europe, total income has risen by between 50 and 70 percent.

This confirms, in a way that is difficult to refute, the class character of globalization and the progress it generates. From the perspective of the dominated (and thus seen “from below”), it is identified with the very concrete hell of the new technocapitalist power relation, which was consolidated on a planetary scale after 1989 with the intensification of exploitation and commodification, of classism and imperialism.

To this hermeneutic duplicity, which presides over the duplicity of classes in the very fractured post-1989 context, returns the endless debate that has interested and continues to interest the two foci of this frontal contraposition: on the one hand, the apologists of globalization; and on the other, those engaged in the elaboration of the cahier de doléances du mondialisme.

The former (who as a whole can be called “globalists,” despite the kaleidoscopic plurality of their positions), extol the virtues of making the world a market. On the contrary, the latter (who only partially coincide with those whom the public debate has baptized with the name of “sovereigntists”), emphasize the contradictions and the eminently regressive character with respect to the previous framework centered on national sovereignties.

In short, and without delving into the intricacies of a debate that is practically unmanageable because of the quantity of content and diversity of approaches, the panegyrists of globalism insist on how globalization extends the industrial revolution, progress and the conquests of the West to the entire world; or, in other words, how it “universalizes” the achievements of a humanity somehow understood as “superior” and, therefore, entitled to organize the “single file” of linear development of all the peoples of the planet.

Even the most soberly skeptical authors on the axiological value of globalization, such as Stiglitz, seem to suffer from a magnetic and ultimately unjustified attraction to the work of turning the world into a market. In the view of Stiglitz and his reformist optimism, this process, which at the same time also “planetarizes” capitalist inequality and misery, deserves not to be abandoned because of the developments and changes to which it might give rise.

Diego Fusaro is professor of History of Philosophy at the IASSP in Milan (Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies) where he is also scientific director. He is a scholar of the Philosophy of History, specializing in the thought of Fichte, Hegel, and Marx. His interest is oriented towards German idealism, its precursors (Spinoza) and its followers (Marx), with a particular emphasis on Italian thought (Gramsci or Gentile, among others). he is the author of many books, including Fichte and the Vocation of the Intellectual, The Place of Possibility: Toward a New Philosophy of Praxis, and Marx, again!: The Spectre Returns. This article appears courtesy of Posmodernia.

Featured: Playing Chess. Cafe “Dominic,” St. Petersburg, by Hugo Karlovich Bakmanson; painted in 1909.

Pius XII, Independent Ends, and the Inseparability Principle

Recently, a person on social media, after erroneously attributing to me the idea, written in this article, that traditional Catholic morality represents a “discounted, fearful teaching that has no bearing or relevance for the faithful,” told me that in any case “the inseparability principle is demonstrated to be false.” The context of our exchange was obviously Catholic sexual ethics, and he referred to the principle (used in Humanae Vitae) according to which the two meanings of the sexual act (procreative and unitive) cannot be separated. My discussion with him proved to be revealing of some common misinterpretations regarding this topic and is therefore useful to report.

I must say that I was puzzled by his sharp statement as I had never heard of such an allegedly obvious truth about a principle I myself explained many times in classes and writings. So, I just replied that the inseparability principle is one of the most beautiful and solid cornerstones of magisterial teaching, and that I have never read any credible arguments that would deny it.

Does “Independent Meaning” Equal “Separable Meaning?”

I thought this was enough for our friendly exchange on the social network, but he soon came back to me strongly claiming that the principle was old stuff, that,

The primary purpose of marriage (procreation) is independent of the secondary, and therefore is “separable,” because it does not depend on the secondary to exist.

I’m not that comfortable with this use of the term “independence” to indicate the potential relationship between marriage’s ends but I don’t mind following the reasoning and language of my interlocutors, at least initially. Having said that, the first thing that caught my eye in this sentence was the logical confusion of necessarily linking “being independent” with “being separable,” as if the inseparability principle could imply the impossibility of one of the meanings to exist without the other. I wasn’t totally sure if this was his actual problem, but I thought it was relevant, so I replied,

You’re making a typical logical error in ethics. Every moral norm or principle implies the factual possibility of breaking it. For example, the fact that it is possible to give birth or raise a child without love does not mean that it is morally licit to do so. When we use the term “impossible” in morality we express an ought, not a factual impossibility. The principle of inseparability of the procreative and unitive meanings must obviously be understood in a moral sense. The factual possibility of separating the meanings is not an objection, it is a logical premise of the moral principle. If they couldn’t be separated de facto, there would be no need to formulate the ethical principle.

Does “Independent” Equal “Primary,” Equal “Essential?”

I thought this would settle the matter, but I was wrong because he, in addition to confusing independence with inseparability, also confused “primary” with “essential” and thought that the principle of inseparability implied affirming the existence of two primary ends. For reasons unknown, he attributed to me this eccentric idea that there were two primary ends,

The primary is independent. The secondary is dependent. There is only one primary (essential) purpose to marriage. You are saying there are two primary purposes. The # must be correct before liceity of any marriage-related issue can be identified.

Of course, he had to admit that I had never said such a thing, but he added,

It’s not your quote, however “two primary purposes” is the necessary result of “inseparability.” How many, do you say, of the purposes of marriage are essential to it?

Not without some patience and good humor, I had to remind him that the classical view has nothing to do with the idea of two primary ends,

Well, the traditional view, which is my own too, is that there are two ends, one primary and one secondary.

But he immediately insisted on going back to the alleged intrinsic connection between the concepts of “primary” and of “essential,”

Okay, of the two ends, how many are essential to marriage?

My answer, of course, was “Both.” So, he insisted again,

If both are essential, then neither is independent of the other. However, the Church teaches that the primary purpose of marriage does not depend on the secondary in its essential perfection. How is this contradiction remedied?

This reply revealed some deeper metaphysical shortcoming. I therefore decided to provoke my interlocutor with a metaphysical analogy which highlighted other types of essential elements of which one was primary and one secondary and which did not imply inseparability. I also asked for specific quotes from the Magisterium so to better understand from where his doubts were coming:

Are being animal and being rational both essential to the human being? Which one is primary? Are they dependent on each other? How is death possible? Where exactly is the Church teaching what you say? Please provide exact quotes for what you claim.

Pius XII

At my solicitation, he revealed the magisterial source of his conviction. It was Pius XII:

An essential “purpose” can exist independent of its secondary purpose. But the secondary purpose cannot exist without the primary. This is why the legal object of marriage consent is the primary purpose only, and not the secondary. Here is Pius XII condemning “dependent primary.

