Politics and coercion

Political Theory

Volumn 24, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 620-652

  Goerner, E A ^a   Thompson, Walter J ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME   (United States)

^b International Institute

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EID: 21444458960     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591796024004002     Document Type: Article

References (42)

1. Leviathan, chap. 13,9; Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 126.
2. Part of Adeimantos's challenge to Socrates in Republic, 365 d.
3. For example, Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy, and Liberty (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 25-33.
4. For example, James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense (New York: Free Press, 1993), 40-4, 126-31.
5. See Dante, Inferno, iii. 22-69.
6. In many early modern liberal theories the god of a civil religion was to exercise a substantial part of the coercive function. But that only drove the alienation deeper: either alienation from a fearsome god who seems radically other and remote, as in Hobbes, or, when it is the god of one's own reason, as in Rousseau, alienation of the empirical self, of one's particular will, from one's rational self, the general will.
7. It is, of course, possible to meld a certain historicist procedure with liberal rationalism, an example of which would be Ronald Dworkin's Law's Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986). But that is usually combined with a belief that liberal society is on the cutting edge of world-historic progress, either explicitly as in Kant's Perpetual Peace, or implicitly in Americans who take it for granted that their liberal legal order is the novus ordo seclorum as the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States has it.
8. References to the First Part of the Second Part of the Summa Theologica will be given in an abbreviated form in the text as follows: a full reference to I-II, q.' 95, art. 1, resp. will be abbreviated to 95.1 ; I-II, q. 95, art. 1, sed contra will be abbreviated to 95.1. sc; I-II, q. 95, art 1, obj. 2 will be abbreviated to 95.1.2; I-II, q. 95, art. 1, ad 2 will be abbreviated to 95.1. ad 2. References to other "parts" of the Summa Theologica will include the part number, for example, 1.96.4. Translations of Aquinas and others are our own.
9. "Rationis ordinatio." An ordinatio is an ordinance in the sense of an ordering or arrangement. In the process of working dialectically toward his final definition, Thomas also calls it a "rule and measure of human acts" (90. 1), "a dictate of reason" (92. 1), or "some sort of reason directive of acts to an end" (93.3).
10. Thomas's prudentialism extends to the observation of rational laws as well. If there is a particular case where observance would damage the common welfare and safety, the law is not to be observed (96.1. ad 3). That may lead to lawlessness. So he poses a strong qualification: only those with authority to override the law are to apply the principle, except when the danger is so sudden as to preclude recourse to that authority (96.6). That qualification, in turn, applies only in cases where there is a political authority aiming at the common welfare, rather than a tyranny whose acts are politically irrational.
11. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 241, 245-6, 303, 315, 351, 391, 577. The coincidence of approaches is amusing, given Rawls's evident distaste for Aquinas at 553-4.
12. Ibid., 235.
13. Our aim is only to explicate St. Thomas's theory. So we do not offer an interpretation of St. Augustine's view. But note, Thomas finds citations from Augustine to support his own view (e.g., 1.96.4).
14. His terms are "oeconomica out civilis." For a detailed discussion of the terminology, see the dispute between R. A. Markus ("Two Conceptions of Political Authority," Journal of Tlieological Studies n.s., 16 [1965]: 68-100);
15. and Paul J. Weithman ("Augustine and Aquinas on Original Sin and the Function of Political Authority," Journal of the History of Philosophy 30 [1992]: 353-76). We are indebted for these references to Jeanne M. Heffeman.
16. See Aristotle, The Constitution of Athens, xliii. 1; Ixi. Rawls, like most liberals, simply assumes that there is to be a government of elected officials without considering whether the division of political power ought not be the subject of the first principle of justice. Only a theory of justice essentially constructed for subjects rather than citizens would omit consideration of this most political subject.
17. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 100-5.
18. 1.96.4, citing Augustine, De Civilaie Dei xix. 15.
19. Like Aristotle and unlike most social contractarians, Thomas lays great stress on the moral value of friendship (amicitia as the love of mutual benevolence in a common conversation of deed and word and as the culminating consequence of all the moral virtues) and ties it to equity (epieikeia) as the highest form of justice (II-II. 23; II-II. 80.1. ad 2 and 3; II-II. 114; 1I-II. 120).
