Old fashioned values: Richmal Crompton as the surburban Burke

Whilst trying to wind up Twitter by praising the wisdom of the suffragists rather than the violence of the  suffragettes, I came across an interesting essay on Richmal Crompton (a suffragist):

This repetition [in her books] not only reveals the way in which a busy writer recycles her material. It also suggests that we should see Crompton's work as the expression of a consistent set of values. But what, in the end, are those values? For Owen Dudley Edwards, the Just William stories show Crompton as a Tory radical: a scourge of the establishment, an anti-snob. This is, however, only partially true. Crompton was certainly a Tory. A member of the Conservative Party from 1920 onwards, she described herself as 'true-blue'. She was also a shrewd critic of social convention and of the petty snobbery of English life. Her wiser characters are always those who come to realise 'that there is no vulgarity in an aspidistra, but there is a world of vulgarity in the conventional sneer at it'. Many of her stories likewise conclude with the recognition that 'There's only one vulgarity...and that's pretending to be something you aren't.' Nonetheless, Crompton's books as a whole reveal a rather more pessimistic sort of Conservatism than Dudley Edwards has discerned. It is not just that she had a very limited belief in the possibility of human progress -although she did, describing the passage of time as rather like a roundabout, with people going up and down but never really moving forward. Nor is it simply that she had a bleak view of the capacity of people to understand one another -although again, her description of humans as 'A set of children playing blind man's buff', unable truly to comprehend themselves or each other, suggests that this was a central aspect of her worldview. More importantly, Crompton's views on class and on human nature bear little resemblance to the crusade for 'fairness, and the consequent destruction of privilege' that Dudley Edwards sees in the wartime fiction.

[...]

This analysis, combining confidence in social stability with pessimism about the fundamental nature of humanity, is, of course, a classically High Tory one. It is also a High Anglican -indeed Augustinian- notion, and it comes as little surprise to learn that Crompton was an Anglo-Catholic...No one is entirely pure, no one is entirely good; indeed, 'unselfish people are sometimes much more selfish than selfish people'...True wisdom and real change, in Crompton's books, come from...an acceptance of God and his providence: his capacity to rectify the worst effects of human sin. Human efforts on their own will always fail...

[Her work] reveals a Conservative who was unthreatened by modernity. But this optimism was always tempered: first, by a rejection of social and political reform, and secondly by a highly pessimistic view of human nature.

[From here: Whyte, William (2011) 'Richmal Crompton and Conservative Fiction' in Griffiths, C. V. J, Nott, J.J & Whyte. W. (eds)  (2011) Classes, Cultures, and Politics, Oxford, OUP.]

This passage sent a lot of hares running in my mind: both personal (how much have I personally been affected by a childhood immersed in her books?) and political.  Sticking with the political, why is this humane, conservative view almost entirely unavailable to modern youth? I don't mean by that just the unfashionableness of her work (and I find it hard to judge how much such a claim would be true: certainly less fashionable than when I was young, but forgotten? I hope not) but rather the unavailability of such ideas as a current, half articulated worldview. Even when I was reading them, we were beginning that long, futile trek through the sixties into the modern progressive era, where humour, resignation, God and a realistic sense of possibility have been lost in favour of strident self assertion in the service of consumerism. And thus I don't think I noticed these conservative ideas: not until much later in my life when reading first Scruton, then Burke and finally Kirk, did I recognise the outline of a philosophically coherent, but culturally very, very unfashionable worldview. That's a pity, because at the least, such an Augustinian conservatism is at the very least a useful corrective to modern progressivism, and possible even just simply true.