This line still reveals the confusion between “essential” and “primary,” but at least he added a reference to a document which, although drafted by Pius XII, was issued by the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office (Decree on the Ends of Matrimony, April 1, 1944). My interlocutor strangely missed that the whole point Pius XII wanted to make was to reaffirm the doctrine according to which there are certain “goods” or “essential properties” of marriage (Pius PP. XI, Casti Connubii, 1930) of which one is primary (procreation) and other secondary, and that secondary goods cannot be interpreted as independent.

This is how the Decree from 1944 (quoted by my online friend) put it:

A novel manner of thinking and speaking was born hither unto fomenting errors and uncertainties; seeking to avert these things, the most Eminent and Reverend Fathers of this Supreme Sacred Congregation, charged with safeguarding matters of faith and morals, in the plenary session of Feria IV, held on the day of March 29, 1944, to the dubium put before them: “Whether the opinion of certain modern [authors] may be admitted, who either deny that the primary end of matrimony is the generation and raising of offspring or teach that the secondary ends are not essentially subordinate to the primary end but are equally paramount and independent?”; they have decreed the response: Negative” (Decree on the Ends of Matrimony, April 1, 1944).

And this is how Pius XII himself summarized what happened with the dubium and the Decree:

Now the truth is that marriage, as a natural institution, by virtue of the Creator’s will does not have as its primary and intimate purpose the personal improvement of the spouses, but the procreation and education of new life. The other ends, although they too are intended by nature, are not in the same degree as the first, and even less are they superior to it, but are essentially subordinate to it. This applies to every marriage, even if it is infertile… Precisely to cut short all the uncertainties and deviations, which threatened to spread errors about the scale of the ends of marriage and their mutual relations, We Ourselves drew up a few years ago (March 10, 1944) a declaration on the order of those ends, indicating what the same internal structure of the natural disposition reveals, what is the patrimony of the Christian tradition, what the Supreme Pontiffs have repeatedly taught, what was then established in the due forms by the Code of Canon Law. Indeed, shortly afterwards, to correct the contrasting opinions, the Holy See with a public decree pronounced that the sentence of some recent authors could not be accepted, who deny that the primary purpose of marriage is the procreation and education of offspring, or who teach that secondary ends are not essentially subordinate to the primary end, but equivalent to and independent of it (S. C. S. Officii, April 1, 1944—Acta Ap. Sedis, vol. 36, a. 1944. 103). (Pius XII, Speech of His Holiness PIO PP. XII to the participants in the congress of the Italian Catholic Union of Obstetricians, Monday, October, 29 1951).

And again,

Two tendencies are to be avoided: the one which, in examining the constituent elements of the act of generation, gives weight solely to the primary purpose of marriage, as if the secondary purpose did not exist or at least were not finis operis established by the Orderer of nature himself; and that which considers the secondary end as equally principal, freeing it from its essential subordination to the primary end (Pius XII, Speech to the Tribunal of the Sacred Roman Rota, Friday, October 3, 1941).

Thus, this is how I replied to my interlocutor’s quote:

This document does not say that unity is not essential to marriage but that it is subordinate to the primary (essential) end, which is exactly what I’ve been saying all along. You keep confusing the concepts of “essential/not essential” with those of “primary/secondary.” The secondary meaning of marriage is essential to marriage too even if it is essentially subordinate to the primary end. I don’t see any logical problem here.

Yet, he had done more than confuse those meanings. Surprisingly, he had claimed that “the legal object of marriage consent is the primary purpose only, and not the secondary.” Thus, I politely reminded him what the Code of Canon Law actually states,

You may like to consider canon 1096, which clarifies, in terms of validity, what is essential to the existence of the marital consent: “Can. 1096 §1. For matrimonial consent to exist, the contracting parties must be at least not ignorant that marriage is a permanent partnership between a man and a woman ordered to the procreation of offspring by means of some sexual cooperation.” The concept of “permanent partnership” includes a reference to unity (secondary end), which is as essential to the contract as the primary end (“ordered to the procreation”) is.

Matrimonial Consent and the Conjugal Act

He insisted,

When legally defining marriage, “unity” refers only to exclusivity AKA faithfulness AKA fidelity. If “inseparability” is true, then no purpose of marriage is independent, correct?

I interpreted this further response as a difficulty in connecting the unitive meaning to love, also generating an eccentric contrast between love, on the one hand, and the legal concepts of exclusivity, faithfulness, and fidelity, on the other. After all, he had just claimed that “the legal object of marriage consent is the primary purpose only” (i.e., he thought that unity was not part of the essence of the contract). He was clearly trying now (after I recalled Canon 1096 about “permanent partnership”) to legally interpret “unity” in a different way than that expressed by the inseparability principle. Thus, in my reply I focused on the important consistency that must exist between legal definitions and the substance of things.

The legal definition of the existence requirements must correspond to the substance because it indicates what is essential to the real existence of marriage, in this case with respect to the purity of the will. If the will does not include the essential, the marriage does not come into existence. If the will does not include some important but accidental elements, marriage comes into existence but could be vitiated (annulment). In all the explanations I know (including Aquinas’) indissolubility is linked to the purity of spousal love (unity) and not to procreation because procreation per se, conceptually, does not require indissolubility (but at most a certain stability for enough years: cf., Summa Contra Gentiles, III, 122). Still, procreation is the primary meaning of marriage. Obviously, the inseparability of the meanings of marriage does not imply inseparability with respect to all acts internal to marriage, except in the case of the conjugal act. A nice outing with the wife and a hug when she is frightened need love in themselves but not procreation. The conjugal act needs both because outing and conjugal act are very different things, even within marriage. Logically, it’s very different to refer inseparability to the marriage as a whole or to the individual acts that the spouses continuously perform within the marriage. There is only one act within marriage which is so defining of it that it necessarily includes both meanings, and coincidentally this act (the conjugal act) is also necessary for the actual conclusion of the marriage, which makes it indissoluble.

Analogical Predications

My interlocutor has never allowed himself to be involved in my conceptual solicitations. His only problem was maintaining the logical objection that the principle of inseparability is denied by the claim that the primary end is independent of the secondary ones and, therefore, separable:

“Inseparable” purposes of marriage = no purpose can exist independently of the other. Pius XII says the primary purpose of marriage is “independent” of the secondary purpose. Was he wrong?

