Jan Cossiers – Prometheus Carrying Fire (detail)

“IF WE refer to idealism as a system of thought that proclaims the primacy of the intelligence over reality, the world in which we live today is an idealist world. It is built by intellectuals with tremendous reinforcements of abstractions, and it is superimposed on the world of experience which is constantly put in doubt.

“Our twentieth century world is so minimally materialist that it is a construction of the mind, from one side to the other, right down to its moral turpitude and its eroticism. Despite its pretensions and bluster, Marxism is not in any way materialist. It is an idea projected onto society in order to destroy it, knead it into dust, blend it into a mushy and obedient paste, and impose on it a form that is matured for a long time in a mind that is sequestered into itself, far from reality. It is all a lie, right down to the terms it decks itself out in, “dialectical materialism” or “scientific materialism.” Its idealism bursts out in its hate of all divine and human reality, in its desire to subjugate nature to its will to power, and in the extraordinary waste of material resources in which it engages to maintain its ideological orthodoxy in the countries where it has installed itself. Our world, in the so-called free democracies, is no longer materialist. It underwent transformations in its innermost depths brought about by the mind of modern man. Matter no longer appeared as its own reality. It is always transformed there by human contrivance.

“‘The illustrated prelate,” whose conversation with one of his disciples is recounted by Maurras, says it well:

‘Young man, you believe that materialism is the great error of the moment. False! It’s idealism.”
‘Why?’
‘It lies the most. Materialists are rightfully looked down upon. Because they are swine. But we can see them as such. We do not always see what social or political idealists are: Fellows who let everyone see their hearts, which are huge, and who pound their own chests while making a lot of noise, in order to put the world to flames in order to make it better.’

“With its sublime false airs, its pharisaism, its blissful elevation of thought and heart, and its hypocrisy, which is so deep that it is not self-aware, the idealism, for which modern intelligence is dying is without doubt the greatest sin of the mind.”

— Marcel de Corte, Intelligence in Danger of Death; transl. Brian Welter (Arouca Press, 2023), pp. 15-16

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