The article below originally appeared as part of the essay “What Are We to Do?” in New Polity magazine, issue 3.3 (Summer 2022). It is reprinted here because Fr. Waldstein recently replied to it, in part, over at The Josias. It has been lightly revised for greater clarity.
Considering that some of the positions I take above have recently been rebutted in these pages by Fr. Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., it seems that I owe him, and readers, an explanation—especially since it may seem that in disagreeing with him I set myself against St. Thomas.
The essence of our difference can be covered rather completely under three interconnected heads.
1. Subjects Govern, Being Rational
First, I assert that even though “the average person has little direct sway over society as such”—since “most of his actions deal only with small, local, often personal things”—“his care for his whole society, indeed, for the whole cosmos, is lived out precisely in these small actions, in the way they suppose and work toward greater orders”: going so far as to say that in this way the early Christians “rule[d] the pagan emperor, even as they remain[ed] his subjects.”
Fr. Waldstein has explicitly disagreed with this, appealing to the distinction between the different senses of legal (or general) justice, the “virtue that looks to the common good.” He quotes John of St. Thomas to the effect that “the prince”—or, as Fr. Waldstein glosses, all those who participate in political rule—“actively regulat[es] the common good itself,” whereas mere “subjects ... are passively ordered to the common good.” So, those who govern have the virtue of legal justice “actively” and “architectonically,” whereas those who are governed have it “passively” and “ministerially,” being “parts which are ordered to the whole.”[1] This description from John of St. Thomas is true if one takes it as an abstraction from any actual life, laying out the most bare logic of the thing. But Fr. Waldstein seems to take it as though such a society of purely passive people not only exists but is even the baseline for all societies.
To clarify what is going on here, it is helpful to look at an analogous case in Aquinas: that of prudence, the virtue that precedes and grounds justice. Writing of “political prudence”—the sort of prudence “related to the common good”[2]—, Aquinas says that, “speaking per se, ... the virtue of prudence is not a virtue of the subject as a subject.”[3] This is because prudence is the virtue that enables one “to deliberate well” about things to be done[4]—and qua servant “a servant does not have anything at all to deliberate about,”[5] since he does what he is told to do, being “an instrument of his master.”[6] This perfectly corresponds to his comments about legal justice quoted above. But what is meant by his qualifier, “speaking per se”? Aquinas is quite clear what he means by “speaking per se” or formally: “insofar as a subject is a subject, or a servant a servant, it does not belong to him to rule and to govern; instead, it belongs to him to be ruled and to be governed.”[7] That is, to the extent that the abstract logical situation of “being governed” exists in a given reality, to that extent the subject does not deliberate about the matter in question.
Yet he immediately adds—following Aristotle—that this “extent” is, in the actual world, never complete. “Each man” is rational in nature, and thus “insofar as he is rational” in act, he deliberates about and thus rules over his own acts[8] in “singular matters.”[9] Thus, he affirms that there are “two species of political prudence”: one that “belongs to the rulers” and another “to their subjects.”[10]
One could read Aquinas here as continuing to speak very formally: as meaning, that is, merely that human beings are not robots, and insofar as they do anything, their rationality is engaged upon it, guiding their actions—so, if I tell a servant to fetch water from the well, then he does not deliberate about “whether to fetch water,” but he still must know what it is, practically, to fetch water, how to accomplish singular acts of the sort involved. One could argue that such actions could still “retain the general name ‘political’ ” since, concretely, they are performed as part of a whole, even if the subject does not deliberate about them as they relate to the whole.[11]
But I do not think that is the correct reading of Aquinas—for two reasons.
First, it leaves it unclear why the prudence should be considered “political” prudence except improperly, since, on that reading, the prudence directed to performing the singular matters has no genuine connection as prudence to the whole. That is: it is not, on that reading, because the servant understands the part’s relation to the whole (the relation of fetching water to the master’s purpose) that he deliberates excellently about the part (how to fetch water); rather, his deliberation about the general physical actions of water fetching simply happens to align with the master’s end. Such a reading might make him a prudent “water fetcher” as such, but it would not make him a prudent “water fetcher” as servant (one who fetches water well and prudently for this end).
Second, it fails to explain the analogy Aquinas gives for the two sorts of political prudence—an analogy that does involve a connection between the part and the whole. He says that “the ruler” has political prudence “in the manner of the architectural art,” whereas “the subject” has it “in the manner of an art or craft that belongs to one who works with his hands.”[12] Now, it is manifest that in the building of, say, a cathedral, the various artisans who work with their hands can accomplish their “singular matters” well only insofar as they actually grasp and even approve the plan given by the architect. Indeed, in their various spheres, they add glories of the whole unforeseen by the architect, because of the way they—and not he—grasp their parts’ significance to the whole. (As, to switch analogies, a good trombonist will always know more than the conductor—who can give no more than pointers—about what precise sound, even in relation to the whole, to impart to particular phrases). Of course, the artisans, qua artisans, grasp the whole in a different way than the architect, a way suited to their particular mode of work; but they do, nonetheless, grasp the whole.