Philosophers always feel the primary need to clarify the meanings of terms, especially when there are various analogical meanings involved. I sensed that this was a case where this need had to be satisfied. So, I wrote the following,

You cannot reduce analogical meanings to univocal meanings. Both “inseparability” and “independence” can refer, for example: (a) to the marriage contract; (b) to a marriage in fieri as a partnership; (c) to the object of each single action; (d) to the intention of the agent. There is no contradiction, e.g., in saying that the two meanings are inseparable compared to “(a)” and not compared to “(c)” or “(d).” Humanae Vitae says that they are inseparable compared to “(c)” in the specific context of the conjugal act.

The point is that the doctrine of the inseparability of the two meanings has been used in Humanae Vitae to explain the immorality of contraception compared to its object. It was not used to explain the morality of every possible action performed by the spouses as a married couple. This doctrine or principle does not mean that even in the act of choosing movie night at home those two meanings must be present and inseparable. Clearly, marriage as a whole—the life together of the spouses—essentially requires both meanings, but as to specific acts of married life, there is only one act capable of encompassing the very essence of marriage, the conjugal act.

Again, the analysis of the human act can be done with respect to the object, the end, and the circumstances. In the case of intrinsically evil acts, the analysis of the objectivity of the act precedes and renders superfluous (at least in this respect) that of the end and of the other circumstances. This means that Humanae Vitae, even with respect to the conjugal act, did not need to refer the inseparability principle to the spouses’ intentions and/or to their entire marital life. Humanae Vitae focuses on the order of objective morality of the conjugal act.

Conclusion

The online discussion with my friend didn’t end here and maybe it will never end, but this is enough to clarify at least some important points regarding this topic. At the end of the day, his doubt was about the possible contradiction between the inseparability principle and the alleged independence of the primary end. How should we handle this doubt? One answer is that Pius XII and the Magisterium only used the concept of “independence” to deny erroneous theses which sought to make the secondary purpose independent. A more logical answer, which tries to save a possible correct use of the term, lies in the analogical predication and the logical distinctions I mentioned.

Essential, defining features cannot be independent in the sense that if one is missing the relevant thing is not there. Being animal and being rational are both essential to the human being. If one is missing, there is no human being. From this point of view, it does not matter if one feature is primary (being rational) and one secondary (being animal). This, however, does not mean that everything pertaining to the human being needs to have both defining features. For example, digestion, cellular mitosis, or sleeping do not need to be defined in terms of both animal and rational activities. There is one sense in which they all pertain to the human being and another sense in which they are not rational per se. Other crucial acts, on the other hand, essentially include the definition of the human being: e.g., (moral) choice.

Similarly, marriage is essentially defined in terms of both procreation and (loving) unity, but this does not mean that every act in married life includes both elements as defining features. In many ordinary acts that characterize married life (cooking a nice dinner, embracing after a fright, or defending one’s child from a stranger) the two meanings can be described as separable and independent (or, to use a better term, “distinct”).

Separability and independence can also be predicated in many cases of the order of intention compared to the objective moral order (without underestimating the difference between the habitual end and the intention of the proximate end). Spouses do not need to constantly think about procreation in every act of their life. They just ought to act in a context in which the purpose of procreation is objectively respected.

One final note on love and procreation. Many don’t understand why love in marriage, while more important per se, is secondary. Love is the highest meaning (inseparable from any other, at least as a habitual end) in any human reality because it is the first commandment of the law and the reason of our entire existence. Yet, love can exist without sex (think of angels, or love for children). The only reason for the existence of sex is procreation, but procreation must occur in the human reality, which is informed by the precept of love. In the same way, we can say that the primary meaning of the hammer is to drive nails even if we use the hammer to build our house. In this case, the house is a higher meaning of the hammer but not its primary meaning. Sexual life is primarily ordered to procreation but is also essentially ordered (as everything else in our existence) to love God and our neighbor. In the loving order of creation, procreation too—and the diachronic existence of the human race in history—is ordered to the love of God.

Fulvio Di Blasi, Ph.D., Esq., is an expert in moral philosophy and author of God and the Natural Law: A Rereading of Thomas Aquinas, From Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas: Natural Law, Practical Knowledge, and the Person, and Vaccination as an Act of Love? The Epistemology of Ethical Choice in Times of Pandemic.

Featured: The Marriage at Cana, by the Master of the Retable of the Reyes Catolicos; painted ca. 1495-1497.

Ten Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence

1. Appearance

The term “artificial intelligence” first appeared in the 1950s, with the advent of the first computers, capable of performing certain tasks that only human intelligence had previously been able to accomplish. Computing was the very first faculty to be transferred to a machine. This explains why what we call a “computer” in English has kept its original name of computer, i.e., “calculator.” Automated calculation was the first example of artificial intelligence.

Why does calculating no longer seem to us to fall under the heading of artificial intelligence? This is an example of what the Anglo-Saxons call the “AI effect”: as artificial intelligence develops, earlier achievements are no longer regarded as artificial intelligence, but as standard machinery. Thus, for example, character recognition, fingerprint recognition and so on. In practice, then, artificial intelligence refers to what “intelligent” machines are just beginning to be able to do.

2. Downgrading the Human

When they first appeared, electronic calculators were described as “electronic brains.” Over time, as machine performance increased, the metaphor was turned on its head: it was no longer the computer that was compared to a brain, but the brain to a computer. The human being is now seen as just another “information-processing machine.” Today, the term “intelligent agent” is used to describe any “system,” natural or artificial, that interacts with its environment, draws information from it and uses this information to maximize its chances of success in achieving its goals or those assigned to it. In this context, artificial intelligence finds itself completely emancipated from the human model from which it once took its name. On the one hand, many aspects of human intelligence remain properly human. On the other hand, artificial intelligences are now capable of performances beyond the reach of any human intelligence. Although designed by humans, they are endowed with certain intellective capacities that are truly superhuman.

3. The Race for Power

Since the 19th century, technology has been indispensable to power. By technology, I am not referring to technique in general, which is as old as humanity itself, but to that very recent part of technique which is inseparable from the mathematical sciences of nature that emerged in Europe from the 17th century onwards, and is inconceivable without them. It was their technological superiority that enabled Westerners to dominate the world for a time. On the threshold of the 20th century, Hwuy-Ung, a Chinese scholar exiled in Australia, confessed his admiration for what he saw: “The marvelous inventions of this country and of Western nations are, for the most part, unknown to us, and seem incredible.” But did these wonders make people happier? The answer was not self-evident. One thing, however, was beyond doubt: “marvelous inventions” conferred unparalleled power. Hence this observation: “Those who do not follow the trend set by the most advanced nations become their victims, as we are experiencing.” After the Second World War, China set out to become a major technological power in its own right, in order to emerge from the long series of humiliations inflicted on it, from the outbreak of the first Opium War in 1839 to the Japanese invasion in 1937. Today, artificial intelligence is becoming a decisive component of technology, and if you do not want to be at the mercy of those more powerful than you, you need to invest in this field.

