Nicholas, Common Good and Politics in Catholic Social Thought
Common Good and Politics in Catholic Social Thought
Jeffery Nicholas
June 1, 2012
DRAFT
(Please do not cite without author approval)
... the whole reason for the existence of civil authorities is the realization of the
common good....
Peace on Earth, #54
In The Person and The Common Good, Jacques Maritain argues that the
individual is prior to the communityi, or, at least, that the individual and the
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community are “correlative and equally fundamental.”ii He bases his argument
on a passage from St. Thomas’ Summa. At ST I-II Q21 a.4 ad.3, Thomas writes
that “man is not ordained to the body politic according to all that he is and has.”
Pope Benedict XVI uses this same phrase from Thomas in Caritas in Veritate. I
argued elsewhere, though, that Benedict did not mean, nor did Thomas, that the
individual was prior to the community.iii In fact, Maritain misunderstood
Thomas here. For Thomas, the human being is ordered to a higher end than the
common good of political society. This higher end, God, however, comprises,
not an individual, but a common good of the universe. Given that conclusion,
several problems arise for Catholic social teaching and the philosophy of
Catholic social justice.
One can begin with the simple question, how do the rest of the papal
social encyclicals define the common good? What is the relationship of the
individual to the community given this notion of the common good? If I reject
Maritain’s reading of Thomas Aquinas do I not undo his work to protect the
autonomy of the individual and, at the same time, undermine much of Catholic
social teaching? How does one avoid a hegemonizing politics if politics is
centered around a conception of the common good. Finally, how can we realize
a politics of the common good in the modern world?
As I will show, the social encyclicals define the temporal common good of
the political order. This definition mirrors that of Jacques Maritain and of John
Finnis. Further, the papal documents consistently seek a balance between the
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good of the individual with the good of the community. In Benedict’s words,
Catholic social justice seeks a polis in which members can pursue their good
consistent with the good of others. This pursuit entails first and foremost the
protection of individual rights.
This notion of the common good, however, proves inadequate. It proves
inadequate because, first, it cannot identify what it is for human beings to
flourish in society – which is necessary for reaching the common good, and,
second, because it cannot in the end ground the rights that papal documents
defend. I propose a fuller concept of the common good basing my
understanding off of the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. I do so, however,
recognizing that MacIntyre has his own critics: critics like Iris Marion Young
who are wary of any substantive conception of the common good and promote,
in opposition to the polis of MacIntyre or even Benedict XVI, a conception of citylife.
I shall conclude my discussion by providing an example of the common
good – practical reason – which is necessary for the kind of city life Young
desires. Reason is a common good, not only in the sense of a social condition
necessary for communal life, but also as a good that is only realizable as a social
good choice-worthy in-itself.
I originally developed these thoughts in an attempt to engage the feminist
critique of MacIntyre. I presented a paper at the American Maritain Association
in 2003 arguing for a conception of rights based on the natural law of Maritain.
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Later, I developed a critical conception of natural law in opposition to the new
natural law of Finnis at the 2008 ISME conference. I put these ideas aside
because I knew I was missing something in the analysis. Only when I came to
engage Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate did I recognize that it was a clearer
conception of the common good that was missing in these debates. In the
meantime, Alasdair MacIntyre has turned his attention to Maritain. He has
shared some of his thoughts with myself and others in an unpublished paper,
“Common Goods, Modern States, Rights, and Maritain.” Not surprisingly, our
thoughts run parallel in several cases, though, I think, in the end our approaches
and conclusions prove sufficiently distinct to merit separate treatments. I thank
him for giving me permission to refer to his paper here.
The Common Good in the Papal Documents
Pope Leo XIII, the progenitor of modern Catholic social teaching, has little
to say about the common good, and what he does say can prove inimical to
modern beliefs about equality and autonomy. Thus, in paragraph 34 of Rerum
Novarum, he writes “But although all citizens, without exception, can and ought
to contribute to that common good in which individuals share so advantageously
to themselves, yet it should not be supposed that all can contribute in the like
way and to the same extent.” In conjunction with this understanding that all
share in the advantages of the common good, Leo contends that some hold pride
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of place in the society because they devote themselves to the commonwealth. He
immediately makes clearer his position in paragraph 35 when he writes that “We
have said that the State must not absorb the individual or the family.” In
general, Leo’s contribution to Catholic social justice consists in bringing that 2000
year-old tradition in dialogue with the “new things” of the modern world, most
notably, classical liberalism and capitalism.