I can hear my internal -and doubtless external- critic muttering at this point that such a politics is all very well if your position in life is quite comfortable, rather less so if you're at the bottom of the self-satisfied heap. Possibly. But (at least) three things in response. First, a personal response. My father grew up at the very bottom of the heap that Crompton describes in the sort of grinding industrial poverty that wouldn't be seen now outside the developing world (and the effects -and stories- of that world filled my childhood). Of course, that's not a philosophical answer, but is is an admission that I find assertions that only those who have never experienced wretchedness would find such a worldview plausible rather irritating when they come from those whose bloodlines trickle back to the Norman Conquest. Secondly, a realistic sense of what might be possible is essential when trying to doing something about genuine harms: tilting at a thousand and one imagined or minor harms is a good way of avoiding concentrating on what might really and imperfectly be done to remedy serious wretchedness in our society. Finally, Augustinian pessimism is primarily about valuing what really matters: there is no final solution to the problems of the earthly city, and the key thing is that such problems as there are do not get in the way of the pursuit of the heavenly city, either by distracting us by their constant noise, or by simply replacing that supernatural goal. And it is because of that final possibility that secularism destroys the possibility of a good political order: by ignoring the reality of a transcendent, supernatural order, it replaces the real possibility of achieving happiness with a constant, churning, unfulfillable desire for earthly perfection. (Which is why, demonstrably, as proved by SCIENCE, all secularists are in strict medical terms and by dint of ignoring realities nuts.)

Oswald Mosley: enthusiasm and the technocratic state

                                      Mosley shortly before his Luxton Bus Depot speech

Stephen Dorril's 2006 biography of Oswald Mosley contrasts with Skidelsky's earlier book (and unsurprisingly with Mosley's autobiography) in giving a thoroughly unfavourable portrait of Britain's lost fascist leader. Although it's been a long while since I read the latter two works, Dorril's interpretation of Mosley's life undermines claims of his economic expertise and general intelligence, quite apart from presenting his character as one of a complete cad. (Personally, I find it convincing.)

That said, I think it does still suggest that one of the keys to understanding Mosley was his attempt to solve the problems of unemployment and poverty by means of decisive action to impose (broadly) Keynesian solutions. And at root of this attempt is a very current political problem: how to generate a sufficient popular enthusiasm for that driest of dry things: an imposed, technocratic solution to economic problems. Despite Dorril's rather detailed undermining of any claim that Mosley was just an anti-Semite by convenience, the established view that this was a large part of his anti-Semitism survives:

Writers on British fascism vary from the soft-hearted Lord Skidelsky to tough-minded researchers from the East End. On one point, they agree: Mosley's decision to play the race card was entirely cynical. He may have bent the knee to Hitler and Mussolini, but he wasn't more or less racist than any other member of the aristocracy. He embraced anti-semitism as it was the best way to appeal to the East End voters he thought would propel him back to the people around him, Mosley was never a convinced racist,' said Francis Beckett, the best of the tough-minded historians. 'Needless to add, that doesn't mean that he was better than them.'  [Nick Cohen here]

Putting aside the detailed examination of Mosley's actual motivations here, in principle, it is entirely plausible that someone trying to sell politically technocratic and elitist solutions to complex problems would try to link them to rather more exciting activities such as racism, marching up and down and street fighting. If Mosley's own motivations were perhaps not entirely so clear sighted, it would be perfectly reasonable to invent someone whose motivations were...

                                                  
                                                   Laibach looking decidedly antifa

To the extent that I understand Zizek (and I'd admit that's to a very limited extent indeed) part of his fascination with the bands Rammstein and Laibach rests on their using Fascist appearances for 'progressive' purposes:

"They’re very hard - I think they’re extremely progressive. It’s totally wrong to read them as almost a proto-fascist band. My god, they explicitly supported Die Linke, the leftists there, and so on. I like their extremely subversive from within, undermining of all this - you know? Like, it gives me pleasure. Psychologically I’m a fascist - everyone knows it, no? Who published this - Daily everyone knows it, no? Who published this - Daily Telegraph? That jerk who pronounced me a leftist fascist, you know? Alan Johnson or who? So - I mean - I think we should take over these - all of these - authoritarian gestures, unity, leader, sacrifice, f*ck it! Why not? No? So, Rammstein are my guys." [Zizek here]

“The minimal elements of the Nazi ideology enacted by Rammstein are something like pure elements of libidinal investment,” Slavoj Zizek informs us in the documentary film The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012) as frontman Till Lindemann goose-steps across a stage. “Enjoyment has to be, as it were, condensed in some minimal ticks, gestures which do not have precise ideological meaning. What Rammstein does is it liberates these elements from their Nazi articulation. It allows us to enjoy them in their pre-ideological state. The way to fight Nazism is to enjoy these elements, ridiculous as they were here, by suspending the Nazi’s horizon of meaning. This way you undermine Nazism from within." [Here]

The detachability of Fascist spectacle from Fascist policy is, in essence, Mosley's cynicism: the attachment of 'libidinally invested' fashy elements such as para-militarism to technocratic economics is an attempted solution to get popular buy-in to necessary, but unexciting policies.

