Dario Antiseri, a renown thinker and historian of ideas, in his article titled, “A Spy in The Service of The Most High” (Vita e Pensiero, 5/2005, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Milano) urges Catholic scholars to reconsider carefully the rejection of moral relativism (English version: http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/41533bdc4.html?eng=y) that Benedict XVI is urging, for Antiseri considers moral relativism to be the bedrock of the “open society” and even of religion. This of course directly challenges the position of Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, according to whom moral relativism constitutes rather “a dictatorship that recognizes nothing as definitive”.

Antiseri published his article at the beginning of the pontificate, in the face of the Pope’s clear statements on the matter, and in a philosophical magazine of the Catholic University of Milan of the “Sacred Heart” of Jesus Christ. This accumulation of circumstances alone is provocative to a Catholic who believes that the Jesus Christ made absolute commands and will judge us according to our observance of them. But in the article itself, Antiseri goes so far as to suggest that simply holding to an absolute truth is sinful: “I ask these Catholic friends [who hold to absolute truths]: a Christian who thinks he is able to know and rationally found absolute ethical principles, has he not perhaps fallen to the serpent’s temptation that ‘you will be like gods, knowing good and evil’?” Thus, by slight of hand, moral relativism is imposed upon the conscience as an absolute and morally binding value: we must be relativists in everything except in our adhesion to relativism. Only in our “religious” adherence to relativism must we be conscientious absolutists. The contradiction is too preposterous not to be provocative.

Antiseri provoked us and we responded with something more than a reaction. We believe that what Antiseri proposes is the very essence of what is destroying the societies of Western Europe. Relativism obviously destroys objective truth, but furthermore, it destroys the infinitude of reality and its goodness. But the goodness of reality is the foundation of human hope: relativism is intrinsically homicidal because it destroys hope in man; and it can kill a whole society as certainly as any form of totalitarianism. And once hope is gone, only a lingering “mere tolerance” of goodness remains as the final symptom of the mortal spiritual anemia of souls that are no longer attracted to the good. Death is by a subtle self-imposed starvation of the soul.

Today, Friday, the 23rd of June, 2017, the day on which the Catholic Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, I think is a particularly felicitous moment to publish this article rebutting the relativistic thinking of Antiseri and of many others represented in him. As noted above, it was under the auspices of the the Sacred Heart University in Milan, Italy, that Professor Antiseri committed his act of "espionage". I use this occasion to introduce a new metaphysical system (copyright pending) that I firmly believe offers an original contribution to Western thought and the key to settling the intellectual and cultural mayhem that relativism and modernism have wrought. All persons of good will, not just Catholics or Christians, may find a walkway out of the labyrinth of contemporary relativism in this new metaphysical system. I only sketch out its most essential aspects here, but this post may nevertheless serve as a primer to this metaphysics's potential for settling much sophistry while pointing to far deeper results to come.

Dario Antiseri’s position favoring moral relativism: The case for pluralism.

I -- A universal and rational criterion for ethical systems is not accessible to the human mind.

Antiseri asserts that a “pluralism of ethical conceptions, philosophical visions of the world, and religious faiths” is a fact. “In the face of this reality, there are those who maintain that any ethical system is as good as another, that all ethical systems are the same, that... no value is truly [universally] valid. It is this relativism that is object of accusation and rejection.” It is not a relativism of being, but one of ethics and values. “The fundamental point of pluralism”, he continues, is “that these [concepts and ethical outlooks] are not all the same; rather they are all different. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ is something quite different from the imperative ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’... Do we have available to us a rational criterion, one that is valid for all, according to which we can decide which ethics is best in that it is rationally founded?” Thus, Antiseri takes pluralism among the many ethical systems to be a given fact, for he holds that there does not exist a universal criterion capable of measuring one against another and establishing which is the “best” system.

II -- “Hume’s Law” implies that ethical judgements are purely subjective and relative.

Antiseri sees this moral relativism following of necessity from “Hume’s Law”, which states that “prescriptions cannot be logically derived from descriptions”. All that enters into human consciousness originates in the senses, but the senses afford us only descriptions. Hence, no ethical value originates in the action or in the thing evaluated in itself, but must be projected over it from the subject that perceives and evaluates them. Ethical judgements are thus purely subjective creations. “The choice of supreme values – those values for which one can live or die – finds its basis, not in science [that ultimately depends on sense perception], but in the conscience of every man and every woman.”

III -- The “open” (democratic) society can only be based on moral relativism.

It now follows as a matter of course that there can be no absolute moral value, and he who professes such is an absolutist (“intolerant”): “Is it possible to have an open society, a democratic society, where the right to be in possession of absolute truth and exclusive values has been appropriated?” Life in the open society (as described by Karl Popper) is ordered by “rules for common existence”, which are “the first and fundamental common good”. “The open society... is made precisely of those rules that permit the coexistence of the greatest possible number of ideas and ideals, perhaps even contrasting ones; and it is closed only to the intolerant. And the intolerant person is the one who presumes to know in what the true good consists, to be in possession of that absolute good that he feels it legitimate to impose upon his peers, perhaps [even] with the shedding of tears and blood.” Moral relativism and its accompanying “absolute tolerance” appear as necessary conditions for the open society. In a tone of friendly and gentle reproach, Antiseri invites the faithful Catholic to reconsider whether he can be so certain about his absolute values, even suggesting that he might have fallen to the ancient serpent’s temptation of possessing godlike knowledge, of “knowing good and evil” (cf. Genesis 3).

