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METAPHYSICS, THEOLOGY, AND POLITICAL THEORY

Jacques Maritain, Scholasticism and Politics. (Garden City, N.Y.:Doubleday Image, 1960), 233 pp. Originally published in 1940. 1

Jacques Maritain, Man and the State. (Chicago: University of

Chicago, 1951), 219 pp.2

Scholasticism and Politicswas originally a series of nine lectureswhich Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) delivered in the United

States in the fall of 1938. About a decade later, in 1949, at the in-vitation of Professor Jerome G. Kerwin, the French Catholicphilosopher gave the Walgreen Lectures at the University ofChicago under the title ofMan and the State. No doubt at the time,Maritain, along with Professor Yves Simon, represented somethingdistinct in American political theory, an attention to the importanceof Christian thought within its realms. 3 In his own Walgreen Lec-tures of a year later, Professor Leo Strauss put his finger on the

essential uniqueness of the presence of Maritain on the Americanscene, particularly after Maritain settled for a time in the UnitedStates. "Present day American social science, as far as it is notRoman Catholic," Strauss wittily remarked, attacking the contem-porary relativism of the social sciences, "is dedicated to the proposi-tion that all men are endowed by the evolutionary process or by amysterious fate with many kinds of urges and aspirations, but cer-

tainly with no natural right."4 In the meantime, Man and the State

contained a spirited analysis of natural law in the Roman Catholictradition, a tradition which Professor Strauss recognized needed tobe reckoned with within his own efforts to revive classical politicaltheory.

Neither Man and the State nor Scholasticism and Politics, of

course, exhaust the rich corpus of Maritain on political theory.5 Nor

1. Cited in the text of this essay as SP, followed by page number.2. Cited in the text of this essay as MS, followed by page number.

3.Cf. Yves Simon, The Philosophy of Democratic Government, (Chicago: Univer-sity of Chicago Press, 1951), 1977; The Nature and Functions of Authority,(Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1948).

4. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1951), p. 2.

5. For a bibliography of Maritain, cf. Donald and Idella Gallagher, The Achieve-ment of Jacques and Raissa Maritain, (Garden City: Doubleday, 1962.)


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2 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

do they any more than actively presuppose Maritain'

s basic work inspeculative philosophy, theology, ethics, intellectual history, andartistic theory, to which political theory is itself related. 6 Indeed,Maritain was one of those thinkers whose very scope suggests thattoo narrow a training in political things and political thinking may

well be a detriment to political philosophy, which must, for its owncomprehension, also know metaphysics, dogma, and literature, if itis to be properly situated in the vast realm of thought. Nonetheless,

both of these books remain unique and illuminating since they canserve as an articulate standard against which the direction and con-tent of political theory can be measured. For these two relativelyshort books taken together are not only links to specifically Christianpolitical thought, itself too much neglected, even by Christians, butalso, through the intricacies of modern, post-Machiavellian theory,they are links to classical political theory as that was preserved anddeveloped in a living philosophical tradition, one that included an

account of faith in its very philosophizing. These works also serve asbridges not merely to the past of political theory itself but as bridgesbetween political theory and other intellectual disciplines andcultural realities. Thus, Maritain (in Man and the State) is one of thefew writers in political theory who saw the necessity of giving anadequate account of the theology and philosophy involved inchurch-state relations from the side of the Roman Church preciselyas an aspect of accounting for political things.

Maritain's lectures, then, can still save many a student from the il-lusion that to understand the dynamics of political theory, it is suffi-cient to understand onlypolitical theory. Scholasticism and Politicsin conjunction with Man and the State, consequently, serve anessential purpose today for anyone seeking a clear exposition withinthe western political tradition of what a political philosophy thatdoes notclaim for itself a total explanation of all reality might beabout. The enterprise of limiting political theory to itself cannotproceed without an awareness of what is notpolitical.' Maritain re-

mains the master of this latter effort at a philosophical rather than atan institutional level. He would be the first to recognize the impor-

6.These would be in particular Maritain's True Humanism, Philosophy of Nature,Existence and the Existent, The Range of Reason, Approaches to God, On the

Philosophy of History, Reflections on America, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry.7. Cf. J.M. Bochenski, Philosophy-an Introduction, New York, Harper, 1972. See

also the author's Christianity and Politics, (Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1981).


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METAPHYSICS, THEOLOGY, AND POLITICAL THEORY 3

tance of institutions to philosophy, that constitutions can sometimessave thought, but that, in the long run, no state is really safe whichis not aware of the thought upon which humans largely live.Moreover, since the question of the authentic nature of politicalphilosophy appears recently almost more of a problem for religionthan for politics, a reflection on Maritain's two books becomes asmuch an illumination of the proper role of religion as of politics,especially since, historically, it was undoubtedly religion, specifical-

ly Christianity, that first posed dramatically the notion that politicsought to be limited, that there were things both of Caesar and ofGod. Ironically, the Christian left today is the locus of the dangersto politics which Maritain perceived in the Christian right half acentury ago, while the so-called secular left seems to be the area in

which political philosophy as such is abandoned in favor ofideology. Maritain wrote when a secular right (Action Francaise,Franco, Fascism, Nazism) seemed the great and obvious threat,

whereas this latter has mostly disappeared except as an instrumentof progaganda and control required by successful theories arisingout of the historic left of European politics. The value ofScholasticism and Politicsand Man and the Statebecomes uniquelypertinent as a philosophical statement of what Maritain held to bethe only remaining alternative to the success of 20th Century ab-solutism. Maritain's political works are, in this sense, a detailed in-tellectual description of this alternative.

In this context, then, in spite of a Thomist Pope, who frequently

writes very much like he has carefully read Maritain, as did his im-mediate predecessor, these two books are also worth reconsideringagain because the hopes in which they were written have notbeen

realized. 10 For all practical purposes, many Catholic intellectualsthemselves have dropped Thomism with the philosophical profundi-ty upon which it was based, often to "opt" precisely for those ab-solutist political systems that most concerned Maritain. (Maritain'slast major work in this area, The Peasant of the Garonne, 1968,was

his final statement of this concern.) On the other hand, the bright

8. Cf . the author's

"Political Theology and Political Philosophy,

"Lave, Theologi-

que et Philosophic/tie, Fevrier, 1975.9. Cf.James Hitchcock, Catholicism and Modernity. (New York: Seahury, 1978).