This is the political prudence of the subject.[13] The servant deliberates well about how to fetch water for this purpose that he did not choose but nevertheless grasps.[14]
It is important to see that these two types of political prudence arise from human nature itself. Aquinas credits the twofoldness of prudence to man “insofar as he is rational.”[15] Thus, the nature of “political prudence,” in both of its twofold forms, takes one “element” from the relation into which man is set (of governing and being governed), but it takes the general background, as it were, from man’s nature itself, which affects how that individual element, that relation, exists. The governing half remains prudence “as such” (since it belongs to prudence to govern); but the being-governing half is, in this case, also prudence, since it is a being-governed in the way a rational (i.e., self-governing) creature can be governed. (This “general background” also affects the first half, of course: what it means to govern the self-governing. But that is not our topic here.) Aquinas, in defining the part (prudence), is not forgetting the whole (rational animal).
There is also one further step. Even in the definition just given, Aquinas is still speaking formally. That is, he is still speaking about the part as such: still defining the political prudence of a rational subject qua rational subject. It is impossible, however, for a man who is truly rational ever to be merely a subject: to speak in such a way is still an abstraction from reality. To be rational means to take account of the whole; and if a rational subject must grasp and even approve the plan given by the ruler, as I just said, then this can only mean that he is able (at least in some sense) to think as the ruler thinks: that, indeed, the political prudence of a rational subject is founded on that subject’s (at least virtual) possession of, also, the political prudence of a ruler.
Fr. Waldstein quite rightly points out that “a subject ... who is also a citizen ... has general justice also in” (what he calls) “the active sense,” that is, the sense proper to a ruler.[16] He appears to think, however, that this possession of “active” general justice rests on a governmental bestowal of citizenship. Were this so, no subject of a strict monarchy (being a governed subject, not a governing citizen) would possess general justice. Yet both political prudence and general justice are a function of rationality itself: from the ability to see, judge, will, and in one’s willing work toward the good of the whole. As such, they do not depend on having a mode of action that affects the whole directly—even though it is proper to them to have such a mode of action. Any man who judges truly about the actions of the whole and, in his activity, wills them, possesses both the political prudence and the general justice of a ruler, even if the only mode of action available to him is that of a subject, regarding “singular matters.” A regime may not permit its people any official mechanism for governing the whole of society, but insofar as men are genuinely virtuous and free, they cannot be prevented from so doing. They will think of the parts they deal with as forming the whole, and so, kept from making decisions regarding the whole as such, will live out their convictions about the whole in the way they order their parts toward the whole.[17] Free men, even if not granted democratic citizenship, will govern society through their actions. The history of the spread of Christianity is quite clear on this point.[18]
2. The Greater Order is in the Concrete Lesser
(And the Concrete Greater Order is from the Concrete Lesser, and for It)
Second, I speak of circles of friends as the beginning of genuine politics, saying that “human community cannot exist on a larger scale unless it exists at the small scale”; and I assert that “the local and personal is never merely local and personal.”
These statements generalize the content of my previous claim. Any action of each lesser order of society presupposes (or at the very least implies) a vision of every greater order; for someone to, for example, seek a friend’s good presupposes a vision of what that good is, which means a vision of mankind’s entire flourishing and of the purpose of the cosmos. A lesser order can act only on the principles of a greater order. The greater orders come into being as institutions only because they are presupposed as principles in the actions of lesser orders. The orders are built from the bottom up as institutions, even if they act from the top down as principles.
These concrete institutions are not mere instantiations of the true nature of the orders. Instead, the character of each order as a concrete institution is determined by what those who make it take to be the principles of the order—and of every greater order. That is, the character of each order as a concrete institution is determined by how the people (and orders) live who make it. They make the sort of institutions that reinforce them in the way they want to live. The greater orders, as institutions, exist to instill the greater orders, as principles, into the lesser orders and, finally, into people. The greater orders exist much more in the lesser orders (where they are present as motivating and formative principles) than they do in their own institutions.
