Idealism, Nobility of Soul, XIV – Idealism, Yes. But What Ideal?

“When the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain, the Lord summoned Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up” (Ex. 19, 20)

By order we understand the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ.

Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira [Revolution and Counter-Revolution, Part 2, chap. 2]

In This Chapter

In this chapter, we examine various types of false idealism because they refer to false ideals.

What is, then, the true ideal that nurtures the soul of a true idealist?

The Object of Fidelity and Idealism

Is fidelity a great quality? Yes and no. It depends on what one is faithful to.

If one is faithful to something great, fidelity is a very high quality. It is an excellence of love for that thing. But fidelity to something of a second order is not a very high quality.

However, if one is faithful to everything to which one should be, then it is an extremely great quality. [On 6/16/88]

The Ten Commandments, The Perfect Code of Human Conduct

The perfect code of human conduct is found in the Ten Commandments of God. If all men fulfilled this Law entirely, all humanity’s ideological and moral problems would be thoroughly solved. If, on the contrary, all men violated this Law completely, humanity would self-destroy before too long. [Folha de São Paulo, April 5,1970]

If the Revolution is disorder, the Counter-Revolution is the restoration of order. By order, we mean the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ, that is, Christian civilization, austere and hierarchical, fundamentally sacral, antiegalitarian, and antiliberal.[Revolution and Counter-Revolution, translated into many languages and described as “prophetic” by the renowned theologian Fr. Anastasio Gutiérrez C.M.F., is the work that contains the summary of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira’s thinking]

Where there is order, there is true peace. Where there is simply an absence of disorder, there is no peace but only a veiled disorder, a simulated order.

Christendom is by no means an ideally organized society in which everything works very well. It is much more. [On 12/18/92]

It is the order of things in which the human spirit soars so high that it expresses itself in symbols that, in men’s eyes, surpass all the beauty this earth might contain and recalls Paradise – and then qualitatively overtakes the very beauty of Paradise and reminds one of Heaven. [On 3/27/81]

An Upward Impulse

In the early decades of this century, the dominant trend in temporal society, at least in general terms, was a drive to always improve. This statement would need to be heavily qualified when it comes to religion and morality, public or private.[Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites, by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, 137]

All these phenomena [of decadence in the modern world] bring an extremely strong signal of proletarianization in the most pejorative sense of this term. [idem]

However, this did not kill the old drive toward all forms of elevation and perfection born in the Middle Ages; from certain standpoints, it actually developed over the subsequent centuries.[ibidem]

To some extent, this impulse hinders the speed of expansion of the opposite impulse. In many ambiances, it even attains a preponderance of sorts. [ib.]