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The Individual, The State, and The Common Good

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

John Haldane
John Haldane
Affiliation:
Moral Philosophy, University of St. Andrews
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Extract

Let me begin with what should be a reassuring thought, and one that may serve as a corrective to presumptions that sometimes characterize political philosophy. The possibility, which Aquinas and Madison are both concerned with, of wise and virtuous political deliberation resulting in beneficial and stable civil order, no more depends upon possession of aphilosophical theory of the state and of the virtues proper to it, than does the possibility of making good paintings depend upon possession of an aesthetic theory of the nature and value of art.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , Winter 1996 , pp. 59 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1996

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References

1 See Aquinas: Selected Political Writings, ed. D'Entreves, A. P., trans. Dawson, J. G. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1959), p. 3.Google Scholar

2 See The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, ed. Jonathan, Elliot (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, 1907).Google Scholar

3 See Oakeshott, Michael, “The Concept of a Philosophy of Politics,” in Oakeshott, Religion, Politics, and the Moral Life, ed. Timothy, Fuller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993);Google Scholar and Scruton, Roger, The Meaning of Conservatism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980).Google Scholar“Conservatism may rarely announce itself in maxims, formulae or aims. Its essence is inarticulate, and its expression, when compelled, sceptical. But it is capable of expression …” (Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism, p. 11).

4 Chesterton, G. K., “The Revival of Philosophy–Why?” in Chesterton, The Common Man (London: Sheed and Ward, 1950), p. 176.Google Scholar Regrettably, Chesterton's writings have hardly been appreciated by social philosophers. See, for example, Chesterton, , What's Wrong with the World (London: Cassell, 1910; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994).Google Scholar

5 See, for example, Rorty, Richard, “The Contingency of Community,” in Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Rorty, , “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy,” in Reading Rorty, ed. Alan, Malachowski (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).Google Scholar

6 Augustine, , De civitate dei (London: Loeb, 1960), Book XIX, ch. 26.Google Scholar

7 Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 146.Google Scholar

8 Paul, John II, Veritatis Splendor (London: Incorporated Catholic Truth Society, 1993)Google Scholar–to which may be added a second much-heralded–and disputed–statement of fundamental Catholic doctrine: the Catechism of the Catholic Church (London: Chapman, 1994).Google Scholar

9 Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 4.

10 For a recent and influential departure from this tradition, see McDowell, John, “Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary volume 52 (1978), pp. 13–29;Google Scholar and McDowell, , “The Role of Eudaimonia in Aristotle's Ethics,” in Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, ed. Amélie, Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).Google Scholar

11 For Aquinas, see, for example, his Summa Theologiae ]1265–1273], trans. Thomas, Gilby (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1976), la, IIae, q. 1, a. 6.Google Scholar

12 See The Moral Law: Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, ed. and trans. Paton, H. J. (London: Hutchinson, 1976), ch. 2, p. 78.Google Scholar

13 See, for example, Rawls, Political Liberalism: “[T]his reasonable plurality of conflicting and incommensurable doctrines is seen as the characteristic work of practical reason over time under enduring free institutions”; “we also view the diversity of reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines found in democratic societies as a permanent feature of their public culture”; and “[a]s always, we assume that the diversity of reasonable religious, philosophical and moral doctrines found in democratic societies is a permanent feature of the public culture and not a mere historical condition soon to pass away” (pp. 135, 136, 216–17; my emphases). Why “characteristic” and “permanent” unless for skeptical reasons?

14 Ibid., p. 9.

15 See ibid., pp. 12–13; see also ibid., Lecture V, “The Priority of the Right over the Good.”

16 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, section 51, p. 80.

17 See Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 152–53.

18 False Trends in Modern Teaching: Encyclical Letter (Humani Generis) of Pius XII Concerning Certain False Opinions, trans. Knox, Ronald A. (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1950),Google Scholar Part II, “The Field of Philosophy,” para. 29, section 1, p. 16.

19 Ibid., p. 3.

20 For a distinguished exception, however, see MacIntyre, Alasdair, “How Can We Learn What Veritatis Splendor Has to Teach?” The Thomist, vol. 58 (1994), pp. 171–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I discuss philosophical aspects of Veritatis Splendor in “From Law to Virtue and Back Again: On Veritatis Splendor,” in The Use of the Bible in Ethics, ed. Davis, M. (Sheffield: University of Sheffield Press, 1995).Google Scholar

21 I offer such an argument in “Religious Toleration,” Synthesis Philosophica, Special Issue on Toleration, vol. 9 (1994), pp. 21–26.

22 Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 216.

23 Ibid., pp. 243–44.

24 Donum Vitae (1987), as quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (supra note 8), Part 3, section 2, paragraph 2273, p. 490.

25 Here I am thinking especially of recent writings by Raz, Joseph: The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986),Google Scholar and Ethics in the Public Domain (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994).Google Scholar

26 Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 109.

27 See Haldane, John, “Political Theory and the Nature of Persons: An Ineliminable Meta-physical Presupposition,” Philosophical Papers, vol. 20 (1991), pp. 77–95,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “Identity, Community, and the Limits of Multiculture,” Public Affairs Quarterly, vol. 7 (1993), pp. 199–214.

28 See, for example, Maritain, Jacques, The Person and the Common Good, trans. John, Fitzgerald (New York: Scribner, 1941);Google Scholar and Simon, Yves, The Tradition of Natural Law (New York: Fordham University Press, 1965).Google Scholar

29 See Aquinas, Thomas, The Treatise on Law, trans. Henle, R. J. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), q. 90, a. 2, pp. 132 and 134.Google Scholar

30 For recent accounts of the common good as it features in Aquinas and in modern Thomistic writings, see Dupré, Louis, “The Common Good and the Open Society,” in Catholicism and Liberalism, ed. Hollenbach, David and Douglass, Bruce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993);Google ScholarFroelich, Gregory, “Ultimate End and Common Good,” The Thomist, vol. 58 (1994), pp. 609–19;Google ScholarKalumba, Kibujjo, “Maritain on “The Common Good’: Reflections on the Concept,” Laval Théologique et Philosophique, vol. 49 (1993), pp. 93–104;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Rourke, Thomas R. and Cocharan, Clarke E., “The Common Good and Economic Justice: Reflections on the Thought of Yves R. Simon,” Review of Politics, vol. 54 (1992), pp. 231–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Maritain, The Person and the Common Good, pp. 52–33.

32 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (supra note 11), II, II, q. 152, a. 2, ad. 1, p. 173.

33 Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 146.

34 Ibid., pp. 37–38.

35 See Haldane, “Identity, Community, and the Limits of Multiculture,” section IV.

36 For an example of what this might validate, see Haldane, John, “Religious Education in a Pluralist Society: A Philosophical Perspective,” British Journal of Educational Studies, vol. 34 (1986), pp. 161–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 147–48.

38 See Haldane, John, “Can a Catholic Be a Liberal?” Melita Theologica, vol. 43 (1992), pp. 44–57.Google Scholar

39 See Raz, The Morality of Freedom, esp. chs. 14 and 15.

40 See, for example, the essays in Hollenbach and Douglass, eds., Catholicism and Liberalism.