Two Kings: the ancestor and the descendant
Louis XIV, King of France
(Hyacinthe Rigaud, 18th century, Louvre Museum, Paris)
Juan Carlos I, King of Spain
The revolutionary process, considered as a whole, and also in its main episodes, is understood by the Brazilian thinker as the development, in stages, and through continuous metamorphosis, of dissolute tendencies of Western and Christian man and of the errors and movements that these foment.
The deepest cause of this process is, for Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, an explosion of pride and sensuality that inspired a whole chain of ideological systems and a whole series of actions resulting from them.
“Pride leads to hatred of all superiority and, thus, to the affirmation that inequality is an evil in itself at all levels, principally at the metaphysical and religious ones. This is the egalitarian aspect of the Revolution. Sensuality, per se, tends to sweep aside all barriers. It does not accept restraints and leads to revolt against all authority and law, divine or human, ecclesiastical or civil. This is the liberal aspect of the Revolution. Both aspects, which in final analysis have a metaphysical character, seem contradictory on many occasions. But they are reconciled in the Marxist utopia of an anarchic paradise where highly evolved mankind, “emancipated” from religion, would live in utmost order without political authority in total freedom. This, however, would not give rise to any inequality.”54
The Counter-Revolutionary authors of the nineteenth century, such as de Maistre, de Bonald and Donoso Cortés, well described the Revolution in its process of doctrinal errors. What characterizes the work of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira is rather his attention to “the passions” and their influence on the strictly ideological aspects of the revolutionary process.55
Conforming to the use of various spiritual authors, when he speaks of “passions” as the supports of the Revolution, the author refers to the disordered passions of the human soul.56
And, in keeping with everyday language, he includes among the disordered passions all impulses toward sin existing in man as a result of Original Sin and of the triple concupiscence denounced by the Gospel: that of the flesh, the eyes and the pride of life.57
The Revolution has therefore its first origin and its most intimate driving force in disordered passions. Just like typhoons and cataclysms, it has immense strength, but this is directed at destruction.58
Notes:
54. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, p. 3.
55. H.-D. Noble, Passions, in DTC, vol. XI,2 (1932), col. 2211-41; Aimé Solignac, Passions et vie spirituelle, in DSp, vol. XII,1 (1984), col. 339-57. Passions may be understood in the metaphysical sense (Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-IIae, q. 23 art. 2-4) and in the psychological sense. H.-D. Noble defines passion as “a unique act of the sensitive appetite that essentially includes an affectionate tendency and a psychological reaction” (col. 2215). cf.also Gérard Blais, Petit traité pratique des passions humaines, Sherbrooke (Canada), Editions Paulines, 1967; Antonio Eymieu (1861- 1933), Le gouvernement de soi-même – Essai de psychologie pratique, Paris, Perrin, 1910. In investigating relationships between ideas, sentiments and acts, Eymieu establishes some great psychological laws, the first of which is that the idea drives towards the act of which it is the portrayal. The second principle is that the action excites the sentiment of which it should be the normal expression. The third is that the passion intensifies to the maximum point and uses human psychological forces for its own ends.
58. The [disorderly] tendencies produce moral crises, erroneous doctrines, and then (…) The latter then lead … to new crises, new errors, and new revolutions. (…) The fact is that disordered passions, moving in a crescendo analogous to the acceleration of gravity and feeding upon their own works, lead to consequences which, in their turn, develop according to a proportional intensity. P. Corrêa de Oliveira Revolution and Counter-Revolution, pp. 30-1.