The Common Good "Begins and Ends in Jesus"

ONE OF THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF THE CHURCH'S social doctrine is the principle of the common good. The principle of the common good has its basis from the underlying "dignity, unity, and equality of all people." (Compendium, No. 164) Every aspect of social life must be related to and directed to the common good if social life is to have its full meaning. Phrased negatively, no aspect of social life which detracts from the common good has human meaning: it somehow diminishes the dignity, unity, or equality of one or more persons.

The common good may be broadly and generally defined as "the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily." (Compendium, No. 164) The notion of flourishing is not to be understood as material well-being alone, though it certainly includes it. The notion of human flourishing is a concept which includes the moral and spiritual flourishing of a people, either as a group or as individuals.

The common good is something different than the summation of individual good or the good of the collectivity. It is a concept that comprehends both the parts and the whole. Therefore, the notion of the common good is not to be viewed as an individualistic or atomistic concept, as if it were merely a utilitarian "greatest possible good for the greatest possible number of individuals" concept. It is not simply the good of each person totaled up one-by-one. Neither, however, is it to be viewed in a collectivist or communistic sense without regard to individuals. It is not the good of the whole irrespective of the individuals which are a part of that whole. The common good is not simply the collective good.

The notion of the common good is therefore a synthetic concept which embraces both the good of each individual and the good of the whole, both "the good of all people and of the whole person." (Compendium, No. 165) "Belonging to everyone and to each person," the common good, "is and remains 'common' because it is indivisible and because only together is it possible to attain it, increase it, and safeguard its effectiveness, with regard also to the future." (Compendium, No. 164)

The common good reconciles the good of community, the bonum commune communitatis, and the good of the individual, the bonum commune hominis. It therefore never sacrifices the good of the individual for the good of the collective. It would never cry out like the wicked high-priest Caiaphas that it is good for one man to die for the people. (Cf. John 18:14)

Importantly since it is often forgotten, the common good also embraces future generations. (Compendium, No.166) We must not saddle future generations with our sins or burden them with our profligacy. We are custodians for the future. We have a patrimony--a spiritual, social, material, and cultural capital--to bequeath to our children which we are obliged to consider in living our lives today. It is never eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. (Cf. Eccl. 8:15, Isaiah 22:13; 1 Cor. 15:32) There are those of our kind that will exist in the morrow and to which we have a moral obligation.


The fundamental principle of individual action is that it must aim to the good. Analogously, the fundamental principle of social action is like unto it: "the actions of society attain their full stature when they bring about the common good." (Compendium, No. 164) The common good may be seen as the moral good writ large: "The common good . . . can be understood as the social and community dimension of the moral good." (Compendium, No. 164)

However, the common good of society "is not an end in itself." It is not, in other words, to be an idol. It is not something to viewed in a purely material way, as if man lives by bread alone. That is one reason--of many--why the Marxist or other collectivist notions of the common good are vicious.

Believers know that the common good "has value only in reference to attaining the ultimate ends of the person and the universal common good of the whole of creation." They also know that "God is the ultimate end of his creatures and for no reason may the common good be deprived of its transcendent dimensions." (Compendium, No. 170) In fact, Christians have the further insight that all individual and collective effort "begins and ends in Jesus," as it is "thanks to him and in light of him [that] every reality, including human society, can be brought to its Supreme Good, to its fulfillment." (Compendium, No. 170)

The common good is frequently analogized with the good of a human body. For example, this is how St. Paul understands the Church in 1 Corinthians 12:14-26. The one body is composed of many diverse and separate parts--eyes, hands, head, feet, and so forth--which must work harmoniously and with respect to each other for both their individual and their corporate good. Their integral interconnectedness is what allows him to say: "If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it. If one part is honored, all the parts share its joy." (1 Cor. 12:26)

It is, in fact, vicious for a person to consider his individual good alone without regard to others around him. It is obvious that the "human person cannot find fulfillment in himself, that is part from the fact that he exists 'with' others and 'for' others." (Compendium, No. 165) We are members incorporate in the human community as a whole. More concretely, we are intricately part of a complex economic, political, cultural, social, and familial web of relations. Each of these various levels of associations has its common good which makes a demand of us.

"No expression of social life--from the family to intermediate social groups, associations, enterprises of an economic nature, cities, regions, States, up to the community of peoples and nations--can escape the issue of its own common good, in that this is a constitutive element of its significance and the authentic reason for its very existence." (Compendium, No. 165)

"The common good therefore involves all members of society." In fact, "no one is exempt from cooperating, according to each one's possibilities, in attaining it and developing it." (Compendium, No. 167)

To be sure, in seeking the ideal of the common good we must be careful of a number of pitfalls which make it difficult to attain in the concrete. We must take care that we do not reduce the common good to the good of our group or own own good. There is a constant temptation to seek one's own good as if it were the good of others. Like a pirate, self-interest constantly seeks the opportunity to elbow in and commandeer the ship of the common good.

There is an obligation upon each individual to consider the common good of those groups of which he is part. But there is also an obligation upon civil society--in particular the political institutions, especially those of the State and subordinate authorities--to consider the common good. The State and subordinate authorities must consider the common good of those within its charge. In fact, it is precisely for the common good that political authority exists. (Compendium, No. 168) The use of political authority for something other than the common good, that is for the private good of some group or for the good of the ruler, is unjust. It is an abuse of political authority. Regarding something other than the common good makes a mockery of authority. As St. Augustine expressed it in his great work The City of God (IV, 4), "without justice," remota iustitia, that is without reference to the common good, "what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers?"*

"To ensure the common good, the government of each country," regardless of how it is set up, "has the specific duty to harmonize the different sectoral interests with the requirements of justice." (Compendium, No. 168)

Significantly for democratic theories of political society, the common good, in fact, is more important than majority rule. The common good trumps the will of the majority where the will of the majority conflicts with the common good. For this reason, the elected representatives in a democratic state "are required to interpret the common good of their country not only according to the guidelines of the majority but also according to the effective good of all members of the community, including the minority." (Compendium, No. 169)


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*Augustine, De Civitate Dei, IV.4 ("Remota itaque iustitia quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia?")

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: The Common Good and the Larger Community

THE FAMILY IS A FUNDAMENTAL, essential form of association, but it is not whole and complete within itself. A family that interbreeds will soon find itself in a genetic mess heap. Moreover, though a family may be large, it will still lack the economic robustness and specialization to flourish. Families need other families. "So there emerges the desirability of a 'complete community', an all-around association in which would be co-ordinated the initiates and activities of individuals, of families, and of the vast network of intermediate associations." NLNR, 147. Individuals, families, etc. are all better off in coordinating themselves, in placing themselves with this greater society than they would be without it, though it also necessarily comes with restrictions. The "ensemble of conditions" required for proper co-ordination necessarily requires both positive and negative (restrictive) co-ordinating principles--customs, rules, and laws, for example. This self-sufficient community Finnis calls the "political community" or the "body politic." It is within this political community or body politic strictly so called that we find politics and law in their fullness.

[T]he common understanding of the unqualified expressions 'law' and 'the law' indicates [that] the central case of law and legal system is the law and legal system of a complete community. That is why it is characteristic of legal systems that (i) they claim authority to regulate all forms of human behaviour . . . (ii) they therefore claim to be the supreme authority for their respective community, and to regulate the conditions under which the members of that community can participate in any other normative system of association; (iii) they characteristically purport to 'adopt' rules and normative arrangements (e.g., contracts) from other associations within and without the complete community, thereby 'given them legal force" for that community.