IV -- Catholic: thou shalt not impose thy religious values on secularist society!

Does the faithful Catholic’s convictions about certain acts derive from a “religious message” or from some philosophical argument? From the gospel or from human reason? Presumably, if his conviction comes from the gospel, then it is fine insofar as it binds his conscience alone. If it comes from philosophical argument, then it is, as we saw before, at most a relative value, and he may not impose it on others. For the Catholic, only God is absolute. Therefore, if he preaches anything that is only human (and therefore only relative) as if it were absolute, then he sets it at the same level of God who alone is absolute, and commits the sin of idolatry.

V -- Giving nihilism a chance. The case for axiological nihilism.

Having ensconced his moral relativism in the firm bedrock of Hume’s Law that prescriptions do not derive from descriptions, and torn down the altars of all absolute and universal values, which he considers idolatrous because they compete with God for his unique absoluteness, what world view does Antiseri propose? Nihilism. But his is not the crass metaphysical nihilism that annihilates “being”: Hume’s Law does not provide a motive for the annihilation of being per se but only for the rejection of more-than-descriptive interpretations of being, such as absolute values and ethical codes. According to Antiseri, these are not really in the world or in things, but are projected (he says “constructed”) by the individual human person, and therefore are subjective, relative and never absolute, and may never be imposed on another person. In sum, Antiseri’s conception of the world is comparable to that of a formless clay-like mass. And his conception of the person is that of a human mind abstracted from its material and corporal conditions, that with its “constructions” thrusts values, and ethical codes, and in a word, civilization, into the amorphous and moldable world; and all of these constructions serve to complete the actual form of the world. The world appears as a demigod’s playground, and the demigod (the human person) is at once absolute and relative: absolute insofar as separated from the world and passing constructive judgements on it; relative insofar as these constructive judgements are of limited extension and can never be universal. The cosmology of an amorphous but moldable world and the anthropology of an abstracted, relative-absolute mind are two foundational tenets of the ideology called liberalism.

Within liberalism’s world view, Antiseri’s nihilism does not appear to be a bad thing, for he defines it as “the impossibility on man’s part to construct an absolute meaning of the lives of individuals and of human history as a whole”. Nihilism tears down preexisting axiological structures, and becomes “a source of tolerance and also opens space for the sacred”. It empowers the person-demigod to construct his own values and meanings in his “playground” that is the world, and requires him to leave room in the playground for the constructions of other demigods. The demigod is even permitted to construct a temple to the Eternal Creator God, so long as he does not claim that his God is the creator of universal and absolute values. This would be a sin against tolerance; and tolerance does appear to be the one universal and absolute value that Antiseri inexplicably recognizes. “Nihilism”, he writes, “is a source of tolerance, above all, because so many presumptions of absolute truth have given rise to intolerance and untold tragedy, piling up millions and millions of dead. Lurking behind every form of totalitarianism is always the fatal presumption of ultimate, definitive truths and exclusive values.” Antiseri furnishes no examples illustrating how genocides follow from the intolerant impositions of universal truths (as opposed to falsehoods), but he does manage to blame metaphysics for them. “The metaphysics of chosen races or of classes destined to redeem the entire world have bathed the earth in innocent blood. Whole ranks of intellectuals – who were anything but nihilists [and therefore, anything but peace-loving and tolerant]– have defended these truths according to which absolute evil is found, for example, in another race, a nation across the border, the middle class, or the adherents of another faith.”

If the abstracted, liberal mind can construct only limited values, how can it construct an absolute religion, or even one that only appears absolute? Antiseri clarifies, “If nihilism consists in the awareness of man’s inability to construct an absolute meaning of life – an earthly absolute which then, most of the time, is nothing but a wholesale negation of any transcendent absolute – then nihilism means the rational reconstruction of the possibility of posing the question of religion.” Man may not be able to construct his own God or his own eternal paradise, but he can construct his hunger and desire for them, or at least he can construct a rational curiosity about them. Let him take comfort in this who can.

VI -- Human reason as the enemy of religion: man’s ignorance is his portal to religion.

“In reality, it is not science that leaves no room for faith. What have presumed to deny this space are philosophies – the results of concentrated thought – in which, for different reasons, man has been divinized and God eliminated.” Science restricts its assertions to descriptions about the world. “Philosophies”, on the other hand, transgress, asserting prescriptions with the absoluteness permitted only to descriptions, and daring to extend them to universal scope. Antiseri marches before us the pageant of the principal ideologies (he writes “philosophies”) of the twentieth century, and according to him, these attack God, not because they are false, but because they are universal and prescriptive. Antiseri concludes his article: axiological “nihilism truly presents itself as a spy in the service of the Most High, apart from being a presupposition for tolerance, and thus for democracy.”

Our confutation of moral relativism. The case for the Infinite One.

A -- The real epistemological power of the human intellect. Hume’s Law discarded.

At the center of the liberal world view, and the moral relativism and axiological nihilism that accompany it, is Hume’s skeptical certainty that more-than-descriptive reality is beyond the scope of human intellectual apprehension. It is necessary to sow doubt in Hume’s certainty. We do this by founding a metaphysical system, which shows that the human intellect does indeed have the power to transcend the senses.

