It seems necessary at this time to make some ideas clear, or at least, clearer. First of all, metaphysics is not the same thing as philosophy. Metaphysics is knowing, an activity of spirit, active and masculine. Philosophy is thinking, an activity of the soul, passive, and feminine. A man knows himself to be free, with an active will; he has no need to wade through several hundred pages of Kant to convince himself of what he knows in his own immediacy.<\/p>\n
A warrior acts courageously because it is an expression of his nature, his being. An artist can portray a courageous man in a poem or play, but is not thereby courageous himself. A philosopher will debate the meaning of courage, but will always end in aporia. If a scout comes back to camp with news that the enemy is on the march, a debate about the meaning of the “other” will not then ensue. Nor will anyone attempt to achieve the synthesis between the self and the other as enemy.<\/p>\n
When we write of doctrines, we mean metaphysical doctrines, not specifically religious or theological doctrines. Here are some quotes from Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power<\/em> by Rene Guenon that clarify our point of view<\/p>\n During the Middle Ages there existed throughout the West a real unity, based on properly traditional foundations, which we call ‘Christendom’, but when these secondary unities of a purely political — that is to say temporal and no longer spiritual — order were formed this great unity of the West was irremediably broken and the effective existence of Christendom came to an end. Nations, merely the dispersed fragments of what was formerly Christendom, false unities substituted for the true one by the temporal power’s will to dominate can, given the very conditions of their origin, survive only by opposing each other and ceaselessly contending among themselves in all fields. Now spirit is unity<\/strong>, matter is multiplicity and division<\/strong>; and the more one removes oneself from spirituality, the more antagonisms are accentuated and amplified.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The last sentence speaks for itself. Please understand the following point thoroughly.<\/p>\n When speaking of Catholicism the utmost care must always be taken to distinguish between what concerns Catholicism itself as a doctrine and what relates only to the present organizational state of the Catholic church. Whatever one may think about the second, it cannot affect the first. … there are very few today who are able, when such a need arises, to free themselves from historical contingencies, to the extent that certain defenders of Catholicism, not only its adversaries, believe that everything can be reduced to a simple question of historicity, which is one form of the modern superstition of fact<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As for the continuity of the Roman Tradition, Guenon points out<\/p>\n The symbolic assimilation of Christ with Janus as the supreme principle of the two powers is the very clear sign of a certain traditional continuity<\/strong> (too often ignored or deliberately denied<\/em>) between ancient Rome and Christian Rome<\/strong>; and we must not forget that in the Middle Ages the empire was just as Roman as the papacy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A warrior acts courageously because it is an expression of his nature, his being. An artist can portray a courageous man in a poem or play, but is not thereby courageous himself. A philosopher will debate the meaning of courage, but will always end in aporia. Continue reading