4. Survival in the Digital Jungle

Power is not the only issue. For as long as there have been homo sapiens on earth—some 300,000 years—they have lived most of their lives in Paleolithic conditions. It was in these conditions that the faculties of our species developed. It goes without saying that these skills include an extraordinary ability to adapt to new environments. However, since the industrial revolution, the environment in which a growing proportion of humanity is called upon to live has been changing so rapidly that, in many respects, our natural faculties, including intelligence, have been taken by surprise. If natural intelligence used to enable us to orientate ourselves correctly in the natural environment, known today as the biotope, we now need artificial intelligence to orientate ourselves correctly in an environment that is itself artificial, the technotope. And for this, artificial intelligence is indispensable. Just think, for example, how helpless we would be to use the Internet if we could not rely on search engines that incorporate forms of artificial intelligence.

5. The Control Society

Among the threats posed by the all-out development of artificial intelligence, the public’s greatest fear is undoubtedly that of social control, through the innumerable digital data now generated by our lives. After all, the word intelligence also means “information gathering.”

One thing is clear, however. By massively rejecting the old-fashioned social control constituted by the inculcation of moral rules, and the discredit that came with breaking them, by fleeing the control exercised by neighbors in traditional communities, late moderns believed that it was possible to do without social control. But a society without social control is no longer a society—it is chaos. To protect against chaos, more and more precautions have to be taken. So, for example, people living in big cities are obliged to equip themselves with digicodes, intercoms and armored doors. The more “open” society becomes, the more its members have to lock themselves in. In this respect, the automated surveillance, assisted by artificial intelligence that is taking shape, has all the allure of Nemesis, the Greek goddess who punished hubris, the excess of beings who did not respect the limits of their condition. The individual who pretended to escape all control sees control returning to him in another form.

6. Permanent Formatting

Another problem is that underneath its apparent neutrality, the machine can conceal biases that are all the more pernicious for being difficult to detect. A search engine, for example, responds to queries with lists of answers, and we do not know what went into their creation. And we do not want to know—the use of search engines would lose all interest if we had to know the details of the search itself. But this means that we are totally subject to the biases included in them, whether these biases are intentional or not. What guides us can also lead us astray, and what informs us can also manipulate us. Academics have subjected the chatbot ChatGPT to a political positioning questionnaire. The result was that OpenAI’s chatbot “has the profile of a mainstream liberal and pragmatic Californian,” very much in favor of multiculturalism, welcoming migrants or minority rights, and that if it were registered to vote in France it would probably vote Macron or Mélenchon. Let us deduce the effects of living in symbiosis with ChatGPT.

7. Looming Acedia

The development of information technology was supposed to free us from routine tasks. In fact, IT “extends the routine of its procedures everywhere.” It is feared that artificial intelligence will only intensify the process to the point of nausea. Workers who put their hearts into their work when the tasks they have to perform call on all their faculties, no longer know what meaning to give to their work when they become mere operators of machines that do the “intelligent” part of the job for them. If you take less trouble, you may also find yourself doing less well.

8. Moral Stunting

By constantly talking about artificial intelligence, making ever more use of it and marveling at its prowess, we are becoming accustomed to making artificial intelligence the paradigm of intelligence—and at the same time devaluing the essential characteristics of human intelligence, and no longer cultivating them. Long ago, God appeared to King Solomon in a dream and said: “Ask what you want me to give you.” Solomon replied, “Give your servant an intelligent heart, to govern your people, to discern between good and evil” (1Ki 3:5-9). The first character of intelligence, here, consists in discerning between good and evil. This is the intelligence that Solomon demonstrates when he dispenses justice. If we become accustomed to seeing artificial intelligence as the model of intelligence, we run the risk of leaving the heart in unintelligence.

Some will argue that it is possible to include moral considerations among the criteria taken into account by artificial intelligence in its operation. In this case, however, it is as if moral reflection had been carried out once and for all, before being delegated to the machine. A faculty that is not constantly used will wither away. Hence moral stunting.

9. Intellectual Stunting

Artificial intelligence is a product of technology, itself intrinsically linked to the development of modern science, to the constitution of mathematical sciences of nature. The aim of these sciences was to make the world comprehensible to us, while at the same time increasing our capacity to act upon it, according to the Baconian equation of knowledge = power. What is happening today?

The power we have acquired over the world has led us to transform it to such an extent that the world resulting from this transformation has become, in some respects, more opaque to us than nature of old was. Our natural faculties are overwhelmed—which is why we increasingly need artificial intelligence to find our way around it, and simply to live in it. But truly interesting artificial intelligence is that which produces results, not just faster and better than we could achieve without it, but results that escape our understanding. Artificial intelligence cannot therefore be considered as a simple decision-making tool: insofar as the genesis of the indications it gives us escapes our control, we are led to simply defer to these indications—which means, in the end, that the decision-making tool decides for us, or more precisely, that our decision resolves itself in the use of the tool. In this case, the tool does not so much increase our capabilities as completely delegate our power to an obscure tool. As a result, our intelligence, which made it possible to set up these extraordinary artificial intelligence devices, finds itself put on vacation by them; and, by dint of being on vacation, it loses the habit of work, and even the ability to work. The loss of control is not, as in a number of dystopias, linked to intelligent machines becoming malevolent towards humans and seeking to enslave or eliminate them, but to the fact that, by constantly relying on them, we become incapable, crippled.

By slouching on a sofa and playing online games, teenagers in developed countries have seen their physical capacities decline by a quarter over the last four decades. The average IQ has also fallen over the last twenty years. Many factors must be contributing to this phenomenon—but at least part of it has to do with the delegation to machines of an ever-increasing number of tasks that used to require our intelligence. At the end of the 1960s, Louis Aragon was well aware of this process: “Progress that gradually deprives me of a function leads me to lose the organ. The greater man’s ingenuity, the more he will be deprived of the physiological tools of ingenuity. His slaves of iron and wire will reach a perfection that the man of flesh has never known, while he will gradually return to the amoeba. He will forget himself.”