10. Cf . Andrew Woznicki, A Christian Humanism: Karol Wojtyla's Existential

Humanism, (New Britain: Mariel, 1980).


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hopes for a "practical" democratic charter and world today seemrather more obscure than in the heady days after World War II,

when everyone seemed to take as self-evident the dangers of moderntotalitarian states and ideas. Ironically today, it often seems as ifChristians are the ones most enamoured by "socialism" while thosewho live under actual socialist systems are the ones most concernedthat a natural law in a free society be respected. A Solzhenitsyn caneven claim that there are more Christians in the worst of the Marxist

states because they have no illusions about the promises of thesocialist systems. Maritain, for his part, understood in his essay on"The End of Machiavellianism" (1942), that the initial step in anyrejection of modern absolutism is to understand its origins preciselywithin political theory." This is why it can be argued that thedecline of interest in the political philosophy of Maritain or indeedof any orthodox Christian political theory, is in direct proportion tothe rejection of political philosophy itself and a subsequent embrac-

ing of ideology on the part of Christians.12

Clarifying Received Ideas

In his brief Forward to Scholasticism and Politics, Maritain wasmost concerned to clarify and reanalyze the content of the receivedideas of modern political theory which he rightly felt were leadingto an immediate political disaster in Europe. Indeed, it was a happycharacteristic of

Maritain that he understood how politicalphilosophy does relate to an exercise of logical precision about termsand ideas in their usage and history. The first and second chapters ofMan and the State, with their analyses of nation, state, body politic,community, society, people, and sovereignty, remain models of thisrealization. Maritain held implicitly the truism that "ideas haveconsequences," so that the initial step to be made to correcthistorical political disorders is to examine the ideas behind them.Thus, the impending crisis and disaster in European political prac-tice in 1938 were also rooted for Maritain in errors in the intellectualclimate of the previous centuries. The examination of the ideas ofpolitical philosophy, then, was not merely a kind of inconsequential

11 .Jacques Maritain, "The End of Machiavellianism," in The Range of Reason,(New York: Scribner's, 1952) pp. 136-54.

12.C f. M-D Chenu, La 'Doctrine Sociale ' de la Eglise, (Paris: Cerf, 1979).


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mirroring of times past but an active step in the process of anypolitical change that could be made to correct the public order.Maritain was himself a student of Henri Bergson, who had so muchinsisted on the relation of ideas to action.

For Maritain, moreover, philosophic "errors"were not just basedon a theory of the relativity of truth, on the idea that all was false sothat everyone was therefore free. 1 3 Maritain's philosophy held thatthere was a discoverable truth, the truth of being itself, a truth flow-

ing out of the rigors of intelligence itself, such that the dignity of thehuman person consisted in the "human capacity for knowing thetruth," a capacity that was the real root of human freedom. Therelation of philosophy to politics was one of Maritain's main themes,the understanding of and accounting for speculative and practicaltruth. In 1938, Maritain held that there was a general philosophicalrevival taking place in the intellectual world. He saw too thatphilosophic errors that had to be accounted for constituted im-

mediate political problems for Europe and the world. Optimistical-ly, perhaps, he held that "in America, there is still time for mankindto eliminate these errors by creative effort of intelligence and libertyrather than by offering itself up as a victim to the forces of fatality."He even detected a philosophical revival among the then young inAmerica, one that, as such, was very important "for the future ofcivilization."(SP, 8). This, together with a new "social order"-Reflections on America, the books which more than any otherseparated him from the European Catholic left, was not to come foranother twenty years-one for the working classes, would result in"a new Christendom," unlike the old one but one reflecting Chris-tian values. In the meantime, the working classes of Europe con-tinued to become richer, in spite of World War II, perhaps evenbecause of it, the philosophical revival did not materialize, and "theNew Christendom" remains locked in a struggle within politicaltheory about whether there is a place for Christianity at all.

Thus, speaking in retrospect of Maritain's political philosophy at

the 1973 Ancona Conference, Professor Etienne Borne noted howMaritain's thought has subsequently come to be attacked from twoopposite sides which, in the light of "liberation theology" and Pro-fessor Strauss' approach to faith and reason, seem to emphasizeScholasticism and Politics and Man and the Stateas essays precisely

13. Cf. Maritain's Preface to Metaphysics, (New York: Mentor-Omega, 1962).


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human freedom, equality, dignity, and justice cannot be divorced, according toMaritain, from those propounded by Christianity in the development ofwestern democratic institutions.

Maritain voices the principles of democracy but denies that they can beverified empirically for the reason that the very definition of democracy finds itsorigin in the Christian faith, in the evangelical inspiration, and in the inspira-tion of the Gospel. Democracy for Maritain is basically a theological concept.Christian theology is not only the keystone of speculative philosophy, but alsothe bedrock of practical democracy from which the very notion of democracy isderived. Thus for Maritain, political issues and problems are inseparable from

Christian theology. In this respect, Jacques Maritain is primarily a Christiantheologian who utilizes political philosophy for theological purposes and,without contradiction, theology for political purposes. 15

For much of contemporary political theory, no doubt, any referenceto a systematic relation to theology is considered forbidden no mat-ter how forcefully the evidence for such a relationship exists. But, onthe other hand, for much of theology, the autonomy of politicaltheory from both theology and ideology is not fully recognized.

Man and the State along with Scholasticism and Politics, in thiscontext, then, forms a consistent statement of the reasons for atheory which can be political without denying the relative in-dependence of politics before theology. Pure Machiavellianism, thebelief that ends do not control means in politics, or the notion that"success" is the sole criterion of political action, constitutes theultimate destruction of politics. In this sense, Maritain conceived hisphilosophic task as much one of saving politics from itself as saving it

from religion. On the other hand, Maritain was not prepared togrant the empiricist position which would reduce the subject matterof politics to something which could be measured or tested by cer-tain presumably scientific methods. Not only was this latter itself aclosed position, confining man to certain methodological premises,but it also was an assumption that revelation could itself bear no ra-tional content comprehensible by human intelligence. It is for thisreason that metaphysics plays such an important part in Maritain's

political theory, since it is on the question of being that religion andphilosophy meet in a non-contradictory fashion.