We consider the human person (“the subject”) who perceives through his senses a thing (the object of perception). What can legitimately be concluded from the fact that the subject (S) can and does perceive an object (O)? Hume can see no more than O’s description internally represented, even as Descartes can infer from the internal representation no more than his own existence (cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore, I am"). Hume and Descartes represent in the history of philosophy a concatenation of epistemological reductions. What is really there? In the first place, we know that S is not O and O is not S. The subject is not reducible to the object, for if he were, he would be an elephant when he thinks an elephant and would annihilate himself when he conceived the notion of nothingness. Furthermore, O is not reducible to S. Even if the object is something entirely fantastic, as when the subject imagines a unicorn, the unicorn is not the chimera, it is not nothingness. It has an ephemeral consistency that is not absolutely nothing. Should there be any doubt about this, tell the empiricist that he is wrong, and he will no doubt reject this, proving that the notion “empiricism is false” is not the same as the contradicting notion that “empiricism is true”, and therefore that the objects of thought are not reducible to nothingness. Therefore, the object is being, that is, “effective presence”, however tenuous. Now if the object were absolutely identical to the subject (O = S), the subject would destroy himself upon contemplating things that are not himself. Thus far, we can infer from the act of perception or cognition that (1) S and O are different; and that thinking would be impossible if S and O were not different; in other words, (2) the difference between S and O is a necessary condition for thinking.

Are S and O absolutely different? Is S so different from O that it has absolutely no point of commonality with it, and vice versa? We give the term “absolute” all its value. If there existed some third reality M that had a relation with S and another relation with O, then S and O would not be absolutely different because they would have M in common. Therefore, S and O could be absolutely different only if each were sealed within its own universe, having nothing in common with the other. This is absurd, S and O are not absolutely different, and therefore, they have something in common (and Descartes’s “bridge problem” can be discarded). This discussion treats of S and O in the context of the cognitive relation, but this result is more general. No two realities can be absolutely different: if they were, each would be in solipsism, in its own private universe having nothing to do with the other. If realities in this universe were so isolated from one another, the universe itself would be annihilated. We can add two more conclusions to our considerations on the cognitive scope of perception. (3) It is metaphysically impossible for S and O to be absolutely different. By “a thing is metaphysically impossible”, we mean that were such a thing to be given in reality, universal annihilation would ensue. From (3) it follows that (4) S and O are the same or identical (which does not mean “absolutely the same”, as in “A = A”). (5) The sameness of S and O is a necessary condition (5a) for existence and (5b) for thinking: for existence because absolute difference would split the universe into absolutely disjoint pieces; for thinking because absolute difference in the cognitive relation would likewise destroy it.

Putting (1) [S and O are different] and (4) [S and O are the same] together, we say that S and O are in metaphysical opposition. Now we must make the pertinent metaphysical induction. We do this by asking what gives origin to the sameness between S and O? Suppose the sameness derived entirely from S: then even O’s difference from S would derive from S, and the difference between S and O would vanish, contradicting the fact that O is necessarily different from S (1). Hence it is impossible that the sameness between S and O derive entirely from S. And by similar reasoning, it is impossible that it derive entirely from O. Yet it must exist by (3). Perforce, we must conclude that (6) the sameness between S and O does not derive entirely either from S or from O. Hence, (7) the sameness between S and O is independent of (“transcends”) both S and O. This last conclusion is the metaphysical induction: the affirmation of a preexisting reality that is the necessary condition for the metaphysical opposition between S and O, and therefore, the necessary condition for the cognitive act and the reality of the difference between S and O.

The attentive reader perhaps has observed that this conclusion puts into crisis the liberal notion that man is a mind abstracted from its material and corporeal conditions that judges absolutely concerning the world, “constructing” the values it wants. Why? Because the thought of the subject is not absolute but conditioned by this sameness between S and O, which derives from neither and therefore is independent of both. Therefore, the absolute mind of liberalism cannot possibly exist. If the absolute thought of liberalism were to exist, it would have to absorb this independent sameness into the subject (to eliminate its dependence on this sameness), and this would destroy the difference between subject and object, and by (2), would imply the destruction of thought itself.

We return to our consideration of what certain knowledge is derivable from the act of human cognition. Conclusion (7) is argued in the context of the cognitive relation between S and O, but there is nothing in it to restrict its validity to realities in such relations. In brief, if “X” and “Y” represent any two finite realities, then they cannot be absolutely different (entailing universal annihilation in a manner analogous to 3) so they must be the same; and this sameness cannot derive from X alone or Y alone (which would eliminate their difference), so it must be independent of both for these to coexist in metaphysical opposition. Hence, we can strengthen (7) to conclude that (8) the preexistence of a common sameness between any two finite realities is an absolutely necessary condition for their metaphysical opposition.

