How to Destroy Western Civilization and Other Ideas from the Cultural Abyss

by Peter Kreeft

Overview

Best-selling author Peter Kreeft presents a series of brilliant essays about many of the issues that increasingly divide our Western civilization and culture. He states that "these essays are not new proposals or solutions to today's problems. They are old. They have been tried, and have worked. They have made people happy and good. That is what makes them so radical and so unusual today. The most uncommon thing today is common sense."

Kreeft says that one thing we can all do to help save our culture is to gather wisdom as data to preserve and remember, like the monks in the Dark Ages. Data is important and necessary; they are the premises for our conclusions. He presents relevant, philosophical data that can guide us, divided into 7 categories: epistemological, theological, metaphysical, anthropological, ethical, political, and historical. He then explores these categories with classic Kreeft insights, presenting 40 pithy points on how we can implement the data from these categories to help save civilization – and more importantly, save souls.

He emphasizes the single most necessary thing we can do to save our civilization is to have children. If you don't have children your civilization will cease to exist. Before you can be good or evil, you must exist. Having children is heroic because it demands sacrificial love and commitment. Cherishing children is the single most generous and unselfish act that a society can perform for itself.

He discusses the "unmentionable elephant in the room". It's sex. Religious liberty is being attacked in the name of "sexual liberty". Our culture war today is fundamentally about abortion, and abortion is about sex. Today we hear astonishing, selfish reasons people give to justify not having children, or killing children through abortion. So let's fight our culture war, which is truly a holy war, with joy and confidence. And with the one weapon that will infallibly win the future: children.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642291599
Publisher:	Ignatius Press
Publication date:	03/01/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	182
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, is one of the most respected and prolific Christian authors of our time. His many bestselling books cover a vast array of topics in spirituality, theology, and philosophy. They include Wisdom from the Psalms, Practical Theology, Doors in the Walls of the World, How to Be Holy, Because God Is Real, You Can Understand the Bible, Angels and Demons, Heaven: The Heart's Deepest Longing, and Summa of the Summa.

Table of Contents

1 How to Destroy Western Civilization 7

2 What Can Chicken Little Do? 12

3 The Unmentionable Elephant in the Living Room of the Religious Liberty Debate 21

4 The Paradox of Poverty 25

5 The Logic of Liberalism 41

6 The Social, Moral, and Sexual Effects of Symbolic Logic 48

7 Twelve Core Values 63

8 Traditionalism and Progressivism 80

9 C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Culture Wars 96

10 Heroes 111

11 What Is a Liberal? 122

12 What Is the Key to a Good Society? 131

13 Seventeen Freedoms 136

14 Four Confusions about Freedom 138

15 Is Agnosticism in Religion the Default Position? 146

16 A Word about Islam, and a Defense of My Controversial Book about It 157

17 Pity vs. Pacifism 162

18 Judgment 168

Editorial Reviews

"In describing how to destroy the West, which we're doing a pretty good job of just now, Peter Kreeft also indicates how to save it, if what's left is savable. He has produced many valuable books in the course of a long career. This one, in its broad scope and incisive analysis, may be the very best of them all."
— Robert Royal, Ph.D., Author, A Deeper Vision:The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century

"If Western civilization is imploding, the sole corrective is to detonate it with love, the only reality able to move both minds and hearts truly. Dr. Kreeft does precisely this in his explosive call for a renewal of family life, of a culture aware of what it is worshipping, and of a freedom that allows humans to embrace the fullness of life for which they have been created in Christ."
— Fr. David Meconi, S.J., Director, Catholic Studies Centre, Saint Louis University; Editor, Homiletic & Pastoral Review

"A pithy, often very funny book, with a serious underlying purpose. Peter Kreeft, our very own C. S. Lewis, is a keen diagnostician of our moral and spiritual disorders—here set forth in layman’s language of common sense. He doesn't flinch or coddle. Truth is hard on those who deny it. Whether it makes you laugh or cry, this is a book to be savored and enjoyed on many levels."
— Robert Reilly, Author, America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding

"Diagnosis and prescription in one volume! Dr. Kreeft shows that the diseases destroying Western civilization are indeed deadly, but need not be fatal. While there is still time, we can remember, reclaim and discover the treasures of Western civilization that are both so divine and so thoroughly humane."
— Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J., Author, Real Philosophy for Real People; Host, The Catholic Current on the Station of the Cross Radio Network

From the Publisher