15 . HwaYol Jung, The Foundations of Jacques Maritain's Political Philosophy,

(Gainesville: University of Florida Monographs in the Social Sciences, fI7, Summer,1960), pp. 60-61. Cf, also Leo Ward, "Maritain and the Tradition of Natural Law,

"

Modern Age, Fall, 1975, pp. 375-80; Gerald A. McCool, Maritain's Defence of

Democracy," Thought,June, 1979, pp. 132-42.


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Approaches to Politics

Perhaps the best place to begin a consideration of Maritain's con-tribution to political theory, however, is not in metaphysics or intheology, but precisely at that point wherein he most clearly ac-cepted the "messiness," as it were, of politics, at the place whereinhe seems at first sight most near to Machiavelli. To his credit, Mari-tain never was under any illusion that the living politician, even the

most virtuous, would be confronted only with clear, morally up-lifting, patently rational choices. This was the arena about which hemedieval theologians, following Paul and Augustine, spoke underthe rubric of the Fall. "We know, indeed, that evil and foolishnessare more frequent among men than intelligence and virtue," Mari-tain wrote.

How is it possible to call them all to a political life? Those who will try todiscover in this remark a decisive argument against universal sufferage are not

aware that in this case it would be still more dangerous to recognize the right ofevery man to found a family and to exercise an every day authority over hischildren. Furthermore, experience shows that in politics (as in all spheres wherethe affective dispositions and the collective interests play an essential role), per-sons of education and refinement are no less often mistaken than the ignorant;

the errors of the latter are vulgar, those of the former are intellectualized anddocumented, like the persons themselves. In these matters, if the central virtueof the leaders is political prudence-which is rare and difficult to ac-quire-what matters most in the rest are right instincts. And this confirms...the

view that a general Christian education for the nation, a general developmentof Christian habits and Christian instincts is, in fact, a condition for thepolitical success of democracy. (SP, 111)

This is a reformulation of Aquinas' argument that there are certaindeficiencies in the very nature of law and politics which wouldargue to a "need" for revelation, even in order that true politicalpeace might be kept. (I-II, 91, 4) Neither Aquinas nor Maritainmeant by this that from these deficiencies we could argue that

revelation had already happened or that the insufficiency of politicsto achieve all of its own ends made nature something less worthy.Rather what was meant was that experience did show the weak toneed guidance and the intelligent to need also virtue and wisdom.Should these be supplied, even from what is called revelation,politicswould have no need in principle to exclude them from thepublic order but rather, however incapable of accounting for suchcauses, it can accept them as practical advantages to itself even in its


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own order. This is why Maritain maintained that theology andmetaphysics were also properly within the scope of his politicaltheory.

The accounting from the darker side of human action-that itdoes occur, that evil happens, that some institutions must be alsofound to confront it in the name of the moral good of the people,that such institutions themselves can go wrong-has been in a waythe most sensitive area in modern politics. Indeed, it could be said

that it is a greater problem for modern politics than for classical andmedieval Christian theory which had placed the source of politicaland moral disorder within man himself. Modern politics followingHobbes and Rousseau, toying with the strangely parallel assump-tions that man is either wholly evil or wholly good, assumed that evilin man might be controlled or even removed by some kind ofpolitical, economic, or institutional reorganization. The Thomistposition had held for a naturalness of government even without the

Fall. This was due to the general nature of freedom. (SP, 107)Nevertheless, the Christian tradition recognized that politiciansmust often act in the worst possible circumstances. Indeed, Mari-tain's discussion of "The Problem of Means in a Regressive or Bar-barous Society" in Man and the Stateremains something of a classicof a political realism that knows that both principle and the worstsituation must both be accounted for. 16 Unless the politicalphilosopher can also deal with the moral action of the politician or

the citizen even in the worst circumstances-a concentration camp,in Maritain's example-he cannot avoid accepting theMachiavellian principle that only success or survival is what countsin civic life. Since Maritain rejected this latter position, as well asthe excessive optimism from Rousseau, which would claim to placethe origin of political evil outside of man in his institutions, Maritainmust grant that political action will often involve force or coercionin the name of justice itself. Thus, however exalted a Christianpacifist position may seen, it must be rejected by the politicianresponsible for balancing the evil that does exist in actual society.

16. Jacques Maritain, "The Problem of Means in a Regressive or Barbarous

Society,"

Man and the State, pp. 65-70. Cf. also, on a similar point Leo Strauss,

Natural Right and History, ibid., p. 160.


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Force and Justice

Nevertheless, acknowledging the reality and need of force at timesdoes not entail denying that the higher, non-political virtues mustalso be allowed a real space within the body politic. This isMaritain's constant teaching. Force may be necessary; charity mayalso work, even against legitimate force. The defence of politics isitself an admission that something higher, non-political is called foreven for the good of politics, at least in this historic order. "As to themeans of a Christian politics...," Maritain wrote,

Iwould say first that these means should always be just, not excluding force butsubordinating it; second, that a higher moralism demanding that these meansbe not only good in themselves but pharisaically pure-I mean free of contactwith the impulses of human history which would stain them fromwithout-this hyper-moralism is as contrary to a true political ethics as it is to aMachiavellian cynicism; third, that the seemingly irresistable power of the

weapons of violence, of deceit and infamy, employed by men who havediscovered that the absolute rejection of all moral rules open the way to a kindof omnipotence and paradox of force, obliging Christians to fix their attentionon the question of the hierarchy of means....

