Jacques Maritain and the Natural Law

JACQUES MARITAIN IS, IN ANYONE'S BOOK, one of the more important 20th century advocates of Thomism and the natural law. This French philosopher and political thinker was born in 1882 in Paris, France. He studied at the Lycée Henri IV (1898-99) and then at the Sorbonne, where he worked towards a licenciate in philosophy and the natural sciences. He was steered from his initial interest in the thought of Spinoza by his friend, the French essayist and poet, Charles Péguy, to attend the lectures of Henri Bergson. In 1901, Maritain met a fellow student at the Sorbonne, Raïssa Oumansoff, who was the daughter or Russian Jewish immigrants, and later was to marry her. Together they contemplated the meaninglessness of life, and vowed to commit suicide within a year if they were unable to discover a path out of life's vanity. Through Bergsonian philosophy, and then later through the influence of the Catholic author Léon Bloy, the Maritains found that life had meaning and ultimately sought baptism in the Roman Catholic Church in 1906. Eventually, Maritain was to exchange Bergson and his bergsonisme for St. Thomas Aquinas and his thomisme, a very fine trade. He became, along with his fellow Frenchman Etienne Gilson, one of the foremost advocates of neo-Thomism in the 20th century. In 1912, Maritain became professor of philosophy at Lycée Stanislaus, but also lectured at the Institut Catholique de Paris, where he later became an assistant professor in 1914. In 1921 he was appointed full Professor, and later became chair of the department of Logic and Cosmology, a position he held until 1939 when World War II broke out while he was giving series of lectures at the Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto. He decided not to return to France, and instead moved to the United States where taught at Princeton (1941-42), and then Columbia (1941-44). Returning to Princeton as Professor Emeritus in 1948, Maritain lectured at a number of American universities including Notre Dame and the University of Chicago. In 1960, the Maritains returned to France. After his wife Raïssa's death that year, he lived with the Little Brothers of Jesus and published his popular A Peasant of the Garonne (Le paysan de la Garonne), a work critical of some of the post-Vatican II reforms. In 1970, he joined the order, and died in Toulouse in 1973.

An Elderly Jacques Maritain

His output was prolific and broad, publishing works on religion and culture, philosophy, including epistemology, the philosophy of nature, the philosophy of religion, logic, art and aesthetics, political philosophy, moral philosophy and the philosophy of law, and the philosophy of history. The French edition of his works (which include the works of his wife) is composed of 16 volumes (Oeuvres complètes de Jacques et Raïssa Maritain). His works are being published in English under the editorship at one time of Ralph McInerny (R.I.P.), and is anticipated to be 20 volumes in expanse (The Collected Works of Jacques Maritain).

A number of his works are particularly relevant to the issue of natural law, and eventually, we hope to review them all in this blog. Most notably, one can cite the following: The Natural Law (La loi naturelle), Man and the State (L'Homme et L’État), The Rights of Man and the Natural Law (Les droits de l'homme et la loi naturelle), Christianity and Democracy (Christianisme et Démocratie), Lectures on Natural Law (La loi naturelle ou loi non écrite).

In the next series of blog entries, we shall review the book entitled Natural Law: Reflections on Theory and Practice,* which is a compilation of Maritain's writings from his The Range of Reason, his lectures La loi naturelle out loi non écrite, and The Rights of Man and the Natural Law. It presents an overview of important concepts in the Maritainian presentation of Thomistic natural law.

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*Jacques Maritain, Natural Law: Reflections on Theory and Practice (William Sweet, ed.) (South Bend: St. Augustine's Press, 2001)

Leo Strauss and Natural Law: Classical Coda

1789 WAS NOT A GOOD YEAR for the wine of revolution in Burke's view. This is compellingly evidenced in his monograph on the French Revolution which is highly critical of the French Revolution partisans. Burke had the insight to see the French Revolution for what it was, a philosophical, even religious revolution, one which had atheism at its heart. This philosophy fed the masses through intricate arteries of propaganda using labels that are, in themselves, noble-sounding, but which, in actuality, are masks for something altogether demonic: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. It could equally be the motto of a monastic order, as it could be the motto of wild-eyed Jacobins, but this trilogy of words would certainly mean different things to the man who operated under the evangelical counsels, compared to the man who spurned not only the evangelical counsels, but the Ten Commandments as well.