Between Rerum Novarum and the next social encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno
lay 40 years. In 1931’s Quadragesimo Anno, Pius XI says of the common good that
“The public institutions themselves, of peoples, moreover, ought to make all
human society conform to the needs of the common good; that is, to the norm of
social justice” (#110). It took another 30 years till Mater et Magistra in which we
receive a definition of the common good: “It is necessary that public authorities
have a correct understanding of the common good. This embraces the sum total
of those conditions of social living, whereby men are enabled more fully and
more readily to achieve their own perfection” (MM, #65). John XXIII modifies
the definition in paragraph #74: “The common good embraces the sum total of
all those conditions of social life which enable individuals, families, and
organizations to achieve complete and effective fulfillment” (MM, #74). This
definition can be taken as the standard definition of the common good in
Catholic social doctrine. It is restated in Gaudium et Spes #26, Pacem in Terris #58,
Octogesima Adveniens #46, and finally in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of
the Church #164.
Nicholas, Common Good and Politics in Catholic Social Thought
John XXIII, then, ties the common good as a set of social conditions to the
development of the human person. In Mater et Magistra, John XXIII holds that
those invested with care for the political must “must take account of all those
social conditions which favor the full development of human personality” (#65).
This notion of the full development of human personality, though not noted,
refers back to Maritain’s understanding of the goal of natural law. In Pacem in
Terris, he insists that “all members of the state are entitled to share” in this
common.
John XXIII elucidates what he means by saying that the political leaders
must care for the common good: “On the contrary, it must do all in its power to
promote the production of a sufficient supply of material goods, "the use of
which is necessary for the practice of virtue" (MM #20). It has also the duty to
protect the rights of all its people, and particularly of its weaker members, the
workers, women and children. It can never be right for the State to shirk its
obligation of working actively for the betterment of the condition of the
workingman” (#20). Thus, with the first definition of the common good, the
papal documents link that definition with the defense of the “rights of all its
people.”iv John XXIII reiterates this understanding of the relationship between
the common good and rights in Pacem in Terris at #s 56 and 63: “it is also
demanded by the common good that civil authorities should make earnest
efforts to bring about a situation in which individual citizens can easily exercise
their rights and fulfill their duties as well.”
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For Catholic social thought, the common good does not comprise a sum of
individual goods. “It 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 #164). This understanding of the
common good, then, relies on an understanding of the human being as social. It
also remains consistent with Thomas’ contention that God is a common good to
all human beings – God is indivisible and we cannot attain God without
cooperating with and cooperation from others.
Pope Benedict XVI ties these ideas together more clearly. “To take a stand
for the common good is on the one hand to be solicitous for, and on the other
hand to avail oneself of, that complex of institutions that give structure to the life
of society, juridically, civilly, politically, and culturally, making it the polis, or
‘city.’” This stand defines “the institutional path – we might also call it the
political path” which will contribute “to the building of the universal City of
God, which is the goal of the history of the human family” (CIV 35). The
common good comprises a complex of institutions that structure the life of
society. In taking a stand, Benedict claims that individuals will be taking an
institutional path and identifies the institutional path as the political path. I will
return to this understanding of the polis, of politics, and of institutions
throughout the rest of this essay.
First, however, I want to look at the common good from a more
philosophical vantage point.
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Philosophical Accounts of the Common Good
Jacques Maritain
Because of his importance to the general debate about the relationship
between the individual and society and because of his influence on Catholic
social thought in the 20th century, Jacques Maritain provides an interesting
person with whom to begin a discussion of the philosophy of the common good.
This discussion will allow me, further, to contrast the understanding of the
common good in John Finnis and Alasdair MacIntyre. In the end, I shall argue
that we must turn to MacIntyre’s Thomistic-Aristotelian understanding of the
common good to better underwrite Catholic social justice.
Maritain grounds his view of rights in Thomas Aquinas’ Natural Law
Theory. What is central in this Natural Law Theory, for Maritain, is the notion of
the person that lies behind it. While recognizing the individuality of the person,
Maritain rightly claims that the person becomes such only within a community.
Indeed, as an individual, rights do not pertain to “man;” they pertain to the
person.v The human person is a human being; the human being is “more whole
than a part and more independent than servile.”vi As such, the person possesses
an incomparable worth. Nothing but God is more important than the individual
person. Yet, the person is a social animal. It is social because it seeks to
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communicate to others its nature and to reach out to others in givingness and
love.vii The society, then, is a whole consisting of wholes -- for each person is a
whole, but society itself is a whole – not fragmented parts.viii
The ground for the conception of rights in Maritain rests on the notion of
incommensurable worth of the person.
Since society consists in these
incommensurable wholes, the aim of society lies in the common good -- the good
of each one.