Indeed, in the last analysis, every order exists only in each individual person, since only human beings—and not organizations, structures, collectivities, and so on—subsist and act. In this sense, everything is an expression, or mode, of the greater orders, the greater order entering practice only through, and as, everything lesser. A family lives in a civic way; an individual lives in a familial (and therefore also civic) way. What one needs is greater institutions that instill the correct greater principles into lesser orders and, finally, into people, so that these principles dwell in them as their form; so that families and friendships and each individual person become really families, really friendships, and really people.[19] The greater orders, as institutions, are for the flourishing of the lesser orders, because it is in them and as them that the greater orders, as principles, flourish. The lower orders, in turn, flourish by being given over to the true principles of the greater orders, which means by being given over to the greater orders’ good concrete institutions.[20]
I will explain with examples.
When I speak of “friends” in the essay, I speak of genuine friends, who seek each other’s genuine good. I have nothing to do with “friendships based on family ties rather than on the civic common good” or “any other private friendships.”[21] It is, I hope, obvious that a “private friendship” is not a friendship in the proper sense. I hope it is also obvious that in ceasing to be “private,” a friendship doesn’t simply become a “political” relationship, since it retains the close, deeply individual character of a friendship. Indeed, in ceasing to be private, it becomes really a friendship for the first time. A friendship is really a friendship only when it is—at least implicitly—lived on a political, cosmic, and ecclesial basis. This need not entail that it is a “friendship between statesmen in the common achievement of great things for the city”[22] (something that really, according to the universal, everyday usage of language, is often much more a partnership than a friendship); it is enough that their will toward each other’s good is toward each other’s political, cosmic, and ecclesial good.
Since a friendship, in ceasing to be “private,” becomes really a friendship for the first time, it is profoundly misleading for Fr. Waldstein to say that “to the extent that a father leads his son to a participation in common goods that are higher than the proper common good of the family, he is already initiating a civic, or philosophical, or ecclesiastical friendship with his son. In other words, he is no longer relating to his son as a father, but as a fellow member of a higher society.”[23] I assume that his intention is to indicate the formalities at work, but it certainly seems that the formalities are taken to exhaust the realities they pick out and that, for this reason, the various realities are considered exclusive one to another. A father does not ever cease to be a father to his son, and so he can hardly “no longer relat[e] to his son as a father”; rather, he comes to mediate the greater orders to his son as a father. The “ecclesiastical friendship” of a father and son exceeds the content which is in “father and son” as such, and it even renders it non-absolute (see “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father...”),[24] but this higher content is realized precisely in their relationship as father and son and even as that relationship.
Clearly, the “ecclesiastical friendship” of husband and wife described by St. Paul in Ephesians 5 doesn’t entail that they no longer relate to each other as husband and wife. Rather, it entails that they relate to each other even more truly as husband and wife and, what’s more, that their participation in the life of the Church exists as marriage, which is not merely a “delivery system” for the content of Churchly life, but a unique, irreplaceable modality of the Church.
All these things are true, in their way, of “the city” (and all the greater orders) as well. For example, husbands and wives, when they love in a rightly ordered way, will work to bring about a justly ordered and human polis: a husband will seek to provide his wife with a situation where she will not have to spend years of her life, all day long, in the exclusive company of child-minds, with a situation where he, family, friends, and neighbors are companions and cooperators in her daily life. Doing so will make him more truly a husband; and in his husbandly love and as his husbandly love, in this case, he expresses a civic love. The city comes to a unique expression: in the mode of marriage.
Fr. Waldstein makes these hard-and-fast divisions between “private friendship” and “political friendship,” between fatherhood and “relating ... as a fellow member of a higher society”—and between the justice of a ruler and a subject—, to secure the distinctions between greater and lesser orders, which he fears are being confused by Andrew Willard Jones and D. C. Schindler. He fears, in particular, that they are losing sight of the fact that the greater orders are greater, an assertion that is the essential linchpin—he is correct—to the intelligibility of all cosmic and political order. All his arguments are intended to refute the position that “the lower societies achieve better goods (as Jones claims),”[25] and that “lower societies achieve greater goods.”[26] Such a position would indeed be very worth refuting. Yet—and this is an intriguing point, which merits attention—neither Jones nor Schindler has argued for that position, even implicitly.
