{"id":2978,"date":"2020-07-23T12:15:09","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T12:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/07\/23\/the-spirit-of-the-left\/"},"modified":"2020-07-23T12:15:09","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T12:15:09","slug":"the-spirit-of-the-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/07\/23\/the-spirit-of-the-left\/","title":{"rendered":"Negativity: The Spirit of the Left"},"content":{"rendered":"

The spirit of the Left is the spirit of negativity. Any intellectually honest person following current events can see that the tendency of leftists is mindlessly to destroy for the sake of destruction what it has taken centuries to build. Transgressive of tradition and its wisdom, these 'progressives' are both hobbled and enabled by their presentism. Hobbled, because they know nothing of the past. Enabled, because their ignorance allows them to imagine themselves to be free of the moral limitations of humanity. Punks and know-nothings for the most part, they are unwitting agents of the demonic.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Faust<\/em>, Goethe gives Mephistopheles the following lines:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint!<\/span>
Und das mit Recht; denn alles was entsteht <\/span>
Ist werth da\u00df es zu Grunde geht;<\/span>
Drum besser w\u00e4r\u2019s da\u00df nichts entst\u00fcnde. So ist denn alles was ihr S\u00fcnde,<\/span>
Zerst\u00f6rung, kurz das B\u00f6se<\/a> nennt, <\/span>
Mein eigentliches Element. (V. 1338\u20131344)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I cannot improve upon Walter Kaufmann's translation:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I am the spirit that negates.<\/span>
And rightly so, for all that comes to be<\/span>
Deserves to perish wretchedly;<\/span>
'Twere better nothing would begin.<\/span>
Thus everything that your terms, sin,<\/span>
Destruction, evil represent —<\/span>
That is my proper element.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"Mephisto<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Vito Caiati (7\/24) responds:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

In yesterday\u2019s post \u201cNegativity: The Spirit of the Left,\u201d which includes an excerpt from Goethe\u2019s Faust <\/em>and which terminates with the statement, \u201cPunks and know-nothings for the most part, they are unwitting agents of the demonic,\u201d you obliquely suggest a lien [Vito slips into French here: link, connection] between the ongoing leftist annihilationist campaign [against] the Western cultural, historical, and religious heritage and malevolent supernatural forces or entities. Am I right in assuming that this was your intention?  Or are you employing the adjective \u201cdemonic\u201d in a more generic, figurative sense to speak of evil?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I mean 'demonic' literally. It is not that the vandals are themselves literally demons, but that they are being used by demonic forces, the "principalities and powers" that St. Paul speaks of.  Here<\/a> is a short video by N. T. Wright on the meaning of the phrase.  Leftism at bottom is nihilistic, and this nihilism has a metaphysical source in the rebellious spirit who "always negates" and can accept no legitimate authority.  So what is playing out before our eyes is something very deep and metaphysical: Unseen Warfare.  Or is that OTT, to use a going abbreviation?<\/span><\/p>\n

Your question also raises the question whether there can be evil without agents of evil.  Aquinas held that evil is a privation with no positive entitative status, a lack of good, privatio boni<\/em>.  A stock example is blindness in the eye: the blindness is a lack of sight. But it seems to that there is a positivity about evil that could only be accounted for by evil agents<\/em>, with evil free wills, for example, the Antifa or BLM thug that blinds a police officer permanently by shining a laser in his eyes, as happened the other night. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The spirit of the Left is the spirit of negativity. Any intellectually honest person following current events can see that the tendency of leftists is mindlessly to destroy for the sake of destruction what it has taken centuries to build. Transgressive of tradition and its wisdom, these 'progressives' are both hobbled and enabled by their … Continue reading “Negativity: The Spirit of the Left”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[163,40,477,531],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leftism-and-political-correctness","category-literary-matters","category-negativity","category-translations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}