NLNR, 148. The coordination required for the life of this political community or body politic necessitates, as a requirement of practical reasonableness, law. Law participates in practical reasonableness and in its requirements that there be impartiality between persons, impartiality and openness to the basic values, and so forth. The political community, like all groups, must have a "sharing of aim," a sharing of aim with some stability over time, something more than just a "multiplicity of interaction," which gives them a sense that they are a "group." And this group aim and the coordination of the community with that group aim must accord with the requirements of practical reasonableness. NLNR, 153. The requirement of practical reasonableness upon law under the "ensemble of empirical conditions" under which the political community operates takes us into the area of "justice," distributive and commutative. Ultimately, the norms of practical reasonableness applied to coordination of this community lead to the "point" of the common good:

[The norms, practices, usages, conventions] of that arise in the coordination of a group] will be then be thought of as norms of and for the group, and the leader(s) will be thought of as having authority in and over the group. The 'existence' of the group, the 'existence' of social rules, and the 'existence' of authority tend to go together. And what makes sense of these ascriptions of existence is in each case the presence of some more or less shared objective or, more precisely, some shared conception of the point of continuing co-operation. This point we may call the common good.

NLNR, 153.

The concept of "common good" must not be thought of in a utilitarian sense (greatest good for greatest number). The vacuous, indeed irrational, consequentialist or utilitarian formula is made no better by taking it from the individual vantage point and expanding it into the political community. Rather, the common good** may be defined thus:

[The common good is] a set of conditions which enables the members of a community to attain for themselves reasonable objectives, or to realize reasonably for themselves the value(s), for the sake of which they have reason to collaborate with each other (positively and/or negatively) in a community. . . . [the common good being] the all-around or complete community, the political community subject to . . . the incompleteness of the nation state in the modern world.

NLNR, 155-56. The common good, broadly so defined, may also be called the "general welfare" or the "public interest."

The modern state seems overweening. "But we must not take the pretensions of the modern state at face value." NLNR, 149. We may be confronting not a norm, but an anomaly. [T]here are relationships between men which transcend the boundaries of all poleis,* realms, or states." And these relationships not only are within the boundaries of the modern state, but the relationships also go beyond the modern state into the global realm. The nation must not be so absolutized as to adversely affect these internal relationships nor to sever or minimize the international community into which nations must be coordinated.

What is the content of the common good of the political, or even the international, community? What is it that justifies (and perhaps limits!?) the functions and aspects of the political community we call states? The answer to this question--what is the content of the common good--takes us into the realm justice, authority, and positive law.
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*Plural for polis (Greek for city-state).
**There different "explanatory levels" of the common good. NLNR, 156. There is a "common good" more generally defined as encompassing human beings generally, "inasmuch as life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, friendship, religion, and freedom in practical reasonableness are good for any and every person." NLNR, 155. There is also the "common good" in the sense that each of these basic human values may be called a "common good," "inasmuch as it can be participated in by and inexhaustible number of persons in an inexhaustible variety of ways or in an inexhaustible variety of occasions." Finnis, however, uses the notion of "common good" in a way that is specific to the political community, but which does not contradict the first two broader notions. In fact the first two senses seem to inform the third sense which is quoted above.

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: The Common Good and Friendship

MAN IS A SOCIAL ANIMAL, a ζῷον πολιτικόν or homo politicus. It follows that the requirements of practical reasonableness will take this reality into consideration. Practical reasonableness is not solely focused on self-constitution, self-realization, self-fulfillment to the point of self-centeredness or selfishness. Practical reasonableness recognizes that there must be a balance between self-regard and regard for others. (This part of the natural law is entrenched in Scripture: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (Luke 6:31) or "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18; Mark 12:31 )).

Indeed, regard for others sometimes leads to significant self-sacrifice, even the sacrifice of oneself. Greater love no man has than to give his life for his friends. (John 15:13) We hold those who give their lives for others--e.g., the firemen, policemen, caregivers, and even the priest at 9/11 who gave their lives helping others, St. Maximilian Kolbe at Auschwitz who trade his life for the life of a married man, the soldier receiving the Medal of Honor posthumously in defending his fellows and his country--in such high honor surely not irrationally?

Finnis finds humans always aggregated in communities. He looks at communities as the product of relationships between human beings, and identifies four irreducible "orders" of such communities or sets of unifying relationships: a physical or biological order (relationships in the physical realm), an intellectual order (relationships of common thinking), a cultural order (community of shared language, technology, techniques, etc.), and a voluntary or psychological order (relationships of corroboration, co-ordination, cooperation arising from common action or a common pursuit or interest). It is this last order with which Finnis is most concerned and with which the requirements of practical reasonableness have most to do.

"Friendship" by Picasso

This relationships of corroboration, co-ordination, and cooperation give rise to common enterprises and therefore bring forth the concepts of common good. This order of community may be further subdivided (using largely Aristotelian insights) into communities that relate to utility ("business" communities), communities that relate to pleasure ("play" communities). Also to be distinguished are those communities that go beyond mere utility or pleasure, those that deal with amity, with friendship. In these kinds of relationships, the good of the other is, at least in part, defining of the relationship or community. In this sort of relationship of corroboration, "there is a community . . . not only in that there is a common interest in the condition [of that corroboration], and common pursuit of the means, whereby each will get what he wants for himself [as there is in those relationships of utility and/or pleasure], but also in that what A wants for himself he wants (at least in part) under the description 'that-which-B-wants-for-himself', and vice versa." NLNR, 141. One is clearly outside the ideas of self-fulfillment, self-constitution, self-realization--that self-fulfillment, self-constitution, self-realization includes the self-fulfillment, self-constitution, self-realization of another or of others. A father is miserable if he cannot provide for the needs of his wife and his children. His self-fulfillment comes, in great part, from the self-fulfillment of those under his care. More generically, a friend regards the good of his friend as part of his well-being. He relishes in the successes of his friend, and grieves at his friend's suffering.

So we leave the area of relationships of utility and of pleasure into the area of relationships of friendship (with the concept of friendship broadly understood). The notion of friendship is essential to the classical understanding of natural law which is not the individualistic self-regarding state of nature envisioned by Hobbes or Rousseau.

[C]ertainly there is no possibility of understanding the classical tradition of 'natural law' theorizing . . . without first appropriating the analysis of friendship in its full sense.

NLNR, 141. The "dialectic" of the core of friendship is a requirement of practical reasonableness because it participates in the basic value, the self-evident value of friendship: A has B's interest and not his own in view; reciprocally, B has A's interest and not his own in view; such "reciprocity of love does not come to rest at either pole." NLNR, 142-43.

Thus self-love (the desire to participate fully, oneself, in the basic aspects of human flourishing) requires that one go beyond self-love (self-interest, self-preference, the imperfect rationality of egoism . . . ). This requirement is not only in its content a component of the requirement of practical reasonableness; in its form, too, it is a parallel or analogue, for the requirement in both cases is that one's inclinations to self-preference be subject to a critique in thought and a subordination in deed.

NLNR, 143.

Friendship, then, is a sort of governor or a sort of counter to self-interest, and, in an almost paradoxical way, it is one's self interest which requires one to disregard one's self-interest as a fundamental sine qua non for participating in the good of friendship. If we focus on self-interest to the exclusion of friendship, we harm our self-interest. Our self-interest, then, requires us to have due regard for others. Friendship allows us to step outside ourselves.

Strict friendship is "the most communal though not the most extended or elaborated form of human community." NLNR, 143. There are friendships, attenuating in character, that extend and elaborate further out, rippling out of friendship in the strict sense and family to one's greater community, including one's neighborhood, city, state, country, nation, and even the global community.* But even in its greatest expanse, some sense, however attenuated, of the common good exists. That is why, when we see the plight of the Japanese after the tragic earthquake we have the felt need to provide them with help though we are "friends" with them in only the most weak of ways. There is a certain "friendship" that we have with the entirety of the human race.

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*However, "communism in friendship," one that seeks "the widest sharing in friendship" to the detriment of intermediate familial and other communities, frequently seen in Utopian schemes, such as those suggested by Plato in his Republic are to be disdained as a travesty of friendship. It is fatal to real friendship which must be other-regarding and personal, since it requires commitment to the other and an ability to give of one's self or one's own to the other. NLNR, 144-46. If one does not have something of one's own to give, it follows that there can be no friendship. The more an individual has (and the less the state or the commonality has), the more he can give in friendship. Friendship cannot exist if one is nothing more "than a cog in big wheels turned by others." NLNR, 147. Subsidiarity must exist in friendship as in the allocation of other aspects of community (power, decisions to allocate resources, etc.).

