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Entry: A New Humanism in Europe Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/a_new_humanism_in_europe#6403 Post contents: In his “Study of Sovereignty, Maistre points out, “It is one of man’s curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them. The mysteries that surround him on all sides are not sufficient for him; he still rejects clear ideas and reduces everything to a problem by some inexplicable twist of pride, which makes him regard it as below him to believe what everyone believes.” The conference—as well as the more prolix comments on this forum--seem to encourage that idiosyncrasy. So Habermas now suspects that man is a religious being? Well, stop the presses for that insight from the most important philosopher since Derrida. Wake me up in 10 years or so when he makes another such profound discovery. Everything that is has a nature, and the nature of man, as Maistre pointed out a couple of centuries before Habermas, is to be a “cognitive, religious, and sociable animal.” The term “conservative” no longer means much, perhaps “Traditionalist” is better despite its nominalist usage by a poster. The Traditionalist does not repeat the past simply because it is the past, but only insofar as the past embodies the “permanent things”, that is, insofar as it is in accordance with the true nature of man. We could say that authentic Tradition is not simply historically prior, but rather ontologically prior. Maistre objects to Rousseau who denied that sociability is from nature and claimed in opposition that it is simply a matter of convention. In other words, as conventional, it is a creation of man, and thus, not a creation of God who created the social arrangements that a man is born into. Hence, it is a rebellion against God. The political thinker must be able to discern universal and natural social arrangements from the truly conventional customs that arise in different times and places. Not that even conventional customs should be casually tossed aside, but natural arrangements, never. The latter used to be obvious to sane and normal men, but apparently not to those who prefer to create difficulties. Sent at: 2008 11 20