Metatheoretical Theoretics and Cognitive Knowledge
By Joseph Andrew Settanni
From at least the late 19th, and especially the 20th and into and including the (now) early 21st century, a great deal of much needed knowledge had been lost such that the theorization of the retention of knowledge appeared as requisite to the task of trying to retrieve a civilization in manifest decline.
Understanding and especially comprehension, the latter as perception of matters in depth, are fading away as to mental capacities and capabilities, though this is not being generally noted. Those 30 years and younger are, more and more, simply allowing computers, in effect, to cogitate for them, which will produce, of course, certain consequences. [One thinks of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine and the sadly degenerate and deracinated race of the fictional Eloi.]
The true ability to think clearly, logically, cogently, and rationally has, it is notably contended, been substantially perverted; of course, it is so freely admitted that truly sustained cognitive endeavor is difficult, since deep thinking is very hard work for most people; thus, the majority, as can be expected, do studiously avoid it, inclusive especially of (deracinated) intellectuals.
Unfortunately, human loquacity and communication may be assumed as being equal to cognition.
And yet, rhetoric, speech, is not the same as thought, as if mere grammatical corrections or syntactical adjustments may prove to be a salvific affect for humanity. Communication can yet increase as thought fades, as with crescive and expansive computerization.
Theoretical constructs for primary knowledge, which can be verified, are then held here as being vitally needed pertaining to the foundations of thought that can make metaphysical speculations take life in the practical affairs of human beings; semantic quibbling is, therefore, thoughtfully dismissed as just a diversionary measure. Cognitive definition and structure are needed, therefore, in defense of human thought, as axiology, properly understood, should lead ever upward to epistemology, when rightly comprehended, and then further upward to ontology (finally, divine ontology, i. e., God).
The overall noetic endeavor of what will be called metatheoretical theoretics is, thus, the creative effort to attempt the beneficial formulation of the correct means of establishing a way of determining the very first principles of thought, of most profound cognitive effort. Why, however, is this considered to be appropriately necessary for the positive recovery of cognitive knowledge, for the proper restoration of mental and moral sanity?
Ideologies and Metaphysics
The ideologies of modernity and postmodernity (1 [See: Notes]), the epistemological means for the corrupting of human intellect, made this an imperative task having enormous moral, ethical, and intellectual implications and ramifications of the highest degree.
It is here contended that the ideologies of modernity (2) had, among others, included: Communism, Nazism, Fascism, Anarchism, Conservatism, Libertarianism, Socialism, Feminism, Syndicalism, Nationalism, and Liberalism; and, all are, furthermore, vilely directed toward undermining the capacity of the human mind to think independently of ideological constraints of various kinds and types.
What may be called mental “cognitivity” has been corrupted. For the terrene sake of a supposed ideological perfection and its rigorous pursuit on earth, hundreds of millions of human beings (in the 20th century and after) were, consequently, exterminated for what were thought to be righteous causes. The human search for Utopia, what has also been denominated as the pursuit of the millennium, produces the end products of dystopias. Ideologies had contributed as justifications for the bloodshed, including, of course, World War I and II.
These various and often conflicting systems of thought, having ethical and moral dimensions, were, in turn, based upon many diverse metaphysical concepts such as, among others, pragmatism, materialism-naturalism, empiricism, positivism, rationalism, secularism, existentialism, behaviorism, historicism, scientism, presentism, hedonism, relativism-subjectivism, (secular) humanism, and nihilism. But, all are, finally, united by a truly common foundational and fundamental principle of thought (besides the axiomatic rejection of metaphysical order/God) to be explicitly encompassed, very soon, in this text.
Postmodern ideologies had, e. g., covered environmentalism, deconstructionism, structuralism, etc., which includes the most definitive of the postmodernist creeds: antinatalism. Nonetheless, upon advanced analysis and study, all ideologies and often related concepts of both modernism-modernity and postmodernism-postmodernity are, ultimately speaking, prefaced upon the metaphysical thinking to be encountered in nominalism. [It is to be understood that “modernity” as to philosophy/system of thought does not, in this article, equate with the modern age, meaning a time period or era.]
