Writing at The American Mind (a publication “dedicated to restoring the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life”), Daniel Mahoney seems to have been triggered by, um, something, though he never specifies what:
In our era, truth is under systematic assault from moralistic fanatics who are at the same time thoroughgoing relativists and dyed-in-the wool subjectivists. The fervid intensity of the woke absolutists, their endless anger and excoriation, should not be mistaken for a commitment to truth and truth-seeking. Their indignation, their aim to “cancel”—to morally obliterate—those they cannot abide is a consequence of the fact that they have left the world of objective truth and measured moral judgment behind. Ideological fanaticism is the inevitable consequence of a nihilistic denial of an order of things, of a natural moral order available to human beings through reason and experience. The willful denials of truth and falsehood, good and evil, virtue and vice, understood as fundamental distinctions rooted in the structure of reality, inevitably leads to a comprehensive subversion of all the goods of human life: of liberty, the life of the mind, sound politics, and moral judgment.
Relativism, of course, is a shocking and unprecedented development, if you ignore the fact that it has been around forever. The 4th-century (BCE) Greek philosopher Pyrrho taught that “all our knowledge is tainted with subjectivity. The real nature of things is wholly unknown to us. Since nothing is certain, a suspension of judgement is the only prudent attitude to adopt.” The historian Myrick Carrere, writing about St. Augustine, who lived nearly a millennium after Pyrrho, informs us that Augustine found himself surrounded by (and distressed by) secular relativists in the fourth century CE. For Augustine, writes Carrere, “Finding a positive basis for knowledge was a matter of anxious moral concern,” an anxiety Daniel Mahoney apparently shares. We can all ignore differences of opinion on trivial matters, but on matters close to our heart and vital to our identity, we become at first defensive and then angry if the disagreement persists.
While Augustine, given the opportunity, had no problem persecuting those who disagreed with him, Mahoney is aghast that today’s heretics are attempting to impose their own brand of orthodoxy. He accuses relativists of being self-contradictory and incoherent; how can relativism be true if there is no such thing as truth? 1 And if relativism promotes tolerance, he demands, why are woke relativists so intolerant? Mahoney is a member of the Roman Catholic Church, and his essay was originally delivered as a speech to a Catholic gathering (the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars), which is relevant only because Holy Mother Church, as Mahoney might call it, has quite a record of expelling, excommunicating, and otherwise silencing dissidents. “Tolerance” has never been the motto, or even the ideal, of Catholicism; it was, after all, a Catholic pope who proclaimed that “Error has no rights.” 2
To his credit, and based on his publications and speaking engagements, Daniel Mahoney does not seem to have been morally obliterated by the woke fanatics whose reign of ideological terror he invokes; leaving us to wonder, not for the first time, whether cancel culture exists anywhere other than in the heads of right-wing pundits. Especially in our contemporary communications landscape, the idea that anyone can be silenced short of imprisonment or death seems dubious; I mean, eight-year-olds can (and do) post their performative grievances on TikTok.
Mahoney’s essay is all polemics and very little argumentation, often little more than an exercise in dropping names beloved to conservative Christians: Roger Scruton, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Michael Polanyi, John Courtney Murray, Dostoevsky, Pierre Manent, Christopher Rufo, and several Popes. 3 Preaching to the converted, Mahoney closes by reminding his audience that “the old verities persist, and they must be artfully articulated and vigorously defended in this age as in any other.”
If “Truth and Politics” is Mahoney’s idea of artful articulation and vigorous defense, the old verities may want to find themselves a better advocate.
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Truth and Politics - The American Mind
1 Clever 14-year-olds love this gotcha! almost as much as they love the paradox about Cretan liars. (By the way, the correct response to Mahoney's question is, "All truths are relative, including this one.")
2 Error has no rights - Wikipedia
3 Putting Christopher Rufo in such august company does not speak well of Daniel Mahoney’s acumen.
Pyrrho: Father of Skepticism, Relativism, Subjectivism, and Nihilism
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