The Natural Law and the Common Good: Leo XIII's Graves de communi re

HOW TO RECONCILE THE TWO OPPOSING camps of labor and capital weighed heavy on the shoulders of Leo XIII. It was obviously one of his great pastoral concerns. To offer solutions to the social problems caused by the Industrial Revolution and the new manner of economic and political relations spawned by it, Leo XIII applied the principles of natural law in light of the Gospel. Leo XIII recognized that many of the solutions that were being touted as panaceas to the plight of the worker--communism and socialism, for example--or were by used to justify the oppression of the worker--classical "laissez-faire" liberalism, or untrammeled capitalism--were based on the "bad philosophical and ethical teaching" so prevalent in that day.

In his encyclical Graves de communni re, Pope Leo XIII readdressed the issues that had been treated by his encyclicals Quod Apostolici muneris and Rerum novarum. The former condemned the errors found in the socialistic movements of the day, and the latter, more positively, provided guidance on the relations between labor and capital, and offered solutions to ameliorate the plight of labor without violating the rights of capital focusing on the mutual rights and duties of both classes to each other.

There had been much done to relieve the sufferings of the proletariat, not the least by Catholics that had set themselves upon the task to address the social ills of the day by forming institutions and organizations whose task was to educate the laborer, provide financial support and credit, offer relief services. Labor unions were also something that provided laborers a legitimate means for association and protection of their interests.

Leo XIII gave his support to some of the efforts by Christians that conformed to natural law and divine precepts, or at least did not work against them. These movements, Leo XIII felt, could be called Social Christians (socialismi christiani or sociales christiani) or Christian Democracy (democratia christiana or democratici christiani). Pope Leo XIII understood that "although democracy, both in its philological and philosophical significations, implies popular government, yet in its present application it must be employed without any political significance, so as to mean nothing else than this beneficent Christian action in behalf of the people." GC, 7. There was some fear that the term Christian Democracy, however, could lead itself by implication of its terms "to favor popular government and to disparage other methods of political administration." It also appeared to "belittle religion by restricting its scope to the care of the poor [the "demos"], as if the other sections of society were not of its concerns." GC, 4. There was some concern that "under the shadow of its name there might easily lurk a design to attack all legitimate power, either civil or sacred." In other words, was "Christian Democracy" just another term for an incipient socialism or liberalism?

"Am I my brother's keeper?" (Gen. 4:9)

הֲשֹׁמֵ֥ר אָחִ֖י אָנֹֽכִי

Leo XIII compared Social Democracy (democratia socialis) to Christian Democracy (democratia christiana). Social Democracy, to greater or lesser extent, tended to the error that "there is really nothing existing above the natural [human] order of things (nihil ut quidquam supra humana reputet), and that the acquirement and enjoyment of corporal and external goods constitutes man's happiness." GC, 5. Social Democracy's ultimate goal is dubious:

It aims at putting all government in the hands of the masses, reducing all ranks to the same level, abolishing all distinction of class, and finally introducing community of goods. Hence, the right to own private property is to be abrogated, and whatever property a man possesses, or whatever means of livelihood he has, is to be common to all.

Hinc imperium enes plebem in civitate velint esse, ut sublatis ordinum gradibus aequatisque civibus, ad bonorum etiam inter eos aequalitatem sit gressus: hinc ius dominii delendum; it quidquid fortunarum est singulis, ipsaque instrumenta vitae, communia habenda.

QC, 5.

Christian Democracy was therefore easily distinguishable from Social Democracy:

As against this, Christian Democracy, by the fact that it is Christian, is built, and necessarily so, on the basic principles of divine faith, and it must provide better conditions for the masses, with the ulterior object of promoting the perfection of souls made for things eternal. Hence, for Christian Democracy, justice is sacred; it must maintain that the right of acquiring and possessing property cannot be impugned, and it must safeguard the various distinctions and degrees which are indispensable in every well-ordered commonwealth. Finally, it must endeavor to preserve in every human society the form and the character which God ever impresses on it.

At vero democratia christiana, eo nimirum quod christiana dicitur, suo veluti fundamento, positis a divina fide principiis niti debet, infimorum sic prospiciens utilitatibus, ut animos ad sempiterna factos convenienter perficiat. Proinde nihil sit illi iustitia sanctius; ius potiundi possidendi iubeat esse integrum; dispares tueatur ordines, sane proprios bene constitutae civitatis; eam demum humano convictui velit forma atque indolem esse, qualem Deus auctor indidit.

GC, 6.

The difference between the two could not be more stark: "It is clear, therefore, that there is nothing in common between Social and Christian Democracy. They differ from each other as much as the sect of socialism differs from the profession of Christianity." GC, 6.

Leo XIII thus gave his tentative approval to the term "Christian Democracy," but warned that care should be taken to maintain its use within the economic or social sphere, and not import it into the political sphere. Pope Leo XIII insisted that the Church was, in the final analysis, indifferent to the forms of civil government, as it was not the form, but the substance of that government--whether it promoted justice, morality, and allowed the Church to accomplish its divine mission without prejudice--that was important. Here, Leo XIII invoked the natural law and the revelation of the Gospel:

For the laws of nature and of the Gospel, which by right are superior to all human contingencies, are necessarily independent of all particular forms of civil government, while at the same time they are in harmony with everything that is not repugnant to morality and justice. They are, therefore, and they must remain absolutely free from the passions and the vicissitudes of parties, so that, under whatever political constitution, the citizens may and ought to abide by those laws which command them to love God above all things, and their neighbors as themselves.

Nam naturae et evangelii praecepta quia suopte iure humanos casus excedunt, ea necesse est ex nullo civilis regiminis modo pendere; sed convenire cum quovis posse, modo ne honestati et iustitiae repugnet. Sunt ipsa igitur manentque a partium studiis variisque eventibus plane aliena: ut in qualibet demum rei publicae constitutione, possint cives ac debeant iisdem stare praeceptis, quibus iubentur Deum super omnia, proximos sicut se diligere.

GC, 7. In applying themselves, therefore, to promoting the welfare of the working classes, Catholic action should remain aware that its work--which deals with justice and morality, and the relief of the plight of labor--should therefore avoid partisan politics or political preferences, and ought not to be "actuated with the purpose of favoring and introducing one government in place of another." GC, 7. In other words, Catholic action ought not to be a cover for political action.

Pope Leo XIII also sought to warn against any tendency to over focus on the plight of the working people to the extent that it should "overlook the upper classes of society." GC, 8. The Christian law of charity does not limit itself to the laboring classes, but must embrace and comprehend all classes:

The Christian law of charity . . . . embraces all men, irrespective of ranks, as members of one and the same family, children of the same most beneficent Father, redeemed by the same Saviour, and called to the same eternal heritage.

Caritas lex . . . ad omnes omnino cuiusvis gradus homines patet complectendos, utpote unius eiusdemque famliae, eodem beignissimo editos Patre et redemptos Servatore, eademque in hereditatem vocatos aeternam.

GC, 8.

There is a union among all men and all classes of men, one that is based upon their common nature, and which is made closer by the bonds of grace:

Wherefore, on account of the union established by nature between the common people and the other classes of society, and which Christian brotherhood makes still closer, whatever diligence we devote to assisting the people will certainly profit also the other classes, the more so since, as will be thereafter shown, their co-operation is proper and necessary for the success of this undertaking.

Quare propter nativam plebis cum ordinibus ceteris coniunctionem, eamque arctiorem ex christiana fraternitate, in eosdem certe influit quantacumque plebi adiutandae diligentia impenditur, eo vel magis quia ad exitum reim secundum plane decet ac necesse est ipsos in partem operae advocari, quod infra aperiemus.

GC, 8.