Prudence is perhaps the key trait of Burke, the principal animator of this practical man addressing practical things. Indeed, Burke calls prudence the "god of this lower world." And yet, Strauss detects an unclassical strain in Burke. There is a Burkean cleavage between reason and sentiment, "a certain emancipation of sentiment and instinct from reason, or a certain depreciation of reason," in Burke. Strauss, 312. It is this which Strauss says "accounts for the nonclassical overtones in Burke's remarks on the difference between theory and practice" which is at the heart of his criticism of the French Revolution and its partisans.

Prudence, there can be no doubt, is a virtue, a habit of great value. And yet, one wonders, how many martyrs doth prudence make? How many prophets does prudence nourish?

While Burke's practical prudence would dampen ideology's recoil, doesn't it also dampen faith's spring? Would Burke confuse "speculatism," that is, theory as ideology which is oblivious to, or a falsification of, reality, an idealism ummoored in reality with something else, with supernatural faith? If not, what does he have to distinguish them? In Burke's Whiggish view of the world, heavy with the feet of clay of inherited constitutions, could the spirited faith of martyrs pitted impractically, imprudently against the judgment of the senatus populusque Romanus have been execrable "speculatism"? Had Burke's girth gotten so swollen with victuals and drink that he no longer hungered after eternal verities? Prophets, it may be observed, like martyrs, tend to be highly imprudent, at least when worldly prudence is the canon by which their words and deeds are adjudged. Most kings find prophets unsettling, irritants, idealists unchained to practical realities that come with rule because they are citizens of a world that they cannot see. How shall prudence judge between ideologue, the foolish martyr and prophet, on the one hand, and the authentic martyr and prophet on the other? Burke relies on his historical English patrimony, and advocates a "historical jurisprudence." Strauss, 316. But doesn't this land us back to the "historical school" of Weber and others that Strauss criticized in the first part of his History and Natural Right? Ultimately, we want to avoid the blindness of practical men, such as Pontius Pilate, and want to side with He who had far less worldly attachments such as Christ. Wasn't the prudent Pontius Pilate both deaf and blind to the Christ that was before him? Quid est veritas? What is truth? What good is political prudence, the "god of this lower world," if it blinds one, like it did Pilate, to the God of the world? Is this where Burke would take us? Strauss intimates that it would be so. "Prudence and 'this lower world' cannot be seen properly without some knowledge of 'the higher world'--without genuine theoria." Strauss, 321. (Strauss should have said fides et ratio, but his atheism prevented him.)

Both Burke, in his way, and Rousseau, in his way, tried to tame Providence. Burke saw the English constitution--the rights of Englishmen--as providentially given. Rousseau saw his time as providentially enlightened. So one saw history as providing the "ought." The other saw history as providing the "is." Both, therefore, settled upon an "idea of History" which was nothing less than "a modification of the traditional belief in Providence." Strauss, 316-17. "That modification," Strauss notes, "is usually described as 'secularization.'" Strauss, 317. He explains:

"Secularization" is the "temporalization" of the spiritual or of the eternal. It is the attempt to integrate the eternal into a temporal context. It therefore presupposes that the eternal is no longer understood as eternal. "Secularization," in other words, presupposes a radical change of thought, a transition of thought from one plane to an entirely different plane. . . . . The "secularization" of the understanding of Providence culminates in the view that the ways of God are scrutable to sufficiently enlightened men.

Strauss, 317. This, Strauss argues, is found in both Rousseau and Burke.

There is a watershed of difference between the belief that the ways of God are scrutable to man, or inscrutable. The tradition never had the temerity to suppose, in an institutional way, that it knew the designs of God in history.

The theological tradition recognized the mysterious character of Providence by the fact that God uses or permits evil for his good ends. It asserted, therefore, that man cannot take his bearings by God's providence but only by God's law, which simply forbids man to do evil.

Strauss, 317. In his daily work, in giving himself his daily bread, natural law, therefore, was what man had to follow. Providence would take care of itself. Providence was God's business. Avoiding sin and promoting virtue was man's business. The hubris involved in supposing one could divine God's Providence led to a deprecation of law:

In proportion as the providential order came to be regarded as intelligible to man, and therefore evil came to be regarded as evidently necessary or useful, the prohibition against doing evil lost its evidence. Hence various ways of action which were previously condemned as evil could no w be regarded as good. The goals of human action were lowered. But is precisely a lowering of these goals which modern political philosophy consciously intended from its very beginning.