10. Connected Chicks

When I was a child, a playground riddle asked: what’s small, yellow and very scary? The answer was a chick with a machine gun. Today, we could ask, what’s small, yellow and thinks it’s the lord of creation? A connected chick. Connected immatures, that is what we are becoming. If the power stops flowing to the sockets, if it stops recharging the batteries, if our earthly and celestial roots are atrophied, it is not just our devices that will be neutralized, it is we ourselves that will be annihilated.

Olivier Rey is a mathematician and philosopher of science whose area of study is science and society, with a focus on transhumanism. This article appears through the kind courtesy of La Nef.

Featured: Ai-Da, the first humanoid robot, with self-portrait, 2021.

Louis Veuillot, Lay Preacher

Louis Veuillot (1813-1883), head of L’Univers, exerted a powerful influence on 19th-century French Catholicism. He was also, quite simply, an extraordinary personality. Portrait of a social “ultramontane.”

Rome, 1838. Louis Veuillot, 25, on a mission to the Orient, stopped off in the Italian capital. A journalist for the government press at the time, the young man was disillusioned, having nothing but contempt for the nihilism of his time, whether it had the face of the Voltairean bourgeoisie or revolutionary anarchism. This soul, a friend of religion, yearned for the Absolute, and it was in the Eternal City that he was struck by light: “I was in Rome. At a bend in the road, I met God. He beckoned me, and I hesitated to follow. He took my hand and I was saved.” This “veritable first communion,” which he recounts in Rome et Lorette (Rome and Loretto), was a conversion in the most radical sense of the word. He, the self-taught son of an illiterate cooper living in Bercy, already a bulimic reader and soon an insatiable writer, had just found his way.

A Journalist on Fire

“As soon as he became a Christian, he felt like an apostle,” said his nephew François. Indeed, Louis returned to France animated by a religious zeal that would never leave him, and he chose to dedicate his life to bearing witness to this fire, to making Catholic truth resound everywhere, and also, with the ardor of a convert, to scourging freethinkers of all kinds (including the bourgeois louis-philippard “preceded by his belly and followed by his behind”): “These gentlemen have a great virtue that they preach to us incessantly: tolerance. They tolerate everything, except that we do not tolerate everything they tolerate. And that is where our quarrels come from.”

And it was journalism that was to be the instrument of his apostolate. In 1840, he landed at L’Univers, a moderate Catholic paper with a small readership (1,500 subscribers) and no resources, run by Charles de Montalembert. He soon became its chief editor—along with his brother Eugène, a writer without a genius for the pen but with good business sense—and for forty years made it the leading organ of French Catholicism. Its success was phenomenal: by 1860, the daily had become France’s fifth-largest newspaper, with 13,000 subscribers (and an audience estimated by Mgr Gerbet at 60,000-80,000).

The recipe for such success lies in his popular base. While the bishops always looked on him with a distant, even accusatory eye, the lesser clergy championed this plebeian from the same national bowels. In seminaries, in small parishes and among provincial notables, the flamboyant journalist—whom Thibaudet would say was the greatest of his century—was worshipped. Far from the mundane, he was above all the herald of a faith full of social solicitude, as witness the passage on the death of his father: “On the edge of his grave, I thought of the torments of his life, I recalled them, I saw them all; and I also counted the joys that, despite his servile condition, this heart truly made for God could have tasted. Pure joys, profound joys! The crime of a society that nothing can absolve had deprived him of them! A glimmer of mournful truth made me curse not work, not poverty, not sorrow, but the great social iniquity—impiety—by which the little ones of this world are robbed of the compensation God wanted to attach to the inferiority of their lot. And I felt the anathema burst forth in the vehemence of my pain…”

Veuillot’s journalism continued to be combat journalism, sometimes virulent, driven by a burning concern for the truth, unencumbered by convenience or recognition (he refused the decorations of the Académie française and the Académie des sciences morales): “The journalist forces the stragglers to walk, engages and compromises the timid, holds back the reckless; he binds up the wounded, comforts the vanquished, makes the clumsy understand their false maneuvers and repairs them.” His pen, wielded to wound evil, was genial as it was merciless, as full of ethos as it was of pathos. Hence the polemics and scandals that marked his life.

Church First

Although a staunch monarchist who even drafted a constitution, Louis Veuillot was never a politician—and twice refused to run for parliament. His mantra: “The Catholic Church first, and then what exists; the Catholic Church to improve, correct and transform all things.” His political choices were subordinated to religious interests—a position that heralded the Ralliement. The question is, how to act in a positivist age that has broken with Christianity? Against centrifugal modernity, for fear of dilution, Veuillot opted for centripetal forces: the empire, the Pope, the Church.

However, in the name of the same Catholic interests, the “liberal Catholics” went for the opposite gamble—and this marked the start of a fratricidal war with the “intransigent” Veuillot, who at the same time introduced the writings of the counter-revolutionary Donoso Cortés to France. Born out of the fight for freedom of education, the “Catholic party” fractured over the Falloux Law (which Veuillot disapproved of), then tore itself apart from 1852 onwards. While L’Univers sided with Napoleon III, the “liberals” defended the virtues of parliamentarianism, and considered that the modern regime of freedom (of conscience, expression, the press, association, etc.) allowed and would allow Catholic interests to triumph. The free Church in the free State: “The triumph of the Church in the 19th century will be precisely to vanquish her enemies through freedom, as she vanquished them in the past through the sword of feudalism and the scepter of kings,” professed the sensitive and introverted Montalembert (Les intérêts catholiques au XIXe siècle).

For three decades, infamous adjectives rained down from all sides, and people accused and replied to each other in books. Ozanam, Mgr Dupanloup and de Broglie accused Veuillot of fanaticism. Supported by Mgr Pie, bishop of Poitiers, and reinforced by the encyclicals of Pius IX, the massive plebeian denounced in L’illusion libérale a “rich man’s error which could not have occurred to a man who had lived among the people and who would see the countless difficulties that truth, especially today, experiences in descending and maintaining itself in those depths where it needs all the protection, but particularly the example from above.” In the end, historian Émile Poulat summed up this unfortunate quarrel best: “So-called liberal Catholics are the recurring expression of an unresolved problem in the Church—its place and relationship within our society that has left God behind—while Veuillot remains the witness to an imprescriptible requirement within an anachronistic situation.”