...It follows that the greatest evil with regard to the temporal common goodwould be for Christians to cease to bring into the life of the political communitythe testimony and influence of the Gospel truth, of the Christian virtues and thegrace of the Holy Spirit. (SP, 210)

These are clearly key lines in Maritain since they address themselvesdirectly to the legitimacy and limits of the use of force within thecontext of a reality that transcends it. Force and charity can and doexist within the same society, within a hierarchy of relationships tothe same body of persons who compose it. Thus, there are just usesof force; yet also available in the broader area of society for its owngood, though not for this alone, there are principles and virtues thatcan render force inoperative. Maritain thus did not advocate "therule of the saints," however much he advocated that there be saintsamong men even for the sake of rule. This was his application of thedirective of Aquinas that the saint was beyond the law because heobeyed it for motives higher than coercion. (I-II, 96, 5, ad 1)

Maritain made this same point in Man and the Statewhen hewrote: "The problem of end and means is a basic, thebasic problemin political philosophy." (MS, 54) But if this be so, we need to decideboth what is the ultimate end of man (which is discussed primarilyin Scholasticism and Politics) and what is the exact end of the


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METAPHYSICS, THEOLOGY,.AND POLITICAL THEORY 11

specificallypolitical society (which is discussed primarily in Manand the State.)This latter is not designed "to ensure the materialconvenience of scattered individuals" nor "industrial mastery overnature," nor political rule over other men. Rather, it is

to better the conditions of human life itself, or to procure the common good of

the multitude, in such a manner that each concrete person...may truly reach

that measure of independence that is proper to civilized life and which is

measured alike by economic guarantees of work and property, political rights,

civil virtues, and the cultivation of the mind. (MS, 54)

What is to be carefully noted here is that this is nota definition ofthe end of the human person, the understanding of which is forMaritain a basic purpose in Scholasticism and Politics, but the endof man as a human being who is conceived, born, active, andhimself finally dies in this world. Though not opposed to theultimate end, in fact preparatory to it, the emphasis is on man in sofar as he lives in this world. It is, in other words, an essentially

Aristotelian definition.Maritain thus returns to his theme that an objective standard of

justice must motivate all political life if man's ethical depth is to bemaintained. Yet, justice as such is insufficient. "We know that theflesh is weak. It would be nonsense to require perfection and impec-cability from anyone who seeks justice." Because of this weakness,Maritain cited Bergson's notion that democratic philosophy "has itsdeepest roots in the Gospel." (MS, 61) Indeed, for Maritain,

"democracy can only live on Gospel inspiration."I

'At first sight, thiswould seem to suggest that grace ought to replace the political enter-prise of justice. But that would logically involve a denial of thenatural legitimacy of politics, which is certainly not Maritain 's in-tention. Rather what Maritain meant was that man is a much richerand deeper reality than politics alone could comprehend, such thateven the attainment of justice in actuality may require for most menand most societies something more than justice. This is a delicate

point, one most often used to suggest that Maritain's position istheological, not political. Aquinas, of course, had made the samepoint. (II-II, 91, 4) But the conclusion both Aquinas and Maritaindrew from this was not a-political. The existence of something more

17 . MS, 61 Cf. Brooke W. Smith, "The Jacques Maritain Controversy in Perspec-

tive," Thought, December, 1975, pp. 381-417.


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than justice, which could be accounted for by a metaphysics ofopenness to all being, did not obviate or even reduce the enterpriseof politics, even a politics such as Maritain correctly conceived

which may have to include the just use of force by politicalauthorities in the real order. This position entailed the argument of

why political authority was necessary for men (Scholasticism andPolitics, Chapter 4) and with what it must deal. (Man and the State,pp. 126-38)

Maritain argues that an unrealistic notion of that with whichauthority must treat-even though authority's end is the conditionof civilized life-is itself a very dangerous factor even for believers,

who are not presumably limited in their motivations to the politicalonly. "The fear of soiling themselves by entering the context ofhistory is not a virtue, but a way of escaping virtue," he wrote at theend of his fundamental discussion in Man and the State of whatpolitics must deal with. (MS, 63) There is perhaps no more graphic

discussion than Maritain's of the principal issues involved in this ef-fort to save politics from Machiavelli on the one hand and a religiousinnocence that would abandon politics altogether or leave it by rightin the hands of those who would use it without restriction, on theother. To establish his position, Maritain stressed the fact that in the

Aristotelian tradition, there are two books dealing with ethics, buttheir precise differences are what must be accounted for.

Politics is a branch of Ethics, but a branch specifically distinct from the otherbranches of the same stem. For human life has two ultimate ends, the one

subordinate to the other: an ultimate end in a given order, which is the ter-

restrial common good...and an absolute ultimate end, which is the transcen-

dent eternal common good. And individual ethics takes into account the subor-

dinate ultimate end, butdirectly aims at the absolute ultimate end; whereas

political ethics takes into account the absolute ultimate end, but its direct aim is

the subordinate ultimate end, the good of the rational nature in its temporal

achievement. (MS, 62)

This suggests why a philosophical analysis of the ultimate end of theindividual human person-the nature of his being, his rationality,his freedom-is presupposed to political philosophy. But politicalphilosophy also maintains the legitimacy of politics-that is, of men"acting." This is itself an ethical enterprise whose purpose isachieved often in the most dire of circumstances, since these are theraw materials of men acting towards one another.


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Maritain, then, argued, in a most significant passage:

Thus it is that many patterns of conduct of the body politic, which thepessimists of Machiavellianism turn to the advantage of politicalanimality-such as use by the state of coercive force (even of means of war inthe case of absolute necessity against an unjust aggressor), the use of intelligenceservices and methods which should never corrupt people but cannot help utiliz-ing corrupted people, the use of police methods which should never violate therights of the people but cannot help being rough with them, a lot of selfishnessand self-assertion which would be blamed in individuals, a permanent distrustand suspicion, a cleverness not necessarily mischievous but yet not candid withregard to other states, or even the toleration of certain evil deeds by the law, therecognition of thefait accompli (the so-called statute of limitations) which per-mits the retention of gains ill-gotten long ago, because new human ties and vitalrelationships have infused them with new-born rights-all of these things are inreality ethically grounded. (MS, 62-62)

The place of such a passage in Maritain's concept of politicaltheory-with its background in Man and the Stateof a natural law

that is only gradually known and perfected through history (MS,89-94)-cannot be overestimated, since it is the basis for anyrealistic approach to politics which also recognizes that ethics do ex-ist in all political situations that politicians must face. In denying aprecisely defined Machiavellian opportunism and a debilitatingreligious perfectionism, Maritain could indeed have a politicaltheory which accounted for what politics must deal with if it bepolitics,while not at the same time denying that within the broader

scope of what Maritain called "society," the higher values could ex-ist in a way that would not properly be political. (MS, chapter 1)Maritain would thus acknowledge that virtue and grace cannot be"commanded," yet he could still admit that with virtue and grace souncommanded, the reality of political life is better because theylessen the dire extremes which the politician frequently must deal.