Strauss, 317. Strauss finds the commonality between Burke and Rousseau elsewhere also. His insight is that, at the heart of both Rousseau and Burke, one finds an overemphasis on individualism. It is the quarrel that both Rousseau and Burke have with the ancients:

The quarrel between the ancients and the moderns concerns eventually, and perhaps even from the beginning, the status of 'individuality.' Burke himself was still too deeply imbued with the spirit of 'sound antiquity' to allow the concern with individuality to overpower the concern with virtue.

Strauss, 323.

But his successors would not have the benefit of that spiritual capital. Rousseau still had his Plutarch. Burke still had the traditions of the ancients. Neither appear to have had a vibrant faith. As man by then had given the faith all up. Modern man has none of these anchors. He flails in the wind, and his politics has no lasting meaning, either in reason, or in faith. His reason and faith is given not to God, but to some substitute. That is to say, modern man has given himself up to idols.

Leo Strauss and Natural Law: Even Edmund Burke's Infected

EDMUND BURKE IS LEO STRAUSS'S CLOSER. It is with this English Whig, this great figure of Kirkian Conservatives, that Leo Strauss rounds up his work entitled History and Natural Right. Unlike the dissolute Rousseau, who appears to have given himself to the modern Hobbesian and Lockean assumptions and extended them to their radical, revolutionary anti-social, anti-moral, and anti-rational conclusions, the politician Edmund Burke (1729-1797) attempted, perhaps more by force of habit than by absolute principle, a return to the classic notion of natural law. "Burke sided with Cicero and with with Suarez against Hobbes and against Rousseau." Strauss, 295. Burke had the good sense to view "the Parisian philosophers," and their "new morality," with skepticism, and to side instead with "the authors of sound antiquity." Strauss, 295 (quoting Burke). He scoffed at those who, like Rousseau and Hobbes before him, "pretend[ed] to have made discoveries in the terra australis of morality."* Strauss, 295 (quoting Burke).

Burke does, from time to time, adopt the prevailing language of these theorists that he excoriates, but only with a practical, ad hominem purpose. As Strauss observes, Burke "may be said to integrate these notions into a classical or Thomistic framework." Strauss, 296. Burke also speaks within the British constitutional mantle, as he "conceived of the British constitution in a spirit akin to that in which Cicero had conceived of the Roman polity." He was not reactionary--he was, after all a Whig, and a Whig's Whig at that, and may be said to be a classical liberal (he it was that said, to Marx's consternation, "The laws of commerce [meaning the laws of commerce per Adam Smith and other mercantilists] are the laws of Nature, and therefore the laws of God.")--but he was deeply conservative, indisputably reaching back behind the moral upstarts Hume, Rousseau, Locke, and Hobbes.

Edmund Burke

Though Burke did not write any single synthetic, theoretical work on moral philosophy or politics, his entire corpus--of political speeches, tracts, letters, monographs--all evince a practical yet principled man, deeply steeped in classical notions of natural moral law. It was this lodestar which made him so independent in thought and in mind to those of his contemporaries, and allowed him to favor the rights of American colonists and the Irish Catholics, and to oppose Warren Hastings and the French Revolution, against the views of many of his countrymen.

Against Hobbes and Rousseau, Burke clearly saw that man naturally tended toward civil cooperation, some sort of civil society. In the language of the times, he therefore distinguished between the Hobbesian and Rousseauian state of "rude nature," and wrote about a "true state of nature," which included the Aristotelian notion of man as a political animal. Strauss, 296. Against these two also, we find Burke advocating the concept that the "social contract" must include a "partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection." Strauss, 296 (quoting Burke). The social contract was, for Burke, "a contract in almost the same sense in which the whole providential order, 'the great primeval contract of eternal society," can be said to be a contract.'" Strauss, 296-97 (quoting Burke). Thus society and government have a role towards promoting the rule of virtue, of human perfection. These are not the words of a radical, or a libertine, of a Jacobin. Nor are they, however, the words of authoritarianism, a supporter of tyrannical government. There is therefore both a "Burke of Liberty" and a "Burke of Authority" as Winston Churchill denominated it, but yet it was "the same man pursuing the same ends, seeking the same ideals of society and Government, and defending them from assaults, now from one extreme, now from the other." (Winston Churchill, "Consistency in Politics" in Thoughts and Adventures (London: 1934), 40.) Burke was a man who sought to navigate, like a political Odysseus, through the Charybdis of Liberty and the Scylla of Authority.

