The West between the Cross and the Sword: Toward a Reflectionist Libertarianism
The West between the Cross and the Sword: Toward a Reflectionist Libertarianism

Author(s): Bernardo Ferrero
Subject(s): Economy, Political Philosophy, Economic policy, Sociology of Politics
Published by: Addleton Academic Publishers
Keywords: John Paul II; Ludwig von Mises; Western civilization; Respublica Christiana;
Summary/Abstract: In 2006, John Paul II affirmed that European nations had entered the stage of “post-identity”, unreceptive as they were to their glorious past. Today this post-identity crisis presents itself in an exacerbated form, exemplified by the damnatio memoriae of political correctness, wokeism and cancel culture. Movements that are undermining, along with the foundations of the west, those contexts of authority that, as sociologist Robert Nisbet underlined, represent the indispensable companions to man’s impulse to freedom. If the liberty of the individual cannot flourish apart from natural society, neither can it do without authority. Society, as Nisbet put it, is ultimately “a tissue of authorities”. But to reconquer or defend these centers of authorities, which are home to man’s quest for freedom and thirst for truth, one cannot afford to shy away from a realistic “philosophy of history”. One which, contrary to that of Kant, Hegel, Comte or Marx, avoids what Ludwig von Mises termed “fatalistic determinism”, reasons through epochs rather than years or centuries, unveils the ultimate (moral and spiritual) why of things and judges these in the name of proven principles rooted in the permanent nature of man.

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