“Lay Legate of the Infallible Pope”

Ironically, L’Univers was banned from publication by the Emperor, between 1860 and 1867, for having published the encyclical Nullis certe verbis, in which the Pope blamed French policy in Italy. A temporary death with apotheosis value. As a reader of Joseph de Maistre, Veuillot was devoted to the papacy—he was very attached to Pius IX—and, along with Dom Guéranger, took up the cause of papal infallibility, a dogma proclaimed at Vatican I (see Veuillot’s Rome pendant le Concile–Rome during the Council). These debates were also an opportunity for him to battle against the “provincial spirit” of the “Gallicans,” whom he accused of threatening the unity of the Church—thereby fueling clear tendencies towards centralization. Together with the apostolic nuncio Fornari, Veuillot was the linchpin of French ultramontanism, the “lay legate of the infallible pope,” as the Journal des Débats put it. On the other hand, the “liberals,” supported by a large part of the French episcopate, feared that infallibility was a cover for political authoritarianism, and, along with Montalembert, denounced the “idol of the Vatican.” The truth surely lay somewhere between these two positions, as Cardinal Newman summed it up in his famous formula: “Conscience has rights because it has duties.” And indeed—a second irony of fate—in 1872, Pius IX reprimanded Veuillot for his vehemence against Dupanloup on the Italian (Roman) question, putting side-by-side “the party which fears the Pope too much” and the “opposite party, which totally forgets the laws of charity.” A rebuke tempered by a benediction that Veuillot would say “enters by breaking the windows!”

A genius of polemic to the point of excess, Louis was not a bad guy. A tender and delicate man, a kind-hearted father of six daughters, he lived and died firmly waving the flag of faith: “In all my life, I have been perfectly happy and proud of only one thing: that is to have had the honor and at least the will to be a Catholic, that is, obedient to the laws of the Church.” All is forgiven.

Rémi Carlu is a French journalist. This article appears courtesy of La Nef.

On The Right to Live in Your Own Home and Live with Dignity

1 – During his recent speeches in Marseilles (September 2023), Pope Francis reminded us of the “right of migrants to remain in their homes and lead a dignified life.”

A “right” implies a relationship of exigibility, between the holder of that right and any person, physical or moral, obliged to recognize and respect it. In this context, the holder of the right is the migrant; the person obliged to guarantee it is primarily the state.

The Pope thus understands that the right to remain in one’s home is primary, antecedent to the right to leave one’s homeland. Migration from one country to another must be a free choice, rather than a constraint for many, provoked by violence of all kinds: hunger and thirst, war, misery, persecution, ideological madness. This notion deserves a closer look.

2 – In the expression “chez soi” (“in your own home”), the word “chez” comes from the Latin “casa” (“house”), which gave rise to “case” in French. It designates the fundamental dwelling, the “thatched farmhouse” of the song, which remains at the bottom of one’s heart wherever one goes, and whose intimacy and personal character is emphasized by the pronoun “soi” (“your own”).

The “chez-soi” is thus not just a legal domicile, nor a more or less ephemeral residence. It is the human, protective place, inscribed in a physical and spiritual space, where warm, living roots have taken root. The place of initial “little things” where, as in César Isella’s poem, everyone always returns, in one way or another, because it is the place “where they loved life.”

The “right to stay at your own home” is therefore the right to keep these roots, and to continue to live from them, where they were born. A rootedness that cannot, however, retain this vital virtue unless it is itself continually nourished and invigorated. No one settles near a dried-up tree or a dried-up spring without being forced, sooner or later, to migrate.

For a “home” to remain such, its roots must be nourished by a tradition, both cultural and religious, that is preserved and enriched, a tradition that is nothing other than the permanence of the identity of a “home” renewed over time.

3 – The purpose of the “right to remain in one’s own home” is therefore not limited to the physical maintenance of a place. The purpose assigned to it confirms this. The right to remain in one’s own home is “to lead a life of dignity.” The right to remain in one’s own home thus implies the right to a dignified life.

Dignified life” does not simply mean “feeding, growing and dying by oneself” (Aristotle, Treatise on the Soul, II 1, 412-414) in a chosen place, after having enjoyed it in a variety of ways. Nor does it simply mean living in conditions of material or economic sufficiency, as expressions such as “dignified housing” or “dignified working conditions” might suggest.

Dignity, in fact, is an essential and inalienable property of the person, insofar as he or she is rational and free. It is the radiance of “that which is most perfect in all nature; namely, that which subsists in a reasonable nature” (Thomas Aquinus, Summa theologica, Ia, q. 29, a. 3.). It follows that “dignified life” is that which enables everyone, according to their natural vocation, to live and grow to the height of humanity, the material conditions mentioned above being ordered to this vocation. Respect for natural law, which reflects divine wisdom, the promotion of the family as the original “home,” education in truth, love and transcendence, and the cultivation and practice of justice are the primary conditions for a dignified life.

4 – Thus founded on the principle of human dignity, which French law recognizes must be protected against any infringement (art. 16 of the French Civil Code), the “right to remain in one’s own home and lead a dignified life” reveals its true dimension: it is a fundamental right with, as such, universal value.

In this respect, it is not the privilege of the migrant. Its purpose is not simply to measure the freedom to come and go, to stay at home or go into exile. This right is the ultimate expression of every human being’s natural inclination to live in society, not only to find security there, but also—and above all—to find and keep that deep-rooted “home” that is destined to be the nurturing place, familial and social, for his or her total human, material and spiritual fulfillment.

The “right to stay at home and lead a dignified life” also belongs to citizens of host countries. Being universal, it is fundamentally equal for those who welcome migrants into their homes and for those who, having seen this right violated, are forced into exile.

Two conclusions, at least, can be drawn from this, which are rarely present in discourses on migration.

5 – The first is that the fundamental nature of the right being invoked conditions not only the political freedoms of those who hold it. It also sheds light on the state of health of societies that are, or are not, in a position to guarantee and promote it.

Societies that not only exhaust the economic capacities of their members, but also feed systemic lies and manipulation, moral and mental degradation, educational ruin, sanitized homicide or other forms of violence—physical, legal or ideological—contrary to the dignity of the human person, are certainly not the right setting for the creation or permanence of a “home” enabling its members to grow humanely.

So it is, of course, with the societies that migrants are forced to flee, precisely because of this. But the same is true of the societies they join, when these societies offer them nothing but their materialism, their self-hatred, their break with natural law and the degradation of their culture and mores. So, it is hardly surprising that these migrants cannot find a national “home” in which to integrate. Failing that, they prefer to try and rebuild the community they were forced to leave.

Nor are migrants the only victims of this decivilization. The first are the citizens of these societies, where the common good, in particular, is no longer the raison d’être of the law. Many of them are struggling against their own uprooting and that of their children. As a result, they are at risk of becoming exiles from within, forced to nurture a “home” against the grain, from family to workplace to school, that preserves their Christian identity, historical tradition, language and culture.