Our actual universe is filled with many finite realities and many metaphysical oppositions between them. Let “X” again represent a finite reality. X thus enters into myriad metaphysical oppositions in which it is different from all the other finite realities, but not absolutely different; it is the same as each of the others too, so there must preexist a common sameness between X and each finite reality. Since X is common to all the metaphysical oppositions, all these oppositions cannot be absolutely different among themselves but must also enjoy some sameness (otherwise the finite unity of X would contradictorily be disintegrated in absolutely different pieces). We conclude that (9) there preexists a universal commonness that is a necessary condition for each and all the metaphysical oppositions among finite things. Since it is a necessary condition for the “totality” of our universe of finite realities, we call it the Totality. If there were two Totalities, then by (8), there would have to preexist a “higher” common sameness by which the two could be in opposition. This higher commonness would then be the Totality, and we would still have only one Totality. We conclude that (10) the Totality is unique and that we are justified in speaking of “the Totality”. We also affirm that (11) the Totality is extrinsically infinite: if the Totality were limited by another extrinsic reality, it would imply the preexistence of a higher common sameness that would be the true Totality, contradicting the Totality’s uniqueness. We could also argue that the Totality is intensive, penetrating into all finite realities, so that none of these can delimit it, but this anticipates our introduction of the notion of dynamism, to be developed in the next section. Finally, we affirm that (12) the Totality is intrinsically finite: the finite realities dependent on it for their existence articulate it from within. This intrinsic articulation is an internal limitation which we denote as “intrinsic finitude”. In sum, the Totality is intrinsically finite and extrinsically infinite.

Based on (9), the fact that the Totality is the preexistent universal commonness necessary for the metaphysical opposition between finite things, and as such is irreducible to any one of them, it follows that the Totality is in metaphysical opposition with each and every finite reality: it is the same as they and different from them. This calls for an ulterior metaphysical induction to resolve the opposition. By a reasoning similar to that justifying conclusions (6) and (7), the sameness between the Totality and a finite reality is not reducible either to the Totality or to any one of the finite things, so that this sameness must be independent of the both the Totality and each finite thing. Thus, we metaphysically induce the necessary preexistence of an ulterior reality. This ulterior reality is extrinsically infinite: were it extrinsically finite, it would be finite and incapable of resolving the opposition between itself and the Totality, and certainly incapable of resolving the opposition between any other finite thing and the Totality. This ulterior reality is also intrinsically infinite: were it intrinsically finite, it would repeat the structure of the Totality contradicting its uniqueness (10). We call this ulterior reality “ΑΩ” (“Alpha-Omega”), and conclude that (13) ΑΩ is intrinsically and extrinsically infinite, or more simply, “absolutely infinite”. Since it is absolutely infinite, (14) ΑΩ is unique, for the existence of a repetition would limit it, contradicting its infinitude. Furthermore, its intrinsic infinitude (absolute simplicity) implies that it does not parcel out its existence to the realities that participate in it (as the Totality does): (15) ΑΩ coincides with all existence and (16) the existence of finite realities including the Totality are entirely within ΑΩ. This coincidence of ΑΩ with existence (15, to be understood in the strong sense that ΑΩ = existence) is eternity: we say that (17) ΑΩ is eternal, which can also be designated as the impossibility of ΑΩ’s not existing. From (16), that ΑΩ is the existence of each and every other existent, we have that ΑΩ is not different (in existence) from any other reality. Hence, it is not in metaphysical opposition with any other reality, and there are no further metaphysical inductions to be made: (18) ΑΩ is the ultimate reality. ΑΩ is God.

The whole point of this exercise is not to develop a new metaphysics in five minutes. This metaphysics is in fact being developed over hundreds of pages, and some of its elements are laid out here compactly and over simplified with a view to make the skeptical empiricist doubt his certitude regarding his constitutive ignorance. For example, we have developed a distinction between “horizontal oppositions” and “vertical oppositions” that would clarify the relation between ΑΩ and the rest of reality. Alas, its presentation here would take us far afield from our main purpose, which is to question the prudence of putting Hume’s or Descartes’s epistemology at the center of any ethics or metaphysics. If Hume’s thinking cannot arrive at more than descriptions of contingent realities, and Descartes’s cogito cannot arrive at any certitude beyond that regarding his own existence, why should this reflect badly on all human thinking? Why can we not simply ascribe such poverty of thought to Hume and Descartes alone? What freak induction justifies audaciously attributing to all human persons the limitations of their epistemologies? Solely from the metaphysical opposition implicit between the object and the subject in the cognitive act, we have uncovered 18 truths where the poor fellows could only arrive at two. We have arrived at infinities beyond Hume’s powers of description. We have arrived at the Fount of Descartes’s personal existence. And all these truths are of absolute metaphysical necessity: were they not true, universal annihilation would ensue. If the Totality were not to exist, there could be no common sameness to hold things in metaphysical opposition, and each would collapse into absolute solipsism, and the universe would come crashing down around us. If ΑΩ were not to exist, then the Totality and finite things would collapse into solipsism, and again the end of the world would be upon us. It is not as easy to refute the conclusions of our dialectic as it is to poke fun at the musings of Hume and Descartes.

B -- Dynamism and the constitutive ordering of reality.

According to secularism, God has his “free space” in human society, and that is within churches, and only on Sundays. Every other place in the world on every day of the week is the secular man’s playground, where he can frolic and be free (of God and religious constraints): it is a “no-God zone”. Of course, this is not very fair to God. Any citizen has more right to free speech, to protest, to promote his opinion, business, morality, immorality or amorality than God has. All this may be well and good, or it may not be, depending on ones perspective. But the uncanny thing is how well moral relativism and axiological nihilism play into the secularist program. Comforted by this axiological nihilism, the secularist Catholic can feel free to go to church on Sunday and profess that he “believes in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth...”, for axiological nihilism does not seek to annihilate being and God’s existence; it annihilates only absolute values. Then, unencumbered by oppressive norms and encouraged by moral relativism, the secularist Catholic can “construct” his personal values, so long as they are “tolerant”. Our secularist Catholic can thus feel free to violate the Ten Commandments, after mass, when he has returned to the no-God zone.

