More on Far-Right Self-Identification

From commenter Kristor over at Bruce Charlton's Miscellany:

The social order we seek is not, after all, just like the one we had in 1100. It is like the one we will have after the scientific and industrial revolutions, *and* after the collapse of modernism. So, in everything we say about the social order, we must speak in terms of *transcending* the modern. Post-modernism is no good; it’s now widely understood to mean super-duper-modernism. Trans-modernism is no good either, because it sounds like the next intensification of modernism. Ditto for meta-modernism. No; we can’t be about the modern at all. We shouldn’t even mention it, if we can help it.

...

The only thing that occurs to me is teleonomists. It is familiar sounding, thanks to teleology. But it is obscure enough to call for inquiry. It connotes teleology, and our conviction that there are real essential natures to things, that incline them toward teloi; so it connotes our skepticism about the sufficiency of merely stochastic procedures to “explain” anything. It refers back to the pre-Cartesian metaphysic of the Grand Synthesis of the Middle Ages, and to the precedent synthesis of the Early Church. It connotes a rejection of materialism, moral relativism, libertinism, etc. It connotes a confidence in natural law, in the transcendent, and in the final telos of this world in the eschaton. Teleonomists are literally “far or complete tellers,” and “nomos” means “law” as well as “name.” So it works on lots of levels, at least in philosophical and etymological terms.

It doesn’t have to make sense in terms of current political categories. Indeed, it shouldn’t. That’s the whole point.

I am not quite happy with the term, but I have this strong feeling that we need a totally new wineskin, and I can’t come up with anything else that is as good at indicating that we are not about the far past, or the recent past, or its extension into the future, but rather about something that transcends all particular times, and about leaving behind the dead of this age to bury this dead age.

I can imagine the evangelical conversation: “Are you a conservative?” “No, I’m a teleonomist.” “What’s that?” [Notice the curious, open mind, the lack of any knee-jerk animosity such as “Christian” or “Reactionary” would likely provoke] “I think things have real natures, and that if we pay attention to our nature as human beings, we can know what sort of society really works, at least in general. I’m not interested in our current political categories. I think they are all whacked. I’m interested in bringing in something that transcends them.

Comments

[The Continental Op]

I guess all the philosophers will need to muse this one out back in Rivendell or Isengard.

[Red]

Reactionary is my vote. The best bet is turning something negative(and thus somewhat sexy) into a positive word.

[Bill]

The problem with reactionary is that lots of people use it and use it to mean really weird things. I have seen people who yearn for the 1950s or Victorian England call themselves reactionaries.

[Joe]

Just wanted to point out something incredible that many folk miss.... and that is the use of "we" when describing the Middle Ages or other period of Western Civilization over the past 2400 or so years. Is it not amazing that "we" can indeed feel kinship with "those" people and that culture when the link is not tribal/ethnic nor linguistic but "just" a matter of religion? And our peers claim religion (especially Catholicism) is 'divisive'! But there's more. Many of 'us' read the ancient Romans and Greeks and Jews and also think "we" despite even religious differences...because we inhabit the same value-virtue space as they.