A Communio Partner Feature

released 9/6/2024

Michael Hanby’s essay from the Fall 2021 issue of Communio reveals 20th-century philosopher Augusto Del Noce’s prophetic genius in foreseeing that the root of the crisis in the West is metaphysical and theological, not political. Hanby connects some of Del Noce’s central ideas with insights about American intellectual and spiritual history from other thinkers, such as George Parkin Grant, Daniel Boorstin, Hannah Arendt, and others. His description of the current crisis in America as — to use Del Noce’s terms — a “totalitarianism of disintegration” and a “rebellion against being” is based on an examination of the long-standing antipathy in American intellectual life to metaphysical realism. He explains why Del Noce’s concept of the interrelatedness of revolution, scientism, and eroticism (the sexual revolution) is essential in understanding the “new totalitarianism” that is the air we all now breathe.

This essay is presented courtesy of Communio and is read by Ken Myers. To download a PDF of this essay from Communio, click here.

79 minutes

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