The Incoherence of Secular Messiahs: Why the New Paganists Cannot Fill the Void of Nihilism (Faraz Khan, 3/21/24, Renovatio)
Yet European messianic secularism would prove catastrophic; history attests to a tragic lethality that was not incidental to the surrogate doctrines. Marx and Freud, for example, have entries in a compelling account of ideologues who were, as the book is titled, Architects of the Culture of Death.3 The authors demonstrate that it is precisely the messianic and totalizing nature of Marxism and of Freudian philosophy, based on their radically reductionist humanisms, that engendered “death cultures.” With his paradigm of “scientific” materialism, Freud reduced the human being to a mere biological being, devoid of any spirit or soul, and he significantly minimized the centrality of reason and judgment in the motives behind human action, thereby dismissing the ethical imperative altogether. But to eliminate the soul and the moral life is to inaugurate a culture antagonistic to life. And given his immense influence in the modern history of Western civilization, the pernicious effects of Freud’s surrogate faith had a widespread and lasting impact. As for Marx, his program combined rage against class exploitation and injustice, dialectical materialism, “rational” atheism, and a summons to violent revolution, while his salvific promise included liberation, a cure for man’s alienation, and ultimately a utopian earthly paradise of societal cooperation without the hierarchy of classes.