Russell Kirk: Where is the Gorgon's head?

By John Hittinger

"The frightful grin, the flattened nose, the lolling tongue, the eyes with their fixed stare . . . such a face as drifts through dreams, the goddess of terrors" Russell Kirk, Prospects for Conservatives, p. 17

Kirk claims that the twentieth century writers about America do not really look upon the dreadful face of Medusa. Alfred Kinsey and David Riesman attempted to analyze the dark side of American character; Kirk said theirs was but a curious and morbid look in the monster's direction and they too would be frozen in stone.

"We still need Perseus; but our Perseus, if he is to crush Medusa now, must be endowed with powers of mind and conscience undreamed of in our national boyhood." p. 18. Who is this monster whose cove Kirk approaches in his work? It is a monster of the spirit, a "gorgon within."

After unmasking the sources of boredom and criticizing avarice, Kirk says near the end of the book: "The grand question before us is really this: is life worth living? Are men and women to live as human persons, formed in God's image, with minds and hearts and individuality of spiritual beings, or are they to become creatures less than human, herded by the masters of the total state, debauched by the indulgence of every appetite, deprived of the consolation of religion and tradition and learning and the sense of continuity, drenched in propaganda, aimless amusements, and the flood of sensual triviality?" (p. 253)

Kirk looks at the descending road before us and sees the ruin of souls and society.

Have we yet to name the Gorgon? It is not greed, nor power, nor sensuality. What then, where is she? In what mirror must we look; what shoes of Hermes must we don? Perhaps we must turn to Dante, mentioned by Kirk in chapter one. Dante fears that he might see the Gorgon's head and be turned to stone never to return from hell. We hear the story in Canto Nine of the Inferno. As Virgil and Dante cross over to the depths of hell at the gates of Dis, they are confronted by three "hellish furies" whose heads were covered with snakes. They screech "Fetch Medusa! Turn him to stone!" I will draw upon the interpretation of Dorothy Sayers -- she says they are "the images of the fruitless remorse which does not lead to penitence." (Hell, Penguin edition, p. 127) Why do they need Medusa, why can they not affect Dante? Dante is following his guides and seeking, will find the light. He must be turned to stone so as never to return to the light. And so Sayers says: Medusa, "in this allegory" she is "the image of despair which so hardens the heart that it becomes powerless to repent."

And there we have found her, the terror of Kirk's dream. Despair. A lack of hope. Conservatives are quite prone to a lack of hope. And despair will turn one to stone. A heart of stone. A eye of stone. All stone, with no movement or aspiration. In the Inferno, Virgil puts his hands over Dante's hands already covering his eyes. They descend to the bitter end and blown out from hell, make their eventual ascent. Hope is the one thing needed. See Margaret Mansfield, "Dante and the Gorgon," Italica 47 (1970) found on-line here.

But Kirk calls for Perseus because we may not avoid her stare, the Gorgon within, despair. "We still need Perseus; but our Perseus, if he is to crush Medusa now, must be endowed with powers of mind and conscience undreamed of in our national boyhood." Who has such powers of mind and conscience? Perhaps Pope John Paul II is that hero. [to be continued]

(Ed.: This essay is from John's very nice site Reflections on the Philosopher Pope.)

Rusell Kirk and Pope John Paul II on Redemption of Man: Part 2

By John Hittinger

(This is part two of this previous post by the same title.)

Pope John Paul II and Russell Kirk defended freedom within the limits of truth and its authentic or right use. They knew it was crucial to distinguish license and liberty. But they have different approaches to truth.

An important passage in Redemptor hominis is this one: "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." These words contain both a fundamental requirement and a warning: the requirement of an honest relationship with regard to truth as a condition for authentic freedom, and the warning to avoid every kind of illusory freedom, every superficial unilateral freedom, every freedom that fails to enter into the whole truth about man and the world" §12

John Paul is unabashed in reference to the sayings of Jesus Christ and he has a rich notion of revelation and magisterium standing behind his love of truth. This is appropriate of course for the supreme pontiff. But he also has a vigorous notion of reason as a spiritual capacity for natural knowledge of God and moral law. So in Fides et ratio he says: "This is why I make this strong and insistent appeal—not, I trust, untimely—that faith and philosophy recover the profound unity which allows them to stand in harmony with their nature without compromising their mutual autonomy. The parrhesia of faith must be matched by the boldness of reason." §48 The boldness of reason is not to be found in Kirk, nor is the parrhesia of faith as such.

Russell Kirk and Pope John Paul II on the Redemption of Man

by John Hittinger

(Ed.: This essay is from John's very nice site Reflections on the Philosopher Pope.)

Russell Kirk by Sam Torode (see samtorode@tds.net)

Russell Kirk (1918-1994) was a social critic whose works best defined conservatism in the United States for decades (not that his ideas were embraced or followed by any party or platform). But his case for an imaginative conservatism in books such as The Conservative Mind, Prospects for Conservatives and the Conservative Reader received a wide readership and the comprehensiveness of his accounts and the diffuse range of what is "conservative" continue to attract readers and provoke discussion. A disciple of Edmund Burke, a lover of Scottish history and culture, a devoted family man, beloved teacher, and a Roman Catholic convert -- Russell Kirk cut an eccentric and often misunderstood figure in the world of contemporary politics and academia. My brother and I had the pleasure of meeting him at his home in Mecosta Michigan in 1973 or 74 during a seminar for college students. In Mecosta there is now a Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal directed by his wife Annette Kirk. Yesterday I had the privilege of attending a seminar at the Center for the American Idea on Kirk's Prospects for Conservatives, a seminar run by Dr Bradley Birzer, holder of the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in History and Director of the American Studies Program at Hillsdale College, Michigan.

As we discussed this work of Russell Kirk, written in 1954, revised in 1962 and 1988, I was very struck by similarities between the thought of Kirk and some keys themes in the thought of Pope John Paul II, who surely develops his own style of imaginative conservatism for the world at large through, of all things, the documents of Vatican II, his philosophical studies in Thomism and phenomenology, and Polish literary and religious culture. Kirk and Wojtyla both came of intellectual age in the 1950s, Wojtyla in his country oppressed by communism, and Kirk in the United States, triumphant in its military and economic power. Wojtyla struck his blow for freedom against the might of the Soviet; but Kirk, in the midst of an emerging and expansive economic superpower, is an early critic of the consumerist mentality that John Paul II would later identify as the chief mischief of the West. He struck a blow for integrity and humanity against the dumb Leviathan of liberalism. He begins to articulate the principles of a "civilization of love" also envisioned by the Archbishop of Krakow in the midst of the worker's paradise. I can but draw a few similarities in this blog.

First and foremost Kirk and Wojtyla, like Dante, are disciples of love. We have written a blog or two on John Paul's Redemptor hominis in which he advocates for human self-discovery in love, in Christ. "Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it." §10 Christ reveals man to man himself through his love and his sacrifice on the cross.

Read the complete essay.