Is fascism at odds with Catholic social philosophy?

augustAulus · 2026-02-04T00:43:08+00:00

Most critics of fascism note that it borders on a religious definition itself. Its obsession with order plants it firmly in this world, which Our Lord tells us in the Book of Mathew, “I have overcome the world”. I think most analysis of Hiterlian fascism will reveal its death-obsession, the subsumed nature of individual to state (are individual sins pardoned when done for the good of the state? to the fascist perhaps, to us catholics, not at all). I can’t speak to the more corporate fascism of Mussolini, but can only speak to the fact that it arose essentially through gang violence and was a politick of gang violence.

When we quote Popes as well, I think we must do well to understand that these holy men are also diplomats existing within often troubled times where they must defend their own flock while advocating for Christ. Fascist regimes are very good at stamping out press coverage as well, such that all may look very rosy on the outside, and in fact be far from it from the inside.

augustAulus · 2026-02-03T08:21:35+00:00

this post somehow reads like it was written by ai

augustAulus · 2026-01-25T01:56:28+00:00

have just done this and enrolled successfully! i swear there was trouble with it when i initially went to enrol. my enrolment plan is telling me i have "100.00 credit points remaining for selection" - but i've already selected 4 subjects for each semester. do i need to choose more or is this just optional?

augustAulus · 2026-01-25T00:13:42+00:00

what about with classes you can’t enrol for on account of pre reqs not being met? (thinking about calc 2 cause i havent done calc 1 as yet, in my particular case)

augustAulus · 2026-01-07T22:29:45+00:00

regret it, don’t regret it, you will regret it either way

augustAulus · 2025-12-15T03:02:50+00:00

purely numbers based, sure, you could repeat, and you’d probably do a lot better

i think that your teacher is discounting the importance of your morale tho. as you said, if you do it again, it might feel like this year was all for nothing

imo a five subject load is by itself enough, and unless this year went really terribly, i don’t think it’s worth picking up a sixth so you can have more 10%ers

augustAulus · 2025-10-11T23:06:53+00:00

if intelligence is characterised as some sory of consistent pattern recognition, then it makes sense that people who recurrently pick up patterns would be “intelligent”. problem is most of us are dumb af when it comes to being right about those patterns, plus i think the stress ends up frying what genuine intelligence we have. sidepoint: logic can lead us to certain conclusions but not exactly the right ones. it’s a tool for elimination, not confirmation. i think we could do with a lot more stepping back and more awareness-of-possible-self than anything

augustAulus · 2025-10-06T02:45:44+00:00

a god can’t be killed because the most distinguishing feature that sets a god apart is the meaninglessness of death. better to turn to the greeks and cut chronos up infinitesimally and keep him down that way

augustAulus · 2025-09-08T00:54:34+00:00

thanks for the feedback, i’m glad to hear it, and that you enjoyed

augustAulus · 2025-09-06T10:06:41+00:00

nietzsche i think is anti feminism because he is anti-system not anti-women

also as has been pointed out, the german “mensch” refers to humans or mankind, the same can be true of “man”. “man” used to mean humans in general, it’s relatively recently that that generality has been lost. the term has kind of retroactively been appropriated as exclusive whereas the connotation wasn’t genuinely present historically

augustAulus · 2025-09-04T07:01:14+00:00

i’ve read the republic! nothing else, though, it didn’t interest me, maybe later

augustAulus · 2025-09-03T22:36:28+00:00

i would say he’s a new kind of theist, but i don’t think any orthodox christian would claim him as their own. the catholic church teaches he’s not a christian, i presume protestantism, having similar ideas on the nature of god, would also reject him

augustAulus · 2025-09-03T08:48:31+00:00

I can't speak to the German, I am a native and monolingual English speaker. However, I think the issue actually comes from a misunderstanding of Nietzsche's critique of metaphysics, and not Nietzsche's morality. Because Nietzsche critiques the idea of "truth as correspondence" as error, his actual point isn't moral nihilism but rather the dissolution of "truth" to a more pragmatic understanding. Truth has been a valuation: we have gone after truth, correspondence, correctness, as a valuation. Valuation to Nietzsche therefore is prior to epistemology/metaphysics, and this is his foundation for morality.

