• 00:01:00 How Thaddeus got into philosophy and theology in the first place?
• 00:05:45 How political pluralism should work? Is the US actually pluralistic?
• 00:12:23 Has liberalism built a super structure of metaethics on top of religions. Are religions (too) boxed in by the liberal structure? How has our consciousness already been changed by this structure?
• 00:19:13 Is the treatment of religions and reality comparable? How should philosophy deal with quantum physics?
• 00:30:03 What did postmodernism contribute to the current state of philosophy?
• 00:35:03 What did Friedrich Nietzsche really try to tell us in 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'? How much of his depression should be attributed Christianity?
• 00:39:03 Why are so many people falling out with active Christianity? Is it connected to the different role of idolatry (the replacement of the divine) between the older Abrahamic religions and the New Testament?
• 00:45:02 What kind of love is the most fulfilling - self-centered or selfless?
• 00:51:02 How does Ayn Rand's philosophy (Objectivism) fit into the high regard that is given to selfless love by philosophers? Is altruism self love or selflessness?
• 00:53:01 Why do we have this endless potential of addiction? Is addiction a coping mechanism for reality? Does it help us reconcile long-term and short-term goals? Is it better than being stuck in place?
• 00:57:34 Is religion a system of societal error correction? Do religions give you better life goals (and free you of addictions). Have religions become too lazy and are not challenged enough? Has postmodernism shown us how uncontested religious ideas are a problem?
• 01:07:13 Is the catholic church a good model for a 'world government'?

Thaddeus Kozinski is a professor of theology and philosophy at the Divine Mercy University. He is the author of Modernity as Apocalypse: Sacred Nihilism and the Counterfeits of Logos and The Political Problem of Religious Pluralism: And Why Philosophers Can't Solve It.

You may watch this episode on Youtube - Thaddeus 'the Catholic' (Pluralism, Liberalism, Postmodernism, Idolatry, World Government).

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Today's welcome to the judgment call podcast really appreciate thanks for coming You're welcome. Thanks for having me on torsten. Hey, absolutely I looked into you a little bit and there's two books that you wrote and it stood out and got quite a bit of recognition One is where you talk about what role does religious pluralism have in society? How nation states should actually be a construct and is that even possible which we all think it is right? So that's kept I guess the consensus and the other book that I took a quick look at is How Catholicism really fits into modern society and what what happened to Catholicism? Because it went through so many changes at least the public perception during the last 100 years So i'm excited to talk about this and you're also just in that before when we spoke earlier you mentioned A couple of other topics that I think are really relevant to today's discussion about what's going on in the world So maybe like my first question is how did you start with philosophy and how do you select those topics? So why are certain things closer to your heart like those topics? We just talked about and others that you come across from what you feel others are not as relevant to you You just leave them by the wayside a little bit well, I I started out in college as a pre med major math and science Towards my junior year I was reading And I wasn't practicing religion at this point. I was kind of a Nietzschean In my in my behavior and thought even though I didn't know who Nietzsche was, you know what I mean? I was sort of uh, I was a de facto Nietzschean living for extreme extreme experiences trying to defy uh the status quo you know Trying not to be a conformist all that and I was searching though at that point And I I actually read one particular book which sort of opened up a whole new world to me And was called the screw tape letters by c.s. Lewis Have you heard of the book? I have not no I have not so the screw tape letters are fictional letters written from uh a devil in hell called screw tape To his nephew wormwood and the whole book is about how to How to get this one particular individual into hell and so what lewis does is he incorporates a lot of uh social commentary and spiritual truth in this But what happened to me when I read that was I thought wow, this could be true There really might be the spiritual world out there of of truth of comprehensive metaphysical spiritual truth And I I really felt the the the reality of that from this book It really it really floored me And so at that point I got really interested in reading reading these things. Um reading spiritual works of lewis and uh other other theologians and That got me interested in moving away from the sciences into philosophy and theology and so um I then uh Enrolled in a program called uh saint john's college uh in anapolis, maryland, which teaches the great books only They're one of the first great books colleges and I took the master's program there and read through the whole canon of great works All the philosophy theology literature history that I didn't really get uh undergraduate Um as I was going through that program. I discovered playdough who became uh, I just fell in love with his writings especially the republic And what really floored