The common good of society is neither a mere collection of
private goods, nor the good proper to a whole... It is the good
human life of the multitude, of a multitude of persons, the good life
of totalities at once carnal and spiritual.... The common good of
society is their communion in the good life; it is therefore common
to the whole and to the parts...ix
The political task of this common good is
to procure the common good of the multitude, in such a manner
that each concrete person, not only in a privileged class, but
throughout the whole mass, may truly reach that measure of
independence which is proper to civilized life and which is insured
alike by the economic guarantees of work and property, political
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rights, civil virtues, and the cultivation of the mind.x
Significantly, Maritain focuses on the demands for the concrete person. This
person, while perhaps a member of this or that class, is unique as a concrete
person and cannot be reduced to class membership or to humanity at all. So each
concrete person must share in the common good in a concrete and unique way.
Persons are concrete, not abstract, in their familial, social, and historical situation.
The good, moreover, of each concrete individual is assured by, among other
things, rights.
The human person possesses rights because of the very fact that it
is a person, a whole, master of itself and of its acts, and which
consequently is not merely a means to an end, but an end, an end
which must be treated as such. The dignity of the human person?
This expression means nothing if it does not signify that by virtue
of natural law, the human person has the right to be respected, is
the subject of rights, possesses rights.xi
The person is a whole, but only a whole because it is in society. The
dignity of the person means that, as a whole in a community, that whole has
rights – particularly rights to be respected.
Each person has a right to the
“minimal conditions” for a truly human life.xii These minimal conditions include
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not only “a collection of public commodities and services” like “roads, ports, and
schools,” but also “sound fiscal condition of the state and its military power, the
ody of just laws, good customs, and wise institutions,” the “heritage of its great
historical remembrances” Above these items, the common good also includes
“the whole sum itself of these, a sum which is quite different from a imple
collection of juxtaposed units” (PCG 51). As an example, Maritain mentions that,
for Aritotle, “6” is not the same thing as “3 + 3.”
These rights derive from Natural Law.
Natural law, in its simplest
statement, is the belief that, through reason, human beings can discover on the
basis of their very human nature an order or disposition to the necessary ends of
the human being -- that is, to become more human.xiii Natural law, then, is
geared toward the fulfillment of the human being and it recognizes that said
fulfillment rests, in part, on the rights of the human person -- not as distinct from
society but a whole within and because of society.
John Finnis
In contrast to Maritain, John Finnis avoids discussion of human nature.
Rather, he begins where Maritain ends: a set of individual goods as a foundation
for his natural law theory. His theory “defines the good in such a way that the
common good is nothing other and nothing more than one aspect of the set of
fundamental human goods.”xiv
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In Natural Law and Natural Rights Finnis avoids giving an account of
human nature. He asserts that, in Thomas, first principles of natural law are “not
inferred from metaphysical propositions about human nature, or about the
nature of good and evil, or about the ‘function of the human being.’” xv This
position opposes that of Maritain, and, I would say, of any true reading of
Thomas. Notice, however, that Finnis arrives at a definition of the common good
that mirrors that of Maritain.
Finnis defines the notion of common good as “a set of conditions which
enables 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.”xvi This definitions comprises an abstract account of the common
good as a set of conditions that help people realize their objectives or the values
which might make them collaborate.
If Maritain states that the common good is the communion in the good
life, we can see a difference only of degree from Finnis; “collaborate with each
other in a community.” Further, it is difficult to tell at this abstract level whether
Maritain and Finnis disagree about whether the sum of the goods is greater than
their parts. More importantly for my discussion, nothing really distinguishes the
discussion of the common good in Maritain or Finnis from the discussion of the
common good in the papal encyclicals. All three insist on a set of conditions that
allow individuals to achieve their perfection. Finnis might be given credit, in
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fact, for spelling out this perfection as “attaining for themselves reasonable
objectives.”
Catholic social doctrine might add to this that the primary
reasonable objective is union with God. As pronouncements on the common
good of political society, however, the distinctions fade to nothingness. I want to
suggest that reading the notion of the common good in this minimalist way leads
to problems. In fact, it cannot support the “polis” which Benedict calls for in
Caritas in Veritate.
MacIntyre’s Critique of Maritain and Finnis
From MacIntyre’s Thomistic-Aristotelian perspective, two problems
present themselves with the Maritain-Finnis reading of the common good in
natural law. First, both attempt to define the worth of the individual prior to the
common good and, second, the account of the common good remains too
abstract.
MacIntyre focuses on the way in which modernity rejects natural law.
Disagreement over fundamental values characterizes advanced modernity. For
MacIntyre, this characteristic of advanced modernity deprives natural law of two
of its central features. “What the natural law was held to provide was a shared
and public standard,” appeal to which could justify positive law, and that
natural law “appeals to the judgment of plain persons and not to those of
professional specialists.”xvii In advanced modernity, one can neither appeal to
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shared and public standards nor to one’s own judgment when it comes to law.