Politics and Metaphysics

Maritain's political philosophy, then, is indeed an exercise inpolitical discernment, the main function of which is to examine howthe good of persons as understood in ethics and religion is to berelated to the temporal common good of the same human beings inso far as they have something positive to accomplish in this life. Theaccomplishment of the one ordinarily is not necessarily the ac-complishment of the other-saints can live in the worst of societies,


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sinners in the best, as Augustine clearly saw. Yet, it is the samehuman person as a complete whole who must be considered in anyfull understanding. For Maritain, there is not some secret division

whereby the man who reaches "eternal life," as it is called in revela-tion, is not also man the citizen. In Aristotelian terms, the soul andthe body are substantially united into one being, not one using theother. Nor did he doubt that the choices made in political life wereethical and therefore indicative of our eternal stance. Graced ac-tions, ones that cannot be commanded by law, are not merely inter-nal acts, but actually reach other people in need in a way politicalaction cannot. (This was Aquinas' notion that civil law reaches theexternal but not the internal act. I-II, 91, 4) In this sense, Maritain'spolitical philosophy is designed so to limit politics that room isguaranteed for an area of reality, the profoundest area, whose ex-istence politics can admit but not, as such, fully under-stand. This is why the "reductionist" view which confines all reality

to the politically observable must always appear so dangerous.Man and the State, then, was an exercise in political philosophy,

whereas Scholasticism and Politicswas rather a study in themetaphysics and theoretical ethics presupposed to any politicalanalysis. Together with clarifying the relation of reason and revela-tion as it appears in political philosophy, these two books form an in-tellectual whole which constitutes an overall vision seldom seen orunderstood by most students of political philosophy, though

fragments of these themes are in one way or another the very core ofpolitical theory courses. The continuing value ofScholasticism andPolitics, in particular, in this context lies in its orderly presentationof the two forms of transcendence-natural intellectual and divineintellectual-as they relate to questions arising within politicaltheory. Even though from Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine, thesehave been continuing, perplexing issues somehow intrinsic to thevery abidingness of properly political questions, still the contem-

porary student and scholar, untrained in the classics or even less soin classical theological reflection, are little equipped to understandthe import of analysis in this area. This has been unfortunate since ithas deprived contemporary political thought of tools and forms ofreflection that normally should belong to it. Jacques Maritain had aparticular facility in the enterprise of revitalizing these questionswithin the realm of political theory, for relating properlymetaphysical and theological questions to those belonging to the

narrower area of political reflection.


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Professor Leo Strauss, in his Natural Right and History, arguedthat, apparently, the Aristotelian teleological view of nature was"destroyed by natural science." This meant a break between thenatural and the social sciences from which two consequences flow:

According to one, the non-teleological conception of the universe must befollowed up by a non-teleological conception of human life. But this"naturalistic" solution is exposed to great difficulties: it seems to be impossible togive an adequate account of human ends by conceiving of them merely asposited by desires and impulses. Therefore, the alternative solution has pre-

vailed. This meant that people were forced to accept a fundamental, typicallymodern dualism of non-teleological natural science and a teleological science ofman. This is the position which the modern followers of Thomas Aquinas,among others, are forced to take, a position which presupposes a break with the

comprehensive view of Aristotle as well as that o fThomas Aquinas.1 e

Jacques Maritain was, perhaps, with Etienne Gilson and JosefPieper, the leading modern follower of Thomas Aquinas, so it is

useful to note how he actually handled the relation of the naturaland social sciences, which seemed to Strauss to be such a key issue.

In his essay on "Science and Philosophy," Maritain did not acceptthe dualisms between social and natural sciences, though he haddevoted much attention to the precise nature of the naturalsciences. 19 Rather, he examined the scientific method itself as it isused in contemporary scientific theories to discover whether it doesin fact demand the denial of the teleology intrinsic to Aristotle and

St.Thomas. If it does not, then a way is open on its own groundseven to revelation, that is, it cannot a prioriexclude it, and tolocating properly the area of modern natural sciences. Indeed, Mari-tain argued that the logical-empirical methods of science arethemselves open to a kind of implicit fideism because of their ownlack of true metaphysics:

Science knows only the space-time connections of the observable; it does notknow being. And it is always added, there is no other science, there is no ra-

tional knowledge other than this science. Well, this brings great relief and com-fort to apologetics. To every question concerning the being of things-the soul,God, freedom and determinism, nature and miracles-to all such questions,human reason must answer, in the manner of empiriological science, beyondwhich it cannot go: I do not understand the question , ith a s no meaning forme

18. Strauss, ibid., p. 8.19. Cf. Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, Trans. B. Wall, London, Bles, 1937.


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16 THEPOLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

and shuts its mouth. It is for faith that such questions have meaning; it is faithwhich must answer. By an unexpected reversion, the object which Aristotleassigned to metaphysics passes to faith. Science does not know being, butfaith-at least for him, who has received this gift-does. Let us crown neo-posit iv ismwith neo-fideism, and all will go well with, moreover, a remarkableeconomy of intellectual effort. (SP, 46-47)

Of course, for Maritain, this conclusion of neo-fideism implicit inthe structure of modern science was quite unacceptable, particular-ly since "faith involves rational implications; it implies, for instance,the possibility of reason to prove the existence of God, starting fromcreatures." (SP, 47).

