America, Post-Logic, by Donald DeMarco

By Donald DeMarco, Crisis Magazine, July 17, 2020

In genius and influence, according to Christopher Dawson, Abu Hamed Mohammad Ghazali (1058–1111) most resembles Saint Thomas Aquinas. This is indeed high praise. The Persian scholar’s most famous work is The Destruction of Philosophy (Tehâfat el Falâsifah). As a Moslem thinker, he saw clearly the fundamental incompatibility between the Moslem faith and the Greek conception of the universe as an intelligible order that can be penetrated by human reason. He did not succeed, however, in destroying philosophy, but he did succeed, to some degree, in submerging it.

In our own day, philosophy remains submerged because it is incompatible with the reigning ideology of political correctness. The absence of philosophy in the public forum prevents a view of reality that everyone can share. Ideologies are limited to a partisan group. Without a universal truth, particular groups will remain at odds with each other. Philosophy is the search for and, to a certain extent, the discovery of truth. Without a unifying philosophy, people remain divided, with one tribe setting itself against another tribe. …