The efforts rendered to the laboring class, ought therefore not to seek political goals or become partisan to one group over another. In all respects, all should be done in a spirit of obedience, of order, of an all-encompassing justice and charity. In distinction to those who would foment class warfare, or those who take advantage, for the gain of power, of the social situation, the Christian Democrat will respect the existing legal and civil order, in addition to the authority of the Church, as it will recognize its duties under both natural law and the Gospel imperative:

Both the natural and the Christian law command us to revere those who in their various grades are shown above us in the State, and to submit ourselves to their just commands. It is quite in keeping with our dignity as men and Christians to obey, not only exteriorly, but from the heart, as the Apostle expresses it, "for conscience' sake," when he commands us to keep our soul subject to the higher powers. [Rom. 13:1, 5]

Revereri eos qui pro suo quisque gradu in civitate praesunt, eisdemque iuste iubentibus obtemperare lex aeque naturalis et christiana praecipit. Quod quidem ut homine eodemque christiano sit dignum, ex animo et officio praestari oportet, scilicet propter conscientiam, quemadmodum ipse monuit Apostolus, quum illud edixit: Omnis anima potestatibus sublimioribus subdita sit.

GC, 9.

If these principles are kept in mind, then there is no "dispute about the name of Christian Democracy," and it can be considered a legitimate expression of Christian action.

[L]et no one condemn that zeal which, in accordance with the natural and divine laws, aims to make the condition of those who toil more tolerable; to enable them to obtain, little by little, those means by which they may provide for the future; to help them to practice in public and in private the duties which morality and religion inculcate; to aid them to feel that they are not animals but men, not heathens but Christians, and so to enable them to strive more zealously and more eagerly for the one thing which is necessary; viz., that ultimate good for which we are born into this world. This is the intention; this is the work of those who wish that the people should be animated by Christian sentiments and should be protected from the contamination of socialism which threatens them.

[C]erte nemo unus studium illud reprehenderit, quod, secundum naturalem divinamque legem, eo unice pertineat, ut qui vitam manu et arte sustentant, tolerabiliorem in statum adducantur, habeantque sensim quo sibi ipsi prospiciant; domi atque palam officia virtutum et religionis libere expleant; sentiant se non animantia sed homines, non ethnicos sed christianos esse; atque adeo unum illud necessarium, ad ultimum bonum, cui nati sumus, et facilius et studiosius nitantur. Iamvero hic finis, hoc opus eorum qui plebem christiano animo velint et opportune relevatam et a peste incolumem socialisimi.

GC, 10.

Pope Leo XIII wanted to disabuse people from thinking that the social question was one related to economics alone. Man, he reminded us, is not solely a homo economicus. What was involved in the social question comprehended the moral and religious life of man. The social question, indeed, required both a religious and moral response because in large part it was a religious and moral question that required a religious and moral solution. More than bread was required; it was also a question of virtue and of piety.

For, even though wages are doubled and the hours of labor are shortened and food is cheapened, yet, if the working man hearkens to the doctrines that are taught on this subject, as he is prone to do, and is prompted by the examples set before him to throw off respect for God and to enter upon a life of immorality, his labors and his gain will avail him naught.

GC, 11.

Indeed, Leo XIII commended the work of Catholics among the laboring classes, "on behalf of the masses," observing that in working among this they imitated the early Church--indeed the Church throughout all ages--in following the law of justice and the law of charity. "This zeal in coming to the rescue of our fellow men should, of course, be solicitous, first for the eternal good of souls, but it must not neglect what is good and helpful for this life." GC, 13. Not only was the Catholic to remember that man was more than a stomach, but also had a soul; but he was also to remember that man was more than a soul, and also had a stomach. Man is both body and soul, and both ought to be cared for. That is why the Church, following the teaching of the Lord, has always recognized both the spiritual and the corporal works of mercy.

Pope Leo XIII therefore recommended almsgiving, institutions that rendered temporary aid to the working classes, but also institutions that were permanent in nature and that encouraged growth in education and in virtue so that the laborer could be self-sufficient. To the rich or those with standing in the community, he reminded them "that they are not at all free to look after or neglect those who happen to be beneath them, but that it is a strict duty which binds them." GC, 19. They could not turn a deaf ear to the plight of any member of the civil body. Everyone had a duty to the common good:

For, no one lives only for his personal advantage in a community; he lives for the common good as well, so that, when others cannot contribute their share for the general good, those who can do so are obliged to make up the deficiency. The very extent of the benefits they have received increases the burden of their responsibility, and a stricter account will have to be rendered to God who bestowed those blessings upon them. What should also urge all to the fulfillment of their duty in this regard is the widespread disaster which will eventually fall upon all classes of society if his assistance does not arrive in time; and therefore is it that he who neglects the cause of the distressed masses is disregarding his own interest as well as that of the community.

Nec enim suis quisque commodis tantum in civitate vivit, verum etiam communibus: ut, quod alii in summam communis boni conferre pro parte nequeant, largius conferant alii qui possint. Cuius quidem officii quantum sit pondus ipsa edocet acceptorum bonorum praestantia, quam consequantur necesse est restrictior ratio, summo reddenda largitori Deo. It etiam monet malorum lues, quae, remedio non tempestive adhibito, in omnium ordinum pernciem est alquando eruptura: ut nimirum qui calamitosae plebis negligat causam, ipse sibi et civitati faciat improvide.

GC, 19.

The rich! The powerful! They have obligations to the common good. The poor! The voiceless! They have obligations to the common good. Every man, woman, and child has obligations to the common good. There is not one of us who, under the natural law and the law of the Gospel, can claim to live himself and neglect any one or more of his brothers and sisters.

"Am I my brother's keeper?" asked Cain of God. (Gen. 4:9) There is no other answer but one, for both the rich and the poor, for both the capitalist and the proletariat: yes. This is the upshot of Leo XIII's encyclial Graves de communi re.

Leo Strauss and Natural Right: The Seesaw of Justice and Law

JUSTICE AND LAW SEEM TO BE both easy and tense bedfellows. It is just to obey the law, to apply it equally, to govern in accord with the rule of law. This is generally conceded regardless of the law in question. Yet no one reasonably equates law with justice. We talk of unjust laws and just laws. It is just this sort of seesaw or teeter-totter between justice and law that Strauss sees evidentiary of a distinction between convention and nature. When law and justice teeter or "see" as one, doesn't that imply "that there is a measure of universal agreement in regard to justice" and "reflect[] natural right dimly"? When law and justice totter or "saw" as distinct, does that not also "point to the workings of nature"? Strauss, 101. In both corroboration and contradiction, the easy and uneasy relationship between justice and law are suggestive of natural right, natural justice, a natural law.

The Seesaw of Justice and Law

The reason for this tension between law and justice is that human law shows itself to be something self-contradictory:

One the one hand, [human] law claims to be something essentially good or noble: it is the law that saves the cities and everything else. On the other hand, the law presents itself as the common opinion or decision of the city, i.e., of the multitude of citizens. As such, it is by no means essentially good or noble. It may very well be the work of folly or baseness.

Strauss, 101. It is easy enough to see the negative side of law: its folly and baseness. We can all see the truth in the remark often (but wrongly) attributed to Otto von Bismark that laws are like sausages--it is best not to see them being made. The humor in Mortimer Zuckerman's quip that law is the opposite of sex in that even when it's good, it's lousy is easily grasped precisely because we all have experienced the seedy side of law. The harder question is whether the law's claim to noble pedigree is something that can be justified: is it entirely unfounded--are we really dealing with just sausage or the opposite of sex--or is there something real, something true in the claim that law is a noble enterprise?

Heraclitus sees the law as important as the city walls, and so it is in that Heraclitean spirit that the "law claims that it saves the cities and everything else." Strauss, 101. Here is its warrant to nobility: "It claims to secure the common good," and "the common good is exactly what we mean by 'the just.'" Strauss, 101-02. If the law's goodness is thus linked with the common good, then it cannot be merely conventional. It is easy to envision laws that are not conducive to the common good a city. What if a law was passed mandating all married couples to have but one child? What about the laws against Jews passed by the Nazi? What about the laws that institutionalized human chattel slavery? Here one stumbles upon a great truth:

[T]he conventions of a city cannot make good for the city what is, in fact, fatal for it and vice versa. The nature of things and not convention then determines in each case what is just. This implies that what is just may very well differ from city to city and from period to period: the variety of just things is not only compatible with, but a consequence of, the principle of justice, namely that the just is identical with the common good. Knowledge of what is the just here and now, which is knowledge of what is by nature, or intrinsically, good for this city now, cannot be scientific knowledge. Still less can it be the knowledge of the type of sense perception. To establish what is just in each case is the function of the political art or skill.