Such a failure in modernity undermines the subversive power of natural law in
opposing oppressive and dominating systems.
If natural law is to be saved, then, according to MacIntyre, it must do two
things. First, it must explain why natural law can no longer secure widespread
assent and second identify the grounds for assent to the precepts of natural law
which plain persons meet.xviii
MacIntyre notes, then, that Finnis has attempted to explain why natural
law no longer secures widespread assent.
He fails, however, to provide an
adequate notion of the common good. Finnis appeals to individual goods as a
foundation for his natural law theory rather than to a conception of human
nature. In gutting the notion of common good of any appeal to human nature,
Finnis undermines the ability of natural law to explain why it might be rejected
under certain conditions.
The Aristotelian-Thomist system has within it,
according to MacIntyre, a theory of moral and legal error. MacIntyre returns us
to Maritain’s discussion of natural law to find out how to explain the failure of
natural law in advanced modernity.
Maritain’s Thomist account of natural law includes two key features.
First, the precepts of natural law comprise those which a plain person obeys
when functioning normally. That is, plain persons already obey the precepts of
natural law because just those precepts lead to human development, or as stated
above, the expansion of human personality. Secondly, the Aristotelian-Thomistic
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account of natural law views people as essentially social.
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We develop our
human personality “through being bound to others through a variety of familial,
social, and political relationships expressed in joint activity aimed at achieving
our common good.”xix Thus, “the common good is that toward which we are
inclined when we are functioning normally and developing as we should be.”xx
That is, the common good consists in the human inclination to develop to be
more and more fully human. If the theory of natural law fails to provide an
account of human nature, however, the common good cannot be achieved.
Again, the subversive power of natural law flounders.
For MacIntyre, “Maritain errs in supposing that we can give any account,
let alone a Thomistic account, of the nature and worth of human individuals
prior to and independently of a characterization of their relationships to common
goods.”xxi Maritain has reason for this error of course. He misunderstands
Thomas’ position concerning how the human person is ordered to society.
Where Thomas asserted that human beings are ordered to a good beyond
political society, Maritain understood him to mean that individual human beings
are metaphysically prior to society.
Finnis’ New Natural Law Theory is
characteristic of theories in advanced modernity that fail from their own
shortcomings. The failure of advanced modernity lies in a misunderstanding of
human nature. Just so long as that misunderstanding reigns, so long does a
theory of natural law become impossible to defend. Thus, advanced modernity
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impairs, not only the subversive aspect of natural law as social criticism, but, for
Macintyre, the recognition plain persons have of the natural law within them.
Maritain’s discussion of the common good, further, remains at an abstract
level. The definitions of the common good in the papal encyclicals also remain at
an abstract level. MacIntyre rightly asks, how can plain persons “translate those
generalities into concrete and particular terms?” (Common Goods, pg. 10). Such
persons must, first and foremost, identify a set of agreements on the “rank
ordering of goods.” This ordering of goods must further include an agreement
on right methods for pursing and ordering those goods.
These agreements
further entail a common understanding of law and justice “for it is only through
relationships governed by the precepts of natural law and informed by justice
that common goods can be achieved” (Common Goods pg. 11).
Consider MacIntyre’s description of oppression: “What is always
oppressive is any form of social relationship that denies to those who participate
in it the possibility of the kind of learning from each other about the nature of
their common good that can issue in socially transformative action.”xxii
MacIntyre links natural law to the common good.
For MacIntyre, we understand the common good, first, as a concept that
applies across a variety of associations and practices (PPCG 239, cnf. Common
Goods, pg 5).
Families, for instance, have one kind of common good, and
workplaces have another, and political societies have a third.
From an
Aristotelian perspective, of course, politics constitutes the highest science
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because politics orders the common goods of all the other associations in the
polis. From a Catholic social justice perspective, theology takes the place of the
highest science because God is the common good of all people and politics
organizes the common good of human beings on earth.
The common good of many of these associations, for MacIntyre, including
that of the political association proves prior to the good of the individual. Why?
These goods are “in key part constituted by cooperative activity and shared
understanding of their significance” (240). Engaging in the associations and
practices, individuals raise two questions: first, what place should the goods of
this practice/association have in my life, and, second, what place should these
goods have in our common life? In asking these questions, so MacIntyre argues,
the individuals in community must recognize that the achievement of their own
good occurs only in achieving the shared goods of the practices in the
community and of the community as a whole (240-1). The common good, then,
proves prior just because I cannot articulate my good without reference to it.
This discussion of the common good constitutes the practice of politics.
Politics involves the ordering of the practices within a community.