Jones has said that a father’s action is “the most effective ... for attaining virtue”; that virtue formation is achieved “most efficaciously at the most personal level possible.... No one can lead a boy into virtue more efficaciously than his father”; and that “the fullest human happiness (which is the fruit of virtue) is possible only through the smallest level of social interaction; at the level of family and friends and at the level of personal love.”[27] Nothing is said here about greater or better goods; nor is it said that the family, etc., attain these things alone and out of their own resources. He does quote St. Thomas saying that “the benefaction of a father is greater in relation to one person” than that of a king is, because “a father is the cause of the son’s three greatest goods”—yet he does not interpret those words in the sense Fr. Waldstein assumes (that the father supplies all the best human goods and does so from his own native power), glossing them, instead, as meaning only that the “relationship between father and son,” being the place where the rubber meets the road, “is ... archetypical of the types of relationships where the end of politics, virtue, is built and happiness experienced,” and therefore, as the archetype, “foundational for politics.”[28] Schindler, for his part, said merely that “the lower levels ... are goods that are present nowhere else,” naming as an example the “particularity and exclusivity” of “marriage,” which “realize[] the good of love in some respect ... better” than greater orders do.[29]
I bring this up because the sort of misreading required to find in these statements a collapsing of distinctions and an inverting of orders indicates the root of the disagreement. It certainly appears that Fr. Waldstein does not see the greater orders present in the lesser ones as the lesser ones, does not see them forming the lesser ones in such a way as to make the lesser ones more truly themselves. This is puzzling, since universal causality, which plays a large part in his discussion, is one cause being present in another. It would seem, however, that he thinks that a greater order can be present in a lesser only when the lesser acts as an instrument of the greater (as, in his example, when a man obeys the law, becoming a “passive” instrument of the lawgiver), and hence as a mere extension of the greater, and not as itself.[30] The only alternative he envisions is for the lesser to simply become the greater (as, in his example, when a father stops relating to his son as a father and begins relating to him as a fellow in the city, or when a subject ceases being a subject and becomes a citizen).
If he agreed with Jones that “The rule of the prince ... is only finally experienced in the rule of the father or the friend, as the universal is only ever encountered in the particular,”[31] all would become clear: what it means to say that the father is the archetype of virtue formation; that his activity in that regard is most efficacious (since the activity of the prince himself, as well as of every greater order, is present in it and as it);[32] that the fullest happiness is experienced in the orders that are “least,” as well as why a father’s unique characteristics—such as a love with “a particular emotional intensity” and “familiarity,” and the ability to give existence itself—are unique contributions to the whole, even modes of the whole, which greater orders do not merely stand in need of as “prerequisites” but also serve to perfect. It would be clear that Andrew Willard Jones’ description of subsidiarity is a description of universal causality, not in abstract terms, but as it actually exists,[33] and that a real-life description of the greater orders inhering in the lesser doesn’t involve a collapsing of distinctions.[34]
That this is not clear seems to point to a methodological difference, a different way of understanding the value of drawing distinctions—that is, the value of speaking formally. The point of speaking formally, of the Thomistic distinguere, is to illuminate concrete realities: so at a certain point one has to stop speaking formally and speak about the concrete matter as an existing whole. There is a characteristically modern way of understanding Thomism that thinks speaking formally ipso facto illuminates concrete realities. However, what this way of practicing Thomism actually does, against its intention, is dissolve the concrete reality into the (allegedly sufficient and therefore apparently extrinsic and exclusive) distinguished elements. It treats formalities as though they basically subsist.
A formality (a logical element) is something at work in realities, but no formality is the truth, the whole truth, of any real thing; and, indeed, a formality is at work in realities only by entering into a unique and living “composition” with the rest of the reality’s “elements,” rather as there is no such thing as “an animal” in reality (the form of “animality” exists in a pure and univocal way only as an abstraction,[35]) and “animality” is something different in reality for a fish, a dog, and the rational animal—as St. Paul, for example, well understood: “not all flesh is alike, but there is one kind for men, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish” (1 Cor 15:39). The very animality of the rational animal is human and even personal to its roots. Were it otherwise, the Thomistic idea that certain virtues make the “animal” appetites habitually responsive to right reason would be an unnatural act of force. One can give a generally satisfactory account of the human being without ever discussing abstract animality or abstract rationality as such (which is not the same as saying one can do so without having any concept of their difference); and, indeed, any perfectly satisfactory account will frequently have to look as though it is denying such pure formalities, since the ideas by which we think are abstractions from the concreteness of all realities.[36]
I don’t think Fr. Waldstein wishes to practice the distinguere as a universal solvent, and, further, I suspect he sees beyond such a mode of practicing it. At any rate, such is indicated by, for example, calling Andrew Willard Jones’ “Priority of Peace”—which is undoubtedly an account of a concrete reality—a “rich and important essay.” Nevertheless, something of that modern mode remains. It can be seen somewhat expressly in his way of replying to Jones. He begins by saying that Jones’ account of a concrete reality needs “to be complemented to do justice to ... the distinction between” various things—and proceeds to complement it with abstract distinctions, as though abstract distinctions are the same sort of thing, at the same level of reality, as concrete existents.[37] It seems to me (as I have already said) that the distinctions he makes are already present implicitly—and in their actual form—in Jones’ account. Indeed, I think it possible to say that the entire point of Jones’ account was to explain the way in which those abstract distinctions are actually present in things.