Strauss, 102 (emphasis added). So it would seem, then, that the law's effort to promote the common good is the natural justice which the law seeks to implement, and is what informs the law, fills the law with the nobility it claims. So the advocates of natural right appear to have clinched the definitive argument against the conventionalist.

Have they? Conventionalism does not die that easily. The advocate of the theory that law is nothing but convention, and that there is no such thing as natural right and justice persists in his contrarian attitude. Conventionalism argues further that there is no such thing, in truth, as the common good. And even if there were such a thing as the "common good," it would be nothing but the product of convention. Since the "common good," if it exists, relates to an artificial or conventional body (the city is established by convention), then it follows that the "common good" is, at heart, conventional, and all law is similarly conventional.

Is the notion of "common good" just a guise for those who are in power to justify the binding nature of the law that they have passed for the ruling power's interests? Is law necessarily partisan? If law can really be nonpartisan, that is, for the common good, then is not the common good defined by the political society in question? And aren't the bounds of that political society, whether they are defined by geographic boundaries, by language or custom, or the laws that define who is a citizen and who is a foreigner, conventional? Doesn't this mean, at bottom, that the common good of the citizens of a city is defined arbitrarily, by convention? Is there any way to escape this conventionalism?

These are issues explored by Strauss as he address the sophisticated counterarguments of the conventionalists to the proponents of natural right, and expose their hidden flaws.

Flying Solo and the Natural Law: The Common Good as Part of the Moral Order

AN OVEREMPHASIS ON INDIVIDUALISM will usually land one outside the philosophy of natural law and even outside human law properly so called. That is one reason why the natural law philosophy is largely out of favor. Individualism may be defined in a variety of ways, but ultimately, individualism looks at the common good as something merely utilitarian or useful. That is, the common good, is "a mere means to the good of individuals," and outside of this has no independent justification. Simon, 97. The common good does lead to the private good of men, but it is a misinterpretation of its importance to view it as a means, and not an end in itself. By subordinating the common good to the individual good, that is by making it the desire of private good and private action, one misinterprets it, and in fact destroys the notion altogether. There must be a common desire and a common action behind a good, and not a multiple of private desires and common actions, if a good it to be called authentically common. Adam Smith's "invisible hand" which supposedly guides individual choice and individual demand and individual supply and leads to the common good is farcical of the common good. By definition, selfishness, even if it may accidentally or even frequently also benefit the commonwealth, is not conducive to common good, at least one strictly so called.

But more is required that mere common desire and common action for there to be a common good. In addition to common desire and common action, this good, to be common, also requires a distribution to individuals; the common good must not be kept apart from or segregated from the individuals that make up the community. So Simon concludes:

A thing which has the appearance of a common good, inasmuch as it cannot be realized without common desire and common action, is not a common good and may amount to sheer destruction if it is kept apart from the persons who make up the community. . . . The accomplishments of common desire and effort if left undistributed are actually kept out of society and denied the character of common good.

Simon, 98. Three things, then, in Simon's view must exist for a common good to be a common good in theory and fact: (i) a common desire, (ii) a common action, and (iii) a distribution, in some fashion, among the individuals who make up the commonality.

Simon draws from a stray comment of the Communist Manifesto to make a point (though not by any means advocating any of its principles!). "The bourgeoisie," Marx and Engles state, "has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals." Both the Roman aqueducts and the Gothic cathedrals can be considered common goods, so long as they are not withdrawn from access by the public. All men may drink the water the aqueduct guides into the city, just like all men can drink the living waters by attending the cathedral. The pyramids, on the other hand, are not common goods. There was no equivalent distribution among the people of the sizable human labor that was expended on these monuments for the glory of the Pharaoh. "The Pyramids of Egypt are a rather clear example of an undistributed and undistributable common achievement." Such things still occur, they are often the result of "pork barrel" spending, as when "a road is built, at great public expense, for the service of a very few people." Simon, 99. This reminds one of the famous "Bridge to Nowhere," a 365 million project to link the town of Ketchikan (population 8,900) and the island of Gravina (population 50) in Alaska.

Given that there has to be some appropriate distribution of a common good among the population to retain its characteristic of a common good, Simon asks whether the common good becomes utilitarian relative to the good of the individual that participates in it. In other words, does it become a mere means? No, says Simon:

[T]he law of distribution which is that of the common good in no way prevents the common good from enjoying the character of an end, and of an end higher than the private good, and of the final end if the community under consideration has the character of a complete community.

Simon, 100-01. (That's why Aristotle referred to the common good (which he calls the "good of the polis") as "greater and more divine," κάλλιον δὲ καὶ θειότερον, than securing private good. Arist., Nic. Eth., 1094b8. This preeminence of the common good is derived from its "completeness" and "duration," qualities that we discussed in our previous blog posting.

Not only does the common good take precedence over the private good because of its relative duration and completeness, there is also a sense of hierarchy or ordering in the types of goods (and evils). Drawing upon the thought of Pascal in his Pensées, [frag. 792], Simon makes this point. In this fragment, Pascal expresses an important truth. While within certain orders goods may be incommensurable, across certain orders they may not. Some goods are of more fundamental value the others. There is a difference of kind between some goods and others, or some evils and others. Not all matters are differences in degree.

Pascal expresses, with his unique power of words, the great metaphysical and ethical truth that all good of a lower order falls sort of any good of a higher order.

Simon, 102.


This is a truth utterly forgotten by moderns, who are loathe to make judgment calls, as if all value is a matter of taste. For modern ears, the sentiments of St. Thomas or of Cardinal Newman are incomprehensible

The good of grace in a single soul is greater than the good of nature in the whole universe.

The Church . . . holds that it were better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one willful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse . . . she considers the action of this world and the action of the soul simply incommensurate, viewed in their respective spheres; she would rather save the soul of one single wild bandit of Calabria, or whining beggar of Palermo, than draw a hundred lines of railroad through the length of Italy, or carry out a sanitary reform in its fullest details in every city of Sicily, except so far as these great national works tended to some spiritual good beyond them.

S. T. Ia-IIae, q. 113, 9 ad 2; John Henry Cardinal Newman, Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching (London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1891), Vol. I, 240.

Here is a traditional truth entirely lost, one shared by St. Thomas, Cardinal Newman, Pascal, and anyone that gives a moment thought to eternal verities: "[A]ny good of the higher order is greater than the totality of the good that the lower order admits of." Simon, 102. (It should be noted that this notion is entirely lost by the advocates of the "New Natural Law Theory such as Finnis, Grisez, and George, who hold all human goods to incommensurable and do not admit of this sort of hierarchy of goods.) The physical order is subordinate to the rational order, and the rational order is subordinate to the natural moral order, and the natural moral order is subordinate (though never contradictory) to the order of grace. So, for example, one should never intentionally kill an innocent human being even to save one's physical life, or to gain riches, or to acquire knowledge, because this would be to commit a moral evil to so as to gain advantage in the physical or rational orders, violating this hierarchy that prevents such confusing of orders.

Simon then asks the question of what order--physical or moral--the common good may be placed. When one hears the Ciceronian saying: salus populi suprema lex esto, the health of the people is the supreme law, which is nothing other than the principle that the common good of a people is the centerpiece of law, is this suprema lex a law of the physical or moral order? It is, Simon insists, a principle of moral order, and so supreme, but not absolutely. That the common good should be at the center of law, should be its end, is a supreme principle:

Supreme, indeed, not absolutely speaking for the order of charity [which I've characterized as the order of Grace, L.C.], in the words of Pascal, is above all the perfections of nature; but supreme in an order that it would be most inappropriate to designate as physical, material, or external. The common good of the civil society . . . [is in the] order of moral perfection, which remains essentially naturally and never should be confused with the order of charity (in the strictly theological sense which is that of Pascal) . . . . Of this common good it should not be said that it is the ultimate end absolutely speaking, for it is an ultimate within an order which is not itself ultimate.

