Modern Age - Summer 2016 - 92

MODERN AGE

SUMMER 2016

Nowadays the English word dementia usually refers to the
degeneration of mental faculties brought on by old age or disease. For Virgil and the ancient world it meant, literally, being out
of one's mind as a result of rage or desire. A man was demens
who was deprived of mental clarity and voluntary agency by
passion, by what subjugates and takes hold of one: Corydon has
been seized or taken by dementia arising from the passion of lust.
And the same phrase is applied to the daughter of King Minos
of Crete, whose desire for a bull results in her giving birth to the
monstrous Minotaur. Perhaps all we need know about modern
society is that "passion" and "passionate" are now almost universally terms of approval.
Contemporary society is aiming for a world in which no
Corydon will ever be frustrated in his desire for any imaginable
Alexis-whatever bizarre, impossible object of lust that delirious
fancy can demand must, somehow, be accommodated. This is the
realization of R. R. Reno's "Empire of Desire," as he has expounded
the concept in The State of the American Mind; and Gairdner's view
of the matter is compatible. Gairdner also maintains that the truly
vital "clash" in our time is not between civilizations but within
Western civilization itself (40). His thesis resembles Zbigniew
Stawrowski's in The Clash of Civilizations or Civil War (see "Transatlantic Conservatism and the Dilemma of Tradition," Modern Age
57.3, 40-48); and it is probable that Reno would not disagree.
But it is not simply a battle between conservative and liberal
progressive forces for the soul of the West; there is, in addition,
a quiet, desperate, internecine struggle within the souls of individuals. For the most part we have succumbed or are hopelessly
compromised by the regime: "We have accepted the bargain,"
Reno writes, "a public culture of petty regulations and forthright
92

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Modern Age - Summer 2016

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Contents
Modern Age - Summer 2016 - Cover1
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Modern Age - Summer 2016 - Contents
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