me was his discussion of democracy and book eight of the republic Where he basically says that he depicts democracy as a kind of relativistic Carnival of everyone doing their own thing and everybody's happy and self satisfied Except that it's the beginning of tyranny For playdough because what happens is is in that vacuum the tyrant Is born and the tyrant is completely a slave to his passions and makes everybody else enslaved to his will And that just floored me. I never I never read anything like that and it he also described the way in which the political order is Uh, a kind of macrocosm of the order of the soul And that was also uh new to me and that got me interested in political philosophy And uh, I had also become interested in the catholic intellectual tradition, particularly its philosophical tradition Combinating in st. Thomas Aquinas So I went to catholic university and and took 12 courses Uh in for my phd. Uh, a lot of them on st. Thomas Um, I discovered allister mackentire's writings at this point and his radical critique of secular liberalism Um, and I also discovered the social encyclicals of the popes, especially leo the 13th Um, where he talked about what a christian political order looks like and should look like and how it connects to the truths of the gospel And so at that point I decided I wanted to write um, my dissertation on Uh, what I call in my in my book that came out of that the political problem of religious pluralism um Looking at plato looking at Aristotle looking at Aquinas looking at jack baritain allister mackentire john walls Um and seeing what the problem really was Uh in our culture And and that's what I tried to um Figure out in that book. Yeah, that sounds fascinating. I mean those are I I feel I've only even heard of the subset of those books And I've only read a couple um of them as well. Um, this sounds really fascinating when when we look into Let's say a popular opinion is that political pluralism So the the the ability to To and compass all kinds of religion into one nation state kind of what the what the u.s. Um It kind of isn't because it's kind of based on a on a christian philosophy, but it kind of Um prides itself in disability to it. So any anyone with any kind of religion and have anyone that have a guaranteed ability to To practice that religion and bring it into this this microcosm of what's modern, um america First question would be do you feel america is? Pluralist is really pluralist as you would perceive it and be what do you think it's not working out so well? Uh the answer to the question of whether we have a genuine plurality of And even and even from the beginning of the founding is genuinely pluralist is is no Um, and you have to sort of think about what it means to be pluralist. Um Uh, you know John Locke in his letter on toleration Um said that uh, the the true the mark of the true church is toleration Uh, he also said every church is orthodox to itself And in his uh Other writings maybe including that one as well. He He forbid uh, both atheists and catholics to be part of this New enlightened, uh, social contract. The reason he did that is because he had a suspicion there that Neither the atheists nor the catholic could actually abide by Uh, the kind of implicit rules of the social contract and what the rules are there is a sort of religious relativism Um, in other words, uh, you could you could practice your religion your philosophical doctrines Whatever you think about values, uh, in the civil sphere in the sphere of private life But when it comes to public life when it comes to the laws Uh, when it comes to the the sort of life of the common good, it's the civil society that determines these things Well, what that means though is that the civil society the political, uh, authority has decided that no religious truth or institution such as the catholic church Has any political authority whatsoever has any authority to determine Um, you know Uh Reality, uh, it's like like he says every church is orthodox to itself So, um, in my opinion lock was was pretty much an atheist. Um, and his his christian noises were superficial and rhetorical What he's really setting up was the first secularist purely secularist state And that is indeed what we have in the united states. It's not a christian, uh, nation It may have been full filled with christian citizens from the the colonies But uh, insofar as you have the constitution and declaration what you really have is a secular regime Uh, where religion is, uh, ultimately privatized And and the church has no political, uh, moral authority whatsoever And so what I mean by saying that pluralism doesn't mean that it's not a christian nation Pluralism doesn't exist is that in order to, um, you know, live in an american culture You have to kind of adopt at least de facto or a modus fivendi A kind of strict separation Of your deepest held beliefs And and the and the common good in the political order, but this is this is a very, um Uh, distorted and perverted way of understanding, uh, your religion Um, the catholic religion for instance has things to say about the common good about the truth and about the purpose of human life It has things to say about, um What political authority is where it comes from and how laws should be made and what and what they should be ordered to It's not a private institution In fact, it has a higher authority than any state because it was instituted by god himself Now when you