In effect, this ideology attempts to uncouple the moral order from the order of being: moral value is not in the thing but only a construction of the mind that perceives the thing. Therefore, having shaken (we hope) the relativist’s faith in the incapacity of his mind to penetrate reality, we must complete our confutation by showing that absolute values somehow are present in the material, contingent realities in the world: we must show that the moral order is rooted in the being of things. To this end, we lean on the notion of dynamism.

We affirm in (6) and (7) the existence of a sameness between two realities (S and O, or X and Y, indifferently) that as their sameness must be present in them and at the same time is independent of them: it is “beyond” them even while it “penetrates” into them. This sameness, which turns out to be the Totality, is the necessary condition for their metaphysical opposition (9). Since it preexists the opposition, and since the opposition depends for its existence on it, the penetrating is correctly conceived as commencing within the unity of the Totality and entering into the individual unity of the opposing individuals. Therefore the Totality is really articulated into a portion that is in itself, and a portion that is in the other (the finite thing). The “stuff” of the Totality is therefore not static and inert, but “intensive”, “penetrative”, that presses centrifugally on another even as it self-adheres centripetally to maintain its own unity and sameness. These two aspects are irreducible to one another, and the Totality is not just one or the other, it is necessarily both concomitantly (were it only one, and became divided, the metaphysical oppositions that it makes possible would disintegrate). This dynamic aspect, which is the Totality and bifurcates in a centrifugal mode and a centripetal mode, we call dynamism. That aspect by which the Totality presses outward we call necessity, and that aspect by which the Totality self-adheres to its center we call sufficiency.

But dynamism is not only given in the Totality. Any finite reality is a composite of aspects in metaphysical opposition, and insofar as these aspects resolve their opposition in the finite reality itself, this reality is a sameness that at once penetrates the aspects and is independent of them: it too is a dynamism, with its own necessity and sufficiency; it is the form of the unity of the “substance” in which the aspects inhere. And ΑΩ, insofar as it is the common sameness that resolves the metaphysical opposition between a finite reality and the Totality, must similarly be a dynamism. Hence we have arrived at three fundamental types of dynamism: ΑΩ is the eternal dynamism endowed with an eternal sufficiency and an eternal necessity, the Totality is the universal (and sometimes we also say “radical”) dynamism endowed with its universal necessity and universal sufficiency; and then there are the finite and contingent dynamisms that are the finite things themselves, endowed with their corresponding finite sufficiencies and necessities. Note that this doctrine on dynamism is drawn directly from what we developed regarding the resolution of oppositions. It is metaphysically necessary and its denial logically implies universal annihilation.

The necessity of each dynamism goes or at least presses “beyond” the unity of the dynamism itself. Where does the necessity go? In ΑΩ, there is no “beyond”, so it must press back upon ΑΩ, forming as it were, an “eternal ring” or “eternal procession”. The Totality’s necessity directly penetrates into the finite realities. But like ΑΩ, the Totality, too, is one (cf. 8, it is a common sameness which would not be the case were it divided, not one). Its universal necessity never goes beyond itself so as to divide the Totality from itself: its necessity must return to the Totality. This stamps on all finite realities a constitutive, direct ordering to the Totality. Similarly, as ΑΩ cannot but be one, its necessity returns to itself stamping on the Totality and all other realities in the Totality a constitutive and ultimate ordering to itself. We conclude that (19) all finite realities are constitutively ordered directly to the Totality, and all realities are constitutively and ultimately ordered to ΑΩ. This conclusion imposes itself with metaphysical necessity: its denial implies universal annihilation: to deny the universal teleology is to deny the universal dynamisms, to deny the universal dynamisms is to deny the sameness of the Totality and the sameness of ΑΩ that hold reality in existence.

There is a natural ordering in things of universal scope that the human mind can know and should respect. The ordering is really in the thing: the human mind does not construct and project value into anything, but only recognizes it already present. This confutes Antiseri’s moral relativism. In Catholic philosophical tradition, the human knowledge of this ordering is called natural law. Our knowledge of its reality does not depend on Catholic religious authority though this confirms it. Therefore, it evokes the respect of everyone: Jews, Buddhists, atheists, terrorists and “Catholic moral relativists”.

C -- God himself is the universal criterion of morality. Testimonies of faith and reason.

Antiseri asserts that a universal and rational criterion for ethical systems is not accessible to the human mind (I). We assert that there is such a criterion, namely God, who makes known the natural law in realities through their metaphysical oppositions, and therefore, through their relations, the manner by which these things are inserted into the Totality and are operative in it. This affirmation is entirely based on what human reason can learn with its own honest efforts, and therefore, obliges every human conscience.

This position is also the position of Catholic divine revelation. St. Paul writes: “For what can be known about God is perfectly plain to them since God himself has made it plain to them. Ever since God created the world his everlasting power and deity – how ever invisible – have been there for the mind to see in the things he has made. That is why such people are without excuse: they knew God and yet they refused to honor him as God or to thank him; instead, they made nonsense out of logic and their empty minds were darkened. The more they called themselves philosophers, the more stupid they grew, until they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for a worthless imitation, for the image of mortal man, of birds, of quadrupeds and reptiles” (Romans 1:19 - 23). Then St. Paul proceeds to connect this failure to recognize God with immoral actions, confirming our position overturning moral relativism, but from a religious perspective.