3. Our Current Concrete Greater Order Cannot Function for the Lesser
Communio thought is synthetic, not analytic. It tends to discuss not principles but things, and when it discusses principles, it discusses them in light of their existence in things. This in no way questions the validity of the principles or the value of an abstract discussion of them. It is only to say that abstract discussion, however necessary, is not enough; synthetic discussion is needed, too—not only for an understanding of life, but even so that one does not lose sight of the real meaning of the abstract principles. When those who are exclusively Thomist in method read those who also acknowledge the legitimacy of the communio approach, they tend to think we are trying to substitute a different sort of theory for their theory. But most usually we accept their theory in every detail. We are, generally speaking, trying to explain how that theory is present in rem: which means trying to see both how its principles as a rule function in rem, as well as how they manifest in the way things currently are in rem. (Or we are trying to explain how their in rem presence affects how the theory is to be abstractly understood).
Everything I’ve said above indicates that we need to consider how the current institution known as the nation-state embodies the principles of political order, and to consider whether it is fit to instill the true principles of that great order into the lesser orders, perfecting them. I have explored the demands of this in the section on government above [in the published essay]. For all the reasons listed in that section, I cannot join Fr. Waldstein’s “favorable” view of the “practical suggestions” of “Gladden Pappin and Adrian Vermeule,” considered as a project (which is what he seems to mean, since he doesn’t name any particular suggestions).[38] While he does not wish to “leave[] intact ... the modern notions of ‘politics/state’ and ‘religion/church,’ ” and does truly work to restore an understanding that the Church’s authority, coming from God, is public and to make the “political community ... no longer ... closed in on itself,” he has not developed a concrete enough analysis.[39] To escape “the premises of the totalitarians,” it is not enough to open politics up to the common good or even to obtain “the political community’s recognition of the church,” with “acknowledgement of church authority as a higher authority than that of the state, and church law as a higher law than civil law.”[40] That is, it is not necessary only to correct the goals sought. The method of seeking goals and the whole organization that has grown up around those methods also needs correction.[41] If one wishes “to live according to the truth about the human good, a truth written into the teleology of our nature,” one must not only propose the correct abstract truth but also pay attention to concrete workings of our teleological nature.[42]
The analysis given in the section on government above [in the published essay] indicates the following about our current manifestation in rem: government, as conceived and practiced today, has become too impersonal in form; it is not able to give laws that match what people’s lives are really like; nor is it able, by its bureaucratic means, to actually express itself in people. (It tries to remain outside them, and tries, by its very form, to turn people into its idea of their outsides).[43] It is not able to enter into their own wills’ grasp of ends; nor can it, therefore, recognize—or have anything to do with working out—the truth that Christianizing society is not so simple as redirecting things to true goals: that it requires recultivating our society’s “anima technica vacua,” so that our outward, social actions will be again formed by a grasp of the contemplative meaning of what we do. Our government cannot affect man in the place where, even for the purpose of social restoration, he most needs it: the place where he, making contact with truth and God, transcends all social structures. (So, it cannot but try to substitute itself for “the people,” who are the real source of law).
I agree that the “highest temporal authorities” should “promote virtue,” but clearly as they now are they cannot; and, anyway, promoting virtue has to be done by something quite other than mere “command,”[44] something other than even an indeterminate governmental “manifestation of the greatness of the common good.”[45]
What we need is for people themselves—who are the only ones who act—to come to a right understanding of the principles of the various orders and a rightly ordered love of them, and to discern how to live this out, remaking institutions in their specific circumstances. The essential thing is not government but what government serves, which preexists and causes it: before we can have a proper government, we need a proper mind, heart, and conscience—those things in which the principles of government exist.
So, I do not deny that, as the integralists like to say, the solution to our social order is to “integrate from within.” I just think “within” lies further within than they do.
Footnotes
1. See Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., “The Analogy of Perfection,” New Polity 3.1 (Winter 2022): 11–25, at 22.
2. ST II-II, Q 47, A 10 ad 1. All citations are from Alfred J. Freddoso’s translation.
3. ST II-II, Q 47, A 12 ad 1.
4. See ST II-II, Q 47, A 2, respondeo.
5. See ST II-II, Q 47, A 12 obj. 2.
6. ST II-II, Q 47, A 12 ad 2.
7. ST II-II, Q 47, A 12, respondeo.
8. ST II-II, Q 47, A 12, respondeo.
9. ST II-II, Q 47, A 12, sed contra.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. ST II-II, Q 47, A 12, respondeo.