when you go around and interview catholics about that issue Um, and I was first introduced to this way of understanding political theology by reading leo the 13 Specifically his encyclical called immortale day on the christian constitution of states Most catholics and christians and theistic believers in general um When you ask them the role of their religious beliefs their practices their church um In relation to public authority political authority the culture they will give you an answer That is more or less lockian Which means that we're all lockians now, which means that we're not really pluralist Okay, we have superficial differences in our religious confessions, but we're all accepting a certain understanding of the relation of church and state of the supernatural the natural of reason and faith of nature and grace of um Of the sacred and the profane We're all basically accepting a more or less lockian enlightenment Uh liberal view and I'll just finish with this. Alistair McIntyre says um, what we have in our society are Radical liberals and conservative liberals, but we're all liberals and there isn't a place in public discussion where Liberalism itself is put to the critique is put under scrutiny Because what what's really going on is our our religion is big l liberalism and most people are Are basically practicing denominations of big l liberalism Catholic liberalism protested liberalism even muslim liberalism Atheist liberalism, but the problem is is that the the the main architectonic mode of understanding your own beliefs The relation to your life the relation to public life Uh are all filtered through this ideology Which is antithetical actually to authentic traditional um religious and metaphysical truth Yeah, so if I follow this correctly What and this is this is certainly interesting What do you say we don't have the pluralism because the flow of the religions on its they don't really stand on its own they're not able to To express all the knowledge that they have they stop short of this and we have this this the super meta meta Physics on the method ethics on top of that that actually determine the place of religion So religion cannot grow out of its place of boxing and every religion is hope it's in a similar box So to speak but the actual That the the meta ethics that we have accepted is liberalism and that is something we don't really see right So this is something that came off the enlightenment when we talk about religions all the time But we all feel and I I see this slightly different But I think the popular consensus is this is something that helped the old people It doesn't help us as much anymore. It's still around but the utility has gone down That's kind of what I get from most guests here on the podcast They say if it even has the utility it's so small we can ignore it. I I see that differently I feel there is quite a bit of utility still left But the actual superstructure now is how do we We how do we determine and I mean there's a nation state. There's a global government something that we all expect to happen in The year let me just sit on top of that, right? Let me just jump in with the way you frame that it's very interesting Um, most people don't see any utility now in religious belief and practice. You see more utility That's exactly liberalism liberalism, uh makes everything a means to an end Even those things that are ends and so the idea of looking at religion As a useful thing like even george washington or john ams. I forgot who was said, you know Um religion is good for you know, uh american culture keeps people good and you know, okay The whole idea of religion Of truth of god himself is that it can never be Merely a utilitarian good it is that which everything else is ordered to including the political order Uh, and so but I'm just reading i'm just reading nicolas weight. That's something I I and I think it it goes to the quarter I'm just reading nicolas weight and uh, I think he's getting to the heart of it as as well as as I I couldn't he's really going into so what is the survival value? What is the utility value not just in making us richer, but actually it's a viable value. So why are Religious groups usually blessed with a higher fertility rate. So that means we have more likely answers to those of more religious people as non religious people there's especially good example with the roman empire where in the the older greek Parts the fertility rate was terrible kind of what we what we see right now And in the new christian population, which was initially very small. It was a huge fertility rate so they basically took over the roman empire from within and I I strongly believe they this the utility the survival is the ultimate Utility out there because we all need to survive and our genes need to survive and I think this is this group evolutionary um Biology in terms of how would your group can survive and I think it really illustrates as well I think this is where religion fits in so well and I think this is still true This hasn't changed and I think any kind of superstructure we put on top of this will never change that No, I agree with you that those who get married and have indecisible marriages Tend to have healthier lives too. That's true too. Um, I mean these are all the benefits. Uh, you might say of of living a A life that perfect your soul. There's going to be um, you might say fringe benefits, but again What we're dealing with in the area of