by Matthew Crawford in Touchstone (May-June 2026)
From the author of Shopclass as Soulcraft comes another probing search for those elusive answers to today’s most vexing socio-cultural problems. Matthew Crawford’s voice remains eloquent and unabashed. To wit, Crawford’s recent article in Touchstone relates topics as disparate as “the crisis of the male,” mass immigration, humanitarianism, and Christian charity! Yet, the careful reader will discover compelling arguments for rediscovering the foundations of our civilization…
Matthew B. Crawford’s “Downward Nobility” argues that Christianity’s command to love others should not be confused with modern humanitarianism or with a weak, resentful “slave morality.” Responding to Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous critique of Christianity, Crawford examines a contemporary tension on the political right: some young male “vitalists” see Christianity as hostile to strength, excellence, hierarchy, and masculine aspiration. Crawford contends instead that Christianity shares vitalism’s desire for greatness and transcendence but gives it a moral and metaphysical foundation that mere celebration of force cannot provide. He identifies modern materialism, consumerism, careerism, and egalitarian leveling—not Christianity—as central sources of contemporary spiritual flatness.
The article uses Nietzsche’s idea of ressentiment—an enduring, impotent resentment that reverses values—to frame the debate. In Nietzsche’s account, people who cannot attain excellence label it bad, while weakness, humility, or ugliness become virtues; he considered Christianity a historic vehicle for this inversion. Crawford accepts the psychological insight but disputes its attribution to Christianity. Drawing especially on philosopher Max Scheler, he argues that medieval Christian civilization was not characterized by nihilistic leveling but by confidence in transcendence, hierarchy, beauty, and collective achievement, illustrated by cathedral building. He suggests that the more fitting home of ressentiment is the modern state and culture, which can encourage people to see themselves primarily as vulnerable victims requiring protection and expert management.
Crawford’s central claim is that Christian love moves from the higher to the lower—the strong serving the weak, the healthy caring for the sick, and God becoming human—without making superiority or excellence meaningless. For Scheler and Crawford, this “downward” movement is not self-hatred, pity, or a sentimental wish to erase distinctions. It is an active, generous expression of abundance: a person secure in his or her own strength can give without fear of being diminished. The author illustrates this with parenthood, arguing that love for a child develops through concrete acts of care, and with St. Francis’s care for lepers, which he interprets not as attraction to suffering or ugliness but as spiritual vitality overcoming revulsion. In this view, sacrifice can enlarge life and character rather than deny them.
Finally, Crawford distinguishes concrete Christian love of neighbor from what he calls abstract, political “humanitarian cosmopolitanism.” He argues that love is expressed through actual commitments and responsibilities—to family, neighbors, inherited traditions, and national communities—rather than through a universal sentiment detached from personal sacrifice. Applying this argument to European mass immigration, he criticizes political and religious appeals that, in his view, treat border enforcement and attachment to one’s own nation as morally suspect. He maintains that countries are held in trust for both past and future generations and that a renewed Christian humanism should affirm particular communities while guarding against nationalism’s moral dangers. The essay closes by urging recognition of the potentially generous impulse to defend one’s community, tempered by humility and the acknowledgment that moral good and evil run through every individual heart.
[Read the Touchstone article here.]