20. See 21.4. ad 3; II-II. 58.5,58.7 ad 2,61.1. ad 2,179-82.
21. He uses this term repeatedly. 1.18.2. ad 2,115.4; HI. 35.5. sc., 65.5,91.4,101.4 and ad 1 and 4,105.3,107.1; II-II. 23.1. ad 1,26. 8,114.1,145.1. ad 3,145.2,168.2.
22. Cf. 6.4; 9.4; 87.1; 93.5; 96.3-4; 97.3. ad 3; 1.96.4.
23. Thomas also thinks there is one best constitutional order, monarchy, but it is at the level of God's governance of the universe. In human affairs, the requisite unity of order may be achieved under a number of constitutional arrangements, the excellence of which will vary according to circumstances (1.103.3; HI. 90.3.; 95.2. ad 3 and 4; 96.1. ad 3; 96.2. and ad 2; 96.6).
24. HI. 92. 2. 1. He gives the traditional list of Roman law: Digest I. iii. 7 and Gratian, Decretum, I. iii. 4.
25. See 90.3. ad 2; 92.1. ad 2 and 3; 93.4 and ad 4; 93.6; 95.1 and ad 1; 96.5; 105.4. ad 5; IHI. 64.3.
26. Supra, n. 2.
27. One thinks of Kant's race of intelligent devils (Perpetual Peace, First Supplement, 1. [B61; A60]). They are still around as the fictional folks in the "original position," choosing principles of justice under the "maximin rule" (Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 150 ff.). Or they may be the actual folks of "political liberalism" who are reasonably scared by the religious wars at the end of the Middle Ages (Charles Larmore, "Political Liberalism," Political Theory 18 [1990]: 340,352; John Rawls, Political Liberalism [New York: Columbia University Press, 1993], 159).
28. I may internalize a law even when the rational process whereby it was chosen was not my own but that of another, the legislator/legislature. In this sense I remain subject to another. Nevertheless, I am not the subject of another in a different sense: freely choosing to be subject to that authority I make its laws my own.
29. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract, vol. 3 of Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1959-), 368, bk. 2, chap. 1, par. 3 (translation by E. A. Goemcr). Cf. bk. 1, chap. 7, par. 7.
30. The penalties may, of course, be partly psychological, and Rawls clearly relies heavily on this fact in arguing for the rationality of acting justly (A Theory of Justice, pt. HI, esp. 570 ff.). But one's merely psychological bent has no intrinsic normative status, and a "theory of rational choice" needs to ask whether bearing the costs of reshaping one's psychological responses so as to enjoy injustice is rational.
31. Rousseau, On the Social Contract, bk. 3, chap. 10.
32. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 334,474,569,573.
33. See, for example, Sir R. \V. Carlyle and A. J. Carlyle, A History of Mediaval Political Theory in the West (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1950), vols. 1,3,5, and 6.
34. Thomas thinks one cannot lay down a universal rule about breaking bad customs by adopting contrary statutes. If the attempt fails, it may bring all law into disrespect (think of the prohibition amendment).
35. Aristotle, Politics i. 1253a 30-2; and St. Thomas Aquinas, In Octo Libras Politicorum Aristotelis Expositio, I. i.
36. Kant might claim there was a politics that treated the subject as ends by invoking a kind of residual teleology, claiming that living in accord with universalizable rational laws was the ultimate end of the noumenal self. Modern liberals no longer try to demonstrate that.
37. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 575-6.
38. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 142-6.
39. Rawls tried to overcome some of the radical individualism by envisaging the society as a "union of social unions" (A Theory of Justice, 527). But the component "social unions" are not political, not allowed to organize a particular kind of life within a common space. The common . space is that of the society as a whole from which no one and no manner of life may be excluded or publicly held in scorn.
40. See the "Declaration of Religious Freedom" issued by the Second Vatican Council (The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott, S. J. [New York: Herder and Herder; Association Press, 1966], 672-700). See also Catechism of the Catholic Church (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1994), §§160,1782,1738,1906-17,2104-9,2244.
41. In contrast to Political Liberalism, A Theory of Justice (215 ff.) is unprepared to find acceptable theological principles or other comprehensive doctrines of Aquinas and others even if they permit what, to Rawls, seems like a merely prudential check on political intolerance of heretical views and practices.
42. Pope Gelasius I, in a fifth-century dispute with the Roman Emperor Zeno, wrote that "Christ, mindful of human weakness and of what suited the welfare of his people,"- separated the office of Emperor from that of bishops, "willing that his people be saved by humility lest human pride throw them back from the goal" (Tractatus iv. 11). Thus, "two there are, August Emperor, [rather than one, the Emperor or the Pope] by which this world is chiefly ruled: the sacred authority of the Pontiff and the Royal power" (Epistolae xii. 2).