religion? um Is something that evolutionary biology can see in from a certain lens, but ultimately it's it's not really what it is It's not what it's about. It's not it's um, again, it's it's we're dealing with so when you mentioned survival as being the only end That's not true or that's debatable at least physical survival Um, obviously the the christian religion teaches us that the ultimate purpose of life is eternal salvation, but god this life is a trial It's not meant to just be a long life or even survival um, and so, um, you know that truth trumps all other true scientific philosophical economic evolutionary biologist biological But let me let me just get back to something. I just want to sort of give you a couple instances of of my thesis about the way in which um Consciousness is transformed by uh, second liberal secularism even in even in religious people um, the the most caricature example is is mario qualmo saying Uh in the 90s, perhaps I forgot it was that you know, I'm personally opposed to abortion, but uh publicly. I support it So we're dealing with an issue of something where you're he's completely divided in his public life and his in his life as a governor um He's going to promote what what he believes privately is the is the murder of unborn babies Because that's what he's supposed to do as as a good, uh, american uh, politician The other example is um, justice kennedy in plan parenthood versus kasey supreme court decision in 1995 Just kennedy is a catholic and he he gave this um This this this statement as a kind of basis for this decision which had to do with abortion rights um at the heart of liberty Is the right to define one's concept of existence? of meaning of purpose Uh of the cosmos and the meaning of human life So if you think about this, um, that's like a first commandment. You have the right to determine reality. It sounds like nichia most um And that is the basis of liberty as uh, david dc schindler has uh come out in a book Very helpful. Yeah, I highly recommend, uh, a book called freedom from reality by dc schindler our catholic theologian um He he argues that that freedom has become um, the ultimate end, but what what what freedom is is potency over actuality in other words the constant um multiplication and availability of options Each option is equally insignificant non teleological Non authoritative but as long as you have the option you're in this Perpetual state of potency to to change your life to to make decisions to change your gender or whatever it is That understanding is a metaphysical understanding. It's false. Um, it It basically is a kind of a front to the actuality of reality of god. It makes us determiners of reality That's very well articulated by justice kennedy there And so these are the deep metaphysical Um problems the metaphysics even before the spiritual the metaphysics is what we're dealing with We have a kind of liberal metaphysics that is Uh, colonizing everyone's thinking and acting and they don't even realize it that that's what I see Yeah, I think this is a fascinating view that I agree with you that isn't really put out into debate as as much and uh, you know, I just said alexander barton a couple of episodes ago And it's something he he's been pondering with is basically when I when I read his books correctly and there's a lot in there is We we we gonna see reality More like quantum physics and what he means by this is quantum physics basically does away with this one true reality one Unmeasurable reality. We suddenly have maybe multiverses. We suddenly we can't really say where the particles are We know they are somewhere in that club, but we can't measure them if we do they go it goes away, right? So I think that is there is in philosophy Especially there is a way to deal with this this problem that the what's kind of there? What's newton's problem right newton felt we can solve this we can find the ultimate truth The ultimate truth is close to where god is and once we find out the ultimate truth We just we just scale up and I think this is what we did with the with the enlightenment But now we we realize that there's so many different truths out there So the speed of light is the truth, but can we overcome it? Yes There's a lot of different ways now We also know that quantum physics and on its basic philosophical challenges It doesn't work with any of the truth, you know spiritual spiritual or physical But the physics can't I mean if you're modern day physicists and want to describe That quantum physics you you sound like crazy person you sound like or you're in some crazy philosophy you sound worse than the Lenin and What I'm trying to say is what do we challenge if we say if we challenge or if we adopt this view that there is not just one single reality Is quantum physics? And the way we see the world there which is it seemingly from my point of view ultimately that there is no single truth There's no single worldview. Isn't that what we do with religions right now? And don't we have to Look don't we have to be guided by quantum physics and philosophy because ultimately we have to solve that Yeah, well, I think a good author on this question is Wolfgang Smith He's wrote he's written quite a bit on quantum physics and theology And he makes a distinction between the mathematical modeling Uh in the natural sciences, especially in the modern enlightenment modeling view a representational view and the sort of deeper perennial philosophy