We live in a time, in which the degradation of the honor that belongs to the spirit has become a common practice, which no longer impresses in a particular way. To notice it, it is enough to take a careful look at public education, with its conferences, discussions, magazines and with its newspapers; it is enough to observe the bad habits followed in dealing with spiritual things, the language used in this.
Guardini goes on to speak of a ‘moral disorientation’. He suggests that ‘in the judgement of many, the moral act does not compensate for the serious effort it requires’, while for others, who would be ready for such an effort, they simply do not know where to start. They feel ‘lost in chaos’.
Our conscience, he argues, is not a ‘mechanical instrument, a magnetic needle that puts itself in place, but something alive, and everything that is living is prone to error’ While our conscience is our supreme compass, it can nonetheless, lose its own compass. Such reflections by Guardini can be found echoed by Joseph Ratzinger in his Values in a Time of Upheaval. In this collection of essays Ratzinger concluded:
It is indisputable that one must always follow a clear verdict of conscience, or at least that one may not act against such a verdict. But is quite a different matter to assume that the verdict of conscience (or what one takes to be such a verdict) is always correct, ie infallible – for if that were so, it would mean there is no truth, at least in matters of morality and religion, which are the foundations of our very existence.
I am a reader since childhood of many categories of books usually drawn in by my immediate response to leafing through a title I find on the shelf, sometimes in a book catalogue, or in college as the text. A good example of the latter were the two Norton Anthologies of English literature covering, surveying, and presenting English writing from Beowulf to roughly 1968-this in 1974-and in say my International Relations class reading Andre Gunder Frank on Dependency Theory. https://ourpolitics.net/andre-gunder-frank-dependency-theory/ or just roaming the stacks of flea markets, libraries or bookstores looking for whatever came my way.
PC Vulgar Marxist thought controlling all as the dominant ideology in these my years from 1964 to as late as 1984 was a gleam of a distant science fiction world. Today SF State University prohibits free thought. SF State holds the scientific truth is anyone is who they wish to be biologically but NOT racially. Thus allowing students to listen to a biologically female swimmer argue against non biological transgendered man swimming as a Woman -a woman invited to speak by students supporting her view-was bravely shouted down by activists. “College swimming champion Riley Gaines slammed San Francisco State Universityfor praising their students for so-called 'peaceful' protests after she claims she was hit 'multiple times by a guy in a dress' following a speech about saving women's sports.
Gaines, 23, was forced to barricade herself inside a room for around three hours at the San Francisco State University campus on Thursday night after a group of activists ambushed her.
She was giving a speech to students about competing against Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, at the Women's NCAA Swimming Championships last year. It's unclear what exactly set off the fracas but video shows students loudly drowning out Gaines' speech about competing against 'biological males' in women's sports.” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11954485/Incredulous-Riley-Gaines-slams-statement-SF-State-PRAISING-students-peaceful-protests.html
Guardini describes the Kantian belief that the moral law is a law of my “I” as ‘an inner optical illusion’ and an ‘incorrect thesis’ both philosophically and theologically. God, he declares, is not an ‘other’. Rather, ‘my religious relationship with God is determined precisely by that unique phenomenon that is not repeated elsewhere’. This the fact that ‘the more deeply I abandon myself to Him, the more fully I allow Him to penetrate me, the greater the force the Creator asserts in myself, the more I become myself’.
Husserlian phenomenology is rooted in Husserl’s conception of the natural attitude. Husserl was of course a contemorary of Romano Guardini. Stated briefly, the natural attitude is, for Husserl, simply the general positing of the world as something out there and independent, and of myself as a being in the world. Said another way, the natural attitude is essentially a naïve, pre-philosophical realism. Bear in mind, Husserl does not think that (most of the time) we are aware that we are positing the world in this way. Rather, this thesis of the natural attitude is operative behind the scenes in all our normal activities. Thus, the natural attitude forms the basis of ordinary life, as well as of the natural sciences.
Say indoctrination in State and Corporate categories is the natural attitude. Indoctrinated people do not realize the world they posit is only in their head.
https://ko-fi.com/thejournaloflingeringsanity
Thanks for this quote, which helped reinforce one of my own unravelling threads of connection to lingering sanity:
"God, he declares, is not an ‘other’. Rather, ‘my religious relationship with God is determined precisely by that unique phenomenon that is not repeated elsewhere’. This the fact that ‘the more deeply I abandon myself to Him, the more fully I allow Him to penetrate me, the greater the force the Creator asserts in myself, the more I become myself’."
Deep appreciation and respect for what you do here.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/just-wait-whats-coming-welcome-politics-byob-bring-your-own-bullhorn