ROMAN GUARDINI

Romano Guardini, The End of the Modern World, Introduction by Frederik D, Wilhelmsen, Foreword by Richard John Neuhaus (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books/ Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1998) (From the 'Foreword': "The question is not whether the glass is half full or half empty, but what do you do when you know it's empty." Id. at x. "From the 'Introduction': "Mass man is a man without a personality." Id. at xx. From 'The End of the Modern World': A Search for Orientation: "Where is the place of man? The question seeks answer not merely as to the place man shares in nature with all corporeal things, but answer above all as to his existential place. Where is man's place in being?" 'The Middle Ages answered the question by insisting that man's place was the earth and the earth was the center of the universe. That answer upheld man, satisfied him in the wholeness of his responsibility, his dignity and his being. The new astronomy, however, threw the earth out of its old position; at first it lost its place as the center of the cosmos becoming only one of he planets which circled the sun. Then, to worsen the problem, the solar system itself was absorbed within an unlimited universe, from the cosmological point of view the earth had lost all significance, Where then can man be" Id. at 45-46. From 'Power and Responsibility: A Course of Action for the New Age': "[W]e do well to realize at last that there has never been greatness without asceticism, and what is needed today is something not only great, but ultimate: we must decide whether we are going to realize the requirements of rule in freedom or in slavery." "An ascetic is a man who has himself well in hand. To be capable of this, he must recognize the wrongs within himself and set about righting them. He must regulate his physical as well as his intellectual appetites, educate himself to hold his possessions in freedom, sacrificing the lesser for the greater. He must fight for inner health and freedom--against the machinations of advertising, the flood of loud sensationalism, against noise in all its forms. He must acquire a certain distance from things; must train himself to think independently, to resist what 'they' say. Street, traffic, newspaper, radio, screen, and television all present problems of self-discipline, indeed of the most elementary self-defense--problems we hardly suspect, to say nothing of tackling. Everywhere man is capitulating to the force of barbarism. Asceticism is the refusal to capitulate, the determination to fight them, there at the key bastion--namely, in ourselves. It means that through self-discipline and self-restraint he develops from the core outward, holding life high in honor so that it may be fruitful on the level of its deepest significance." Id. at 217-218.).