The French Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac (d. 1991), who was allied with Joseph Ratzinger and whom John Paul II elevated to cardinal, was the author of one of Whittaker Chambers’s favorite books that is indeed a neglected classic, The Drama of Atheist Humanism, published in 1944. It is a fantastic study that climaxes with the later chapters on Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky. The book is not easy to excerpt for this format, but here’s a usable bit on positivism (the founding principle of modern social science) especially as it came to sight with Auguste Comte—a subject much on my mind these days:
The positivist formula spells total tyranny. In practice it leads to the dictatorship of a party, or, rather, of a sect. It refuses man any freedom, any rights, because it refuses him any reality. Because of the sincere altruism which inspired him, Auguste Comte was able to harbour illusions regarding the character of the “harmony” which he wished to established. He was steeped in sheer Utopianism. Nevertheless, he illustrated that too-often-neglected truth that charity without justice inevitably turns into oppression and ruins the human character which it ought to ennoble.
