Two notions, conceived as metaphysical values, express the spirit of the Revolution: absolute equality and complete liberty. They are served by two passions: pride and sensuality. “It is in these sad depths that one finds the junction between these two metaphysical principles of the Revolution, namely, equality and liberty, which are mutually contradictory from so many points of view.”72
The claim to think, feel and do all that unbridled passions demand is the essence of Liberalism. Actually the only freedom that it safeguards is that of evil, opposing in this Catholic civilization, that rather gives good all support and all freedom, but limits as much as possible the action of evil.
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira dwells therefore on this radical egalitarianism, showing its consequences in the religious, political and social spheres. The denial of every inequality leads, at metaphysical level, to the refusal of the principle of identity and of non- contradiction. It results in “egalitarian” pantheism, because if the real is without specific inequalities and identity, the difference between men and God also collapses and everything is confusedly deified. The Gnostic aspect of the Revolution lies in this pantheism. A fundamental trait of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira’s thinking was, on the contrary, love of the concrete, of individuality, of distinctions. He made his own the fundamental principle of Thomism according to which the specific object of the human intelligence is not the undefined being, but the “quidditas rei sensibilis”,73 the specific essences of the real. It is through the direct experience of the specific essences that man can reach knowledge of the universe and even the formulation of the first principles.
The essence, explains St Thomas in De ente et essentia, is the object of the definition of the thing,74 what it is exactly. All that exists has its own essence because it is distinct from the reality that surrounds it and is not confused with it. The essence of the being is therefore its specific unity that distinguishes it from the multiplicity of the real.75
The first property of the reality that we know are the essences and, with them, not the unity but the inequality of the real. Or, to be more precise, we know the one through the many. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira states:
“St Thomas teaches that the diversity of creatures and their hierarchical gradation are a good in themselves, for thus the perfections of the Creator shine more resplendently throughout creation.76 He says further that Providence instituted inequality among the angels77 as well as among men, both in the terrestrial paradise and in this land of exile.78 For this reason, a universe of equal creatures would be a world in which the resemblance between creatures and the Creator would have been eliminated as much as possible. To hate in principle all inequality is, then, to place oneself metaphysically against the best elements of resemblance between the Creator and creation. It is to hate God”.79
Notes:
72. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, p. 51.
73. The “actus essendi”, too luminous for created intelligence, cannot be the real ground of the philosophical speculation of man, whose main object of knowledge is the “essences”. The primacy of the “actus essendi” over essence is certainly an undeniable given of Thomism. But when the affirmation of this primacy leads to an exaggerated controversy against the alleged scholastic “essentialism”, it risks degenerating into an attitude of an existentialistic type (Cf. C. Fabro, C.P.S., Introduzione a San Tommaso, Milan, Ares, 1983, pp. 100-3).
74. St Thomas Aquinas, De ente et essentia, II.
75. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 11, a. 1.
76. Cf. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, II, 45; Summa theologica, I, q. 47, a. 2.
77. Id., Summa theologica, I, q. 50, a. 4.
78. Ibid, I, q. 96, a. 3 and 4.
79. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, p. 50.