D -- Moral relativism destroys the open society and contradicts divine revelation.

“Is it possible to have an open society, a democratic society, where the right to be in possession of absolute truth and exclusive values has been appropriated?” asks Antiseri. If man were a demigod, creating truth and values as he strolled through an amorphous world, then this question would make sense. But in fact, God, the Totality, and the universal teleology in created things are preexistent realities upon which all being and human thought depend for their own existence. Therefore, man is not the mythological demigod of liberal fantasy, but the contingent creature who nonetheless is in possession of the astounding powers of mind to discern the existence of these realities, and who can hear the call to humbly conform himself to them.

Yet, if one insists on holding to an anthropology of demigods, then one might have sympathy with Antiseri when he says that “the intolerant person is the one who presumes to know in what the true good consists, to be in possession of that absolute good that he feels legitimate to impose upon his peers, perhaps [even] with the shedding of tears and blood”. One wonders if it is necessary to tolerate the intolerant. Is it legitimate to defend oneself from the intolerance of the criminal intent on robbing ones livelihood, on killing ones person or family, even at the cost of being intolerant of the criminal’s intent? By what right can a court of law impose the punishment of imprisonment on intolerant criminals when clearly such an act would be intolerant of their criminality and of their contempt for the law of a nation? How can the relativist impose tolerance on all the rest of us without violating his own principle of absolute tolerance? If tolerance is absolute, it will be destroyed by the intolerant. It is absurd to consider tolerance an absolute value, it would be the end of the open society. In the open society that would continue in existence, there can be neither demigods, who create their own values, nor absolute tolerance, which permits the creation of values.

Antiseri raises his absolute tolerance to a theological level when he quotes scripture chiding the faithful Catholic for falling before the serpent’s temptation to pretend to possess godlike knowledge, of “knowing good and evil” (cf. Genesis 3). In fact, man does have “godlike” knowledge by nature: he knows that God exists, for example. To understand the true nature of the temptation, it is necessary to know that “God gave the man [Adam] this admonition, ‘You may eat indeed of all the trees in the garden. Nevertheless, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die’” (Genesis 2: 16). Before the temptation, God had already set before man what is good and what is evil, there was no “creating” of values on the part of man. The temptation of the serpent consists of lying to Eve so that she alters God’s “value system” to that suggested by the serpent. The serpent said to her, “God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:3-4). Disbelieving God and believing in the serpent, Eve accepts the serpent’s redefining of what is good and what is evil as her own. She “saw that the [fruit of the] tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye, and it was desirable for the knowledge that it could give” (Genesis 3:6). Thus, she “creates” her alternative values, a value system contrasting with that defined by God. Ironically, Antiseri is closer to falling for the serpent’s temptation than the faithful Catholic who wants to respect and see respected values that he does not dare define for himself, but receives from divine revelation or discerns by right reason. The creation of value, like the creation of being, is a divine prerogative, and its usurpation is what the serpent suggested to Eve, and what Antiseri is suggesting to us as the basis for a Catholic Theology!

There are other theological difficulties. If intolerance is evil and an “anti-value”, then how can we explain Christ’s intolerance as anything but evil? When Christ says, “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters” (Luke 11:23), he reveals an absolute intolerance of those who do not see eye to eye with him. And in the final judgement, this intolerance takes on eternal proportions: “When the Son of man comes in his glory, escorted by all the angels, then he will take his seat on his throne of glory. All the nations will be assembled before him, and he will separate men one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats... Next he will say to those on his left hand, ‘Away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’” (Matthew 25:31-33.41). There seems no way such extreme intolerance can be put in accord with the goodness that Catholic Theology attributes to Christ the Savior.

From both the perspectives of the philosopher and of the theologian, moral relativism and its absolute tolerance of anything and everything must be rejected.

E -- The demigod as insufficient fount of his own hope.

The liberal universe is a finite universe, composed of finite realities. True, the universe that contemporary astrophysics presents us is mind-numbingly large; yet, large is not infinite, and the universe, conceived as the sum of the plurality of its finite constituents, is not more than a finite sum. And since the being of the liberal universe is finite, so too is its goodness. We are obliged now to take liberalism and relativism to task for putting goodness into eclipse by trapping us in a finite universe.