Thus,
members of the community must come to some agreement about what that
ordering is. Coming to the agreement is as much a part of the common good as
is the ordering that the members of the community arrive at. At the level of
politics, persons determine the right allocation of resources within the
community to support the pursuit of the common good of the community. “So to
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have a care for the common good of family and household or of political society
is to have a care for both a just ordering of those institutions, in which each
individual receives her or his due, and for the justice of transactions between
individuals and between individuals and institutions” (Pg2). This fact entails
that politics of the common good is always politics of the local community
(Common Goods pg. 10).
Education is essential in this politics of the common good.
People
ignorant of the history of the practices and community will be excluded by that
very ignorance from debates in the common good.
For MacIntyre, such
education includes a knowledge of history, geography, social structure, and
political economy.
Thus, MacIntyre claims that “our primary shared and
common good is found in that activity of communal learning through which we
together become able to order goods both in our individual lives and in the
political society” (PPCG 243).
Problems of the Common Good and Polis
In contrast to Maritain and Finnis, MacIntyre comes to the conclusion that
we need a politics of the common good pursued within a polis.
Yet, his
discussion of the common good and of the polis presents two problems. On the
one hand, MacIntyre’s understanding of the polis and the common good seems
to contrast with that of, for instance, Benedict XVI as quoted above. On the
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other, MacIntyre’s defense of a polis and of the common good seems to leave him
open to a charge that both Maritain and Finnis seem to escape viz., that the
common good can be hegemonizing.
Iris Marion Young is perhaps the most articulate critic of the idea of
community in MacIntyre’s politics.xxiii She agrees with the critique of classical
liberalism for its atomistic conception of the human person (Young, 228).
However, Young argues that MacIntyre’s politics cannot defeat two challenges.
First, she holds that the idea of community within a politics of the common good
hegemonizes. Second, Young points to the lack of a theory within MacIntyre’s
politics that addresses power relations between communities.
I believe that
Kelvin Knight has sufficiently put to rest the idea that MacIntyre’s politics cannot
address power relations between communities. However, more can be said to
defend MacIntyre’s notion of community.
Young challenges MacIntyre for his ideal of community. This ideal, she
thinks, tends to hegemonize and overlook differences. “She believes that small
face-to-face communities may entail too much social pressure to conform to a
single standard, and the idea of a global community may require too much
abstraction and the loss of individual and unique strengths.”xxiv Other feminists,
including Seyla Benhabib and Nicola Lacey and ElizabethFraser, have also
voiced to this criticism.xxv
For Young, the debate between liberalism and communitarianism often
ended up in false dichotomies. Community appears opposite individualism, the
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separated self opposite the shared self, and the private opposite the public. Both
liberalism and communitarianism rest on a logic of identity which tries to deny
difference. “Liberal individualism denies difference by positing a self as a solid,
self-sufficient unity, not defined by anything or anyone other than itself ….
Proponents of community, on the other hand, deny difference by positing fusion
rather than separation as the social ideal.”xxvi
For Young, this search for community among communitarianism can lead
to a false common good. Making public life political – open to the participation
of all persons – does not require “the creation of a unified public realm in which
citizens leave behind their particular group affiliations, histories, and needs to
discuss a mythical ‘common good.’” Rather, “the perception of anything like a
common good can only be an outcome of public interaction that expresses rather
than submerges particularities.”xxvii
Rejecting the logic of identity that
submerges difference, Young is led to reject both communitarianism and
liberalism and to defend what she calls city life.
Young defines city life as “a form of social relations which I define as the
being together of strangers. In the city, persons and groups interact within
spaces and institutions they all experience themselves as belonging to, but
without those interactions dissolving into unity or commonness.” xxviii
The
emphasis on city-life as opposed to community rests on Young’s belief that
community tends to squelch difference and that city-life affirms difference.
Here, of course, we have an immediate question from the presentation of natural
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To what extent does the affirmation of difference expand our human
personality? It’s hard to imagine any limits here because human beings tend to
learn from others and grow in self-awareness by studying the practices and
cultures of other people. But to what extent can a city maintain engagement with
strangers while allowing each the pursuit of the common good and their own
good? For city dwellers “being together entails some common problems and
common interests, but they do not create a community of shared final ends, of
mutual identification and reciprocity.”xxix
In contrast to Young’s city, MacIntyre offers a polis. A polis does “require
a high degree of shared culture by those who participate in it, [but] it is not itself
constituted by that shared culture and is very different from those political
societies whose essential bonds are the bonds of a shared cultural tradition.”xxx
While embracing the notion of a shared culture, MacIntyre rejects the Volk of
Herder and Heidegger whose bonds are “pre-rational and non-rational.” Rather,
MacIntyre’s polis has three characteristics.xxxi First, the members of the polis
recognize that adherence to standards of natural law becomes necessary if they
are to learn from each other. Second, it must be relatively small-scale. It is an
interesting question whether the sizes of MacIntyre’s polis and Young’s city
overlap, and this may determine the degree to which they in fact overlap or
diverge in their respective understandings of community and justice. Finally, the
deliberative and other social relationships of the polis demand a general equality
that the “free market” of advanced modernity violates.