Nominalism, the drift toward what amounts to cognitive insanity, created the incredible mind set of modernity (see: Thomas P. Neill’s Makers of the Modern Mind) and, thus, had easily allowed for its so logical development into overt postmodernity, the codification and self-justification for such insanity, in thought. This includes translational and transactional mental perception as well.
Without the pervasive growth of nominalist cognition and notably its integrally applied ratiocination, none of the metaphysical concepts that have helped compose the many noted ideologies could have succeeded in controlling the deluded minds of literally hundreds of millions of human beings.
Ideological thought, backed as it is so intensively by nominalist concepts such as, e. g., rationalism, is so extremely both endemic and pandemic such that relatively few people are even vaguely conscious of just how ideological they really are. Nominalism, as it were, is in the very air that people breathe; it is, for almost all people, especially those most in direct contact with what passes for civilization these days, simply consonant axiomatically with thought itself, so profoundly pervasive is the mentally-strangling influence of nominalism, of the death of free thought.
The vast majority of people, consequently, do erroneously think that either modernism or, even worse, postmodernism is simply just fully congruent with normal reality, with the very fundamentals of human existence, in the world of thought and action. Historicism and presentism are, resultantly, glorified; positivism and pragmatism, as other examples, become, in effect, deified.
Nihilism (the honest definition of the Nietzschean exultant abyss of atheism) gets, usually covertly, codified as the last intellectual bastion of an assumed absolute realism first predicated upon naturalist materialism. One of the definitely major problems forever inherent to nominalist theoretics is, however, its integral tendency to make exceptions to rules into (becoming) new rules.
Exceptions are meant to better illustrate and logically uphold a general rule as to the principle being enunciated; thus, a lack of (an) exception(s) can come to then invalidate the rule being stated for acceptance. The subjective theoretical construction of nominalism, sooner or later, forces what should have been only logical exceptions into becoming themselves (new) rules; and, sometimes, this can even quickly happen, though usually not.
This entire scope and related mode of progressivist cognition, however, is definitely rejected here as being extremely defective to the nth degree, meaning as to right reason, defensible logic, and, in the end, plain, basic common sense. As illustration, substantial and substantive thought, among human beings in all past and present ages, has always been about something, not nothing, e. g., atheism (3), the belief or faith in nothing, is the complete denial and rejection of any metaphysical order.
The positive, militant affirmation of zilch becomes, ultimately, ludicrous beyond measure; and, it is historically known that only an extremely tiny minority of persons, in relatively isolated instances, have affirmed nothing as being genuinely something. Thus, an atheist is a paradigmatic nominalist who makes the obvious historical exception (disbelief) into its own rule, which then demands respect as just simply being cognitively normal thought fully consonant and commensurate with human intellect itself.
But, atheism is only a small example, concerning the overall destruction and degradation of human intelligence, continuously caused by regnant nominalism, both its effect and affects included; objectivity becomes inverted, therefore, into becoming subjectivity and vice versa, it must be here fairly added, pertaining to the relativistic-centered and dominated workings of nominalist theoretics.
Therefore, to try to attempt, if possible, to get back to a true sense of first principles of human cognition, the cognitive science of metatheoretical theoretics must exist for provoking the needed theorization of those theoretical tools required for breaking through the genuine and adamant nominalist barrier that truly exists between normal-classical thought and both modernist and postmodernist thought.
Admittedly, this enormous task demands the expert and committed creation of a gargantuan project that would, at the least, have to span decades of time, with many dozens of researchers, going through vast axiological, epistemological, and ontological realms of cognition; it is not to be thought, however, that the theorization of reality is to be held as being greater than reality itself; human cognition is not, moreover, a theoretical proposition.
For the restricted purposes of this present and limited disquisition, only one small, discrete, example will be given by which it is hoped a proper heuristic approach can be appropriately suggested by which such study could be guided. It will take prolific minds, much more advanced than the writer of this article, to carry on the anticipated intellectual work for obtaining the required positive spiritual, moral, and ethical benefits, perceived to be of an enormous nature, for generations to come. Why the need for action?