The moment liberalism conceives man in radical opposition with the universe, capable of creating value and thrusting it into the world, both man and the universe limit each other: both must be conceived as finite. Now what is the finite man with infinite aspirations to work for, struggle for and hope for, if there is nothing more than the finite? We hold as proved that man is made for the infinite: it is the constitutive law upon which his personal existence is structured. Any number of scholars and saints have reflected on the mystery of man as a craving for the infinite caged in a finite frame. The boundless zeal of St. Paul, who would give the whole world to Christ, and the fanatic megalomania of Hitler, who would seize it all for himself, are both inexplicable unless we concede that man is made for the infinite. But if the infinite is taken away from him, if goodness is reduced to a measured and stingy remuneration or vanishes outright, what is left to fire the hopes of man, and to motivate his sacrifices to be faithful to his life commitments? He is forced to create his own remuneration as he works, struggles and dies. He must be autonomous, sufficient onto himself. But it is an onerous task to be ones own providence, and the price of being a demigod is high. There may be the momentary thrill of playing God, of pretending to be capable of creating values, of “knowing good and evil”; but even a demigod cannot create the axiological universe without reducing it to his own size. In pretending to create the infinite universe, or even just the values and goodness in the universe, the demigod in reality reduces it to a prison, and himself to a hapless Prometheus. We see in this eclipse of the good the cardinal sin of the liberal world view: liberalism kills man by impoverishing hope. It tricks him into selling away his birthright to the infinite with the candied deception of “creating” his own values, of “knowing good and evil”. It leads him to reject the paternal hand of God. Man must rough it alone. And when in this dreadful aloneness he finds that he is not up to being the providence over his own circumstances anymore than he is up to propelling the movements of the stars, he suffers his despair, too, bitterly alone.

Yet being is infinite, and so too is goodness.

F -- The reaffirmation of the infinite opens man to his liberation and return to God.

The fact which we would counterpose to Antiseri’s “fact of moral pluralism” (cf. I) is that man constitutively aspires to the infinite, even while hampered by his frailty. Man must never be without hope of fulfilling his innermost longing. Depriving man of the infinite is something more than an exile, it is a death sentence. It matters little whether the infinite itself is (speculatively) annihilated by nihilism, or if only man’s intellect is underrated to the point of rendering him incapable of reaching the infinite. Antiseri’s axiological nihilism and moral relativism is such a death. The metaphysics that affirms man’s capacity for the infinite and for God, on the other hand, promotes the life of man. We must vigorously affirm both the existence and the accessibility of the infinite.

G -- The recuperation of the notion of the “good”.

Once affirmed the existence of the infinite, of God and of the Totality, the World is transformed from a disassociated plurality (Antiseri and liberalism’s pluralism) to an organic whole. In section B, we discovered that all finite realities are constitutively in procession into the Totality and God; a universal teleology puts order into all their relations and movements. The sense of the term “good” as that which at once propels and draws the finite realities to their ultimate end is no longer equivocal (as when the infinite is denied): the sense of “good” coincides primarily with God, secondarily with the Totality. Thus, “this food is good for your health” uses “good” in the sense of that conducive to bodily wholeness in existence, to its full insertion into the Totality, to the stability and perfection of the body’s metaphysical opposition with the Totality. “The Word of God is good for you” uses “good” in the sense of that conducive to achieving ones ultimate end in God. The sense of good referencing the Totality is not equivocal to the other sense referencing God. Since the Totality is itself ordered to God, what serves to achieve the Totality serves to achieve God. This ordering derives from the metaphysical participation of the Totality in God, which renders the Totality metaphysically similar to God, and therefore renders the two senses of good metaphysically analogous or similar, not equivocal. While it may in some cases still be true that what is good for one man is bad for another, yet such conflicts are only relative because beyond them is always the one Totality and God. All realities ultimately must converge in harmonious procession into God. It is emphatically false that “metaphysics” causes genocides and wars. A metaphysics that discovers and affirms the existence of a universal good rather encourages men to seek it and to harmonize their common pursuit of it. To the contrary, it is rather the denial of the infinite and of the absolute good that leads to genocides and wars. We accuse relativism, and any ideology that denies the necessary preexistence of the infinite, of leading to precisely such horrors. Our notion of the good is in continuity with philosophical tradition: God and the Totality, as good, thrust good things into existence (realizing the sense of “good” as effusivum sui, as in Plato) and draw them toward themselves (realizing the sense of “good” as final cause, as in Aristotle).

H -- The recuperation of absolute truth.

The notion of truth also is transformed with the affirmation of the infinite. Without the infinite, there can be no more than “your truth” or “my truth”. Since, in the absence of the infinite, reality is conceived as the sum of finite things, so that what is inside one thing or person (for example, my way of thinking) does not necessarily have anything to do with what is in another (your way of thinking). But dialogue is based on a common truth which referees those who dialogue. “Did you pay me in full?” “Yes, check the receipt.” The receipt is an extra-subjective registration of a financial transaction; it is not merely “objective”, for as purely objective, it would be trapped inside a third reality and be inaccessible to the two persons. Dialogue and truth requires an infinite and common third that transcends the two persons in dialogue and which therefore can force each person to respect it (as the necessary condition for their relating; of course, this third is the Totality and God). But Antiseri and liberalism in general deny the infinite, and circumscribe truth within the finite realities of the subjects and object, rendering truth necessarily contingent, finite and therefore partial. However, with the affirmation of the infinite, truth need no longer be partial, it can expand and sink roots into the infinite, and itself can become “infinite”, that is, universal and absolute. Far from enslaving the person, absolute truth is a window that opens onto the infinite good, and furnishes the person’s intellect wings to fly beyond his own narrow subjectivity. Truth liberates. Falsehood, on the other hand, enslaves by alienating the person from his beginning and end in the infinite God and the Totality. It maroons him in his constitutive procession back into God. His becomes a futile existence in which he cannot realize his own plenitude. Moreover, truth, as that opening the person to the common good, opens him to relate with other persons and to collaborate in an open society, a value so rightly appreciated by Antiseri. Diametrically opposed to truth, falsehood closes the person in himself, making him incapable of solidarity and putting the open society at risk. As for totalitarian ideologies, these are not harmful because they are “absolute truths” but rather because they are falsehoods that pretend to be absolute truths: two quite different things. In disparaging truth and practically equating it with falsehood, Antiseri and liberalism unconsciously but really are leading us into totalitarianism with all its attendant horrors. If there is no absolute truth, there is no dialogue and no reasoning, and the conflicts among men who naturally seek the good can only be resolved by violence. Power becomes the absolute value, and the person its instrument. We can only regard it as tragic that in seeking to promote the person and the open society, Antiseri and many others see absolute truth as the enemy and not as the necessary condition for human life and happiness that it is.