Burke thought substance more important than process, and therefore did not view democracy as the cure-all, and this for the simple reason that democracy did not assure good government. And what man had a right to, was not necessarily participation in political process (a procedural right),** but the right to good government (which was a substantive right). As Strauss summarizes it:

For the judgment of the man, or the "the will of the man, and their interest, must very often differ." Political power or participation in political power does not belong to the rights of man, because men have a right to good government, and there is no necessary connection between good government and government by the many . . . .

Strauss, 297-98.

Ultimately, Burke appears to have rejected, but only partially, a Cartesian dualism in man, both in morals and in politics. Burke takes man as we find him, a complex, intricate, indivisible man, a composite of body and soul, a composite of individual in society. Burke therefore was deeply distrustful of any kind of political thinking that was pure theory, or pure "speculatism." He rejected a morals of geometry, an ethica de moro geometrico. Instead, Burke incarnated man in the here-and-now, as a countryman, as a family man, as one who was concerned with "one's own." Thus, politics was the practice of the particular, it "presupposes attachment to a particular . . . one's country, one's people, one's religious group, and the like." Strauss, 309. No political system is perfect; and all suffer from the weakness, habits, and foibles of men.

It may be, Strauss suggests, that Burke's distrust of theory, and his reliance on prudence and practical realities, led him to take an anti-theoretical stance. It may be, as Strauss states, that "Burke's opposition to modern 'rationalism' shifts almost insensibly into an opposition to 'rationalism' as such." Strauss, 313. Perhaps in his aversion to the theories of Rousseau and Hobbes, Burke himself stepped into a rejection of political theory in toto. Strauss suggests that perhaps Burke threw out the baby with the bath water: "Burke is not content with defending practical wisdom against the encroachments of theoretical science. He parts company with the Aristotelian tradition by disparaging theory and especially metaphysics. He uses "metaphysics" and "metaphysician" frequently in a derogatory sense." Strauss, 311. Burke does appear to reject the Aristotelian notion of a natural telos, an end in nature, and in human nature specifically. "There is," therefore, "a connection between [Burke's] strictures on metaphysics and the skeptical tendencies of his contemporaries Hume and Rousseau." Strauss, 312.

Homer nods. So does Burke. So do those who do not go beyond Burke.

To a certain extent, Burke suffers from the plight of all conservatives. What is it that one is trying to conserve? Sometimes, the very order one is trying to conserve is unconservative. There are times, it would seem, that a principled conservative would reject the immediate past, because the immediate past institutionalizes a rejection of an earlier, valid order. In other words, conservatism must not simply seek to preserve the cloth of order it has inherited, as the cloth of order may be sullied, stained, torn. One's patrimony, in other words, may need more than just polishing, it may need to be thrown away. If one were to inherit a library of pornography, is this a patrimony that ought to be preserved? A true conservative would have a standard that supersedes, though it might presume the importance of, his patrimony. Conservatism must sometimes seek to wash, to bleach, and to mend an inherited order that those before him ruined or soiled, or that the changing times have made untrue to a more fundamental principle of order. Burke, wed to the British constitution as he received it, appears, never to have gone beyond a first-phase conservatism. He was, for all his greatness, a bourgeois Whig. He was, and is, better than Rousseau, than Hobbes. He is not, for all that, the best.

[Burke] applied to the production of the sound political order what modern political economy had taught about the production of public prosperity: the common good is the product of activities which are not by themselves ordered toward the common good. Burke accepted the principle of modern political economy which is diametrically opposed to the classical principle: "the love of lucre," "this natural, this reasonable . . . principle," "is the grand cause of prosperity of all states." . . . [Burke's] intransigent opposition to the French Revolution must not blind us to the fact that, in opposing the French Revolution, he has recourse to the same fundamental principle which is at the bottom of the revolutionary theorems and which is alien to all earlier thought.

Strauss, 314-15 (quoting Burke). Burke, in Strauss's view, then is already infected with an incipient tendency toward "secularization" or "temporalization." Relative to Hobbes and to Rousseau, Burke is conservative. Relative to Aristotle, to Cicero, to Thomas Aquinas, to Suarez, to Richard Hooker, Burke is not. Burke has already swallowed the pill of modernism, of secularism.