understanding of reality There is of course an interplay between human knowledge and interpretation and perspective and and the real And it's not as if the enlightenment view from nowhere where all we have to do is come up with this um airtight universal cultureless historic history lists Perfect Cartesian kind of modeling where we can then see reality as it is regardless of perspective Regardless of religious belief Relate regardless of our historical cultural situation I think the good thing about post modernity And and I guess quantum physics is that it's taken away that naive realism Uh about how we encounter reality, but I think we go too far When we make statements like you made where there's more than one reality or there is no architectonic, uh, You know metaphysical reality that we can know as it is Um, I could just give you a pretty clear example of how that's self contradictory. Um The law of non contradiction in logic can never be violated Um, so no matter what you you may think that physics is telling us the statement that For instance, there is more than one truth. Okay, that statement itself is either true or false um, if it's true then it's then Then then that statement itself is either true or false about that multiple reality But now you have the easy way out would be making it um Making it relatable to the observer kind of what would Einstein did, right? So if if you move if the if you take the the the movement of the observer into account That's how suddenly the the space time was suddenly not the same I mean space time is still the same but the the time works differently depending on how quickly well But but see that's that's easy way out, but but that statement itself is not perspective. Uh, it's not perspectival. It's absolute uh to say something like um reality is is uh Is determined to some extent by the Perceiver is that statement itself? Uh perceptually determined because if it is then someone else might have a different perception and not accept that what i'm getting at is You you you fall you fall against the rockhard reality of the law of noncontradiction Aristotle said uh in his um in his law in his organ on um when he dealt with uh the law of noncontradiction Um, he did not try to prove it That demonstrate the truth of this principle. The principle is something cannot be and not be at the same time in the same respect Okay, x is x Uh x is not not x. Okay, this sort of what do we do about the multiverse? Say let's assume for a moment the multiverse is is all the possible options in your life and all of our lives They exist somewhere else. There's an unlimited amount an infinite amount of universe. So let's assume it for a moment It's a theory and might never be proven. Whatever. Well, let's assume it's true, right? And we what what that actually what the universe could be is just a quantum computer So we're just a random fluke could be could be Very different anyways So if if we say it's true in that universe and we by definition can't see outside the universe But the opposite is true in the next universe just like a one one consciousness away What do we do about that fact? Um, because the highest order that we look at are all the multiverses at the same time And maybe there is an observer that can see all of them at the same time not us. We have limited to one universe All right do about that. I I'm I'm still I don't think you're tracking the fact that That you still don't you still can't escape the law of non contradiction. Okay if you have one if I say to you that there are multi universes and We can only understand our one universe Um, you should say to me. Well that might that statement itself That you could only know one of the multi universe one of the universes multi universe that that statement itself is only true For the one universe we're in In another universe. It's true that we know all the universes now when you think about that When you think about that's all right another call when you think about that it doesn't it doesn't work. It's self contradictory um It's either the case that we are limited to our perspective to one universe or we're not It's not the case that in some other universe That doesn't apply. You really can't deny the law of non contradiction. So let me just get to what I think Is the upshot of of quantum physics and all this it's this That we do have limited understanding Of reality a great book on this is mysticism by Evelyn underhill. It's the classic work on mystical knowledge. Okay You read way more than I do and I read a lot Well, no, we read we read different. There's an awesome recommendations. No, there's an awesome recommendation mysticism by Evelyn underhill A beautiful a beautiful amazing work by the great mystical writer English writer anglican Um, but what what she gets out of that book and and this is also uh In treatises about negative theology right st. John of the cross for instance um We certainly have um Limited understanding reality is inexhaustible reality is In a in a certain extent infinite. Okay, because it reflects the infinity of God Now at the same time, that's true. God has given us the power of intellect the power of human reason um, which is able to understand reality as it is um, accurately Not perfectly in the sense of exhaustively comprehensively we never stop learning we never stop plumbing the depths of reality in heaven. I believe We will spend an eternity inquiring and thinking and questioning and wondering