6 – The second conclusion is that if this “right to remain in one’s own home and lead a dignified life” is fundamental and universal, and thus equal for all, then it is particularly binding on the migrant himself. They are obliged to respect it in those who welcome them—or are unable to welcome them. For them, too, the right to “stay at home and live with dignity” and in peace is prior to the right to migrate. It is therefore prior to the rights of those who intend to migrate home. Indeed, it is even among those who do not migrate, by hypothesis, that the exercise of the right to remain at home to live with dignity and in peace is perfect.

It is therefore not without subversion of the natural order that we try, under the guise of charity, to make the citizens of host countries believe that their right to stay at home should take a back seat to the right to migrate of those who cross their borders. In the dialectic imposed by Pope Francis between the “culture of humanity and fraternity,” supposedly virtuous, and the “culture of indifference,” supposedly criminal (Pope Francis, Address, Palais du Pharo, Marseille, September 23, 2023), there is a legal and human space which is that of respect for the fundamental rights of all.

When the phenomenon of migration undermines or threatens the security, habitat, culture, way of life or religion of a host country, to the point where its citizens no longer feel at home and can no longer live there with dignity and security, and are sometimes forced to flee, it necessarily undermines what is, for them, a fundamental right. To this extent, the phenomenon is a grave social injustice, commensurate with the rights it violates, which cannot be ignored.

7 – That is why, between the right of some to migrate and the right of others to “stay at home” to live in peace and dignity, a measure is needed to determine the balance between them. This measure is that of the common good—or, if you like, the general interest. Each State, which is its natural guardian, just as it is the guardian of the fundamental rights of its citizens, has the right, and even the duty, to establish this measure, so that the rights of the former do not prevail over the rights of the latter.

This is the condition and limit of any migration policy. It requires the government to determine when it can welcome immigrants, and under what economic and social conditions, and when it cannot. It requires the government to know how to refuse immigration when it appears that it can no longer be integrated and infringes on citizens’ fundamental rights.

To see this as a “criminal indifference” contrary to charity is to be fooled by political fideism, whereas the demands of charity never erase those of nature. Yet for a long time now, we have been hearing the much-needed lesson of Saint Thomas, which no longer seems to be understood, but which must be repeated over and over again: “Divine right, which proceeds from grace, does not take away human right, which proceeds from natural reason” (Thomas Aquinus, Summa theologica, IIa IIae, q. 10 a. 10).

Patrick de Pontonx is a lawyer based in Paris, France.

Featured: Salon, anonymous, 1857.

Libertarian Autobiographies: Moving Toward Freedom in Today’s World

The following is an amended excerpt from Libertarian Autobiographies: Moving Toward Freedom in Today’s World, co-edited by Jo Ann Cavallo and Walter E. Block. The book gives voice to 80 libertarians from around the world who share their hopes, fears, expectations and achievements, in their efforts to acheive a freer world. Please consider supporting the work of Professors Cavallo and Block and purchase a copy of this inspiring work.

It is our fervent belief that libertarianism is the last best hope for humankind with regard to economics, liberty, justice, prosperity, peace, and thus even survival (pardon us for hyper-ventilating, but we maintain this is indeed the case). This belief of ours is predicated upon the crucial importance of the non-aggression principle (NAP): proper law should allow all people to engage in whichever acts they prefer, with the one exception being any behavior that violates this precept or any threat thereof. Thus, murder, rape, theft, kidnapping, fraud, and similar evil actions should be prohibited, and virtually everything else should be legally permitted.

But why assemble a collection of autobiographies penned by libertarians? Why not, instead, offer a collection of scholarly articles demonstrating the benefits of liberty? Many of the contributors to this volume have published just that sort of work on numerous occasions. Why not do so one more time? Although people may gain an understanding of this philosophy via rational argument, it cannot be denied that autobiographies, too, are important for the promotion of liberty. The personal touch may reach some people not approachable via any other means. Additionally, we all want to know the libertarian stories of people such as those who appear on these pages. Indeed, we find that libertarians have the most interesting stories to share because they often embrace this philosophy as the result of intense encounters with foundational texts or life-changing experiences.

One of the big “problems” we have with some of the best-known libertarians throughout history—such as John Locke, Lord Acton, Ludwig von Mises, Isabel Paterson, Henry Hazlitt, Friedrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard—is that they never wrote an autobiography. Of course, if they had, alternative costs being what they are, they would likely not have been able to write other precious publications of theirs. But what about libertarians alive today? Would they be willing to share their stories? We already have the example of two volumes of libertarian autobiographies: Why Liberty: Personal Journeys Toward Peace & Freedom (Cobden Press), with 54 autobiographies edited by Marc Guttman, and I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians (Mises Institute), with 82 autobiographies edited by one of the co-editors of this present volume, Walter Block (available as a free pdf at https://mises.org/library/i-chose-liberty-autobiographies-contemporary-libertarians). Both volumes were published over a decade ago, however, in 2010. We wanted to learn more about the lives of contemporary libertarians not covered in these two volumes and of others who have emerged since the time of these publications.

We therefore reached out to a number of influential scholars, activists, professors, journalists, and cultural icons who have worked toward a freer society across the globe, inviting them to write a brief autobiography for this collection. We asked them to articulate, for example, what their lives and thoughts were before they embraced libertarianism; which people, texts, or events most influenced their intellectual formation; what experiences, challenges, tribulations, and achievements they have had as participants or leaders in this movement; and how this philosophy has affected their personal or professional lives.

A volume of autobiographies on the part of libertarians immediately raises the question of precisely what constitutes this political economic philosophy. In our “big-tent” view, it comprises several strands. They all have something in common, such as an appreciation for individual liberty, private property rights, the rule of law, and free enterprise, but there are also discernible differences. That is why if you get ten libertarians in a room and ask them a question, you’ll likely get eleven (or more!) different responses. In this volume, we invited libertarians across the political-philosophical spectrum, including (1) anarcho-capitalism; (2) minimal government libertarianism, or minarchism; (3) constitutionalism; (4) classical liberalism; (5) thick libertarianism. The contributors to this volume range over the five main viewpoints mentioned above, and also fill in the gaps between them. Their essays express different perspectives on many issues even while articulating the same core principles. In fact, it is our desire that their very differences of opinion on some matters will invite readers to think for themselves. What we have sought to present is a sampling of the myriad individual journeys toward libertarianism, however defined.