(continued)
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*Terra australis means "southern land," and is a reference to the hypothesized continent in the southern hemisphere, also called terra australis incognita, or "unknown southern lands," in most maps between the 15th and 18th century based upon the unsupported speculations of Aristotle.
**Burke, however, "does not reject the view that all authority has its ultimate origin in the people or that the sovereign is ultimately the people . . . ." Strauss, 298. But Burke speaks less of "compacts" or "contracts," than he does of "constitutions," "custom," and "prescription."

Leo Strauss and Natural Law: Rousseau and Freedom

FREEDOM IS A WORD THAT IS SUBJECT TO ABUSE. It is, like many other fundamental yet multivalent concepts--justice, right, fairness, equality, to name other examples--a notably easy term to hijack. So we hear popular song lyrics include such inanities as, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to loose (lose?). . . ." When freedom is hijacked by radical individualists who pose as would-be philosophers such as Rousseau, it is deviated from its proper route and proper destination to some other undesired route and destination. In emptying the notion of the "state of nature" from any meaning, both social and rational (what Strauss calls the "depreciation or ex-inanition of the state of nature"), there was an inversely proportional emphasis on independence and freedom. Thus, Rousseau's concept of freedom, like Rousseau's life itself, is unbalanced, unhinged as it is from the cardinal guidance of any human nature. Freedom becomes a tyrannical principle because it tends toward arbitrariness:

According to Rousseau . . . freedom is a higher good than life. In fact, he tends to identify freedom with virtue or with goodness. He says that freedom is obedience to the law which one has given to one's self. This means, in the place, that not merely obedience to the law but legislation itself must originate in the individual. It means, secondly, that freedom is not so much either the condition or the consequence of virtue as virtue itself. What is true of virtue can also be said of goodness, which Rousseau distinguished from virtue: freedom is identical with goodness; to be free, or to be one's self, is to be good--this is one meaning of his thesis that man is by nature good. Above all, he suggests that the traditional definition of man be replaced by a new definition according to which not rationality but freedom is the specific distinction of man.

Strauss, 278. La distinction spécifique de l’homme que sa qualité d’agent libre. The notion that the distinction specific to man, as compared to the brute animals, is that he is a free agent, without regard to his social nature or to his rational nature, is what makes Rousseau's thought relatively novel, though it is really nothing but an extension and transformation and perhaps modernization of the old saws of Epicureanism. Nevertheless, at least for us moderns, "Rousseau may be said to have originated 'the philosophy of freedom.'" Strauss, 279. Torn from any moorings in man's social, moral, and rational nature, however, this Rousseauian freedom of the individual becomes socially, morally, and rationally noxious. The "rights" that it posits in the name of freedom become progressively less and less human.* The fruit that they eventually bear is a new tyranny, the tyranny of liberalism or relativism.

There is no such thing as law in Rousseau, at least not law as it has been universally understood. In Rousseau, law is a thing a man gives to himself. All law for Rousseau is derived from the individual, and even "legislation itself must originate in the individual." Strauss, 278. Law was released from any social, even any natural foundation or underpinning. Hobbes had already released law's norm, that is natural law, from any social duty and from any end or telos in nature. The result of this Hobbesian innovation was to lead to "conditional duties and to mercenary virtue." Strauss, 280. That is, everything related back to the fundamental desire of self-preservation. Rousseau accepted these Hobbesian assumptions, but sought somehow "graft the notion of unconditional duties and nonmercenary virtue." Strauss, 280. This, of course, meant he had to find a source of those duties somewhere other than the Hobbesian right of self-preservation. For Rousseau, the notion of self-preservation could not do this because man shared the desire for self-preservation with the brutes. Rousseau therefore tried to base duty and virtue on freedom. What Hobbes had effected between science and nature, Rousseau effected between morality (and, derivatively, law and politics) and nature.

[Rousseau] tended to conceive of the fundamental freedom, or of the fundamental right, as such a creative act that issues in the establishment of unconditional duties and in nothing else: freedom is essentially self-legislation. The ultimate outcome of this attempt was the substitution of freedom for virtue or the view that it is not virtue which makes man free but freedom which makes man virtuous.