Um, the beginning of philosophy is wonder Because we wonder why the thing is the way it is that wonder Uh is concludes in knowledge Okay, where we figure out the cause of the effect that we're wondering about whether it's a balloon going up or whether it's quantum physics That knowledge that we have Uh is maybe accurate, but it's provisional in the sense that there may be more truths to learn about this But this is but this this way of understanding knowledge as asymptotic and inexhaustible Is not the same as postmodern skepticism Um, I mean there is something called a scientific method. There is something called certainty in metaphysics and philosophy It starts out in the principles of logic. It's not it's not like there'll be another universe Where the law of noncontradiction isn't true. That's unthinkable. It's unreal Um, I mean it's like saying god can both exist and not exist at the same time And now we know this because of quantum metaph quantum physics What quantum physics as as far as I understand it is teaching us is something about the mystery of being And something about the indeterminacy of matter now. That's something Aristotle knew 25 hinge years ago. Aristotle said matter is intrinsically potency. It has no determinability It's determined by form and in so far as form Is never going to fully be able to Uh bring matter to perfection in this life. There's always going to be a certain kind of uncertain to your Uh Imperfection in our knowledge of material objects as matter itself is indeterminate I think that's what quantum physics is telling us. There's an indeterminacy in in in matter As you get to the reality, I think that's the problem that they can't perceive reality or that That reality becomes things that we are not used to obviously We will find a higher level of obstruction and then we will maybe come back to the ultimate place of reality Can I can I hold you there for one second? Yeah, go ahead Postmodernism a lot of people describe things to postmodernism that it isn't and I think a lot of stuff isn't postmodernism People don't realize. Okay. Well, what's your reading of postmodernism? Not necessarily what we just talked about just what is reality, but what do you feel is is is reading with What did it contribute to to where we are right now in philosophy or maybe there isn't anything useful? well, um In one way postmodernism is nothing more than another Mode or level of modernism. It's not its own thing. I think it takes certain Patterns and trajectories that are found in the Enlightenment and brings them to a logical conclusion So for instance, if you want to say that Nietzsche is the first postmodern perhaps, right? What did Nietzsche do? Well, he took the Enlightenment inheritance Of this kind of evacuated a very very um anemic understanding of reality that that came from Enlightenment science and social sciences Um, and he looked at it and said, you know, this is this is a house of cards This is this is merely just a prejudice of a kind of uh, the last man as bourgeois emaciated You know nonheroic non tragic Uh, person who wants to be able to control his his life and and have comfort and security Um, and Nietzsche said look this is this is just inhuman. This is disgusting. This is aesthetically ugly Uh, and he was right in that sense now Because the secular Enlightenment ideology was a kind of reductionism Um, it it looked at all those, uh elements of human life, uh the mystery of life drama religion the sacred Uh, the Dionysian and it tried to kind of neuter it with a kind of, uh, soft Apollo apollinary and You know Mathematization and and and Reductionism it is disgusting. Um, and he called and he said the last man blinks, right? God is dead Uh, do you know what we've done? Do you know how to uh, drink up the sea and and he blinked the last man blinks because He has no comprehension of even Nietzsche's question So in that sense what Nietzsche was pointing to was a kind of dead end In the Enlightenment now what Nietzsche did though was he instead of trying to return to or progress towards a more Adequate notion of human reason and human will um He abandoned the whole desire of truth at all And he really rejected the creaturely status of human beings. He basically said we're not even creatures. We're gods um The the the the whole sort of uh perennial uh understanding of of humanity beginning with with with homer but but proceeding from Plato and on is that we are participants in Uh reality we are creatures in in a reality that we can know and love and perfect ourselves in uh, Nietzsche wanted to throw all that out because he he saw it uh, resulting in Because it's misreading of christianity uh, resulting in um, uh, uh, a kind of inhuman Uh bloodless kind of kind of enlightenment science Well, that's and and heidegger had the same critique, right? Um in his in his writings But but but I think what Nietzsche did was he threw out the baby with the bath water as it were use a cliche um, because in the end We can't we can't defy Reality and determine it. It's there It beckons us to conform to it to participate in it because ultimately it's the reality of god and so um postmodernism in in its good in a good sense tries to tell us that there's a kind of mystery and um Uncertainty in our human knowledge in a bad sense postmodernism then becomes the enlightenment Uh on steroids when it makes claims like There is no truth. There's only perspective. Um, there is no ability to uh to