The Collapse of Being: How the Denial of Universals Destroys Justice, Identity, and Freedom

The soul of modern Western culture stands at a crossroads. Every person should be concerned with justice, rights, and freedom. Yet many in our society fundamentally deny the very realities that make these goods possible. They reject the existence of real universals, essence, nature, and truth, upon which identity, justice, and freedom depend. In doing so, they collapse the underpinnings of identity, corrupt the idea of justice, and lose a true understanding of freedom.

You might be asking yourself: What exactly is the problem?

The Classical Understanding of Reality

The classical understanding of reality affirmed that things possess real and intelligible essences. A thing is what it is, not because of how it acts in a given moment, but because it has a nature, an internal structure of being, that gives rise both to its existence and its capacities for action. This applies universally and particularly. For example, a horse exists as an individual substance and also participates in the universal category of "horseness." As Aristotle wrote:

"To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false; while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true." (Metaphysics, Book IV)

Understanding essences is critical because a being’s nature determines not only how it acts, but also how others ought to act toward it. We do not treat rocks the same way we treat dogs, because their natures are fundamentally different. Likewise, we do not need to examine each and every dog individually to know how to treat it. We understand "dog" as a kind of being, and act accordingly.

Likewise, human beings have a fixed nature. Human beings are rational and moral creatures, ordered toward truth and goodness. To say that humans are rational implies two key powers:

• Intellect is the ability to perceive truth, goodness, and beauty.

• Will is the ability to choose actions in accordance with those goods.

Freedom, properly understood, is the ability to choose the good, not merely to follow base instincts or momentary passions. As Aquinas put it:

"For the impulse of man to action arises from the directing reason; wherefore his impulse is one of command." (Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 17, a. 2)

Rationality sets the human being apart from merely sentient or vegetative creatures and grounds the very idea of justice.

Justice, in its classical sense, means giving each being what it is due. To do this rightly, one must first understand what kind of being one is dealing with. It is not just to treat a baby like a rock or a dog like a carrot. Failure to recognize and act according to a being’s nature is a failure of justice at its most fundamental level.

The Break: Nominalism and the Denial of Universals

However, over time, the very concept of justice has been eroded, although not initially by malice.

In the 14th century, William of Ockham sought to defend God's omnipotence by arguing that God is not constrained even by universal natures. To bolster this claim, he denied that universals are real. Thus, there is no "horseness" — only individual creatures that we group together by naming them "horses."

This doctrine, Nominalism, fundamentally changed the landscape of philosophy. If there are no real universals, then how can we treat beings according to their nature? Justice, rights, and identity became matters of human will, not of objective reality.

Like a compass demagnetized, thought itself began to drift without any true north to guide it.

Modern Emotivism: Rousseau and the Triumph of Feeling

This nominalist foundation set the stage for further corruption of thought in the Enlightenment. Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century argued that man is fundamentally good, not by reason, but by instinct and emotion. Society, he claimed, corrupts man's natural feelings. Thus, feelings became the new foundation for truth.

But Rousseau was tragically wrong. As anyone who has wrestled honestly with human nature knows, our deepest instincts are often self-centered, grasping for pleasure, comfort, and dominance. Left to our instincts, we do not find selfless love but selfish appetite. As Pascal observed:

"The heart has its reasons which reason does not know."

The elevation of emotion over reason, and the denial of fixed natures, led directly to the modern collapse of real rights. If beings have no essences, then there is no stable basis for rights. Natural rights cannot exist without natural natures. Thus, rights became state-defined, arbitrary privileges granted and revoked by the powerful.

Existentialism and the Death of Essence

The collapse of belief in real essences also paved the way for existentialism in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Christian existentialists like Søren Kierkegaard still believed that human beings had a real nature, but emphasized the anguish and "leap of faith" required to live authentically in a fallen world.

However, secular existentialists, most famously Jean-Paul Sartre, took the next logical step.

Sartre declared:

"Existence precedes essence."

In other words, human beings are not born with any given nature, purpose, or meaning. You simply exist, and then you must invent your own meaning through acts of radical freedom.