Simon, 105. Simon then concludes:

[T]he common good indeed enjoys primacy over the private good of the individual, when both are of the same order, but that at the same time the common good is internal to man and by its very nature requires continuous distribution among the members of society. As such it is the end of the laws of the state. . . . If the purse of law is common, the cause also must be common. Thus the law is a rule of reason, relative to the common good which, on account of its relation to the common good, proceeds from the community. . . . [t]he making of law belongs either to the community as a whole or to someone who is in charge of the community. . . . [and] has to be promulgated, it has to be conveyed to the knowledge of those who are subject to the law.

Simon, 107-08, 109.

When one gathers together all the thoughts of Simon on human law, the analogate of law with which we are most familiar, he proposes, in fact, the definition of law of St. Thomas Aquinas:

Law is an ordinance of reason for the common good, promulgated by him who has the care of the community.

[Lex] est aliud quam quaedam rationis ordinatio ad bonum commune, ab eo qui curam communitatis habet, promulgata.

Simon, 109; Ia-IIae q. 90 a. 4 co.

Using his understanding of human law as the analogate, Simon now turns to what it may tell us of the natural law, the natural moral law.

The Common Good and Its Counterfeits

THERE ARE RULES, AND THEN THERE ARE LAWS. Laws are rules, but not all rules are laws. What is it that distinguishes rules or ordinances from law in the strict sense? The distinguishing feature between laws and all other systems of order is that law "stands for a rule relative to the common good, and more precisely, to the common good of a community distinguished by [a relative] amplitude and completeness." Simon, 87. The laws' direct relation to the common good raises in tandem the question of whether the common good has a relative primacy over private good, and thereby have a superior claim to our loyalty over our private interests. This takes us directly into the question of the relationship between the individual and the community. In this post we will review Yves Simon's comments regarding the common good. In the next we will address Simon's comments regarding individualism.

The modern Western world idolizes individualism, and shuns any form of collectivism, and with such bias becomes tone deaf to the calls for the common good, to solidarity among people. Modernly, there is, without doubt, a bias against the common good to which we must become sensitive if we are to regain balance. The prevailing individualism expresses itself in the language of right at the expenses of the language of law; whereas a collectivist view will express itself in the language of law at the expense of the language of right. To walk between excessive individualism and excessive collectivism and speak in terms of the "common good" where both individual and collective good are balanced is to walk a tightrope. (The disease has infected even Evangelical Christianity which talks much of a personal, individual relationship with Christ, but seems to have completely overlooked the equally important obligation of membership in the Church and incorporation into the Body of Christ. Private prayer and private penance is given precedence over public liturgy and public confession.)

For all the value placed on the individual, it is apparent that the community has certain qualities that make it transcend the individual in the natural order. Simon places the preeminence of the community to the individual in the qualities of "duration" and "completeness" that the common good has over the private good. These qualities of the community are what justifies law, which aims to the common good, and not private good.

The common good is of greater duration than individual good. It is true that human communities do not live eternally; only individual human souls do. Knowledge of the individual soul's immortality is something that is vouchsafed by reason and by revelation. (The Church, being of divine institution and not of natural institution is excluded from this analysis, as the Church , in distinction from the State, transcends time and lives in eternity in the Church Triumphant. But there is no "Tribe Triumphant" or "State Triumphant" or "Nation Triumphant" in the Eschaton.) Though only the individual soul is immortal, the individual soul's immortality does not impeach the importance of the community in the natural order which persists beyond the individual deaths of men, irrespective of the eternal life of their souls. Simon refers to the requirements of the duration of the temporal order over and against the individual as the "problems of duration."

In this life, contemplation, joy, and the happier forms of love raise men above the world of becoming and destruction. But these true images of eternity are accessible here below, only by rare privilege, and their supratemporal way of existing is quickly suspended by the needs of a life which never ceases to be engaged in the stream of universal becoming.

Simon, 88. Wealth, education, language, science, culture, tradition. These are natural goods that must be taken up and passed down, or they would be lost by the death of the individual if not resident in the community, and these therefore have a life beyond the individual. They reside, as it were, in the community, and an individual shares in them but in passing. These endure in community, but not in the individual. Macbeth well-expresses man's short, seeming limited contribution in the natural order, albeit with the pessimism of a pagan:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Shakespeare, Macbeth, V.5.19-28.

The human species is expressed but briefly in an individual life, individual life is an ephemeral spark. Yet within the chain of individual lives one finds in the expanse of generations that occurs in the life a community, a nation (though nations come and go) and, more broadly, a human people (such as the Jews, though they come and go, e.g., the Cro-Magnons) or, more broadly yet, the human species, that human life persists virtually immortal. No individual man has the staying power, the duration of a family or tribe, much less of a nation, a people, or the species. "The duration is a trait by which the primacy of the common over the private good is clearly established." Simon, 89.

There is, however, something more than "duration" that accords a dignity to the common, rather than the individual, life. "[M]ore profoundly, it is a completeness which determines the greater excellence of the common good." Simon, 89. What does Simon mean by "completeness"? The fact is that individuals are limited. This is what drives the need for the division of labor and the specialization that comes with it. The specialization is required even for the necessaries of life: safety from aggression, shelter, food, and so forth. But the specialization is required a fortiori for the more noble pursuits: the sciences or the arts, or even moral wisdom. There is, therefore, an intrinsic need to contribute to the common life, to sociability. "This need is so deeply rooted in our rational nature," notes Simon, "that when it is frustrated it soon breeds a singular power of destruction." Simon, 90. Refuse a man a wife and friends; put him in solitary confinement, or worse, educate him in moral solipsism, and you will see what Simon means.

There are common goods. Yet there are also their counterfeits. Utilitarianism ("greatest good for the greatest number") suggests a recipe for the common good, but it is a counterfeit, since at the heart of its premises is still the individual good, which it merely sums up. Utilitarianism is a calculus of added individual good, and so it is qualitatively different from a true understanding of the common good. The difference between a utilitarian view versus a solidaritarian view is the difference between a bunch of people watching the same pornographic film in solitary porno booths versus men watching a football game in a stadium in common. The former really involves nothing that could be characterized as a common good. Add up the multiple individual mastubatory orgasms and you do not derive one iota of common good.

To bring forth the qualitative difference between the common good and the private good, let us remark that a good is common if, and only if, it is of such nature as to call for common pursuit and common enjoyment. It is not an addition, or a multiplication, but an objective relation of the thing desirable to the powers of desire and attainment which distinguishes the common good from the private good.

Simon, 90. Such goods as public peace and safety, the moral order, educational institutions are common goods.

It may be difficult to say in what respects man is, and in what respects he is not, a part of the community. What is not open to doubt is that insofar as the individual has the character of a part, the principle of the primacy of the whole signifies not only that the common good is greater, but also that the private good may have to be sacrificed to the greater good of the community.

Simon, 91. This is what justifies occupations such as the police, or firemen, or the military, who are expected to, and are honored for, sacrificing their lives for the good of the community if called upon to do so. They are heroes to the common good.

There are, however, counterfeits to the common good. As previously mentioned, utilitarianism is one such counterfeit. Another counterfeit is what Simon calls "the myth of a common good external to man," a myth which lends itself to "the temptation . . . to conceive a human community after the pattern of a work of art and the excellent condition of the human community after the pattern of perfection supplied by a masterwork." Simon, 92. This is the haunt of social engineers, of liberals, of socialists, of communists, of collectivists. Tied to this is a tendency to absolutize, even divinize the State.

