Monday 18 June 2012

Modern French Intellectual Chivalry and the Gods of Earth


The revolutionary momentum in France during the 1970s amongst the rural intellectual community was a partial phenomenon latent with Spartanism and the neo-chivalric political philosophy of France often attributed to the 'Priory of Sion'. That chivalry of the French Revolution was strong in liberal intellectual society of France during that time period was also copied by the neo-conservative (ex-liberal) political elites of America. [For chivalry (is) the true gesture of Christ: the French conception of the evangelical will of Christ is not one of a soteric god, a saviour of man or a "bleeding heart liberal", as pessimists would conceive it.] Instead it is the reverse; Christ was the great executioner of original intellectual chivalry who employed his wisdom as an Erasmian weapon [a.e., "the pen is mightier than the sword"], that he used to throw off skeptics and their demagogues. The titanical philosophy of the great intellectual chivalrists of that era was one of egalitarian devotion to Christ and protection of his genealogy. Their work was later misread by patriotic nationalists who found a perfect source for intellectual exemplarism in support of their militarism. Leftists today only recollect their legacy in the image made of them by the American patriots and have been labelled as possessors of titanism. Titanism however, in Masaryk's interpretation, is essentially atheistic. Wether fairly or unfairly, Masaryk uses the example of Nietzsche and of his superman as the embodiment of titanism. The Nietzschean superman is but a myopic fighter without reason, a miniature titan, an anti-man of mere negation. Phlegmatic, opulent, adipose and hypertrophied the titan resembles less of a man than a creature of the sea; an ichthyocentaur, as depicted in Raphael's Triumph of Galatea.

   Lured by the beauty of myths humanity holds so dear, the imagination is left to wander in an enchanted world of divine and human mythology. This harmony between gods, men, beasts, centaurs and chimeric beings should make clear that the gods of mythology could just as well have indulged in the sordid, confused passions men often attributed to them ([i.e., breeding or intermixing their genetics with the creatures of the Earth.)] In actuality, the gods and half-gods were human only in appearance. In reality they represented the ideal of humanity. Nietzsche's superman, the ideal man of exalted and glorified nature, is kindred in spirit to that of the genius of divine tragedy. Van Gogh; the self-martyring artist, banned from the rest of society, both aped and envied, forced to self-martyrdom by his own admirers he becomes an object of glory for all those who deceptively placed spiritual illuminations and halos of superstition above their heads. This is the age-old dream of solitary madmen and of the more dangerous ones who combine to form clandestine and elite secret societies. The members of these elite societies are individuals who, with inflamed passions, seek their ideal in the living mind of the divine genius, the master race, the breed of lords of the Earth to which they believe they belong, and which, in their opinion, existed formerly and will exist again on the Earth. They turn to palaeontology and to the palingenetic theory, rearranged to suit their own purposes in order to persuade themselves and their flock of the truth of their faith. If it were not for their extremely innocent and childlike minds these men would not have been so deiceived by the unexplained and would not have used deceptive methods of propaganda against their mass. Absolute power corrupts absolutely but so does secrecy and deception. Only an innocent mind, an innocent group of illumined men, could be so deceived by an alien presence, which neither they nor the public understands fully, that it would seem natural to attribute it to themselves and to a philosophy of change.