13. So, Leo XIII’s hesitation when he wrote that “the political prudence of private individuals would seem to consist wholly in carrying out faithfully the orders issued by lawful authority” was justified (Sapientiae Christianae 36). (And “faithfully” [fideliter] can in any event bear more than one sense).
14. Thus, John of St. Thomas’s language of “active” and “passive” justice seems to rest on a failure to distinguish this interpretation from the previous one. Human servants and subjects, even as servants and subjects, are passive only in relation to the proposing of ends, not to the accomplishing of them—which accomplishing they not only do but even do using their own judgment, their own grasp of their actions to the end. It is possible, however, that he is using the word “passive” rather loosely.
15. ST II-II, Q 47, A 12, respondeo.
16. Waldstein, “Analogy,” 22; emphasis added.
17. So, on my reading, the difference between regime forms is (among other things) about the mode in which various people are able to govern the whole, not about who governs.
18. [See p. 65 in the published essay].
The Greater Order is in the Concrete Lesser
19. To instill correct principles, it is necessary not merely to insist on truths but to live according to the way in which those principles are principles. It is a matter not merely of stated ends but of form. One’s family life will not begin to form children well simply because one begins to give them better advice or to exercise stricter discipline; no, one may have to change jobs, to reorder one’s days, to live differently in common. In like manner, monarchies do not differ from tyrannies only in having good ends; they differ everywhere in form, having the form that serves the formation and governance of free men.
20. This, I take it, is what D. C. Schindler meant when he wrote “In reality, it is true both that the family exists for the sake of the polis ... and that the polis exists for the sake of the flourishing of families (and the individuals within them).... A genuinely Catholic sense of order ... affirms a simultaneity of movement from above and from below, with a priority of the “from-above” dimension” (“Integralism as Fragmentation,” New Polity 2.2 [May 2021]: 21–32, at 27). This asymmetrical double motion is perennial in Catholic thought: as ancient, at least, as the famous statement of St. Irenaeus that “The glory of God is a man fully alive, and the life of a man consists in beholding God” (Adversus haereses, 4.20.7)—or even as ancient as Biblical statements such as “in my name shall his horn be exalted” (Psalm 89:24). As that quotation indicates, this double motion is not true merely within the world, but “characteriz[es] God’s most basic relation to the world” (Schindler, “Integralism as Fragmentation,” 28).
21. Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., “Politics as a Sketch for the Church,” New Polity 2.1 [February 2021]: 6–32, at 30.
22. Waldstein, “Analogy,” 22.
23. Waldstein, “Politics as Sketch,” 30.
24. Luke 14:26.
25. Waldstein, “Politics as a Sketch,” 30.
26. Waldstein, “Analogy,” 22.
27. Jones, “What States Can’t Do,” New Polity (blog), July 24, 2020, https://newpolity.com/blog/what-states-cant-do; emphasis mine. He does also say in this essay that “At the level of the nation-state there are very few positive political goods” and that “As one moves up, the positive goods decrease in potency,” but it seems to me that he is speaking of the goods directly achieved by the institution.
28. Jones, “Priority of Peace,” 313; my emphasis.
29. Schindler, “Integralism as Fragmentation,” 27; his italics, my bolding.
30. I do not deny, as I have hopefully made clear above, that it is correct to speak of men as “instruments” at a certain level of logical analysis; I simply say that this is a terribly misleading way of speaking about them in reality. And even logically, each species of instrumentality differs in its way of being instrumental.
To address the latter point first: abstract “instrumentality” involves being moved by another’s agency to fulfill an end communicated by that other. We are inclined to conceive this in terms of its lowest-level instantiation: say, of a hammer wielded by a carpenter—a pure extension of the other (i.e., the carpenter), that acts only in and as the other’s acting (or all but so). Yet this is merely one instance, or species, of “instrumentality,” and even though it stands closest to hand and is that from which our abstraction is first derived, it does not thereby define “instrumentality,” which is an abstraction from all species alike. In strictly Thomistic terms, “instrumentality” means only that there is in some regard a dependency in a thing’s action toward an end; nothing is said about the mode of this dependence or how absolute it is. I have already explained how in the case of the “political prudence” of a servant, this dependence is absolute in one way (qua servant, he does not choose the end he pursues) but that in another it is not (since even qua servant—qua rational servant—he grasps the end and acts to seek it). In the case of a subject, the dependence is even less absolute, because a servant is ordered to an end that is not his own (he does his master’s work), whereas a subject is ordered to an end that is his own (he does his own work).