Although the majority of contributors to the volume live in the United States, we are grateful to the libertarians from around the world who accepted our invitation to share their stories. This volume thus includes voices from Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, England, Germany, Guatemala, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Nigeria, Peru, Poland, Romania, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and Ukraine.

It is the hope and expectation of the editors that by bringing together a range of contemporary voices from outside the dominant left–right paradigm, this volume will contribute to the viewpoint diversity that is crucially needed in today’s public discourse. Moreover, these personal and intellectual journeys not only offer compelling insights into their individual authors and the state of the world in our lifetime, but may also serve as an inspiration for the next generation who will feel called upon to make our society a freer one.

Metaphysics of Information Warfare

The global information war is now in full swing. Several versions of reality are clashing with each other more and more openly. Societies and individuals choose for themselves which reality to believe in. And then live in it.

If we think “in the old way,” in the spirit of classical materialism, there is only one reality. Only its descriptions and interpretations differ. That is why some people lie and others tell the truth. And the roles can change. And the whole question is who to believe when.

But that is not the case. Reality itself—as phenomenologists and structuralists have shown—is a product of human consciousness. There is no reality outside of it, and what is there is not loaded with being or meaning. Therefore, in the information war, it is not just interpretations that collide, but the facts themselves.

There is more than one reality—as many structures of consciousness (collective, of course) as there are realities. Not only evaluations of the facts, but the facts themselves. Materialists and people far removed from philosophy are not ready to accept this. Their belief in a reality independent of consciousness is unshakable. And as long as it is so, they will remain victims of information warfare, not those who are its subjects.

Consciousness creates reality.

In the unipolar globalist world, only one consciousness is recognized by default—liberal and Western. It is this consciousness that constructs reality—not only what is good and bad, but what is and what is not. Multipolarity is an act of asserting the sovereignty of other consciousnesses, different from the West. Which means that reality itself becomes polycentric. Information constitutes what we perceive as being. That is why neither the military nor journalists should be at the center of information warfare, but primarily all philosophers. Sovereignty is first and foremost a question of the mind. Sovereign is the one who is the independent and final subject of constructing reality.

Truth is directly dependent on ideology. If you are in favor of unipolar world and globalism, then Palestinians blew up their own women, children and old people. And Zelensky is a freedom fighter against Russian imperialists who massacre innocent Ukrainians. And you, of course, have irrefutable evidence—because CNN, the White House and the IDF always tell only the truth. If you are against American hegemony and its Nazi proxies, the hospital was destroyed by Israel with US support, and the events in Ukraine are all the responsibility of Ukrainian terrorists who were unleashed upon Russia by the American regime. And you even have solid grounds—facts, documents, evidence, knowledge.

The objective world no longer exists.

Alexander Dugin is a widely-known and influential Russian philosopher. His most famous work is The Fourth Political Theory (a book banned by major book retailers), in which he proposes a new polity, one that transcends liberal democracy, Marxism and fascism. He has also introduced and developed the idea of Eurasianism, rooted in traditionalism. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitica.

Sexism Rears its Ugly Head in an Airplane

I took an airplane trip the other day. It was a direct flight from Seattle to New Orleans on Alaska Airlines, if you must know. I had the occasion to use the rest rooms three times. Hey, it was a four-hour flight and I’m not as young as I used to be. (I used a different one each time. I even once snuck into the first-class lavatory, but don’t tell anyone).

There, staring me in the face as I concluded my business (doing research for this essay!) was a pull-down shelf, stretching the entire width of the commode. It was the appropriate size for changing a baby’s diaper. That was not what horrified me. Rather, it was the illustrated sign posted on this apparatus indicating its purpose. There were two figures indicated therein. One, a little baby, lying on his back. That was quite alright with me. The younger set needs help in this regard. However the other depiction was entirely offensive. It indicated an adult person (you could judge by the relative size of the two figures) standing above and leaning over the baby. That was the offensive part.

At this point I feel compelled to offer a trigger warning. Some readers, with delicate sensibilities, might be so offended by what I am now about to relate that they will keel over in a dead faint and need medical attention. Yes, they will feel “unsafe” without this trigger warning, and maybe, even so, with it. Having fulfilled my obligation to be sensitive (I’m a college professor and I have been inculcated with the wokeism now reigning on campus; I have learned how to deal with snowflakes) I can now relate what offended me: the adult leaning over the baby, ready to diaper the baby was wearing a dress!

I just knew that would shock your socks off! I gasped in dismay when I first saw this. It indicated that a woman (or a transgendered man; I have to be careful here; I am now treading in a veritable land-mine; I might be accused of violating the strict strictures of “inclusion” and “belonging” now rampant in higher education) was changing the baby’s diaper. Oh, woe! As a man, a husband, married with children, I have indeed changed my fair share of diapers (ok, ok, far fewer than my wife) but still, I found this highly offensive. Why should it be assumed that a woman would be diapering a baby!? This is sexism run rampant! Men, too, can get pregnant, have babies, and change their diapers. Arnold Schwarzenegger did so in his 1994 movie Junior. That’s proof enough for me. If it isn’t for you, you’re a sexist pig!

Then, to my utter dismay, I espied yet another offensive statement, accompanied by a picture, also in this very same set of washrooms, again, all three of them! Well, the statement was alright. ‘twas not offensive. It indicated that only bathroom tissue was to be placed in the commode and flushed down. The problem was the figure placed next to this message. It was the picture of a man (well, at least “he” was not wearing a dress; as I say, one can’t be too careful nowadays, at deducing this sort of thing. If truth be told, it is extremely dangerous for academics such as I, even with tenure, to deduce anything at all in this context, while under the baleful eye of deans and provosts on campus). Nevertheless, courageous professor that I am, I am willing to go out on a limb here.

What is my conclusion on the basis of this figure? It is that men, but not women, are slobs. Now, this is perfectly acceptable to me; men, after all, are tyrants, exploiters, rapists (they have a penis; this must be true) responsible for all the ailments afflicting society. However, this only applies to straight white males. Men from other races are certainly not implicated in this charge; they are all angels, come down to earth to inspire the rest of us. Nor are even white males a threat to all that is good and holy, provided they are not heterosexual. The problem with the figure on the toilet was that it did not make this distinction! It indicted all males! This is something up with which we wokesters simply will not put!

So I urge my fellow snowflakes to boycott Alaska Airlines and all other air carriers who are so insensitive as to engage in these sexist, racist, offenses. Soon, your intrepid Paul Revere (me, that is) will examine railroads and bus lines to ensure there are no offenses against political rectitude therein.

Walter Block is the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at Loyola University, New Orleans. Read more of his work on his Substack.