The beginning of a small - dare I say, not too loudly - mini-series on Chesterton's ideas. Philosophers certainly have no monopoly on philosophy. Whatever the student of philosophy may say, systematisation and logical argument isn't the only way to inquire about the nature of life, the mind, and the world. It is in fact one of the most round-about and circumspect ways to understand the world, because it is attracts reason solely, without consideration for feeling or beauty or any of the organs used to understand the world. Poets, from T. S. Eliot to Pindar have as much to say about metaphysics, epistemology, and the good life as Kant or Hume. In a stretched sense, the philosopher is a poet without much aptitude for writing; the very metaphysical structure of the minds of nations is shaped by their poets. What are the ancient Greeks without Homer; what are the Italians without Dante; and what are the English without Shakespeare? Is G. K. Chesterton a philosopher then? I would argue not. He hasn't the dialectics of Plato nor the argumentation of Kant. Chesterton isn't a logician, piecing through possible arguments against his points like Aquinas: Chesterton feels his arguments first, and explains them later. Throughout his book Orthodoxy, he's recounting his journey of thought via sentiments of 'this didn't feel right' and 'this didn't match my observation on the world'. He intuits rather than thinks, and he writes with flourish his sentiments about the world, because Chesterton is by nature a poet. For good or for ill, I am not so much of the poetical disposition, but rather of the thinking philosopher type. The minds of these two types are quite different, but both are of course valuable in developing a full picture; Jesus told the gospel through both St. John and St. Paul for this reason. Therefore, for those like me whose heads are awhirl with systems and models, I want to extract a picture of Chersteron's idea of Love as Patriotism. Chesterton, to my knowledge, first expounds this idea in his essay in Heretics named On Mr. Rudyard Kipling, and Making the World Small. In the essay, Chesterton argues that Kipling has a conditional love for England because 'he admires England because she is strong, not because she is English'. To this end, he quotes a couplet from Kipling, reading, 'If England was what England seems / How quick we'd chuck 'er: But she ain't!'. What Chesterton has issue with is this love for England because of her military might - can this be considered true love? When the military might of England declines and the grandeur of the empire crumbles, as it now has, can Kipling still love England? Or would he move to America and wax lyrical about American aircraft carriers? Perhaps a good example comes in football. Who will you support, your local team, or will you be a glory hunter for one of the major squads? In another essay in Orthodoxy named The Flag of the World, Chesterton touches upon the importance of unconditional love with greater focus. The essay begins with the false dichotomy between optimism and pessimism, and how both positions come at the world 'as if they were house-hunting'. These positions are pre-occupied with our value-judgements of them first and foremost, instead of with our belonging to them being primary. At to belong to some greater and hold it as part of our identity, is to fight for its flag. This is the patriotism Chesterton speaks of. Being British, however far Britain may fall to the dogs, it is the flag I will fight for out of love for my country. Returning to Kipling, love for one's country shouldn't be because it's strong, but because it is one's country. The option to change allegiance, jump ship, and move abroad is always in the background, but does that not represent a betrayal of one's flag? Love for one's country is much like love for one's daughter. If your daughter found hard times or lost her virtue, would you cease to love her? And what about your wife? If you only loved her for her looks, you'll soon find that as she grows older, those looks will vanish. In a very humorous quote, which I believe I've written on this blog before, Chesterton explains how even Pimlico could be gilded in gold and made into the New Jerusalem if the people who lived there loved Pimlico. Just because it isn't currently a beautiful place doesn't mean that, through love, Pimlico can become a beautiful place also. 'Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they loved her.' The beautification of the world and of people can only be achieved through unconditional, agapic, love. Without it, the world decays, as if the vine is cut off from the root, letting the fruit to whither. Marriage is a good example. Lifelong monogamy means you can invest your trust and emotions into your spouse forever without worry, because you can proudly fight for her flag, and love her through the sunshine and the rain. Beyond the flags of nations and the flags of people to fight for, there are higher flags also. There is the flag of justice; we fight for justice and become enraged as its miscarriages out of our love for justice. If the laws were to change and become unjust, we wouldn't cease to love justice, but, out of our love for justice, want true justice to be restored. Similarly, there is the flag of truth. We fight falsehood and study great thinkers out of a love for truth. If falsehood is being taught in a university, and the student discovers his lecturer taught him something wrong, no lover of truth would continue to repeat the falsehood learnt; but one who loves the lecturer or the university more than truth might. Like Athanasius, the lover of truth might have to fight the world. We see this pattern often in ideology. In Communist Russia, a lover of Communist theory, or a lover of Stalin, will repeat untrue propaganda because they love the state or they love communism more than they love truth. In Stalinist times, however, it may be more correct to say that those who are lovers of staying alive more than they are lovers of the truth repeated propaganda.

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

- Matthew 16:25 Much of the The Flag of the World centres on contrasting suicide and martyrdom. For Chesterton, suicide and martyrdom are opposites, for the suicidal man kills himself because he hates the world so much, whereas the martyr lets himself be killed because he loves creation and loves God. The highest flag to fight for is God. To love God is to be patriotic for His cause whatever grave difficulties come your way. This is difficult. Referencing the above quote from Matthew, when your life is in danger, it is very difficult to keep fighting for God's flag when alarms ring inside your head and you want to preserve your flesh. Indeed, you alone cannot do it, which is why one must let God aid you through the Spirit. I've presented a series of different flags to be fought for; and because I have the mind of a German systematiser rather than a poetic soul, we will go beyond Chesterton and form a model of it. There is a kind of hierarchy to the flags we've unearthed. On his essay on Kipling, Chesterton favours the flag of his country over the flag of victory, and that loving one's country through both victory and defeat is better than loving the victor. Do you, dear reader, agree? How about between love of one's wife and love of justice? If your wife had murdered someone and your testimony would be pivotal in the judgement, would you lie under oath in a court of law to prevent your wife from going to jail? How about between God and truth? Many an atheist of today at least believes they use logic and reason to disprove God; but implicit is the assumption that an allegiance to the flag of truth is more important than an allegiance to the flag of God. Each one of us has a hierarchy of flags to which we pledge allegiance through our love for them. And often they are oriented awry, missing what's most important for what's less important. Many of us don't love our houses enough, and leave them messy and dirty. Many of us don't love our bodies enough, loving our taste buds and junk food more than our bodies. And many of us don't love our friends and family enough being stingy with them and not sharing our good fortune. In psychoanalytic circles there is the expression, 'by his libido shall ye know him'. The psychoanalyst looks at the basal urges and drives frustrated in a man; but the principle stands when looking at the higher man also: 'by his love shall ye know him'. We can't help but devote ourselves to flags, to higher causes, but often we delude ourselves as to what we are fighting for. As we've seen, it's easy to love a quality, or love a part of a person, or a concept, or a thing, and forget what we ought to love. Therefore, by ordering and orienting what we love and what we wish to fight for, we can align ourselves more properly to what is most valuable.