Strauss, 281. This self-legislation is what Rousseau denominates as "true freedom" or "moral freedom," and though he distinguishes it from "civil freedom" and "natural freedom," yet he "blurs these distinctions." Strauss, 281. "The blurring of the distinctions between natural freedom, civil freedom, and moral freedom is no accidental error." Strauss, 281-82. Indeed not. For Rousseau, "the primary moral phenomenon is the freedom of the state of nature," which, grafted unto the "exploded notion of the state of nature" of Hobbes, gives the the "state of nature a new lease on life." Strauss, 282. But of course the notion of "state of nature," bound now with the fasces of of equality and of freedom instead of natural law, now means something completely different. Here in germ is obviously the source of political liberalism. Liberalism is the musings of Rousseau writ large.

Rousseau viewed the "state of nature" largely in positive light, at least when compared to his Lockean and Hobbesian counterparts. It was what defined the good life, and what was to be used in judging the adequacy of the social contract. How did the social contract advance the foundational "state of nature" underpinnings of equality and freedom? Man in his origins had a sense of "compassion," but as pride and vanity grew, inequality grew with it, and the cloth of freedom began to fray. So the social contract was an "artificial substitute" for the natural freedom and natural equality that was lost as man became corrupt. The social contract thus justifies itself the closer it approximates the original freedom and equality in the Rousseauian "state of nature." Similarly, law--that is, legislation--is "the conventional substitute for natural compassion" which respected natural freedom and equality. Strauss, 285. We have an odd exchange, a loss of natural compassion leads to a loss of freedom and equality which is exchanged for an artificial compassion which leads to an increase in freedom and equality. This is the Rousseauian bargain.

And yet the artificial compassion that is found in legislation becomes warped if man follows his private judgment, as distinguished from his public judgment. The private will in legislation infects the artificial compassion--and hence the gain in freedom and equality derived by it--if private will, instead of general or public will, is behind it. This requires, in Rousseau's view, a sort of collectivization of man. It is the only means that man may be both equal and free in a state of civil society, apart from a "state of nature." For Rousseau:

Freedom in society is possible only be virtue of the complete surrender of everyone (and in particular of the government) to the will of a free society. By surrendering all his rights to society, man loses the right to appeal from the verdicts of society."

Strauss, 286. Thus, to be free and equal, man must chain himself to positive law. "Free society rests and depends upon the absorption of natural right by positive law [of a properly qualified democracy]. The general will takes the place of the natural law." Strauss, 286. This is tantamount to deification of the general will: "By the very fact that he is, the sovereign is always what he ought to be." Man's will, what Rousseau would have called "democracy," has become god. The general will is Rousseau's new god. It is an unforgiving, jealous, inerrant, infallible god from whom there is no appeal.

And so the legislator as well as civil society itself must put before itself the task of constructing the rites of the citizen, that is its forced devotee's, worship. The society must construct for itself a civil religion. "Only the civil religion will engender the sentiments required of the citizen." Strauss, 288. The legislator should ascribe a divine origin to his code and a divine origin to his legislative mission. Hence, the nearly divine sanction given to the Constitution by Americans and the virtual apotheosis or deification given to the Father of our Constitution, George Washington, and the even more bizarre apotheosis of Lincoln and Washington found in some popular depictions. "Precisely a free society cannot exist," in the eyes of Rousseau, "if he who doubts the fundamental dogma of the civil religion does not outwardly conform." Strauss, 289.

Christ as Judge by Fra Angelico (ca. 1447)

Apotheosis of Washington (Capitol Rotunda, by Constantini Brumidi, 1865)

The comparison of, say, Fra Angelico's Christ in Judgment with the Apotheosis of Washington found in the Capitol's Rotunda would suggest that Washington, though a bit more smug and less compassionate than his divine counterpart, has become the New Christ of Republican Democracy. Washington is now the city planted on a hillside, the light of the world. Christ's role has been usurped by man, the follower of Rousseauian civil religion.

Holy Trinity by Pieter Coecke Van Aelst

Apotheosis of Lincoln by S. J. Ferris

In another equally revealing comparison, the Trinity of Pieter Coecke Van Aelst can be compared to the popular depiction of Washington's welcome of Lincoln by S. J. Ferris. Lincoln was the Great Redeemer of Republican Democracy, welcomed by its Father Washington, just as Christ the Redeemer of Mankind was welcomed by God the Father in traditional iconography. Comparing iconographies is too eerily telling. Rousseau saw himself competing with Christ. It is apparent that in the eyes of some at least, the Democracy of the United States, informed by Rousseau's theories, competes with Christianity.