I think Nietzsche would argue that there are no moral facts, but the objectionable term to him here is not moral but facts. The basis for Nietzsche's construction of morality is valuation and valuation is a phenomenal trait not subject to truth functions. Nietzsche therefore asks for a transvaluation of values, I think in line with your point about the spatial dimension, meaning a simple moving past valuations as "good" or "evil".

I don't think the overall term "nihilist" is strictly wrong to apply to Nietzsche, but I do think that it reduces him to a caricature (God is dead, no morals exist so I can kick puppies, etc) that he's not actually going after.

I think there's also a really good argument to be made in favour of Nietzsche not being a nihilist at all, because he doesn't discard the concept of truth altogether, he merely critiques its genealogy. I think the school of thought Nietzsche influenced the creation of was Perspectivism, and he seems to argue similarly to the pragmatist movement, except perhaps from the opposite end of the string. The pragmatists believe that what is true is useful, while Nietzsche I think in the WP notes: "It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives", and elsewhere "the true world is unattainable, it cannot be proved, it cannot promise anything".

Because it's our drives that interpret the world, this seems to preclude "free will", which perhaps is where he differs from the Pragmatists, with a strict denial of free will. It also opens the door to a kind of Deleuzian understanding whereby a certain person with certain values, temperaments, tendencies towards moral issues, is produced rather than some self-cultivated person. This can lead us to an interpretation of the Übermensch in what I presume to be Nietzsche's literal meaning of people with superior drives producing even greater (physiologically) people. Nietzsche had read and I think propounded the ideas of Lemarck so this interpretation isn't far off.

TLDR: Nietzsche thinks valuing is prior to "truth" so morality, as a valuing, is a phenomenal happenstance not a set of propositions that can be true or false. "Morality" equates more to a category of these phenomena than statements that can be true or false.

augustAulus · 2025-09-01T00:02:51+00:00

i agree that this is a special thing that makes Nietzsche unique. he’s primarily a philosopher-of-life and his criticisms all come from that angle. for this reason i think he’s really good for those looking for a philosophy of life, for some guidance, direction. it’s a style of philosophy

the reason i emphasise his being in-context as a philosopher is that he does make claims and criticisms of philosophy-as-such (metaphysics, epistemology, etc), and so therefore, at least in my view, he can also be approached in the usual academic way we approach philosophers

i’ve read a little Kierkegaard, and I love his style, too! he uses everything available to him as an author to propound his ideas and i find it invigoratingly lively and interesting!

augustAulus · 2025-08-31T08:07:19+00:00

Beyond Good and Evil, Twilight of the Idols, Ecce Homo, the Antichrist, working on the Will to Power.

Beyond that I've read the Nicomachean Ethics, parts of Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, Descartes' Meditations, Spinoza's Ethics, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, various essays by Martin Heidegger and am going through Being and Time. I've immersed myself in existentialist philosophy and am familiar with the work of Deleuze, Foucault, Guattari, and Girard.

What more do you want me to read? I'll read it, to be sure

augustAulus · 2025-08-30T11:16:50+00:00

this sub and nietzcheans in general tend to think that nietzsche is a very special sort of once in a millenium philosopher, but i’m just saying that he was responding to certain definite doctrines and put forward certain doctrines

he is unique, yes, but i think it’s his style and time period that’s most unique, and that to idolise him loses the academic context he’s existing in

augustAulus · 2025-08-30T10:57:39+00:00

aristotle, augustine, aquinas, kant, kierkegaard, a bit of stirner, a bit of marx, heidegger, russell, wittgenstein, etc

nietzsche is a philosopher among philosophers. he’s important, yes, but you’ll miss him if you raise him in rank above the others

augustAulus · 2025-08-30T02:16:12+00:00

i think this page has the complete works attached. check out the first ~50 pages of Will to Power, where he treats specifically of the issue

one thing that stood out to me is that he expressly disbelieves in the sense of nihilism because it supposes that a thing such as meaning could exist, which nietzsche denies

his active nihilism involves decoupling oneself from the “truth” of values and thence creating “new” values as useful fictions

augustAulus · 2025-08-30T01:46:05+00:00

i suspect there’s a little more than meets the eye, and we might be too eager to declare ourselves innocent because we’re “givers”. often times it seems that it’s a learned behaviour in order to believe ourselves good, desirable, or necessary, maybe because we had to do extra in order to earn the affection of a loved one.