Apotheosis of Washington, Winterhur Museum

Apotheosis of the Spanish Monarchy by Tiepolo (Fresco at Royal Palace, Madrid)

Politics is not an art; art can be morally vicious, let us say lewd, yet aesthetically or technically perfect. Politics ought not to be thought to be the same way as art. Politics, if morally vicious, is by no means good. Politics is, in its foundation, a virtue which incorporates moral right and the exercise of prudence, and so it defines itself by whether it is morally good. When the common good is treated as a thing of art alone without reference to external moral standard, technical political prowess, not political virtue distinguishes the public man. Politics becomes instrumental, not prudential. Statecraft becomes not soulcraft, but the art of manipulation, of propaganda, of show, of celebrity. It is what gives us Trumans and Clintons and Obamas instead of Washingtons. More sanguinely, it is what gave us Napoleons or Hitlers or Maos, instead of Charlemagnes or St. Louises or Charles Vs. This is because "no art solves any problem of human use," Simon, 94, and so if politics is considered an art, substantive standards are waylaid. The image Simon uses leads one to think of a Dr. Hannibal Lecter:

A clever physician known to be possessed of criminal dispositions is the least desirable person at the bedside of a patient, especially if the patient happens to be an obstacle to the physician's design.

Simon, 94. So likewise, the reign of politics ought not to be given to a man or woman that is morally unfit, even if he may be politically savvy.

The tendency to view governing or politics as an art and not a virtue is exacerbated by the overly secular and materialistic good we have of social good.

The myth which identifies the common good with the perfection of a work of art and thus represents it as something nonhuman is constantly strengthened by the assumption that society, or at least the temporal, as distinct from the spiritual society, is concerned only with external actions, such as digging, orderly conduct in the street, marching, charging and retreating according to orders, paying taxes, fulfilling contracts, etc. Political society, in this view, would have nothing to do with what goes on in the heart of men.

Simon, 95. The common good thus encompasses the whole of man under God. It is something manifestly separate from the State. The State is its servant, not its master.

Girolamo Zanchi on Human Law, Part 2

Girolamo Zanchi

ZANCHI MAINTAINS THAT ALL HUMAN LAWS originate, at least with regard to their essence, from the natural law. Zanchi distinguishes between the command and the punishment or sanction of the law. The command in a human law is a conclusion derived from a principle of natural law. As an example, Zanchi observes that laws against murder, adultery, perjury, etc. are conclusions based upon the general principle of the natural law that one should not do to another what he does not want done to himself. Thus the essence of human law, with respect to its content or command component, is the natural law.

On the other hand, Zanchi asserts that the punishment or sanction associated with a law's breach is not derived the natural-law, other than perhaps its general principle that someone who sins ought to be punished and the commonly-held notion that murder should be punished by execution. With respect to specific punishments associated with a law's breach, the justice and fairness ought to be applied to match the severity of the crime. "Thus, it is appropriate, according to natural law," Zanchi concludes, "that sin be punished, but should one sin--murder perhaps--be punished by the sword, and another--petty theft perhaps--be punished by a decision of the law-makers" is a matter for human law.

Zanchi maintains as one of his theses that whenever human law conflicts with, or contradicts, the natural law, the human law is overturned and is unworthy of the name of law.

The reason for this is clear. If natural law is indeed the measure for human laws, then it is also the rule for human actions. Therefore, just as every action that does not agree with natural law is sinful, so, too, is every human law . . . .For this reason, Augustine rightly, in his On Free Will, claimed that a law that is not just should not be called so, and it is not just if it does not agree with natural law.

(340 [Note: The ellipses show where I have left off Zanchi's diatribe against the papacy and celibacy, a diatribe which displays an ignorance, or at least a disdain of, the evangelical counsels preached by Christ himself, and so is unworthy of publication in this blog dedicated to the Lord.])

Zanchi adds that because laws are essentially geared to the glory of God and the common good of men, those laws that contradict those aims are essentially unworthy to be called laws. (340) Zanchi endorses the discussion of Gratian's Decretum (4.2) about the qualities of good laws.

Erit autem lex honesta, iusta, possibilis, secundum naturam, secundum consuetudinem patriae, loco temporique conveniens, necessaria, utilis, manifesta quoque, ne aliquid per obscuritatem inconveniens contineat, nullo privato commodo, sed pro communi utilitate civium conscripta.

Good laws, then, should correspond with religion, should be consonant with the Faith, and ought to improve the life and "safety" of men. Conversely, political laws ought not do battle against the right worship of God, good customs, or detract from human safety or the public good.

For this reason, Zanchi believes it obvious that--to the extent that political laws are derived from the natural law--political laws are just and "do not contain less of God's will than do the other laws," that is natural law and divine law. (341) It is this feature that St. Paul recognizes in his epistle to the Romans (13:1): "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities." It is what Christ intended when he taught that we should render to Caesar that which was Caesar's (Matt. 22:21). In a similar vein, St. Peter in his first epistle enjoins the faithful to "accept the authority of every human institution (or ordinances)," "for the Lord's sake." (1 Pet. 2:13)

If this is the will of God that we be subject to our governing authorities, then we cannot resist those things that do not oppose God's will. . . . . So says the apostle Paul . . . in Romans 13, he said first that the magistrates were those who had received the sword from him and he later adds: "Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience." [Rom. 13:2, 5] Why because of conscience? Because the magistrates hold the law over our conscience? Not at all. James 4 reads, "There is, in fact, one lawmaker." No, it is because the one who orders us to obey our magistrates is the law's authority and conqueror. He holds the law over our conscience.

(341) So Zanchi insists that human or political laws, if not contrary to the natural law or divine law, that is, if they are just, are binding in conscience upon the faithful. They are binding on the faithful through the natural law (and through the fact that they are derived from it), and through the divine law as revealed in the apostolic and the Lord's teaching.

Human laws can be unjust in two ways. First, laws are unjust if the one promulgating the law has no authority. (342) But even if the law is issued by one in authority, if it is ordered against the common good, and for the ruler's good or pleasure, then it remains unjust. A law that demands what is impossible is equally unjust. Laws are unjust if they fail in these things even if they do not go against an express injunction of divine law or contradict God's glory. The second way a law can be unjust is if the law opposes God or his divine law. "Whichever way they become unjust," Zanchi teaches, "unjust laws do not obligate our consciences, because God does not bind our conscience to unjust laws." (342) Zanchi properly observes that laws that may be unjust under the first category (but do not contradict divine law), and therefore do not bind in conscience, may still be obeyed at the discretion of the subject, provided that following it "does not keep us from loving our neighbor or avoiding all crimes." This is suggested by Matthew 5:41, where Christ teaches that if someone forces you to go one mile, go also a second mile.

If laws are unjust because they contradict divine law, however, they can be in no wise be obeyed. Since such laws "force us to do something contrary to God's glory," or something "that opposes his law," the proper response is to resist them. (342) This is the meaning of St. Peter as reflected in Acts 5:29: "We must obey God rather than men." It is likewise the teaching of St. Thomas, who states in his Summa (IaIIae, art. 96, 5):

If laws are unjust through their contradiction to the divine good as are the law of tyrants in leading people to idolatry or to anything else that is contrary to divine law, it is right to resist such laws in any way because this was said in Acts 5: It is better to obey God than man.

All this gives rise to two ways that one may sin with regard to law. First, by failing to obey the just laws of the magistrates. Second, by failing to refrain from obeying unjust laws that contradict God's law.

Zanchi then asks the question forced upon him by his Protestant sola gratia concept that suggests that a Christian is freed from law. "But, how should, or even could, every heart be subject to human laws," Zanchi queries, "when the just have been freed from the law and the law is not profitable for the just?" (343) In responding to this quandary, Zanchi suggests that the law has two functions. First, it has a pedagogical role in teaching what is to be done, and what is to be avoided. Second, the law is a "rule for actions" which obliges and urges those subject to the law to obedience. This bifurcated function of the law results in a two-fold subjection to the law, depending upon whether one is wicked or one is just. The wicked are subject to the law "by compulsion through force and obligation." The just or good, on the other hand, are subject to the law "voluntarily through the training and regulation of one's own actions." Those who "love the law" and "run to it by themselves" therefore do so not by force, but by their own accord and desire for obedience. The law, according to 1 Timothy 1:9, "is laid down not for the innocent but the the lawless." The innocent do not need the law because they "do what is included in the law" since "they have it written in their hearts." (343)

Zanchi then addresses the issue of why people should be bound by the law if the king is not subject to his own law. Zanchi acknowledges that kings are not subject to their own laws by means of compulsion, but neither do they have greater power than God, who ultimately judges them. But they are not really greater than their own laws, though they can alter or enact law by decision, because the purpose of the law is to benefit the State. The king, in any event, cannot be said to be entirely released from the rule of law:

[S]ince the law is the rule for good actions, princes are not released from their own laws as far as the public good is concerned. Instead, they must subject themselves to them by their own decision, and good princes ought to subject themselves willingly to them.