have uh, you know, metaphysical knowledge These are dogmatic ideological Certainties the kind of certainties that it was supposedly upset about in the enlightenment Right. I don't know where you read those out. Um, I mean, I read some photos and there and they definitely don't mention this So the idea that there is no truth. There's multiple truths. Yes, but there is no truth No, or there's maybe that's that's what you're saying just in different words So maybe that's that's what where the confusion comes from for myself Um, but when I read Nietzsche do I feel he is and I just read the the the thus books our sister Uh last week again, and I felt many this guy's depressed and he's going to the he's coming up into the month He's going to the cake and comes down. It's like, oh my these people don't get it, right? I feel he's not seeing and that surprised me that you you were you totally well I don't know enough about your model of thought But I felt like he is he is too critical of what's going on in his own social environment or what's going on in germany at the time Right, sure. Right. Yes, and he attributes this to christianity, which might be true or not But I grew up in Germany. I know these people are very secular now and they still live in the same very small minded Yes, not great environment for someone who has a philosophical philosophical mind or any kind of Inquiring mind like Nietzsche. So I think he he had the good of all this to christianity, which I think is not true at all Um, there's a lot of the things you should have made and I think he I don't know what it was Maybe he didn't have enough social content. He didn't have enough people not enough statesmen not enough, um, bishops to talk to He never got there because there's a lot of greatness in In what the old testament in utah summit can teach us and he was seemingly never interested in this That's how I read at tsc Maybe he he was and then he got really disappointed never wrote about it But in his books I never see he never explained the greatness of christian dot No, he didn't he miss he look he had a problem. He was raised by his sisters see I mean, um, look, there's a lot going on psychologically But and I do I do admire Nietzsche spirit in some ways, but it ultimately became demonic I mean, uh, in other words, we have to always remember that the word became flesh logos the logos Okay, e michael jones is very good on this. He just wrote a book called logos rising on the history of logos and history of Of um, what he means by logos is the being of things the reality of things um And st. John's gospel in the beginning was the logos the arcay in greek um What this means is the ultimate reason of things the ultimate reality of things we are not determiners of this We are participants in it. We are able to articulate it We're able to live in it participated, but ultimately We are not its determiners and the ultimate way of living What we're here for is to conform our wills to the divine will Okay, and Nietzsche said no I am going to determine Reality by my will And who wants to join me now? That's ultimately satanic Okay, that's ultimately satanic. That's ultimately um, a blasphemous rejection of god's reality Now we don't want to idolize the language so derrida the deconstructionists I've read derrida. I understand what he's doing. He's saying that words um Are referencing other words. We have to be careful not to idolize our linguistic apparatus as if it were The same as the the deep reality we encounter. I can understand that um deconstructing um language Uh might be a way of allowing god's reality to come forth. This is this is what the negative theologians say This is what meister eckhart says. This is what the cloud of unknowing says st. John of the cross um catholic theology understands that although our language Derives from and is able to penetrate into reality because god is language. He is the word We have to recognize that they're still created things our concepts are created our words are created the uncreated Um is an infinite uh distance between anything created. We don't want to become idolaters So in so far as deconstructionism post modernism A quantum theory however you want to put it in so far as it works as a hammer to destroy idols Which masks and counterfeit reality? I think it's a good thing, okay? But in so far as that post modernism deconstruction itself becomes an idol a counterfeit And deprives people of participation In god's reality. I think it could be demonic and evil And so that's that's how I that's how I would put it That's an interesting interesting way to look at this. You know, I I talked to a lot of christians And many of them are not practicing christianity much, you know, maybe a christmas Um, yeah, me too I find this a really odd thing there in there. You know, I asked a lot of people Why did you kind of leave the catholic church or why you end up practicing and they're like, um, They don't really have an answer But then they seem to know it's the right thing to do for them personally, right? And they seem to be in good company because when I go back to germany, for instance, this church is everywhere But literally no attendance outside of christmas but What what I find that interesting a lot. I feel like when I when I read the Quran and it's really strict rules on idolatry Yeah, I think makes a lot of sense that to me goes all the way back to the Torah and it's just taking it It's spelling it out the