It is clear, then, that we have departed rather far from the colloquial meaning of “instrument.” In what sense is something an instrument if it is directed to one of its own ends and if it seeks it by means of its own judgment and power? Only in the one thin—abstract—sense that the end is given specification by something outside it. So, a lesser order—qua its nature as lesser—does not determine the concrete ends of the greater orders, though the lesser order qua lesser does seek them, since it is by nature a part of the greater order. Herein lies the problem, even at the logical level, in speaking of a lesser order as acting within a greater order only insofar as it acts as the greater’s instrument (which, to be fair, Fr. Waldstein never does): it is to mistake the species of “instrumentality” at hand. It is of the nature of a lesser order that it acts toward a greater’s end in acting toward its own immediate good. However it acts, its acts imply one vision or another of the ends of all greater orders; it cannot but be so: it has relevance for and ramifies on greater orders by nature, no matter what it does. Thus, it acts within the greater orders simply by acting as itself. A hammer, however, acting as itself does nothing—it even exists solely to be acted on.
This point reveals certain other difficulties with “instrumental” language (that don’t, of course, disqualify it totally). For one, the abstractness of such language renders it good for settling only certain very particular points: it inclines one to overlook the unique features of the species of instrumentality at hand and take the abstract point for the whole point. For another, it inclines one to think that the lesser order depends on the institutions of the greater (e.g., government) for the specification of its ends, which they need not necessarily (as the next paragraph will explain). For yet another, it does not make clear that their dependence, whatever it be, is not in complete passivity: for example, domestic prudence alone, though it doesn’t, as such, make judgments about society, will know that certain “social” ends proposed to it are destructive of it or conducive to it, just as one can know from within geometry that adopting certain first principles would render geometry impossible.
To briefly address the former point: the logical situation, even when taken not generically but as its particular species, still always exists within a real being. One and the same person possesses, or at least can possess, both domestic prudence and political prudence. So, he can derive the ends of his domestic judgments from his own political judgments. (Just as I said in regard to servants and subjects above). Government and the force of law assist him in this, but do not replace his conscience, which can never be passive.
31. Jones, “Priority of Peace,” 337.
32. Though Fr. Waldstein is too insightful to do it, someone might deploy against this claim Aquinas’s statement that “a private person cannot lead another to virtue efficaciously [efficaciter],” since “coercive power” is necessary “to prove an efficacious inducement to virtue” (ST I-II, Q 90, A 3 ad 2). It is obvious, however, that that statement must mean something rather technical, since the assertion that “a private person cannot lead another to virtue efficaciously” is, taken in the obvious sense, obviously false.
Indeed, Aquinas cites his statement to Aristotle’s argument in Nicomachean Ethics X—and in that chapter, Aristotle writes that “In fact, public laws and customs have the same place in states as paternal precepts and customs have in families. In the latter case, supervision is even more effective by reason of relationship and benefits conferred, for children first love their parents and readily obey them out of natural affection.” Aquinas, in his commentary, adds that “although the royal decree is more powerful by way of fear, nevertheless the paternal precept is more powerful by way of love—a way that is more efficacious [efficacior] with people not totally depraved” (Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, trans. C. I. Litzinger, O.P. (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1964), Book 10, chapter 9, lecture 15, paragraph 2159).
33. In addition to the passage on the rule of the prince just quoted, see also, “As each man lives freely his vocation in justice, he reaches up to his superiors for the plans, for the dictates, the determinations of reason (the laws), that he needs, a reaching that extends all the way up to the prince. These plans, which work as relative ‘universals,’ then cascade down through networks of analogical instantiation, growing more particular at each stage through the prudence of men in different vocations, and terminating in the profound diversity of individuals, who image the whole in the unique mode of their operations and personalities” (“Priority of Peace,” 335–36).
34. Jones professes that “the virtue of prudence can be subdivided into individual, domestic, and civic forms or manifestations of prudence,” and also professes the order among these forms (“Priority of Peace,” 320fn41). Clearly, however, he thinks they interpenetrate, with the lower founded on the higher. Aquinas, too, thinks this (ST II-II, Q 47, A 11, especially ad 3): he neither absorbs the lower prudences wholly into the higher nor says that the lower regard only what is “merely” domestic or individual—for him, the lower prudences govern, e.g., the household in light of the city. It requires an explanation, then, that one should think Jones denies that “the household and the city are communities different in kind” or that “the common good of the city is ... a more universal cause in the order of final causality” (Waldstein, “Analogy of Perfection,” 21).
35. An attempt to refute this claim by appeal to the angelic or divine ideas would be irrelevant, since St. Thomas holds that the universals we know and the universals that the angels know (which are like unto the divine ideas) are of two different kinds. On the existence of such a difference, see Therese Scarpelli Cory, “Embodied vs. Non-Embodied Modes of Knowing in Aquinas: Different Universals, Different Intelligible Species, Different Intellects,” Faith and Philosophy 35.4 (October 2018): 417–46, at 427–29. She lays out what the difference is on 429–38.