The matter at hand is urgent because there are empirical consequences that, in fact, do lead to death, meaning an earthly finality as lethality, if nothing else. The naïve beliefs of, e. g., Max Weber in the (supposed) glories of Progress, of routinization, secularization, bureaucratization, and rationalization, added to industrialization and overall modernization, were fully crushed, even in his own mind (4), by World War I.
Few people, today, really profoundly understand and comprehend what (seemingly inevitable) Progress had once significantly meant; it was the motivating (secularist) Zeitgeist of an era when an exuberant optimism knew no bounds; this was not the diminutive case of a mere fashion, as with men deciding, e. g., not to regularly wear hats in public. Where there was, for instance, once thought to be, theologically put, no limits to God, there was, then, (as a substitute) thought to be no limits to terrene perfectionism.
The requisite recitation of such important facts is made very necessary because it has substantially become, in effect, truly lost knowledge that is yet vitally needed; this is for genuinely knowing about what has happened to humanity in, at least, the last three hundred years. Why is this so strongly asseverated?
An insightful example may help to brilliantly illustrate the significant point now being made. If, say, in the 1890s, one were to be among a typical gathering of (advanced) Western intellectuals and dared to seriously predict that, by the 1930s, a man wearing an odd little moustache would be saluted, in unison, by hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic German marchers celebrating tyranny, the person making that startling prediction would be either thought to be just clearly insane or, perhaps, quickly laughed out of that crowd rather ignominiously.
Pursuit of Progress, a God-term if there ever was one, has yielded the greatly examined and analyzed facts about demographic changes in the world; evident self-extermination is, actually, going on and not just in the Western world alone; demography is destiny, as has been so often wisely said.
The human species is openly engaged in a form of noted macro-homicide, on a genuinely titanic scale, never previously recorded and chronicled, in the entire course and sweep of human history, which is yet a gross understatement; this is concerning the truly horrific reality being presented, in the 21st century, which more than simply rivals, e. g., the Black Death (5) of the mid-15th century.
The supremely antinatalist morality of pervasive postmodernism is behind this dramatic nihilistic shift in consciousness in that humans are the only beings who can consciously decide to self-exterminate; this is, moreover, as if it were a merely normal and natural choice; it is both openly and proudly said to be, in fact, the pro-choice position, of course. Historically and morally speaking, however, macro-homicide is actually, at a minimum, quite blatantly unnatural and completely abnormal to the extreme, as is, by the way, all of (nominalist) postmodernism, if the truth be fully told.
Population explosion, as “documented” extensively, is an illusion; birth dearth (characteristic of the actual truth) is, therefore, the crescive reality of this present era and into the foreseeable future. The (nihilistic) struggle toward modernism and postmodernism, therefore, necessarily leads to human extinction as a fully empirical result; and, this has been demographically so verified, moreover, to a frightening degree of indisputable veracity. Japan exists as the prime example of the plain truth.
It amounts, in effect, to the secularist worship of death, which is the logical result of denying the truth of there being metaphysical order (read: God) for the ordering of all being itself, meaning an ontological imperative. Satan, of course, made the same choice as to the demonic exercise of will, and hundreds of millions of souls, even now, are urgently rushing to join him in Hell, in the surely postmodernist paradise supreme.
Ideologies and philosophies of modernism/postmodernism exhibit an empirically verifiable result, as to a rather marked direction, clearly favoring continuing depopulation; synderesis, as ought to be known by rational minds, becomes both exemplified and undeniable, as especially when being pro-life. Thus, theologically phrased, for those who still refuse to see the actual truth: The [demonic] wages of sin is death. And yet, the terminal condition still remains a great mystery, among many, that enlightenment thought alone, try as it may, has not provided any answer to, for the grave keeps secrets.
The greater mystery beyond thought, nonetheless, is that the human brain, meaning simple gray matter, does not think; it facilitates the thinking but, in and of itself, does not ever, meaning of itself, actually produce what gets generated metaphysically forever beyond the mere set material substance alone; chemical and other functionality and operability, of course, exists in the brain, as a human organ of the body, though thought itself remains a distinct epiphenomenon of brain activity, nor can, e. g., the gray matter ever will itself. Will, therefore, is a true product of being, of ontological order, not materiality.