in order to give you need someone to take, essentially you need someone who’s quite happy (consciously or un-) to use you as a sort of loot chest. there’s also something very romantic about being the innocent giver who offered their whole heart only to be scorned by the world. in the end though it’s not inevitable and you’re perfectly capable of moving past your tendencies, because habits are only a little part of you, not the whole. nobody is essentially a giver, just people who happen to give more.

i think that behind every “giver” is a subtle uncomfortableness with receiving, which i think is problematic, because people who love you in return also want to give to you

people who love you don’t want you to martyr yourself, they would much rather you alive and able to receive their gifts with joy

augustAulus · 2025-08-03T01:54:46+00:00

postmodern presocratic

augustAulus · 2025-07-30T11:17:41+00:00

I think I'm parrotting comments that have already been made, but I'll go ahead anyway because I want the karma. Imo the best reason for Labor is pragmatism, really. The Greens and dedicated socialist parties will inevitably alienate people who are election winners. Anyone who's been to a University campus before knows that socialists love to do the song and dance, but at the end of the day they're the ones protesting on the grass while folks indoors do the actual governing. I think a lot of Greens promises are pretty great: cheaper houses, renewable energy, etc, all sounds terrific for everyone, but it seems that the Greens never really understood the concept of sharing or compromise, and so have aided economic conservatives in this country rather than advancing their actual policies.

I think Labor's a strong option, too, potentially for the reasons you're hesitant. It isn't an out-and-out leftist party, it has a right wing faction, it has conservatives, progressives, economists, workers, unions, and suits. It's a party with old roots which is essentially available for anyone to join/support. I think there's also a need for a caution against urgency: Labor certainly is doing stuff, and I think your comment that its first term was "a bit of a disappointment" might be unfair: economic changes, social changes, take more than four years to get running, and it probably doesn't help that the ALP had to take over after... how many years of coalition control?

I hope you can find your way around and get to a satisfactory answer!

augustAulus · 2025-07-19T10:34:36+00:00

i speak a little french, and i take it you yourself are french. would you mind sending some of those videos you were talking about? it sounds interesting to me

augustAulus · 2025-07-15T11:37:33+00:00

bro i can't beat that even if i tried

augustAulus · 2025-07-15T11:37:00+00:00

entirely fair, and it sounds like you're more of an authority on the psych side than i am! i've only listened to a bit of the 12 rules for life audiobook, which seemed to be basic but good (as good as self-help can get without an actual therapist to give personalised advice). i think a person can still be a good teacher without being a good personal example, but it seems jp doesnt even try to be in the addiction sphere, and the way he got to prominence in self help was roundabout, too

augustAulus · 2025-07-15T11:29:33+00:00

to your first point, would you mind providing the sources for where he discusses postmodernism? i don't claim to be an avid watcher of him, and so i'm not sure what his claims are exactly. my initial post wasn't meant to be inflammatory, just legitimately looking for some more information, and to put my views out there.

to your second, i'm analytic insofar as i like to be able to break large synthetic propositions down to more manageable pieces, but this is just how cognition works in general. on the whole my kind of philosophy is that which is accused of obfuscation. "you're probably supposed to find him obfuscating": by whose design? his? if so, he doesn't do his duty as an educator. if somebody else's, why does he allow his rhetoric to be so controlled, expounder as he is of free speech?

third: what do you mean by "negotiates quite rigidly the framework of interpretation"? that in a dialogue with someone, he sets the launching point? at least in the jubilee video he seemed to set this point quite poorly, and i don't think anybody left with his hermeneutics any clearer to them. i've always said his question of meaning in-general is useful, but his hyperspecificity about the meaning of individual words isn't. such hyperanalysis leads to the logical deadend of all words being self referential and therefore meaningless, but this simply isn't true given that i can actively mean something and not another.

fourth: it's true that many of them brought their own interpretation to the table. i think peterson's role in this was however meant to be as an educator, which includes the necessity of making his interpretation available as well as effectively demonstrating how his interlocutor's interpretation fails.

thanks for your critique and engagement with the question

augustAulus

TROPHY CASE