The essential feature of modernity is autonomy:
auto-nomos, literally
self-law. Everything wrong with the world comes back to man attempting to give himself law, rather than getting it from the gods.
The Christian tries to do this by saying "conscience is the voice of God". Bad enough when the king's conscience is the voice of the god; Christianity makes
every man's conscience the voice of the god. What kind of law can be based on this?
What Christianity does openly, Platonism does covertly. Platonism makes every man a lawgiver by interpreting the gods' actions and commands allegorically. The worshipper must decide for himself if the deeds of Odin or Zeus are lawful. If their deeds don't meet his personal standard, they are deemed "allegorical"; the god must have meant something different, something to be filled in, naturally, by the worshipper himself. The result is that the gods are in no position to correct us, because where we disagree, it must be "allegory". This is a subtle, and for that reason especially dangerous, crowning of the individual.
The Enlightenment completes this self-law by simply doing away with the god. Because if the god can never correct us, even in principle, what is the difference if he doesn't exist?
Don't be fooled by the toga, the tonsure, or the tri-corner hat. Whether Platonism, Christianity, or the Enlightenment, all these are just modernity.
Only folkish paganism presents any alternative.
@folkishworldview
