Subordinated Ethics by Caitlin Smith Gilson;

Author:Caitlin Smith Gilson; [Gilson, Caitlin Smith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781532686412
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 3)
Published: 2020-08-25T23:32:29+00:00

It is true that these ten principles are describing a set of circumstantial facts, namely that most conservatives do believe in this order. If one were to inhabit its social polity, observe and describe its members, this order would be the predominant classification. But this reaches only the level of a sociological awareness of the tradition. These are statements which are ontical at best, and, even if one relies on the other for its intelligibility—i.e., the continuity of the second principle requires the enduring moral order of the first; the fourth’s principle of prudence requires an umbilical filiation with the sixth’s awareness of our own imperfectibility—they do not reach beyond themselves to something other than themselves for a foundation. They reside within the conceptual appearance of these qualities as a disposition, attitude or approach. This is not to say that these qualities are not to be admired or that such a disposition does not aid the inculcation of the common good, but that they, by being described as principles, obscure our dwelling on the Good which first enables their descriptions. And because, “politics which sin against the laws of being, do so at their own peril,”335 this pseudo-foundation is in danger of collapsing. What has already occurred is the loss of Being by the conflation of Being with idea, and this in turn amounts to the loss of the political mystique by the conflation of the polis’ mystical locality with sentiment, attitude and disposition. Being is reducible to an imposed universal, and the always-preceding mystery which enables empirical, moral, and social clarity and certitude, is reducible to self-enclosed personal belief. Traditionalism, by attempting to undercut the deformations caused by a progressivist top-down approach often inflicts its own top-down vice-grip which cannot illuminate that the God we seek is a God of family and community, because he is not an ideational end-point but Trinitarian relation itself. True progress requires an outward transcending reach which is equally a deepening into the thicket of Presence, so that the very meaning of the Good we chase is invoked in the nearness of the family in the sheer relation with others. Bypassing Presence in favor of the promise of a futural presence never arrives at the “future” but tramples on a series of presences with diminishing returns until one reaches death. This twofold reduction seeks to combat the rapidly encroaching world of secularity, but can only offer flimsy universals rooted in private belief. And this is no weapon against the temptation to render fact equivalent with meaning.

I. The conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order

This first principle is again not a principle, but a conditional conclusion. Linguistically, belief is the root, and thus reductively the originator of this enduring moral order. Because the moral order grounds itself on the conservative’s own belief without pointing to anything beyond itself, then in this tautology of a cloaked idealism, the belief not only grounds the moral order but can as easily be its originator. If this principle is founded on belief, then this belief is girded by collective agreement and conviction.

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