Donoso_Cortés

I've been reading more Donoso, and wondering how I'd
describe my reaction to him. Well, the similarities
to Maistre are striking. It's not only the fanatic
defence of Catholicism and rejection of the Enlightenment,
but the way he expresses himself. Like Maistre, Donoso
sometimes launches into an explosive, florid passage
that you want to read over again to fully digest the
extremism of his mind. So instead of analyzing in detail
some of his ideas about history, dictatorship and so on
(which are original and clearly presented) let me just
quote one of those florid overblown passages, to give you
an idea of what I mean. Here he is responding to
criticisms that he is anti-rational:

"It is said that my opinions are contrary to philosophy
and reason. I ask, to what philosophy and to what reason
are my opinions opposed? ... if philosophy is considered
to be that science of knowing God without God's help,
of knowing man without the help of him who formed man,
and of knowing society without the help of him who
silently rules it; if by philosophy we mean the science
that consists in a triple creation - divine, social,
and human - I resolutely reject this creation, science
and philosophy. This is precisely what I reject. I reject
all rationalist systems that are based upon this
absurd principle: that reason is independent of God and
competent in everything.
"If you ask me about my particular opinion on eclecticism,
I will say that it does not exist. It does not exist
because, first, if it consists in blindly choosing certain
solitary princples from among various philosophical
systems, eclecticism would be the innocent creation of
he who, stripping Homeric poems, strips the loose leaves
flying about in order to understand the capricious sense
of what is fluttering together in the air.
"Second, because if it consists in choosing with
criteria, philosophy is not in the choice, but in the
princple that allows choosing, in which case the unity
of criteria, principles, and guidance in the eclectic
labyrinth, convert eclecticism into an absolute system.
There is still more. Such a choice does not exist because,
in the first place, he who begins by assenting to a
criterion of choosing does not have the freedom to choose.
He is the slave of his criterion.
"However, if this is so, then eclecticism can only be
considered as a pallid and defoliated branch of the
great rationalist tree that brought death into the world.
Rationalism came from Spinosaism, Voltairianism,
Kantianism, Hegelianism, and Cousinism, all doctrines
of perdition that in the political, religious, and social
orders if for Europe what the heavenly empire of opium
is for the English.
"Yes, European society is dying. Its extremities are
cold. Its heart will soon stop beating. Do you know why
Europe is dying? It is dying because it is poisoned.
It is dying because God made it in order to feed itself
on Catholic substance, but the empiricist doctors have
given it rational substance to eat. It is dying because
just as man does not live on bread alone, but on all
the words uttered by God, so also societies do not die
only by iron, but due to every anti-Catholic word
uttered from the mouths of philosophers. It is dying
because error kills. And is society is grounded in
errors. Everything it holds to incontestable is false.
"The vital strength of truth is so great that if you
possess one truth, only one truth, that truth would save
you. But its fall is so deep, its decadence so radical,
its blindness so complete, its nakedness so absolute,
and its misfortune so without precendent that is does
not possess a single truth. So, the disaster that must
come will be the disaster par excellence of History.
Individuals can still save themselves because they can
always save themselves. But society is lost."