Thus, obviously, no dissected cranial mass has ever been found to contain that which had necessarily activated it, namely, the soul. The forever fantastically epiphenomenal mind is, thus, much more than the mere brain itself, as human reason is then much more than just rationality alone.
Rationalism v. Rationality
For the example chosen, let it be here understood that Rationalism (given a capital R for a heightened designation and distinction) is not ever to be wrongly confused with plain reason, rationality, or rational thought, though it too often is, in fact, confused with just human reasoning itself.
Rationalism is the overt (satanic) assumption that everything, sooner or later, can be both rationally understood and comprehended by being made entirely or, at least, suitably explicit, made known, through overt statements and cognate explication and extrapolation. The rationalist creed, thus, has an overt contempt for sound, classical reasoning set, as it is, within an imperfect world (a fallen world) filled with imperfect people (fallen humans). Rationalism, on the contrary, really believes in and seeks the perfectibility of Man, as did Satan himself (perversely speaking) in the Garden of Eden, of course.
For Rationalism, there never rationally can be, therefore, any real mysteries of any type, shape, degree, or kind. All true knowledge and information, facts and data, ought and, in a sense, must be so made unequivocally, explicitly, known to the human intellect, meaning as to whatever can be made known.
Anything else has, by definition, no veracity, no substantial meaning, and no viable actuality; it lacks intrinsically what is called, according to pragmatism, cash value; there is no acknowledgement of any metaphysical order; Benthamite utilitarianism (6) is, as always, a perfect example united logically with Manchesterian Liberalism (7). Rationalism becomes, in effect, its very own system of worship, of the divinization of Man.
Such inherently bizarre thinking has its ludicrous and, often, devastating consequences, though many people, admittedly, would totally disagree with this assertion; this is because they regard themselves as confirmed rationalists, enlightened people, who simply assume that their way of looking at, interpreting, the world and reality is just plainly rational and, thus, so fully reasonable, of course. It is so often not recognized, however, how insanity and enlightenment, irrationality and reason worship, do go well together.
Any who do firmly disagree are, thus, absolutely unreasonable and obviously irrational, by definition. But, every true rationalist, someone who claims to have a monopoly of common sense, has a necessarily corrupted mind infected with nominalism (to whatever degree) that, in turn, upholds Rationalism.
What results are strange varieties of pseudo-reasoning efforts that, oddly, lead invariably, meaning sooner or later, to degrees of rationalization that, therefore, do have importantly real-world life or death consequences; this can be so easily seen in the overt rationalization of health services to, e. g., automatically include abortion-on-demand, as if it is ethically and morally quite normal and suitable.
The need for true knowledge being defended is, thus, not merely for any assumed aesthetic sensibilities or just a, perhaps, rationalist regard for semantic symmetries; in the “holy” names of humanitarianism and altruism, moral insanity is rationalized as if it is equivalent to fundamental moral normality, which was, long ago, recognized by G. K. Chesterton, among others. Chesterton had well noted how, in the 20th century, abnormality, increasingly, came to displace that which was normal from time immemorial.
Again, because a full-scale research project is not here available, only limited efforts can be made as toward the tremendously vast task that really exists. But, an attempt at clear explication will be made by citing examples of how nominalism in cognition, working through metaphysical concepts such as Rationalism, do, quite necessarily, warp rational, meaning reasonable, judgment and excessively pervert reasoning ability to a rather bizarre, a highly weird, degree.
There have been 20th century and are 21st century commentators as, e. g., university-level professors of English Literature no less, who have adamantly, severely, criticized Jane Austin for being so absolutely historically obtuse in her novels. How so? She does not, for instance, bother to ever mention the then contemporary existence of the Napoleonic Wars. This is a manifestly rationalist, not rational, criticism. It is, furthermore, a serious and important distinction worth cognitively elucidating.
What this so easily demonstrates, however, is not her assumed neglect but, rather, the extremely arrogant and quite solidly evident ignorance, on a fantastically grand scale, of these quite evidently miseducated professors (and sundry others) whose corrupted minds are, thus, infected by the rationally necessary consequences of (mentally retarding) nominalism. Why, however, can this be fairly said?
Jane Austin, writing her splendid novels that were, of course, quite amply contemporaneous with the Napoleonic Wars, had, logically, felt no real need to write about what was so obvious as to the social, cultural, and political reality, the extant ambiance, of England and Europe.