The greater king, one who is virtuous, is the king who subjects himself to the law. This is suggested by both Justinian in his Codex (1.14.4) ["for a sovereign to submit himself to the laws, is in fact a greater thing than imperial power" (Et re vera maius imperio est submittere legibus principatum.)] and by Gratian in his Decretum (9.2) [(Principes tenentur et ipsi vivere legibus suis . . . . Iusta est enim vocis eorum auctoritas, siquod populis prohibent, sibi licere non patiantur")] But this is all relative to the political or human law. The king has no such liberty or right to voluntarily compliance with respect to natural or divine law:

It is also certain that princes, as far as God's judgment is concerned, are not released from just laws that are derived from natural law and ordained for the public good whether from a higher power or from the princes themselves, becuas they ought to promote the public good themselves.

(344) "Therefore," Zanchi concludes this section, "after our first examination of all good laws with God as their source, we are bound by conscience to obey just political laws."

In the next blog post we will wrap up our review of Zanchi's analysis of human or political law and its relationship to natural law and divine law.

Universal Ethic-The Natural Law and the State 1-The Common Good

Chapter IV: The Natural Law and the State

4.1. The Person and the Common Good

83. Approaching the political order of society, we enter into the space regulated by right (It. diritto, Fr. droit). In fact, right appears when multiple persons enter into relations. The entry of the person into society illuminates the essential distinction between the natural law and natural right.

84. The person is at the center of the political and social order because he is an end and not a means. The person is a being that is social by nature, not by choice or in virtue of pure contractual convention. To realize himself, a person has need of an interlacing of relations that he establishes with other persons. He finds himself in the center of a network formed by concentric circles: the family, the environment in which which he lives and works, communities of neighborhoods, the nation, and finally the humanity.(78) The person gets from each of these circles the necessary elements for his proper growth, and at the same time himself contributes to their improvement.

85. Since human beings have the vocation of living in society with others, they have in common a ensemble of goods to pursue and values to defend. This is what is called the “common good.” If the person is an end in himself, society has the end of promoting, consolidating and developing its own common good. The search for the common good agrees with the State’s mobilization of the energies of all of its members. At the first level, the common good can be understood as the ensemble of conditions which must be granted to persons in order to be always more of a human person.(79) To articulate these in their exterior aspects—economy, security, social justice, education, access to the work, the spiritual search, and others—, the common good is always a human good.(80) At a second level, the common good is that which directs the political order and the State itself. The good of all, and of each in particular, this expresses the public dimension of the human good. Society can define itself through the type of common good that it intends to promote. In fact, if one deals with the essential requirements of the common good of any society, the vision of common good evolves within the same society as a function of the conceptions of the person, of justice, and of the role of public power.

(78) Cf. Vatican II, pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, nn. 73-74. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1882, states that "Certain societies, such as the family and the state, correspond more directly to the nature of man.”

(79) Cf. John XXIII, Encyclical Mater et Magistra, n. 65; Vatican II, pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, n. 26 § 1; Declaration Dignitatis humanae, n. 6.

(80) Cf. John XXIII, Encyclical Pacem in terris, n. 55.

St. Thomas Aquinas: Definition of Law, The Common Good

THE LAW IS A PUBLIC THING, NOT A PRIVATE TOY. This is essentially St. Thomas Aquinas's teaching in the second article to question 90 in the "Treatise on Law." St. Thomas quotes the early encylopedist, St. Isidore of Seville, for the proposition that laws are not enacted for private benefit, but for the public good. Etymologies, v.21 (nullo privato commodo, sed pro communi civium utilitate conscripta).

St. Thomas observes that although reason is what directs the law, there must be something upon which reason is focused, the ultimate end or purpose (what is called the "final cause"). With respect to law, that focus must be the common good. The common good is based upon happiness; this happiness is "the principle in respect of all the rest." ST IaIIae, Q.90, art. 2, resp. From a natural perspective, this happiness is Aristotle's eudaemonia, what St. Thomas calls felicitas, felicity. From a supernatural perspective, this happiness is what is referred to as beatitude or eternal joy, what St. Thomas calls beatitudo.

The happiness that the law is concerned with is not any individual's happiness, but the happiness of the entire body politic, that is, the universal happiness, or happiness of the community (felicitatem communem). The law, therefore, must not have any particular individual's happiness as its end, but, rather, the happiness of the entire body politic. Quoting Aristotle, St. Thomas states that the only just law is that law which is adapted to produce and preserve happiness for the the body politic. See Aristotle, Ethics, v. 1. The law, can address individual things, and it may result in one particular individual's or one group's happiness. In itself, that is not defective so long as the law was ordained to the good of the community. It is only when the law is not it is ordered to the common good, but toward the good of a group or an individual, that it is "devoid of the nature of law" (non habeat rationem legis). ST IaIIae, Q. 90, art. 2, resp.; see also id. resps.1, 2. Thomas thus strikes a balance between individualism and collectivism.

Nathanael Culverwell describes what occurs when the law is ordered toward the common good

Law-givers should send out laws with Olive-branches in their mouths, they should be fruitful and peaceable; they should drop sweetness and fatness upon a land. Let not then Brambles make laws for Trees, lest they scratch them and tear them, and write their laws in blood. But Law-givers are to send out laws, as the Sun shoots forth his beams, with healing under their wings: and thus that elegant Moralist Plutarch speaks, God (says he) is angry with them that counterfeit his thunder and lightning, οὐσκηπτρον, οὐκεραυνὸν, οὐτρίαιναν; his Scepter, and his Thunderbolt, and his Trident, he will not let them meddle with these. He does not love they should imitate him in his absolute dominion and sovereignty; but loves to see them darting out those warm, and amiable, and cherishing ἀκτινοβολίαι, those beamings out of Justice, and goodness, and clemency. And as for Laws, they should be like so many green and pleasant pastures, into which these ποιμένεςλαων [shepherds of nations] are to lead their flocks, where they may feed sweetly and securely by those refreshing streams of justice, that run down like water, and righteousness like a mighty torrent. And this consideration would sweep down many cobweb-laws, that argue only the venom and subtilty of them that spin them; this would sweep down many an Achitophel's web and many an Haman's web, many an Herod's web; every spider's web that spreads laws only for the catching and entangling of weaker ones; such Law-givers are fit to be Domitian's play-fellows, that made it his Royal sport and pastime to catch flies, and insult over them when he had done. Whereas a Law should be a staff for a Commonwealth to lean on, and not a Reed to pierce it through. Laws should be cords of love, not nets and snares. Hence it is that those laws are most radical and fundamental, that principally tend to the conservation of the vitals and essentials of a Kingdom; and those come nearest the Law of God himself, and are participations of that eternal Law, which is the spring and original of all inferior and derivative laws. του ἀρίστου ἕνεκα πάντα τὰ νόμιμα [all laws exist for the sake of the good], as Plato speaks; and there is no such public benefit, as that which comes by laws; for all have an equal interest in them, and privilege by them. And therefore as Aristotle speaks most excellently, Νόμος ἐστὶ νους ἄνευὀρέξεως. A Law is a pure intellect, not only without a sensitive appetite, but without a will. ’Tis pure judgment without affections, a Law is impartial and makes no factions; and a Law cannot be bribed though a Judge may.

(from An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature, ed. Robert A. Greene and Hugh MacCallum, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001) (spelling modernized).)