On the Death of a Civilization

Our contemporary civilization is in distress. Society is unraveling, with rampant individualism, moral dissipation, identity crises, unchecked consumerism, and social isolation. De Corte, writing in the mid-twentieth century, studies these trends and discerns their causes: the prevalence of philosophies rooted in idealism or materialism, the reign of ideologies inspired by these philosophies, objectification of workers in both free-market capitalism and communism as economic progress trumps social well-being, the efforts of some in the Church to compromise the truth in order to adapt to the world, and, most importantly, the rejection of the transcendent. To heal society and build a new civilization emerging from the old, De Corte prescribes restoring a religious, moral, and philosophical compass to society, and the development of small-scale communities with an organic relationship to the environment and fostering close interpersonal connections.

Marcel De Corte was born in Belgium in 1905 and died in 1994. Philosopher, heir to the great Aristotelian tradition, contemporary of Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson, Gabriel Marcel, and Gustave Thibon, he taught at the University of Liège until 1975. Frequent contributor to the Catholic periodical, "Itinéraires," and author of more than twenty works on philosophical reflection, he was notably interested in social evolutions that stem from the French and Industrial Revolutions, principally regarding the moral and social disintegration of modern man.