Silence, muteness, on a subject does not, however, mean necessarily a lack of knowledge nor, for that matter, a true paucity of concern about the topic in question; contemporary matters, filling the sociocultural milieu, can be so well known as to preclude the excessive need for mentioning them, especially as a courtesy respecting the intelligence of a prospective current reader.
It can be fully undoubted that, e. g., many writers of social novels, written/completed in July of 1969, then took no cognizance whatsoever of the actual moon landing that had, in fact, occurred; were they, one assumes, entirely neglectful of any supposed, perhaps, public duty to give proper recognition and coverage, in their fictional works, of one of the greatest (perhaps, the greatest) achievements in the entire history of humanity? Hopefully, for the sake of literature, if nothing else, the answer should just emphatically (and simply) be no.
She was, therefore, neither absurdly “insensitive” nor supposedly unfortunately “ignorant” (as charged) of what was, rather manifestly, going on in her own country. It was then, in that past era, just so plainly common social knowledge that needed no useless repetition/commentary in all the novels of that same period. It was, in point of plain fact, something simply well understood. That form of silence indicated knowledge.
But, much “serious criticism” of this overtly odd and ridiculous nature still, widely, continues unabated regarding her interesting novels. Such gratuitous disparagement or absurd denigration, however, is really just quite dumb, not appropriate for proper literary commentary. Yet, such critics do proudly think of themselves as being real experts.
The Too Often Unrecognized Plague of Nominalism
Nominalism, thus, spreads stupidity by its encouragement of ignorance, as to things that ought and should be known, as to just common sense (common social knowledge), which gets neglected because of the rationalist demands of nominalist cognition. And, moderate realism, among other results, is then simply rejected. Nominalism, therefore, comes to rationalistically enforce ignorance [the ignorance of truth] that, in turn, both greatly encourages and easily guarantees the so evident existence of rampant and increasing levels and degrees of hard-core stupidity. What is yet another and related consequence?
Rationalism, as a direct outcome of such nominalist speculation, horribly weakens the human intellect and, thus, so integrally disables rational cognition because it gets wrongly confused with the justifiable need for acceptable rationality, meaning plain reason, the useful logical ability to think clearly, cogently, and concisely.
Rationalism, as ought to be recognized by now, is definitely not rationality, which does need to be both properly and appropriately kept in mind at all times. The former demands overt “reasoning” of a restricted and deformed kind that seeks manifest explicitness, meaning no mysteries or unknown things. Anything that is not truly explicit or just obvious is denied empirical reality or substance; consequently, explicitness, literalness, (and the demand for it) gets equated, axiomatically, with the assumed fullness or existence of (an enlightened or progressive) truth.
And yet, the citing of this ignorant criticism of the work of Jane Austin is merely a very tiny instance, among many hundreds of thousands that could be so easily rendered, concerning how many millions of presumably educated and knowledgeable people are, in fact, ignorant and miseducated, meaning ill-informed and untaught. Mere schooling is not here equated with having had a sound education.
That this ignorance, this pervasive nominalism/Rationalism, is not regarded as a dangerous intellectual phenomenon speaks numerous volumes about the massive decay of civilization, of the social-civil order of one’s own contemporary times; and, in addition, the greatly horrid and debilitating strength of such rampant nominalism-subjectivism/relativism over the modern human mind and, one can truthfully add, its rather decidedly demonic results.
Theological and Historical Examples
It is sad to say, as did, e. g., Eric Voegelin (8), that Hegel was the last thinker, in the history of the West, who had both, as understood, proper knowledge of the right questions and answers, as to cognition about fundamental knowledge, though both of those men chose, willingly, to yield to the devastating appeal of nominalism.
Another historical example, taken quite confidently from the field of theology, is how Protestantism is, by definition, so firmly and forever based upon a very thoroughgoing nominalism in cognition; this is, of course, without question, as when (satanic) Sola Scriptura gets rightly analyzed, for what it so really represents, a profoundly marked diminution and extreme restriction of requisite cognition on a vast scale.