Faith, in other words, itself requires rationality, that is, a scienceof being which knows the order of things and itself in relation tothem from the inside, as it were. This is the reason why the Thomistposition is not, as such, a simple acceptance of a non-teleologicalnatural science, but rather a proper location of natural science

within the abiding structure of being. This is Maritain's statement ofthe issue:

Now, if contemplation and theology can be a knowledge of well-assured andcomplete type, it is first of all because there can be in the rational order aknowledge which is a wisdom-a wisdom accessible to our natural powers ofinquiry and demonstration. Is it possible that the intellect-which knows itselfand judges itself, and which knows and judges reflexively the nature ofscience-should be unable to enter itself in awork of knowledge, that is to see

into the nature of things? Can it be condemned to remain always on the outsideof this work, in the role of a witness and a regulator of the senses, as happens inthe science of phenomena? There must be such a science, a knowledge in whichthe intellect is on the inside, and where it freely develops its deepest aspirations,the aspiration of intellect as intellect. That is metaphysics. (SP, 53-54)

The significance of this situating metaphysics within the structure ofbeing by virtue of man's own intelligence and its proper objectshould not be lost in political theory and its own proper enterprise.

Metaphysics and the Limiting of Politics

What is all the consequences of this relation of intellect to the in-ternal structure of being? Political theory, as Aristotle understood,begins with the question of happiness as it is understood in BooksOne and Ten of the Ethics. The relation of the properly political lifeto the end of man, to what is his proper happiness is, consequently,

the abiding philosophical question in political theory. In the


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the proof reason is in some sense also free lies in its capacity to actagainst the classical standards, hence the "legitimacy" of the way ofslaughter.

For Maritain, then, in order to save the proper arena of politics, itis necessary to account for the highest intellectual activities in a waythat leaves them free of politics but in such a manner that they donot deny a limited, valued sphere for political life. This requiredMaritain to repropose the tradition of individual and person, actionand contemplation in such a way that the unity of human life wasretained, while acknowledging different levels of properly humanlife and activity. The essence of Maritain's approach here was con-tained in the notion that human persons are wholes which, as such,transcend any social order, even though as individuals they are partsof the political community. This means that this question is "thefundamental subject of all social and political philosophy." 20 And so"the organization of man into one body" becomes the most

dangerous of all political philosophies when the being of what isorganized possesses no unique autonomy which by itself is capable ofreaching the highest good and being, at least potentially. In order tobe able to give oneself, Maritain continued,

one must first exist, and not only as the sound which passes in the air, or thisidea which crosses my mind, but as a thing which subsists and which by itselfexercises existence. And one must not only exist as other things, one must exist inan immanent way. By possessing oneself, by holding oneself in hand and bydisposing of oneself; that is, one must exist through a spiritual existence, capableof enveloping itself by intelligence and freedom and of superexisting inknowledge and free love. That is why western metaphysical tradition definesthe person by independence: the person is a reality, which, subsisting spiritual-ly, constitutes a universe by itself and an independent whole (relatively in-dependent), in the great whole of the universe and facing the transcendentwhole, which is God. And that is why this philosophical tradition sees in Godthe sovereign personality, since God's existence consists itself in a pure and ab-solute super-existence of intellection and love. (SP, 67)

Thus, when Aristotle said that man does not make man to be man,he meant that his level of being was such that his proper activities,both political and spiritual or metaphysical constituted him in sucha way that he appeared before the world as a integral whole, bear-

20. "The Human Person and Society, " Sp, 61, Cf. Raymond Dennehy, "Maritain'sTheory of Subsistence: The Basis of His ' Existentialism'," The Thomist,July, 1975, pp.542-74.


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ing a mind whose object was precisely all being, all reality.Professor Ernest Cassirer, in his essay on "The Background of

Medieval Theory of the State," was at pains to argue that Aristotle'smetaphysics excluded the kind of person suggested in Judaic andChristian revelation, even though he accepted the idea that there issuch a thing as philosophy which was not merely natural science.Cassirer argued that it was easy for Aquinas to incorporate theAristotelian God in Christian theology and metaphysics. Yet, this

seems to be a distortion of Aristotle, who was less capable of being sointerpreted, according to Cassirer.

Aristotle's God is the best and classic example of Greek intellectualism. It is truethat in Aristotle's Physics andMetaphysics, the love of God is described as thefirst moving principle. God moves the world not by a mechanical impulse butby spiritual attraction-in the same sense as a beloved object moves the lover.

The final cause produces motion by being loved; and by that which it moves, itmoves all other things. The first mover, then, of necessity exists; and in so far as

it is necessary, it is good, and in this sense a first principle. But this prime moveris unmoved, not only in a physical but also in an ethical sense. He is inaccessibleto human wishes, and he cannot yield to human desires. All this is far belowhim. God i s act us purus-pure actuality. But his activity is an intellectual notan ethical activity. He is absorbed by his thought and has no other object thanhis thought. Hence, Aristotle could ascribed life to God, but this life, the life ofthought, is not a personal life. It is purely theoretical and contemplative. Q '

The issue between Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, however, is not tobe conceived as illicitly imposing on Aristotle's First Mover the at-

tributes of the Christian God who presumably is personal and alsoethical. It is, in Christian theology, a formal heresy to argue that theinner life of God can be known by man's unaided reason, which can,however, and this is important, know of God's existence and generalattributes.

Aristotle, as Maritain pointed out in his essay on "Action and Con-templation," did understand why contemplation is a higher good towhich man ought to devote all his life, even if only, as the least of

the intellectual beings, to begin to understand. The question arose,even by virtue of certain Aristotelian positions, whether will is notalso a factor and how the knowledge of God, ultimate happiness, isrelated to all men if only a few can prove God's reality, if only a fewcan really contemplate? Does this, in other words, condemn the

21. Ernest Cassirer, "The Background of the Medieval Theory of the State," TheMyth of the State, New Haven, Yale, 1946, p. 91.


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masses of ordinary people to a "merely human" life, while a fewsecret gnostics, saints, or wise men do that highest activity for whichman exists? How is the ordinary world saved as a meaningful place ifall men can reach beatitude, happiness? Why would they everreturn to the cave, why would not the charge that those who seekGod neglect the world be radically true? Maritain suggested that theproper solution to the problem of the object of contemplation wasbound up with the question posed in Book One of the Politics:

It speaks for Aristotle's greatness to have known and taught that the immanenceof the intellectual act is, as such, more perfect than that of the act of the will;that is why, according to a thesis which St. Thomas made classical, intelligenceis nobler thanwill, from the sole point of view of the degrees of immanence andimmateriality of the powers of the soul.

All this led the Greeks to a twofold conclusion, which, in its first part, for-mulated a most valuable truth; and, in its second part, transformed that truthinto a great error.

