I think the search for a sacred politics is a profound one. Unfortunately, authors like Evola are proposing a fascist (or super-fascist) solution to the problem of disenchantment. We need political forms of the sacred that can flourish and support multi-ethnic, religiously pluralistic democratic societies. It will require much work and imagination from Catholics! I attempted to articulate this problem in another online journal a few years back.
I find it much easier to point to the lack of the sacred in various aspects of the modern West than to any solution. (Indeed, I don't think there is any one solution.)
If compelled to try and articulate a coherent explanation of my viewpoint, I suppose I'd say something like this. Most of us are bathed in a culture that obscures natural human responses to the transcendent. Recovering that sensitivity is still possible however. (Scruton's emphasis on beauty and the sacred as transcendent qualities available in immanence is probably my model here.) Evola and Ertugrul provide a sort of shock treatment in politics: most humans have not and do not think like us, so why are we so sure we're getting it right politically?
I certainly don't think either restoring 13th century Turkish tribal society or Evola's superfascism are solutions! And given the nature of, say, contemporary Scotland, some sort of Catholic Integralism is a pipedream. But some sort of blind, mole -like pursuit of improvement is perhaps possible. A greater sense of the fragility of civilisation? The dangers of immanentising the eschaton? Who knows? (Currently, I'd settle for the Church of Scotland not demolishing every church building built before 1970! https://stmoluagscoracle.substack.com/p/a-letter-to-the-church-of-scotland )
I think the search for a sacred politics is a profound one. Unfortunately, authors like Evola are proposing a fascist (or super-fascist) solution to the problem of disenchantment. We need political forms of the sacred that can flourish and support multi-ethnic, religiously pluralistic democratic societies. It will require much work and imagination from Catholics! I attempted to articulate this problem in another online journal a few years back.
https://regensburgforum.com/2021/08/30/of-rights-and-rites/
I find it much easier to point to the lack of the sacred in various aspects of the modern West than to any solution. (Indeed, I don't think there is any one solution.)
If compelled to try and articulate a coherent explanation of my viewpoint, I suppose I'd say something like this. Most of us are bathed in a culture that obscures natural human responses to the transcendent. Recovering that sensitivity is still possible however. (Scruton's emphasis on beauty and the sacred as transcendent qualities available in immanence is probably my model here.) Evola and Ertugrul provide a sort of shock treatment in politics: most humans have not and do not think like us, so why are we so sure we're getting it right politically?
I certainly don't think either restoring 13th century Turkish tribal society or Evola's superfascism are solutions! And given the nature of, say, contemporary Scotland, some sort of Catholic Integralism is a pipedream. But some sort of blind, mole -like pursuit of improvement is perhaps possible. A greater sense of the fragility of civilisation? The dangers of immanentising the eschaton? Who knows? (Currently, I'd settle for the Church of Scotland not demolishing every church building built before 1970! https://stmoluagscoracle.substack.com/p/a-letter-to-the-church-of-scotland )