Nominalism starts, thus, with the heuristic methodological enforcement of ignorance, which, in turn, breeds growing stupidity, not any Platonic dialogue as might be (ignorantly) supposed. Ongoing mental vacuousness, in this cited case of Protestantism, is the real goal, not wisdom.
Among many other useful books that could be cited, Stephen K. Ray’s Upon This Rock: St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome in Scripture and the Early Church, solidly proves this aforementioned, asserted truth about Protestantism (aka Reform Theology) in its still ongoing denial of too numerous historical facts. Applying variants of, e. g., positivism, historicism, and rationalism, it is yet alleged (falsely), for instance, that St. Peter was probably not ever in Rome and, moreover, that particular city/church has, thus, no (true) primacy whatsoever.
No such charges were, in fact, ever significantly raised, at that fundamental level of absolute denial, until what gets called the Protestant Reformation, a form of theological liberalism, came into historical being. It is the same as questioning the catholicity of Roman Catholicism and the universalism of the Faith in that alleged silence on the subject of St. Peter and the primacy of Rome is supposed to exist in the founding of the Church and all during its early centuries. Ray refutes such nonsense and ignorance in the face of Protestant, mainly Fundamentalist and Evangelical, demands for literalness and explicitness.
Yet another example from history can be given. Because there are no ancient Egyptian records explicitly covering the era of Hebrew captivity, for a number of centuries in that land, Egyptian historians have denied the credibility of what is said to have actually occurred there in ancient times.
Yet, silence, as was noted above, can indicate the existence of common social knowledge; what is so thoroughly obvious to contemporaries does not, therefore, normally need to be written down in heavy detail, perhaps, even beyond any rational need. Marco Polo, e. g., has been and still is hotly criticized as a sort of faker, a supposed fraud, because his accounts had, amazingly, neglected to mention the use of tea in China. He may not have felt any great compulsion to publicize something that did not seem to be extremely remarkable at the time.
But, Austin, of course, did not mention the rather enormous historical detail concerning the then entire Napoleonic Wars, which would so seem to be, thus, of more importance than merely neglecting the somewhat discrete subject of Chinese tea. On the other hand, it is still quite possible to write an entire book about Italy without once, e. g., mentioning the existence of macaroni. But, that, of course, is not a debasement of knowledge or, alternately, an assumed improper lack of concern, only a simple neglect of certain facts.
The salient point being made is that any reification of knowledge, done in a nominalist manner, harms thought processes necessarily as to the rational, the reasoned, want of needful cognition, of properly informed cognizance. Thus, the modern/contemporary mind, ignorant of the cognitive theorization needed, sadly remains under heavy metaphysical assault, though its ongoing destruction gets slight, if any, recognition from the preponderant majority of intellects existing. Theorization, as to this vital matter, is then ignored or, by degrees, simply forgotten as being so inconsequential to human life; and, this sadly contributes, in turn, to the unfortunately steady and, sometimes, quite rapid increase of lost knowledge.
Conclusion
To prevent the modern/postmodern mind from simply rotting away into crudely catatonic antinatalist insensitivity, human cognition qua sagacious cognizance needs, therefore, to be critically defended against the decidedly demonic allure of (insane) death worship. Equally, as to the thematic nature of what has also been contended, literalness, explicitness, is not of the essence of human communication or, on a higher level, metaphysical speculation.
Nor are authors, it can be noted, the only people who can have a major historical impacts. (9) Systems of thought, also, need not offer the final word as to truth, as when the tendencies involve, e. g., the demonic end result of macro-homicide, of death worship.
All ideologies and their many affiliated philosophies must then be rationally rejected as being integrally contrary, by definition, to the natural requirements of social and civilizational demands for necessarily fundamental ethical, moral, and spiritual sanity. Nothing less will do for success, meaning as to the barest minimum requirements, for establishing requisite moral order and truly civilized conduct and intercourse between and among sensate and cognizant human beings. Life is a defensible proposition.
The pandemic worldwide lust for self-extermination, celebrated macro-homicide as a human right (inclusive of so-called abortion rights), needs to be clearly recognized as a noetic (and other) dreadful perversion. Regnant antinatalism, as is strongly favored by the supposedly enlightened intellects of this era, is, therefore, inherently satanic; this is, surely, true as to both its rationalist self-justification and, moreover, rather manifest lethal consequences (demographic disaster) for humanity of an unimaginable magnitude, of a gargantuan scale of measurement.
