Future of Man: A Rightist Interpretation of Order

Abstract

In order to understand the cleavage between Left and Right one must reveal the roots of this opposition. The rift began with the quarrel between the ancients and moderns in 17-18th centuries culminating in the Enlightenment. As a result, modernity questioned almost everything inherited from the past: traditions, God, natural law and right. They were replaced by the ideas of new, history, infinite progress, social justice, and rights. What we consider the political Right today has always been related to a worldview which regards the classical meaning of Nature and its derivatives like natural law and rights still valid and the sources of political and moral judgments. Beyond the practical use of the Left-Right opposition, European culture could regain her earlier strength if she could regain the view of the whole, the major characteristic of the classical philosophy, as represented by authors like Aristotle, St. Augustine, Dante, Shakespeare or Goethe. Thus man could set aims for himself in the future on the basis of wisdom.