Our discourse is haunted by the concepts of the dead. Often, ideas we like to think are original to us were developed by other people 50 years before. This need not entail plagiarism. It can simply mean that someone thought of an idea before we had a chance to do it. But their achievement is more impressive for being more prescient.
One of our ghosts is the distinguished Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce (1910-1989), whose first book, The Problem of Atheism, published in his native tongue in 1964, has now been translated into English. A Catholic author who had opposed the fascism of Benito Mussolini, Del Noce turned after the war to left-wing radicalism and to the subtle, inexorable secularization of Europe and the United States. Intrigued as to what this unassuming Italian had been saying while much of the Anglophonic commentariat had focused on the Cold War, I picked up a copy.
“The apparently essayistic nature of this book,” says Del Noce in its first sentence, “makes its structure and unity hard to grasp.” Such refreshing honesty! One can tell that this was a philosopher who cared more about the truth than about sales.
Del Noce’s book can be hard going for the reader. It has been carefully and elegantly translated by Carlo Lancellotti, who also provides a useful introduction, but it is big enough that one could beat a man to death with it, and it teems with references to authors one may not have read. “The analogies between de Biran and Bergson have been pointed out often,” Del Noce informs us. “Cannot we say that the philosophy of the latter marks the victory, within French positivism, of de Biran over Comte?” Erm, can we? We can. Perhaps.
But the reason this book is of great interest even to those of us who dwell outside the hallowed halls of academic philosophy is its intellectual foresight. Writing before the closure of Vatican II, Del Noce observed that “atheism seems to have triumphed.” “The moral history of the post-Second World War period,” he continued, “seems to be the history of the growing awareness of this victory.”
Del Noce, in his book, frames atheism as ideological in contrast to the common agnosticism of empiricists. He was interested in atheism as the basis of political philosophy. Fascism he saw as being both a reaction to and expression of nihilism. Marxism, on the other hand:
“… claims to realize the program of modern philosophy by uniting rationalism (negation of the supernatural) and an entirely secularized Christian anthropology as affirmation of man’s transcendence with respect to nature. In short, by satisfying both these requirements, it claims to be a radical humanism.”
Yet Del Noce looked beyond Marxism, which, in its closest institutional forms, had long since frozen into the “dominance of the techno-bureaucratic class,” to the “affluent society.”
“In the society of well-being,” Del Noce writes, “men are reduced to the simple economistic dimension of mere instruments for an activity that is not ordered to anything else.” This neatly expressed the essence of what we now call “post-liberalism” before liberalism had truly ascended.
The affluent society is ordered around “technicity,” or faith in technological progress. It rejects the natural limitations of the Christian concept of original sin. “It is not the refusal of sin that follows the refusal of God,” writes Del Noce, “but, rather, the opposite; that is, the refusal of sin, of the status naturae lapsae, of the initial Fall, is the beginning of a process that leads to atheism.” Thus, the liberal world becomes more secular than those of its totalitarian rivals, which remain, if in a degenerate state, “saturated with the sacredness of politics.”
This was a remarkably clear-eyed assessment of the atomizing consequences of the union of market forces and technological progress, in the economic sphere but also when increasingly applied to the nation-state, the family, and civic life in general.
Yet to what extent is it true? From the culture wars to COVID-19, can it be denied that Westerners are still in thrall to sentimentalized religion? After all, the affluent society sacrificed much of its affluence in order to contain COVID-19 infections, not simply because of the fear of death but because of the fear of causing death. One can certainly argue, as the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has done, that the response opened the door to “techno-medical despotism.” But it was animated by something more internal. Our discourse, it seems, is still saturated with the concept of sin. We have little to worship but a great deal to fear.
Still, passive technicity and spiritual deflation have enabled the development of more fragmented and sterile societies. “Against the process of dehumanization,” writes Del Noce, one could “fight … in the name of the individual and of the universal humanity that is being negated by negating the individual.” This is interesting, inasmuch as it does not contrast individualism with communitarianism, as many of us have done in the decades since. Instead, it looks to a more substantive understanding of the individual. This makes a lot of sense. One can hardly build strong foundations without strong bricks.
Del Noce’s book contains few prescriptions — or, at least, if it contains them, they escaped me. It was not written with evangelical optimism and contains a wise caution against the functional defense of faith. “It is not possible to construct an ideology for other people,” writes Del Noce, “in which its own authors do not believe. This is because an ideology can certainly be used by political operatives who no longer believe in it; but it can only be born based on something in which one believes.” Del Noce believed in ideas, but he also believed in belief. The distinction is as important as the difference between reading a map and driving a car.
The Problem of Atheism is a fascinating book. Almost 60 years old, it challenges the reader with insights and provocations that are relevant today, not just as a matter of history. We should listen to our ghosts. There is a reason they live on.
Ben Sixsmith is a writer living in Poland.