What is thought of, here in this present article, that may, significantly, help this dreadfully unfortunate situation, is the critical theorization about knowledge qua cognition, within ontological order, that must formulate a cognitive theory that can theorize about this extremely serious matter.
A theory about theory, pertaining to the imperative effort to reconstruct and regain knowledge, through the arduous work at a metatheoretical theoretics for investigating axiological, epistemological, and, especially, ontological questions of the highest order, must be, therefore, attempted for the important and vital sake of societal and civilizational restoration of truly requisite knowledge and surely profound cognition.
And, more than the needed rejection of nominalism is required for a substantial defense of moderate (or Aristotelian-Thomistic) realism (and a nod toward Platonic idealism) for the civilizational restoration of cognitive sanity and moral order.
Notes
1.) I have contended elsewhere, meaning my articles on the internet, that what I have called “dialogical postmodernism” is fully consistent with efforts at attaining metatheoretical theoretics. The way, e. g., the European Renaissance was intellectually and morally split between neopagan humanism-secularism, on the one hand, and Catholic humanism, on the other, is seen as fairly analogous for the similar kind of cognitive (and other) divide definitely separating two kinds of postmodernism.
2.) All the ideologies of modernity (and, by extension, postmodernity) are products of nominalism and, therefore, are on the Left of the political spectrum, as are, logically, Fascism, Communism, Anarchism, Nationalism, Liberalism, and Nazism, of course; and, upon a very close examination, so is Conservatism. All ideologies, in the end, remain necessarily idolatrous in their function; idolatry, in its true essence, is making the worship greater than the God.
3.) The “New Atheism” that has become crescive in the 21st is a last desperate and militant gasp of a dying modernity to try to maintain its assumed relevance before being crushed (I would contend) by the ongoing contrary thinking of dialogical postmodernism.
4.) By 1918, Weber, as seen in his writings, had fundamentally repudiated his once enormous optimism as to the endlessly magnificent benefits of modernity, of an exultant, endless Progress on earth.
5.) Estimates go as high as a third of the people of Europe who may have died as a result of the Black Plague.
6.) It was Jeremy Bentham, as a 19th century penal system reformer, who originated the
utilitarian concept of “penitentiaries” (aka modern jails) that are now called correctional facilities, which is an interesting euphemism.
7.) As yet another instance of truly lost knowledge, Charles Dickens’ character, in his A Christmas Carole, was, before his “conversion” experiences, a true Manchesterian Liberal; he was, supposedly, an enlightened man of his era who genuinely believed in Progress through his dedication to economic values and fiscal austerity; Ebenezer Scrooge, an extremely heartless, money-grubbing miser, was NOT depicted, by Dickens, as being any kind, shape, or type of (an English) conservative.
But, the growing popular understanding/perception of Scrooge, a generation and more later, is that of a vicious or mean-spirited conservative nonetheless. This, thus, represents the ideological propagandistic victory of the Left, over the modern imagination and popular opinion, which strongly continues today.
8.) Eric Voegelin, for instance, famously (or, rather, infamously) publicly wrote that St. Paul merely had a kind of vision of Jesus Christ, somewhere or other, on the road to Damascus; there was absolutely no, according to Voegelin, living physical presence of the Son of the Father in that particular dramatic confrontation. Perhaps, it was, after all, just a delusionary illusion of a rather large magnitude, of course, sufficient enough to then persuade the future saint that he should both stop harming the Christians and become one of them.
Such an opinion is, therefore, fully consistent with nominalist philosophy as it impinges upon theological speculation qua rationalization based upon reductionism. And, one can then so witness, as when convenient rationalization is plied upon rationalization, an increasingly diminished Gospel made so unworthy of all faith whatsoever, not to mention reason (which has also been debased, incidentally).
9.) It can be usefully recalled, e. g., that neither Socrates nor Jesus ever wrote a single document, as far as is known; but, the remarkable impact of both, especially of the Christ, has still notably continued unabated for literally many centuries, of course.