Every now and then on social media you'll get a to-and-fro about whether Fascists are socialist or conservative. Great fun for all involved, no doubt, but usually no more than knockabout stuff. But certainly, some 'progressives' do adopt libidinally invested (ie fun) elements such as threatening to punch people, parading, and even anti-Semitism (sorry, anti-Zionism) which earlier times claimed as Fascist. (Undoubtedly, genuinely self-identified Nazis also do this. On the other hand, genuine, Burkean conservatives tend to stroll round individually in worn tweeds, assaulting passersby with superior smirks.)  Putting that aside, modern progressivism does seem to have found a way arbitrarily to attach libidinally invested elements to technocratic, dull policies. The Remain campaign, for example, seems to have convinced itself that the technocratic EU is the natural home for a full blown erotic attachment enjoyable in itself and able to generate even more joyful practices such as the anathematisation of opponents. A similar movement is seen in the way that modern 'Scottish civic' nationalism generates an erotic commitment to the establishment of technocratic, modern government instead of rule by obscurantist British aristos.

I'm not really interested here in arguing that modern progressives are Fascists or even 'fashy', although I do think they have at the least attached enjoyable 'authoritarian gestures' to socialist substance. My main point here is that progressivism quite recently seems to have imitated a genuine Fascist (Mosley) in attaching erotically charged elements to dull, technocratic ends. Even if those elements are not always the same as Mosley's, they do resemble his in their function: to make technocracy fun. 

And contrast with that the conservatism of Russell Kirk or Edmund Burke: a disavowal of the end of technocratic government in favour of government as prudence; moreover, a disavowal of the means of enthusiasm in favour of temperance and an Augustinian suspicion of the possibility of political Utopianism. Most importantly, there is a disavowal of the arbitrary attachment of libidinally charged elements to political ends, in favour of the reflective discernment of the nature of things, where there is an intimate, sacramental relationship between what is seen and loved as a means, and what is willed as an end.

[An afterthought: traditional blood and soil nationalism need not anathematise other nations. A love of one's own home and culture is entirely compatible with an cknowledgement that others have their own homes and their own erotic commitment to them. Civic nationalism on the other hand is predicated on our being good people and our opponents being bad people. Liberation from a controlling power in the first case in principle at least ends the hatred of the imperial nation; in the second case, the imperial power remains, no longer an oppressor perhaps, but still bad people full of bad habits. To be concrete: in the eyes of progressive nationalists, if Scotland were ever liberated from England, England would remain full of cruel toffs, intent on starving the poor and destroying foxes and the NHS.]

Coercing Jews: the Mortara Case

                                               Seeing everywhere with complete clarity

A recent book review in First Things has prompted turbulence on Twitter. The review concerned the Mortara Case in which a Jewish child, secretly baptised against the wishes of his parents, was taken away from his Jewish family and brought up a Catholic. (The Wikipedia article gives an extended and, so far as I can see, fair account of the case.)

Although I'm not sure that it's quite fair to say that the author of the review (a Dominican priest) endorsed the Church's actions, he is certainly sympathetic to them. This unsurprisingly provoked some angry responses including one by Rod Dreher.

The Catholic philosopher Joseph Shaw gives a good analysis of why he thinks Pius IX acted wrongly; however,  his main point (that the Church acted inconsistently (and anti-Semitically) in taking away Edgardo whilst ignoring the plight of Catholic children who were not being brought up in the Faith by nominally Catholic parents) is vulnerable to arguments that a) the jeopardy of a child's eternal felicity in a household not even nominally Catholic is factually greater than of a child in a nominally Catholic family; and b) that the Church should have intervened more elsewhere is not an argument that it was wrong to intervene here.

