Writing in the 1960s, when the Soviet Union was at the height of its power and Marxism was the preferred perspective of European intellectuals, Del Noce predicted the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the triumph of Western materialism and consumerism in what he called, “the society of well-being.” Del Noce contrasted the affluent society of well-being, which is focused on this world, with the good society of traditional philosophy and theology. The good society seeks to understand the nature of the good, the true, and the beautiful, and to conform the self and society to these transcendent norms. In the society of well-being all transcendent norms have been deconstructed and relativized. Del Noce predicted that one of the characteristics of such a society would be the reduction of sex to a value-free commodity, resulting in a culture of eroticism necessitating the disappearance of all modesty, a social movement for same-sex marriage, and a metaphysical attack on the family.
The metaphysical attack on the family followed, in Del Noce’s view, from modernity’s understanding of freedom. In traditional thought, freedom consists of the ability to achieve the proper telos, or purpose, of human life, a life that is ordered toward God and the transcendentals of the good, the true, the beautiful. For modernity, freedom means autonomous self-creation, freedom from any and all constraints. Radical atheism is not a conclusion of modernity but a moral premise. God must not exist or else I cannot be truly free. Tradition is seen not as the handing on of soul-freeing wisdom, but rather a set of arbitrary constraints.
Thus, the idea of tradition is tied to what Del Noce calls “Platonism” because “it is impossible to speak of ‘tradition’ without making reference to the thesis that ‘truth in itself’ and ‘good in itself’ are absolute, eternal, etc.”[3] This thesis, in turn, is tied to the idea of a universal rationality, the Platonic Logos. Tradition properly understood is inseparable from “the essential metaphysical principle … which says that everything that is participates necessarily in universal principles, which are the eternal and immutable essences contained in the permanent actuality of the divine intellect. … The primacy of contemplation, the primacy of the immutable, and the reality of an eternal order are equivalent affirmations.”[4] So, in metaphysical terms, “[t]raditional spirit means affirming the primacy of being, the primacy of the unchangeable, the primacy of intellectual intuition, or affirming the ontological value of the principle of non-contradiction.”[5] Del Noce opposes this “metaphysics of being” to the “metaphysics of becoming” which in the modern age found its classical expression in Hegel, and which also shaped the thought of Marx and his successors up to our day. According to this second view, there is no “given” order of being because truth is the “result” of the dialectical process of history, and morality consists in serving such process. Therefore, the very concept of “tradition” makes no sense, since it presupposes a metaphysical-theological conception of an objective order of being, such that morality consists in respecting it. According to this view, there is, in brief, a universal and eternal reason, higher than man, which provides the foundation for the hierarchy and the absoluteness of values. Therefore, values cannot be reduced to any psychological and sociological explanation ... Participating in this order is regarded as the foundation of man’s autonomy and dignity.[6]
Participating in this order is also the foundation of the possibility of a form of authority which is liberating (because “the affirmation of the super-human is what frees man from dependence on other men”[7]) and not repressive. https://humanumreview.com/articles/the-idea-of-tradition-in-del-noce