But without an essence to guide freedom, freedom itself becomes a terrifying burden. As Sartre wrote:

"Man is condemned to be free."

Condemned because freedom detached from truth and goodness is not liberation, but isolation and despair.

Thus, existentialism, especially in its secular form, is not a celebration of human potential but a confession of human dislocation.

• Identity is self-created.

• Morality is invented.

• Meaning is a personal project, fragile and arbitrary.

The individual, once anchored like a ship in a safe harbor, now drifts aimlessly on a sea without stars.

The existential despair of Sartre and his successors accelerated the collapse begun by nominalism and emotivism. Without real being, identity, freedom, and justice are not merely misunderstood: they are destroyed.

Postmodern Play-Acting: Identity Collapses

Identity, too, became a matter of performance rather than being. Instead of identity flowing from what one is, it became a matter of what one claims to be or acts like.

If I claim to be a woman because I act like a woman (whatever that might mean), I have denied that "woman" is a real category rooted in nature. Thus, the concept of "womanhood" collapses into incoherence.

As Simone de Beauvoir said:

"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."

But if womanhood is purely a performance, then there is no real category of women to protect, liberate, or even meaningfully discuss. Feminism, ironically, saws off the very branch it sits on, because feminism depends on "woman" being a real, shared nature.

Identity, once like a monument carved in stone, begins to crack, erode, and collapse into dust — until even the shape it once held is forgotten.

The same absurdity repeats elsewhere:

• If being human is acting human, there are no humans — only performances.

• If being free is acting free, there is no freedom — only theater.

• If being just is acting just, there is no justice — only manipulation.

Everything dissolves into subjective play-acting, untethered from reality. Truth itself becomes an act of will, and thus, might makes right.

The Subversion of Justice: Injustice as the New Virtue

When justice is no longer understood as giving to each what is due according to their nature, but is instead redefined as the redistribution of power, then injustice itself becomes the means of achieving so-called "justice."

To achieve "equity," one must punish, censor, or oppress those deemed "privileged," regardless of whether they have done any personal wrong.

To achieve "liberation," one must deny due process, silence conscience, and treat beings not according to what they are, but according to how they are classified by the ruling ideology.

Thus, one must commit acts of injustice in the name of justice.

It is madness. It is the collapse of reason itself to believe that justice can be achieved through injustice.

As Cicero warned long ago:

"The greatest incitement to injustice is the hope of gaining by it."

But modernity has abandoned even that prudence; now injustice is not merely tolerated, it is celebrated as virtue.

Injustice cannot lead to justice. It can only breed more injustice, until truth itself is ground beneath the machinery of will and power.

Orwellian Language and the Collapse of Meaning

This is the Orwellian irony of our age: The same words, justice, rights, freedom, are used, but their meanings have been inverted.

As Orwell warned:

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." (1984)

Language, once a river carving its path through solid earth, now floods its banks, drowning all distinctions in murky waters.

Language becomes a tool of social control, not a reflection of reality. Truth becomes a political battlefield.

The result?

• Chaos.

• Tyranny.

• The collapse of meaning itself.

Without objective essences:

• Identity collapses.

• Rights become privileges of the strong.

• Justice becomes a mask for power.

Exactly the outcome classical philosophy and Christian theology sought to prevent.

The Way Forward: Recovering Realism

But all is not lost.

Reality is structured and knowable. Science itself could not function without the assumption that nature is ordered and intelligible.

Human dignity must be rooted in human nature, not in arbitrary choice. Otherwise, we are left at the mercy of despotism.

True justice and true freedom depend on affirming what is real. Language must once again serve truth, not power.

If we do not return to these core principles, the entire Western cultural experiment will collapse under its own weight, like a house built upon sand.

As Cicero wrote:

"True law is right reason in agreement with nature."

Without universals, freedom dies, and justice becomes a mask for the triumph of power.

Each of us must choose. And truly, there is only one real choice: To choose the good, to seek the truth, and to work toward the restoration of reality itself.

Let us choose to see again — to see what is, and to live in truth.