The great truth which the Greeks discovered...is the superiority of con-

templation, as such, to action. As Aristotle put it, life according to the intellectis better than a merely human life.

But the error follows. What did this assertion mean to them practically? Itmeant that mankind lives for the sake of a few intellectuals. There is a categoryof specialists-the philosophers-who lead a superhuman life; then in a lowercategory, destined to serve them, come those who lead the ordinary human life,the civil or political one; they in turn are served by those who lead a sub-humanlife, the life of work; that is, the slaves. (SP, 164-165)

The question arises, therefore, how is it possible to avoid the errorand keep the substance of the Greek truth?

Politics and the Super-Abundance of Being

The answer to this question, for Maritain, then, lies in the preciseChristian response to the Aristotelian problem. This means firstrefusing to accept Cassirer's rather absolute separation of Thomas

Aquinas and Aristotle.22

This is accomplished by suggesting thatrevelation is addressed precisely to reason in those questions thatarise within the experience of ethics and politics, questions which re-quire an intellectual answer, if they do not, as Charles N.R. McCoyremarked commenting on Aristotle, turn on the natural order itself

22. Cassirer, ibid., pp. 91-96. Cf . also Strauss, ibid., p. 164. See also the author's"Revelation, Reason, and Politics," Gregorianusn, Rome ffl2 and 3, 1981.


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in their search for a solution.23

So while it is true that the Anselmiannotion that the mysteries of faith can be "proved" must be rejectedin the name of human intellect-an intellect that can fully "unders-tand" the inner life of God is metaphysically already God-still thisdoes not mean that the truths of revelation are incapable of being in-tellectually considered as indicating or stimulating solutions to pro-perly political questions 24 Strauss wanted to make this kind of in-fluence purely theological, but this is less than clear. 25 These solu-

tions are mostly "suasive," as Chenu pointed out and not so con-clusive as to demand certainly. 2e But they are nonetheless answers tothe questions as posed-namely questions about friendship withGod if friendship be discovered a basic human good, personal im-mortality defined as resurrectiong if the person really does want toabide as he is, to know all being, the values of work, action, and suf-fering in a world wherein such things contain evil or degradingtendencies in actual history, the knowledge of what the First Movermay actually be like if it could cause motion spiritually by merelybeing what it is, the nature of law, the relation of creation to order.

The great reality of the metaphysics of being is, in Maritain, themetaphysics of superbeing, of the abundance of being, the primacyof mercy and charity to justice, the proper political virtue.

Christian philosophy better than Greek has seen that it is natural that imma-

nent activity should superabound, since it is superexisting. Purely transitive ac-

tivity is egoistic...,Immanent activity is "generous," because striving to be

achieved in love, it strives to achieve the good of other men, disinterestedly,gratuitously, as a gift. Christian theology is a theology of divine generosity, of

that superabundance of divine being which is manifested in God himself, as on-ly revelation can tell us, in the plurality of persons, and which is also

manifested, as we could have discovered by reason alone, by the fact that God is

love, and that He is the Creator. And God, who is his own essence is his own

beatitude and his own eternal contemplation. God who creates, gives, has never

ceased to give, he gives himself through Incarnation, he gives himself through

the Holy Ghost's mission. It is not for God himself, St. Thomas said, it is for us

23. Cf. Charles N,R. McCoy, The Structure of Political Thought, New York,

McGraw-Hill, 1963, p. 47. See also the author's "Political Theory: The Place of Chris-tianity,"Modern Age,Winter, 1981, pp. 26-33.

24.Cf. Josef Pieper, Scholasticism, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1960, Chapter XI.25. Strauss, ibid., p. 164. Cf. Frederick Wilhelmsen, "Faith and Reason," Faith

and Reason, Winter, 1979, pp. 25-32.26. Cf. M-D Chenu, The Scope of the Summa, Washington, The Thomist Press,

1958.


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that God has made everything in his glory. When contemplation superaboundsin efficacious love and in action, it corresponds within us to that divinesuperabundance communicative of its own good. (SP, 174)

Political happiness, then, in the Aristotelian tradition in whichMaritain thinks, is to be distinguished from contemplative happinessbecause its fullness can only be achieved when the object of con-templation-the activity of the highest faculty on the highest ob-ject-belongs not to a collectivity nor to the whole race, but to each

individual person in his proper life, a life by virtue of the very natureof intellect, which is to include all being after the manner of theknower.

When this ultimate happiness is no longer seen to be the result ofpolitical life, when politics itself is freed from pseudo-metaphysicalpretentions, there comes about a new abundance on the whole per-son in so far as his activities are proper to him. Each activity ispotentially transformed into a completion of itself so that what is

lacking to justice-the Platonic dilemma-is accounted for infreedom in another order. So while for Aristotle, the polis existed forleisure, for allowing the activity of contemplation to a few as a pro-per end; for the metaphysics of personal being which Maritainfollowed, the overflow of being and grace make the kind of politicallife envisioned in justice theory possible but only as a result ofsacrifice and love, only as a result of something with origins not inthe political, yet bound to it because of the fact that faith is ad-

dressed to reason and indirectly to the proper life of man. "Forjustice and law, by ruling man as a moral agent, and appealing toreason and free will," Maritain wrote,

concern personality as such, and transform into a relation between twowholes-the individual and the social-what must otherwise be a mere subor-

dination of part to the whole. And love, by assuming voluntarily that whichwould have been servitude, transfigures it into freedom and into free gift.

Man is constituted as person, made for God and for eternal life, before being

constituted part of a human community; and he is constituted part of familialsociety before being constituted part of political society. Hence, there areprimordial rights, which the latter must respect, and which it dare not wrongwhen it demands for itself the aid of the members because they are parts.

To sum up: on the one hand, it is the person itself, which enters into society;and, on the other hand, it is finally by reason of its material individuality thatthe person is in society as part, whose good is inferior to the good of the whole.If this is the case, we understand that society cannot live without the perpetualgift and the perpetual surplus which derive from persons, each irreplaceable


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and incommunicable; and that at the same time, what in social life is retainedfrom the persons is transmitted into something communicable and replaceable,into something ever individualized and yet depersonalized. (SP, 77-79)

There is, therefore, an accounting of society and state whichrecognizes the metaphysical substance of the human person, whotranscends the actual historical order, whose very transcendencegives this same social order a new capacity and possibility ofdiscovering and realizing itself, in its own terms.