For MacIntyre,
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“[g]enuinely free markets are always local and small-scale markets in whose
exchanges producers can choose to participate or not.”xxxii
MacIntyre and Young disagree on the shared political cultural of their
ideal political units. For MacIntyre, however, the high degree of shared culture
must satisfy the ends of society. In his polis, “individuals are always able to put
into question through communal deliberation what has hitherto by custom and
tradition been taken for granted both about their own good and the good of the
community.
A polis is always, potentially or actually, a society of rational
enquiry, of self-scrutiny.”xxxiii As a society of rational enquiry, there will always
be, not only room for, but encouragement of disagreement and engagement with
others in rational debate about the good. MacIntyre’s polis
may seem at first glance to be the kind of community that could
have no room for individuals or groups who do not share the
prevailing view of human goods. But this is a mistake, and not
only because nothing I have said precludes the existence within
such a political society of individuals and groups who hold and are
recognized to hold radically dissenting views on fundamental
issues. What will be important to such a society, if it holds any
kind of view of the human good and the common good that I have
outlined, will be to ask what can be learned from such
dissenters.xxxiv
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MacIntyre’s polis requires diverse groups, even if such a polis requires a
high degree of shared culture. Here we might look to examples I’ve discussed
before.xxxv The example of the Roman Catholic Church will constitute the more
familiar one. The Roman Catholic Church is known for emphasizing its catholic
– that is, universal – nature. It tolerates disagreements over many issues, though
it still maintains a high degree of shared culture. That shared culture is captured
most evidently in the Bible and the teachings of the Church. It also evidences a
wide variety of disagreement.
The Catholic Church serves as home to
Franciscans, Dominicans, Benedictines, and Augustinians who disagree over
many issues. One of the strongest disagreements concerns the depravity of
human beings, the role of grace, and predestination, all of which Augustinians
tend more closely to Protestants than toward Thomists. Second, the Catholic
Church welcomes and encourages a wide variety of specifically cultural practices
within the framework of the shared culture of Catholicism. I see this on an
everyday level working at a Catholic seminary in the western United States. The
Vietnamese hold a Tet celebration and the Mexicans sponsor an Our Lady of
Guadalupe celebration, to which they invite all members of the community.
MacIntyre writes
A
communitarian
politics
is
at
home
within
the
contemporary institutional framework imposed by the state and
Nicholas, Common Good and Politics in Catholic Social Thought
24
the market and, just because it is thus at home, its conception of the
common good is limited by that framework …. But the
communitarian conception of the common good is not at all that of
a kind of community of political learning and enquiry participation
in which it is necessary for individuals to discover what their
individual and common goods are.xxxvi
MacIntyre is not a communitarian because they have the wrong
conception of the common good. They, in fact, have values which sometimes
coexist happily with liberal values, and only at the extremes of political theory
do communitarians reject the framework of modern liberalism which governs
human life. Moreover, their community is not one of political learning and
enquiry. Once again, we find parallels between MacIntyre and Young this time
in their rejection of communitarianism.
A Substantive Account of the Common Good
MacIntyre argues, then, against Maritain and Finnis, that the good of
individual human beings cannot be given without reference to the common good
as a common good of all and that the conception of the common good within
Maritain and Finnis is too abstract.
By drawing a parallel between the
conception of the common good within Catholic social doctrine, I have suggested
Nicholas, Common Good and Politics in Catholic Social Thought
that this conception might fall to the same criticism.
25
Given my previous
argument about Caritas in Veritate, however, I should make one caveat.
In that argument, I noted that Benedict does not make the same
conclusion about the priority of the individual to the common good that Maritain
made. I focused on Benedict’s use of a citation from Thomas’ Commentary of the
Sentences to make that argument. If my argument there is true, however, then it
gives me pause for how to consider the issue at hand: do the papal documents in
fact presume the priority of the individual over the common good, as Maritain
does? The theological anthropology that lies behind these encyclicals is known
as personalist and received full development from John Paul II.
Whether
personalism is individualist in the modern sense deserves a treatment of its own.
If it relies heavily on Maritain’s understanding of personalism, then it may in fact
be. If, however, it relies on the personalism of Immanuel Mounier, then it might
have a richer understanding of the human person as social being. I suspect,
however, that when John Paul II declared each individual person a common
good,xxxvii his personalism slides into an individualism at contrast with the
Thomistic-Aristotelian tradition.
