Symposium: G.K. Chesterton and the madness of materialism

Socrates (470-399 B.C.) – a renowned Greek philosopher from Athens who taught Plato – Plato taught Aristotle, and Aristotle taught Alexander the Great. Socrates taught by asking leading questions. The Greeks called this form "dialectic" – starting from a thesis or question, then discussing ideas and moving back and forth between points of view to determine how well ideas stand up to critical review, with the ultimate principle of the dialogue being Veritas – Truth.

Characters

• Socrates
• Aristotle
• G.K. Chesterton, 20th–century writer, philosopher and Christian apologist
• Professor Skepticus

Materialists and madmen never have doubts. ~ G.K. Chesterton

{Setting: The Academy of Socrates}

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Socrates: We are gathered here today at my Academy to discuss this very important question – Is it true, as Chesterton argues, that the political question is always the moral question, and that the moral question is itself rooted firmly in human nature – Natural Law? In addressing his question, let us make diligent inquiry into the philosophy of G.K. Chesterton.

Aristotle: I am averse to allow abstract theories to take the place of self-evident truths, because theorists, particularly the Sophists and Epicureans, frequently are detached from reality and so easily dispense with the part of reality that doesn't comport with their theory.

G.K. Chesterton: Many abstract theories of the modern world are not expansions to a greater truth, but constrictions of it that cut off the aspects of reality deemed irrelevant or inconvenient. Therefore I consider myself a cosmic patriot and seek to defend the full spectrum of the truth against those who would narrow it to their own ends.

Socrates: Indeed, Mr. Chesterton. Let us now proceed to your ideas regarding materialism as explicated in your magnum opus, "Orthodoxy." In my day, the Sophists and Epicureans accepted a reductionist theory of materialism based in skepticism, relativism and hedonistic pursuits.

G.K. Chesterton: Materialism is too small to fit the real world.

Professor Skepticus: What about the Marxist view of reducing every facet of human experience to economics; or the Darwinist view of reducing everything to genetics and the survival of the fittest; or the modern scientific view that we do not actually feel love but a series of chemical reactions that we call love; or that we do not think but merely obey the dictates of our genetically programmed brains?

That said, what do you mean, Mr. Chesterton, that materialism is too small to fit the real world?

G.K. Chesterton: The materialist, regardless of ideology, minimizes reality to fit into his myopic, logical and uncomplicated scheme. The materialist chooses the lucidity and certainty of his own theory at the expense of reality – which history has repeatedly shown us has genocidal outcomes.

For example, when Marxists found that actual human beings would not conform to their dialectical materialism, they took the next logical step and cut out the "class enemies" that didn't fit in – a hundred million of them. When Hitler's national socialists found groups that failed their genetic tests of fitness, they designated these people for the gas chamber. Today, our materialist laws reflect a belief that human life in the womb is merely biological material, and, if it is inconvenient, then it may be disposed of.

Professor Skepticus: I believe that truth is overrated, for truth is merely the peculiar firing of the atoms of a man's brain. Truth is relative to each person's particular head.

G.K. Chesterton: Atheistic materialism is the crisis of philosophy as demonstrated by modern rationalists' failure to recognize that reason is itself is a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relations to reality at all.

Professor Skepticus: Since the Enlightenment, we liberals have championed rationality by using materialist philosophy against the superstitious, irrational precepts of religion.

Socrates: Chesterton was correct. Enlightenment rationalism has devolved into profound skepticism.

G.K. Chesterton: The abnormal effects of modern rationalists and materialists are that their rationalism, their war against religious faith, their disregard for the structure of reality ends up in an act of suicide.

Aristotle: Throughout history we see reason destroying itself in the Great Terror of the French Revolution, with the Progressive Movement of the 1880s and in modern times with the advent of the Welfare State in the 1930s, which destroyed the Christian work ethic, morality and family structure.

G.K. Chesterton: The spirit of morality mandates that we have the free will to do or not do something. Materialists are so dangerous because their worldview denies free will and says that we are soulless entities controlled by unpredictable mechanical laws. Therefore, life is not rightly viewed as a gift of God, neither gratitude nor morality are possible or relevant, which leads predictably to a pernicious relativism, nihilism and despair so evident in the works of Nietzsche and Sartre.

Aristotle: We are political animals, which means that an essential part of our perfection is being political. We must engage in the activity of self-government for the same reason we must engage in the activity of self-exercise. If someone else does either for us, then we are robbed of any benefit.

Professor Skepticus: My materialist worldview precludes me from believing in original sin. Like Nietzsche, I don't believe in God; like Marx, I declare the only "evil" in the world is too many goods are hoarded by too few people; and, like Darwin, I believe in the survival of the fittest.

G.K. Chesterton: The idea that man achieves a sort of evolutionary perfection through history was … a 19th–century heresy that taught men to think that so long as they were passing from the ape they were going to the angel. But you can pass from the ape and go to the devil.

Socrates: And so, in the 20th century, they did. As it was in my day with deified kings, aristocrats, senators, Sophists and Epicureans, today you have fascists, tyrants and utopian socialists foolishly ignoring the obvious – that the political question leads irrevocably to the moral question, which is rooted in human nature and Natural Law. Therefore, as Chesterton rightly deduced, materialists and madmen never have any doubts.

Note: Much text of the preceding dialogue is from Dr. Benjamin Wiker's "10 Books Every Conservative Must Read," Chapter 2: "Orthodoxy: Gilbert Keith Chesterton" (Regnery, 2010), pp. 33-52.