36. For example, my explanation of the different sense of legal justice and political prudence may appear to deny those distinctions, since it doesn’t let that distinction remain the whole picture. It doesn’t deny the distinctions, since it admits the active/passive, agent/instrument distinction is true of reality in the relevant sense: as an abstraction from all other elements.
What is universal, even if reached by abstraction, is indeed common to many. So abstract “animality” is indeed indifferently applicable, logically speaking, to men, fish, and dogs. The difficulty is that animality in the thing is not the same as abstract animality; abstract animality is what is logically common to this sort of animality and to that sort of animality, yet is not either. Insofar as one understands only what one thing has in common with another, one fails to understand the thing. One has not understood any particular animality. So the abstract formality is common to many only by failing to tell the whole truth about any of them.
Nor does one move from the abstract universal to an understanding of the particular by “adding in” what is “left out”—for that would mean that the two “parts” would be exterior to each other. Instead, the relationship between logical parts of a form is a matter/form relation (see, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Metaphysics, vol. 2, trans. John P. Rowan [Chicago: Regnery, 1961], Book VII, lesson 9, paragraph 1463). For example, one does not get to “jazz” from the abstract universal “music” by adding in bits “music” leaves out. Rather, “jazz” forms, or specifies, “music,” being a way in which “music” is realized. The abstract universal tells you nothing about the ways in which it is realized. Knowing what “music” is doesn’t allow you to play any sort, nor does it allow you on the basis of knowing one sort to draw specific conclusions about any other. Each way is unanticipatable.
The more abstract a universal is, the less it tells us about any concrete thing in which it is realized: not because it is a smaller “part” of the thing, but because it is more remote matter—so we know less and less about the way in which it is realized. For example, formalities such as “political prudence” or “legal justice,” which are so abstract that they say nothing about whether the “subjects” are men or angels, slave or free, even rational or irrational, can be realized in all sorts of ways: ways where several other universals are more significant for the realization of the one in question than it itself is. For this reason, situating a distinguished universal within the other relevant “elements” of the reality can look like denying it, since one is denying that the distinction alone defines the reality: form defines more than matter does. (Though, of course, only both together do).
To be clear, I don’t think Fr. Waldstein would oppose any of this. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he has already professed it all somewhere. All I say is that when the results of scholasticism’s analytic method have to be related back to life, he tends, by the example of the more recent representatives of the scholastic tradition, to overlook it.
37. Waldstein, “Analogy,” 21; my emphasis.
Our Current Concrete Greater Order Cannot Function for the Lesser
38. Waldstein, “Politics as a Sketch,” 30.
39. Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., in “Letters,” First Things (October 2022): 3–6, at 6.
40. Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., “All We Need is Everything,” First Things (June/July 2022): 34–37, both at 35.
41. The comparative absence of this sort of analysis is, I expect, one reason why Andrew Willard Jones thinks that Fr. Waldstein “hold[s] to the modern categories of ‘politics’ and ‘religion’ and only rearrange[s] them” (Waldstein, in “Letters,” 6).
42. Waldstein, “All We Need is Everything,” 36. Michael Hanby is correct to say that it is one of the merits of the integralist movement that it “confronts the Church with the metaphysical truth that the rejection of Church authority is inseparably bound up with the rejection of teleology in nature,” reminding her that the two can be recovered only together. One of its shortcomings, however, is that it doesn’t pay enough attention to the actual workings of teleology in concrete, existing natures—a project that the Church herself has been engaged on, with still partial success, for the past sixty years or so. Hanby alludes to this in saying that integralists “need a clearer explication of key concepts like ‘authority,’ ‘power,’ and ‘submission,’ ” and particularly in saying that they need “to see whether the older tradition of common good reasoning can be synthesized with the personalism that has become part of the Church’s magisterial tradition” (in “Letters,” First Things [October 2022], 5).
43. In justification of this, see the explanation of society’s descending Dionysian hierarchy in fn. 34 above. Modern bureaucracy exists to replace this natural hierarchy, making “the government,” as institution, everything—making it able to speak from the top immediately and in all detail to the bottom. See also the account of the “sovereign matrix of abstract personae, properties, rights, and contracts” that is at war with all “real, personal rather than abstract and enregistered relationships” in Andrew Willard Jones, “The End of Sovereignty: An Essay in Christian Postliberalism,” Communio 45.3–4 (Fall–Winter 2018): 408–56, particularly 411–433 (quotations from 415 and 418).
44. Waldstein, “Politics as a Sketch,” 30.
45. Waldstein, “Analogy of Perfection,” 20.