More telling, however, is the reliance on a minimalist conception of the
common good and its connection to the idea of rights in the papal encyclicals.
The notion of rights is mean to protect the individual from the totalizing nature
of society. The popes include that conception as a stop-gap to the socialism of
the former Soviet Union, with which John Paul II was all too familiar.
Nicholas, Common Good and Politics in Catholic Social Thought
26
I would suggest, however, that the common good cannot be reduced to a
set of social conditions that provide for the flourishing of the human person.
Rather, the common good is a good that can be had only as common – that is, it
is the nature of the good of the common good that it can only be good as
something shared. As an example to close my argument, I shall propose that
practical reason itself is a common good.
Reason names a set of social practices. Theses practices include the asking
of and giving of reasons, the evaluation of those reasons, and the evaluation of
the good. It is social, as I have argued elsewhere,xxxviii because the standards of
reason are constituted by and constitutive of the conception of the good within a
tradition or practice. Consider, for instance, the practice of midwifery.
Midwives approach birth much differently than medical practitioners do.
A midwife will spend, for instance, an hour or more at a home visit with the
expectant parents. She will commit herself to “being with” the mother through
the birth process, not just to catch the baby. Her after visits look at the way the
mother and child are getting along and how the family is adjusting to the
presence of the new baby. The aim of the midwife is to empower the mother to
trust in her body and in the natural process of birth. This aim entails that the
midwife use technology and medicine when appropriate, but that generally she
allows the birth to occur as nature intended.
The midwife acts as she does based on the practical reason of her practice.
This practical reason entails standards of reason like “trust in the body,” “limit
Nicholas, Common Good and Politics in Catholic Social Thought
27
the use of technology,” and “the birth does not exist in a vacuum.” The issue of
technology is important for discussion of midwifery and birth in the United
States. Over the last 120 years, birth has moved out of the house and into the
hospital, has become increasingly medicalized, and has meant the death of
midwifery. Doctors fought for their right to oversee birth. In doing so, they
characterized pregnancy and birth as pathology and insisted that more medicine
and more technology could ease the birth process and make it safer for women
and children. Midwives, in contrast, act on a standard of reason that limits the
use and role of technology because they see birth as natural. Moreover, their
conception of the good of the birth extends beyond the physical health of the
mother and infant to the whole health of the mother, infant, and family. It is
reasonable for midwives to resist the use of technology in a way that it would not
be reasonable for medical practitioners.
Practical reason on my account is social essentially.
We cannot
understand reason as something individuals have because individuals cannot
give accounts to themselves without reference to the standards of reason
identified as such but a group of fellow practitioners or other members of their
tradition. A theory of human nature supports this. Mary Midgley argues, for
instance, that reason developed specifically as social for those highly social
animals like human beings and could not have developed for animals like
alligators.
Nicholas, Common Good and Politics in Catholic Social Thought
28
As such, reason constitutes a common good. It is not something that I can
have alone. Nor is it something that comprises a composite of all the reasonings
that we do within a community. In this sense, Maritain’s reference to the idea
that 6 is greater than 3 + 3 misses the point. Numbers exist, if you will, as
individual entities, but reasons do not.
Reasons exist only as something
common. While we cannot achieve our flourishing individually without reason,
it is not simply one more condition that makes flourishing possible. Rather,
practical reason comes into existence as social – as common and good only
because it is common.
Nor does my account of reason entail that all of our reasons reduce to
unity in some kind of Kantian categorical imperative as Young would have us
fear about the common good. Reasons and the standards of reasons come into
existence as a common good, but we each participate in those standards of
reasons in a variety of irreducible ways.
When, for instance, conservative
Catholics and liberal Catholics – whatever those terms might mean – debate the
justice of a war or the distribution of contraceptives, if they are reasonable, they
do so with a shared set of standards of reason. Thomas Aquinas exemplifies this
picture of reason in the way that he masterly articulates reasons against his
position and then incorporates and understanding of why those reasons make
sense under his answer.
Thomas’ approach only works, however, if he is
engaged in a social good that is good because social.
Nicholas, Common Good and Politics in Catholic Social Thought
29
Given this richer understanding of the common good, I think some things
can be said about Catholic social teaching. I began with a set of questions: how
do the papal social encyclicals define the common good?
What is the
relationship of the individual to the community given this notion of the common
good? If I reject Maritain’s reading of Thomas Aquinas do I not undo his work to
protect the autonomy of the individual and, at the same time, undermine much
of Catholic social teaching? How does one avoid a hegemonizing politics if
politics is centered around a conception of the common good.