The drama of history, its abiding importance, lies in the fact thatthere is an intrinsic seriousness to it because the rational creature isindeed free in its relation to its own beatitude, which it does notmake for itself as such, but discovers. That is, the human person canreject its own beatitude. If the natural end of the rational creature isbeing as such, being known through its own individual intellect,then it stands over against nothingness-the ex nihilo, of the Crea-tion accounts-only when it determines itself freely toward real be-

ing, to the highest being ultimately.27

The Centrality of Freedom

The central essay in Scholasticism and Politics, then, is on "TheThomist Idea of Freedom." This is not only so because freedom hasbeen evidently the hallmark of modern theory, but because it flowsnecessarily from the kind of beatitude that can be given to an in-

tellectual creature. Maritain carefully worked his way through thenature of free will and its various aspects precisely because thewhole meaning of the person, human society, and the possibility ofbeatitude depend upon it. In a remarkable passage on the relation ofhow our intellects rests in nothing less than the actual vision ofGod-making us thereby free with respect to any other good, in-cluding any merely theoretical or abstract knowledge even ofGod-Maritain wrote:

Because the will is internally and naturally necessitated to absolutely satisfyinghappiness, it is free with respect to everything else; that is to say, with respect toeverything it can desire here on Earth-for where on Earth is this perfect hap-piness, this complete satiety of desire? (SP, 120)

27. Cf . the Author's "On the Neglect of Hell in Political Theory," The Thomist,January, 1980, pp. 27-40.


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As long as the Deity is not the direct and immediate object of our in-tellects,we may know it only by faith or abstract speculation, whichwe might hope will beatify us, but we are not sure. Many goods willattract us in the meantime, since our intellects can know them andpresent them as goods of a lesser sort which may or may not lead usto beatitude. Some will lead to God; some will not. Our seriousfreedom lies here in this object judgment about what does and whatdoes not lead to our proper end. Maritain continued:

By an apparent paradox-we necessarily desire the absolute Good (beatitude in

general); and yet God-this hidden God, who is the absolute Good and the sub-

sistent beatitude and who, existing as the (transcendent) whole and commongood of the universe, is naturally loved by every creature more than itself, even

in spite of itself-this God is longed for by us, and loved efficaciously above all,as being in his very nature sanctity itself and the end of our life, and the goal of

the whole order of our acts, yet only by virtue of a free option, which remains inour power to decline. (SP, 121-22. Italics added.)

For Maritain, as for Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, theaccounting of political things was itself a legitimate enterprise butcould not be completed or carried out without in the process also ac-counting for ultimate things and the proper relation of man to them.

This is not to deny in any sense the legitimacy of politics, but it is in-deed to locate it properly in the explanation of all things.

Furthermore, Maritain has done politics the service of taking itseriously as an authentic part of reality, a part which in itself, in its

own outreach, confronts issues which, if not solved, turn back onpolitics and corrupt its own endeavors. The possibility of evil-atheme of political philosophy from Plato, Augustine, Machiavelli,and Hobbes, to go no further-doubtless needs serious attentioneven in politics, perhaps especially in politics, as Maritainunderstood well. The response Maritain gave to this will appeartheological and metaphysical-which is, of course, his point, name-ly, that failure to confront evil adequately at this deeper level does

not leave politics to be politics, but launches it into a secular enter-prise for removing it by purely political means.

To return, in conclusion, to metaphysical considerations: the creature has

necessarily two origins-God and nothingness; and St. Thomas reminds us that

"things which are made of nothing, tend by themselves toward nothing."

From this point of view, one can say that freedom of choice is linked to

nothingness in quite a special way, since it cannot exist in a creature withoutpeccability and without the possibility of making nothingness. Herein consistsevil.


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The creature can enter the joy of God only if it can love God as a friend; and

it can love God as a friend only if it is an image of God, endowed, as God is,with the freedom of choice. And it can be endowed with freedom of choice onlyif it possesses a fallible freedom, that is, if it can converse with God, not only inobeying the flux of divine actions and motions, but also in resisting them, bysaying no, impeding in itself the action of God.

It is the very condition of created freedom that God wishes to turn to good ac-

count.When by virtue of God's grace and by means of this fallible and peccablefree will, a creature will attain the ultimate term and will gain a consummatefreedom of exultation and autonomy, and a freedom of choice henceforth super-naturally impeccable, then nothingness itself will have been conquered in the

very line of freedom of choice."

Maritain, in other words, contributed most to political theory wherehe was more than a political philosopher. The noble status ofpolitical philosophy-the queen of the social sciences, as Leo Straussrightly called it in The City and Man2 B -achieves its own strength atthe very point it recognizes its limits.

Yet, these limitsare not designed to be invitations to skepticism or

despair, but themselves lead beyond politics. (SP, 130). In recallingthat politics is the higest of the practical sciences, the great tradi-tion, we likewise situate political theory within the larger enterpriseof the structure and destiny of reality and of each person within thisreality. The discovery that each person in his very substance alsotranscends the state to achieve, if he chooses, a definite transcendenthappiness beyond the civil society serves to free political life fromthe heavy burden of claiming of and for itself an absolute freedomand intelligence which would itself "create from nothing" its ownultimate goals and ends. The continuing worth of the work of

Jacques Maritain in Man and the State and Scholasticism andPolitics is precisely the intellectual exercise of actually thinkingthrough the metaphysical and theological consequences of authenticquestions that abidingly arise within the political experience of allmen in all societies. The continued attention to classical and Chris-tian metaphysics and theology, then, is itself a necessary andliberating basis for any complete political theory. Few have argued

this position better than Jacques Maritain.

Georgetown University JAMES V. SCHALL

28. SP, pp. 137-38. See also the author's "On the Scientific Eradication of Evil, "

Cotnmunio, Summer, 1979, pp. 157-72.29. Leo Strauss, The City and Man, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1963, p.

1.

schall metaphysics theology and pt

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