But the very basis of Rousseauian political philosophy--its radical individualism--is infirm. It is infirm because it is indefinite.

The notion of a return to the state of nature on the level of humanity was the ideal basis for claiming a freedom from society which is not a freedom from something. It was the ideal basis for an appeal from society to something indefinite and undefinable, to an ultimate sanctity of the individual as individual, unredeemed and unjustified. This was precisely what freedom came to mean for a considerable number of men. Every freedom which is freedom for something, every freedom which is justified by reference to something higher than the individual or than man as mere man, necessarily restricts freedom or, which is the same thing, establishes as a tenable distinction between freedom and license. It makes freedom conditional on the purpose for which it is claimed.

Strauss, 294. Rousseau, it is true, still drank from the pagan dregs of Plutarch. He ceased reading the lives of the Saints. Nevertheless, he tasted through the insipid paganism of Plutarch the glimmer of the "disproportion between this undefined and undefinable freedom and the requirements of civil society." Strauss, 294. But his followers no longer would read Plutarch. These tomes would be shelved along with Suarez and St. Thomas Aquinas, there to gather dust. But our reader of Plutarch had given birth to the monster of liberalism, which joined to the monster of deified democracy, and together these political titans gave birth the birth of the modern liberal state, a state which, in the name of freedom and liberty entirely undefined and entirely unmeaning, seems to breathe above us, not with the Spirit of God in whom is perfect freedom, but with the stifling breath of a lustful tyrant which is simply biding his time until it has us all in chains that bear the words F-R-E-E-D-O-M.
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*Strauss calls them "anti-socialistic systems of natural right," but they could also be called "anti-rationalistic, anti-socialistic, anti-moralistic" systems of natural right. All of them (and their name is Legion) seem to flow out of the poisoned well of Rousseau's narcissism and irresponsible thought. Rousseau's thought was not responsible to man's social, rational, and moral nature.

Pope Benedict XVI at Westminster Hall

Mr Speaker,

Thank you for your words of welcome on behalf of this distinguished gathering. As I address you, I am conscious of the privilege afforded me to speak to the British people and their representatives in Westminster Hall, a building of unique significance in the civil and political history of the people of these islands. Allow me also to express my esteem for the Parliament which has existed on this site for centuries and which has had such a profound influence on the development of participative government among the nations, especially in the Commonwealth and the English-speaking world at large. Your common law tradition serves as the basis of legal systems in many parts of the world, and your particular vision of the respective rights and duties of the state and the individual, and of the separation of powers, remains an inspiration to many across the globe.

As I speak to you in this historic setting, I think of the countless men and women down the centuries who have played their part in the momentous events that have taken place within these walls and have shaped the lives of many generations of Britons, and others besides. In particular, I recall the figure of Saint Thomas More, the great English scholar and statesman, who is admired by believers and non-believers alike for the integrity with which he followed his conscience, even at the cost of displeasing the sovereign whose ”good servant” he was, because he chose to serve God first. The dilemma which faced More in those difficult times, the perennial question of the relationship between what is owed to Caesar and what is owed to God, allows me the opportunity to reflect with you briefly on the proper place of religious belief within the political process.

This country’s Parliamentary tradition owes much to the national instinct for moderation, to the desire to achieve a genuine balance between the legitimate claims of government and the rights of those subject to it. While decisive steps have been taken at several points in your history to place limits on the exercise of power, the nation’s political institutions have been able to evolve with a remarkable degree of stability. In the process, Britain has emerged as a pluralist democracy which places great value on freedom of speech, freedom of political affiliation and respect for the rule of law, with a strong sense of the individual’s rights and duties, and of the equality of all citizens before the law. While couched in different language, Catholic social teaching has much in common with this approach, in its overriding concern to safeguard the unique dignity of every human person, created in the image and likeness of God, and in its emphasis on the duty of civil authority to foster the common good.

And yet the fundamental questions at stake in Thomas More’s trial continue to present themselves in ever-changing terms as new social conditions emerge. Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: what are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved? These questions take us directly to the ethical foundations of civil discourse. If the moral principles underpinning the democratic process are themselves determined by nothing more solid than social consensus, then the fragility of the process becomes all too evident - herein lies the real challenge for democracy.