I gave a reading of the common good within the papal documents as
minimalist and conducive to a defense of human rights. I suggested that this
reading aligns with the understanding of the common good in Maritain and
Finnis. I think suggested that Maritain’s and Finnis’ accounts fall short of a
notion of the common good because they attempt to define the worth of the
individual prior to the common good and because their conceptions of the
common good remain abstract. An abstract conception of the common good
prevents any formulation of a substantive and subversive critique of modern
society. This critique is the heart of modern Catholic social thought – a critique
of both capitalist and communist modes of social and market organization. Thus
a richer conception of the common good is necessary for Catholic social thought.
Practical reason as a common good provides one aspect of this richer
conception. It is a common good because it is good only as something common
or shared. If society aims at a common good, then society must work together to
Nicholas, Common Good and Politics in Catholic Social Thought
30
bring that good to fruition not as your or mine or ours together but as common
to us. The common good establishes just relations in society because, without
those just relations, the common good cannot come into existence.
Similarly, these just relations entail that the individual is a being worthy in
herself. Without the participation of each individual in the community, the
common good remains deficient if it exists at all.
Within the practice of
midwifery, it is the good of the whole human family that makes the birth good.
The mother cannot achieve her good of giving birth without the support of her
extended family and, sometimes, friends.
If any individual in that network
remains uncommitted or absent from the work of the common good, then the
good achieved will not be the highest good possible.
My account of the common good, then, both protects the individual and
makes a politics of the common good possible without reducing to a
hegemonizing state. Individuals achieve their individual goods in pursuit of the
common good with others. Catholic social teaching, then, must make clearer its
statements on the common good, on the protection of individuals in society, and
of its use of rights language. It must further, as I concluded before, become a
supporter of the politics of the local community. A politics of the common good
is possible only at the local community for discussion of the common good –
which is, of course, the essential element of the common good of political society
– must occur between concrete individuals in concrete ways.
Nicholas, Common Good and Politics in Catholic Social Thought
31
NOTES
i
Pg. 71.
ii
MacIntyre, unpublished essay, 2011, p. 14.
iii
Nicholas 2010, “Local Communities and Globalization in Caritas in Veritate.”
iv
See Thompson, 59.
v
The Rights of Man, 2-3.
vi
4-5.
vii
6.
viii
7.
ix
8-9.
x
44.
xi
Rights of Man, 65.
xii
Cnf, the “Common Good and Catholic Social Teaching,” letter of the Conference of Catholic
Bishops of England and Wales.
xiii
61.
xiv
MacIntyre, ‘Theories of Natural Law in the Culture of Advanced Modernity’, p. 105.
xv
Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, p. 33.
xvi
Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, p. 155.
xvii
MacIntyre, Alasdair (2000) “Theories of Natural Law in the Culture of Advanced Modernity,”
in Common Truths: New Perspectives on Natural Law, ed. Edward B. McLean, Wilmington, DE: ISI
Books, 91-115, 103-4.
xviii
Ibid., 104.
xix
MacIntyre, ‘Theories of Natural Law in the Culture of Advanced Modernity’, p. 108.
xx
MacIntyre, ‘Theories of Natural Law in the Culture of Advanced Modernity’, p. 109.
xxi
MacIntyre 2011, p. 14, unpublished manuscript
Nicholas, Common Good and Politics in Catholic Social Thought
xxii
32
Alasdair MacIntyre, “Politics Philosophy, and the Common Good,” in Kelvin Knight (ed) The
MacIntyre Reader, (Notre Dame, In: Notre Dame Press,1998), pp. 235-254, 251.
Young, Iris Marion. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princton University Press,
xxiii
1990.
McKenna, Erin. The Task of Utopia: A Pragmatist and Feminist Perspective. Lanham, Md:
xxiv
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001, 132.
xxv
Cnf. Benhabib’s The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2002, and Elizabeth Frazer and Nicola Lacey. The Politics of
Community: A Feminist Critique of the Liberal-Communitarian Debate. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1993.
xxvi
Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, pp. 228-9.
xxvii
Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, p. 119.
xxviii
Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, p. 237.
xxix
Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, p. 238.
xxx
MacIntyre, ‘Politics Philosophy, and the Common Good’, p. 241.
xxxi
MacIntyre, ‘Politics Philosophy, and the Common Good’, pp. 247-9.
xxxii
MacIntyre, ‘Politics Philosophy, and the Common Good’, p. 249.
xxxiii
MacIntyre, ‘Politics Philosophy, and the Common Good’, p. 241.
xxxiv
MacIntyre, ‘Politics Philosophy, and the Common Good’, p. 251.
xxxv
Self Reference Here.
xxxvi
MacIntyre, ‘Politics Philosophy, and the Common Good’, p. 246.
xxxvii
Cnf Waldstein 575-576.
xxxviii
Reason, Tradition, and the Good, forthcoming UNDP 2012.