3. Pride and Sensuality and the Metaphysical Values of the Revolution
Two notions conceived as metaphysical values express well the spirit of the Revolution: absolute equality, complete liberty. And there are two passions that most serve it: pride and sensuality.
In referring to passions, we must explain in what sense we use the word in this work. For the sake of brevity, adhering to the usage of various authors on spiritual matters, whenever we speak of the passions as promoters of the Revolution, we are referring to disordered passions. And, in keeping with everyday language, we include among the disordered passions all impulses toward sin existing in man as a consequence of the triple concupiscence, namely, that of the flesh, the eyes, and the pride of life.7
A. Pride and Egalitarianism
The proud person, subject to another’s authority, hates first of all the particular yoke that weighs upon him.
In a second stage, the proud man hates all authority in general and all yokes, and, even more, the very principle of authority considered in the abstract.
In a second stage, the proud man hates all authority in general and all yokes, and, even more, the very principle of authority considered in the abstract.
Because he hates all authority, he also hates superiority of any kind. And in all this there is a true hatred for God.8
This hatred for any inequality has gone so far as to drive high-ranking persons to risk and even lose their positions just to avoid accepting the superiority of somebody else.
There is more. In a height of virulence, pride could lead a person to fight for anarchy and to refuse the supreme power were it offered to him. This is because the simple existence of that power implicitly attests to the principle of authority, to which every man as such – the proud included – can be subject.
Pride, then, can lead to the most radical and complete egalitarianism.
This radical and metaphysical egalitarianism has various aspects.
Lenin making a speech in the Red Square
a. Equality between men and God. Pantheism, immanentism, and all esoteric forms of religion aim to place God and men on an equal footing and to invest the latter with divine properties. An atheist is an egalitarian who, to avoid the absurdity of affirming that man is God, commits the absurdity of declaring that God does not exist. Secularism is a form of atheism and, therefore, of egalitarianism. It affirms that it is impossible to be certain of the existence of God and, consequently, that man should act in the temporal realm as if God did not exist; in other words, he should act like a person who has dethroned God.
Secularism is a form of atheism and, therefore, of egalitarianism. It affirms that it is impossible to be certain of the existence of God and, consequently, that man should act in the temporal realm as if God did not exist
b. Equality in the ecclesiastical realm: the suppression of a priesthood endowed with the power of Orders, magisterium, and government, or at least of a priesthood with hierarchical degrees.
The suppression of a priesthood endowed with the power of Orders, magisterium, and government, or at least of a priesthood with hierarchical degrees.
c. Equality among the different religions. All religious discrimination is to be disdained because it violates the fundamental equality of men. Therefore, the different religions must receive a rigorously equal treatment. To claim that only one religion is true to the exclusion of the others amounts to affirming superiority, contradicting evangelical meekness, and acting impolitically, since it closes the hearts of men against it.
All religious discrimination is to be disdained because it violates the fundamental equality of men. Therefore, the different religions must receive a rigorously equal treatment.
d. Equality in the political realm: the elimination or at least the lessening of the inequality between the rulers and the ruled. Power comes not from God but from the masses; they command and the government must obey. Monarchy and aristocracy are to be proscribed as intrinsically evil regimes because they are antiegalitarian. Only democracy is legitimate, just, and evangelical.9