The inadequacy of pragmatic, short-term solutions to complex social and ethical problems has been illustrated all too clearly by the recent global financial crisis. There is widespread agreement that the lack of a solid ethical foundation for economic activity has contributed to the grave difficulties now being experienced by millions of people throughout the world. Just as “every economic decision has a moral consequence” (Caritas in Veritate, 37), so too in the political field, the ethical dimension of policy has far-reaching consequences that no government can afford to ignore. A positive illustration of this is found in one of the British Parliament’s particularly notable achievements – the abolition of the slave trade. The campaign that led to this landmark legislation was built upon firm ethical principles, rooted in the natural law, and it has made a contribution to civilization of which this nation may be justly proud.



The central question at issue, then, is this: where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found? The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation. According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles. This “corrective” role of religion vis-à-vis reason is not always welcomed, though, partly because distorted forms of religion, such as sectarianism and fundamentalism, can be seen to create serious social problems themselves. And in their turn, these distortions of religion arise when insufficient attention is given to the purifying and structuring role of reason within religion. It is a two-way process. Without the corrective supplied by religion, though, reason too can fall prey to distortions, as when it is manipulated by ideology, or applied in a partial way that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person. Such misuse of reason, after all, was what gave rise to the slave trade in the first place and to many other social evils, not least the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century. This is why I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization.

Religion, in other words, is not a problem for legislators to solve, but a vital contributor to the national conversation. In this light, I cannot but voice my concern at the increasing marginalization of religion, particularly of Christianity, that is taking place in some quarters, even in nations which place a great emphasis on tolerance. There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or at least relegated to the purely private sphere. There are those who argue that the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none. And there are those who argue – paradoxically with the intention of eliminating discrimination – that Christians in public roles should be required at times to act against their conscience. These are worrying signs of a failure to appreciate not only the rights of believers to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, but also the legitimate role of religion in the public square. I would invite all of you, therefore, within your respective spheres of influence, to seek ways of promoting and encouraging dialogue between faith and reason at every level of national life.

Your readiness to do so is already implied in the unprecedented invitation extended to me today. And it finds expression in the fields of concern in which your Government has been engaged with the Holy See. In the area of peace, there have been exchanges regarding the elaboration of an international arms trade treaty; regarding human rights, the Holy See and the United Kingdom have welcomed the spread of democracy, especially in the last sixty-five years; in the field of development, there has been collaboration on debt relief, fair trade and financing for development, particularly through the International Finance Facility, the International Immunization Bond, and the Advanced Market Commitment. The Holy See also looks forward to exploring with the United Kingdom new ways to promote environmental responsibility, to the benefit of all.

I also note that the present Government has committed the United Kingdom to devoting 0.7% of national income to development aid by 2013. In recent years it has been encouraging to witness the positive signs of a worldwide growth in solidarity towards the poor. But to turn this solidarity into effective action calls for fresh thinking that will improve life conditions in many important areas, such as food production, clean water, job creation, education, support to families, especially migrants, and basic healthcare.

Where human lives are concerned, time is always short: yet the world has witnessed the vast resources that governments can draw upon to rescue financial institutions deemed “too big to fail”. Surely the integral human development of the world’s peoples is no less important: here is an enterprise, worthy of the world’s attention, that is truly “too big to fail”.

This overview of recent cooperation between the United Kingdom and the Holy See illustrates well how much progress has been made, in the years that have passed since the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations, in promoting throughout the world the many core values that we share. I hope and pray that this relationship will continue to bear fruit, and that it will be mirrored in a growing acceptance of the need for dialogue and respect at every level of society between the world of reason and the world of faith. I am convinced that, within this country too, there are many areas in which the Church and the public authorities can work together for the good of citizens, in harmony with Britain’s long-standing tradition. For such cooperation to be possible, religious bodies – including institutions linked to the Catholic Church – need to be free to act in accordance with their own principles and specific convictions based upon the faith and the official teaching of the Church. In this way, such basic rights as religious freedom, freedom of conscience and freedom of association are guaranteed. The angels looking down on us from the magnificent ceiling of this ancient Hall remind us of the long tradition from which British Parliamentary democracy has evolved. They remind us that God is constantly watching over us to guide and protect us. And they summon us to acknowledge the vital contribution that religious belief has made and can continue to make to the life of the nation.

Mr Speaker, I thank you once again for this opportunity briefly to address this distinguished audience. Let me assure you and the Lord Speaker of my continued good wishes and prayers for you and for the fruitful work of both Houses of this ancient Parliament. Thank you and God bless you all!