I -- The recuperation of the authentic notion of tolerance.

With the affirmation of the infinite, and with the essence of the good and the true in focus, the authentic essence of tolerance is also clarified. We have shown the absurdity of an “absolute tolerance”. The infinite grounds the good, the good grounds the true, and tolerance depends primarily on the good and secondarily on the true as the means by which the mind can access the good. One can tell authentic tolerance from false tolerance in their relation to the good. Authentic tolerance is the suffering of an evil for the sake of the good when extirpating it would only cause worse evil. (Note: authentic tolerance expresses an adhesion to and love for the good!) Many governments have laws against prostitution, but given that the violence necessary to utterly stamp it out would itself be a great evil, choose prudently to tolerate prostitution, that is, not fully enforce their laws against it. To tolerate evil does not mean to accept or to condone it, much less does it mean to disregard the good. It means to suffer it in this imperfect world to preserve a greater good. Thus the authentic notion of tolerance rests on a robust sense of the good and is not to be understood in a world view deprived of the infinite. In fact, the false tolerance of the liberal perspective has no relation to the good, and the liberal relativist in his “tolerance” is quite at ease with evil. “Do good and avoid evil” is less of an imperative, if truth and falsehood are but relative things, and the good upon which the truth opens the mind is as dubious as the relativist truth itself. For this mindset, goodness is perhaps slightly better than evil; and perhaps not even that, for good and evil are only relative things. In the absence of the infinite, the good and truth vanish, and tolerance is reduced to an apathy before the good and any value, and is turned into a political slogan to bash opponents as “intolerant”. But what can such an accusation mean?

Antiseri alludes to the case of abortion: is it intolerant to impose ones view of abortion as the premeditated killing of innocent, unborn human life? But human life is an absolute good (with respect to things in this world, it is nonetheless contingent on God), and the truth of this is absolute: it is not circumscribed in one finite mind alone, or even in many. It is not a human person but the Totality and God that impose this truth. Furthermore, abortion (and indeed, any sin) has the character of twisting the procession of reality off course: infidelity to natural law implies metaphysical perversion in the sinner. This metaphysical perversion, this existential distortion of the teleology constitutive of the human person who does evil, has universal consequences even if the sin is physically done in a private place. Sin is an absolute evil because it is the twisting of an absolute good. On the other hand, the “intolerant” person who opposes abortion affirms the natural law, and therefore, affirms the ordered universal procession that is for the good of all. In trying to call the abortionist back to his true good (to affirming good and shunning evil), he draws the sinner away from self-alienation, from his separating of his innermost self from that good which is truly in him and in the Totality and God. He is working for the reintegration of the sinner into his course into infinity. This is no “intolerance” of the sinner but rather affirms what is good in the sinner. Once the sinner is no longer considered a demigod but one who is realized by pursuing and assimilating the good that he cannot create for himself, then this purported “intolerance” is revealed for the good act that it is: as a liberation.

J -- Mere tolerance.

We believe there is something still worse than an absolute tolerance of evil; and it is worse because it is more subtle: it is the mere tolerance of the good. A healthy person digs into a plate of food set before him. It is a dying person that has no appetite for food, and barely tolerates the smell of it. The “mere tolerance” of the good expresses this lack of appetite for the good, this boredom and apathy of the soul before what ought rather to enthuse it. The spiritual anemia by which people no longer love others and noble ideals, by which they become selfish and turn in upon themselves, may well have its root in the mere tolerance of the good. We see in this spiritual anemia that which is destroying Europe. Its demographic implosion, its incapacity to affirm the goodness of its own historical and Christian identity before the onslaught of islamo-fascism, a violent ideology openly trying to destroy it, and above all its apathy before these omens of its own demise, all manifest a death wish, an extreme exhaustion of living, an existential nausea before goodness itself. This mortal pessimism we identify as the mature and fetid fruit of moral relativism and nihilism. Many are the promotors of “tolerance” as a virtue both civic and Christian, but it is a mask and an excuse for not authentically loving the good, for not promoting it, for not being generous, for not demanding goodness, generosity and honesty in ourselves and in others. Thus, egocentrism has been dressed up as “tolerance” and even as Christian charity, no less! But true Christianity is first in the doing of good and in the shunning of evil, authentic tolerance follows upon them. Christian charity cannot be diluted to the mere tolerance of others; and an authentically open society is composed of people in common pursuit of a mission: the ardent, enthusiastic, alacritous prosecution of the good. Mere tolerance is too weak to unite a society of vibrant, healthy, free human wills energized with hope, but it may suffice to seal the sepulcher of a society of dead souls.

“Apollonius”
(A-poly = not-many, I reject the dissociated "Many" of relativism, and affirm "the One" as sovereign over "the Many".)