The philosophical problem here is that all (most?) societies acknowledge that, at some point, the welfare of children might require a child to be protected or removed from its parents. More generally, all societies acknowledge that force is sometimes required to prevent wrongs. If (as here) the welfare is a matter of eternal felicity, the reasons for exercising coercion seem pretty strong. Now clearly, secularists will regard this belief of Catholics that baptism and bringing up in the faith are matters of the highest importance to the welfare of children as absurd; but they too will countenance removal of children in the face of abuse (which, at least according to some, will include worshipping sky fairies and circumcision).

So I don't think that the general problem of coercion and removal is a specifically Catholic one, and, given this, it is inevitable that there will be hard cases and, as in all hard cases, the probability that sometimes the wrong decision will be made. (And even where the right decision is made, considerable suffering may result.) But there is undoubtedly something utterly terrible about this case, whatever may need to be said about other cases.

Let's try a slightly different tack. Wisdom literature is full of injunctions to silence and reticence in judgment. For example, 

Proverbs 17:28 Even fools are thought wise when they keep silent; with their mouths shut, they seem intelligent.

Proverbs 10:19 Transgression is at work where people talk too much, but anyone who holds his tongue is prudent.

Moreover, I'd suggest that more generally, the contrast between the folk image of a wise person and that of a merely rational person rests primarily in gravitas: the wise person is reluctant to speak and give judgment unnecessarily; the rationalist has a tendency to (in Russell Kirk's words) to be a chirping sectary (think Richard Dawkins). (As an aside, part of the comic value of Polonius may be that he tries to be both grave and chatty.) So wisdom involves a greater tendency to silence and reticence than the normal run of humanity will display. (And perhaps it is not irrelevant that the wisest of the wise, Solomon, displayed his wisdom most obviously in a child custody case by refusing to make his own judgment.)

Moreover, in the face of the past, we should often feel a particular perplexity in offering moral judgment. It is quite obvious that both the Roman practice of fighting in the arena and the Western practice of the Atlantic slave trade were foul: a society without these things is a better society ceteris paribus. But what really is one to say about those virtuous figures who lived in those societies and lived and prospered sometimes because of those practices? Are they wicked men? (And yet, if one refuses to condemn them because times were different, are we falling into a cultural relativism?) The wise person will, I'd suggest, simply admit the perplexity: there is no need to pretend to a certainty of speech we do not possess and of which we have no need.)

This thought is relevant to a lot of the 'decolonising' activities that seem to be sweeping much of the West. We should find, for example, it perplexing to know precisely what to say about figures such as General Lee with his support of the slave owning South or Washington with his slaves. We can examine and describe their actions and their failings, but to try to come to some sort of final moral decision about their characters or their place in history is both rash and unnecessary. Unlike a judge who does have to come to some sort of decison in the midst of moral complexity, unlike any agent who has to decide what to do in the face of a real moral dilemma, we have absolutely no reason to come to a decision on whether Pius IX acted rightly or wrongly: indeed, it would be wise not to.

(I leave this point resting on the simple observation that wisdom, as commonly understood, involves reticence and the avoidance of unnecessary judgment. As to why this is so, I might offer two strategies. The first is a strong strategy: this might be a justification based a) on the Wittgensteinian thought that language is rooted in a form of life beyond which it 'goes on holiday' and b) the Aristotelian thought that the aim of moral philosophy is ethical improvement, leading to the conclusion that, while reflecting on the ethics of the past is a good thing, it is rash to go from that reflection to a judgment that is, by nature of its being directed at the past, useless. If such a strategy works, there is, in principle, an impossibility of reassessing completely the actions of (especially) the long or very foreign past. The second is a weak strategy: this would be what I take to the commonsense observation that judgments about the past tend, in practice, to be quite difficult to recreate in complete detail, coupled with the thought that they tend to be rather pointless. Such a strategy would not entirely rule out making judgments on the past, but it would strongly discourage it in practice.)

One of the reasons that current discussion of the case involves high emotion is that it seems to have consequences for something that is a live issue: anti-Semitism in Catholicism. I think Joseph Shaw is right that there is indeed more than a whiff of anti-Semitism in the decisions of the Mortara case; I think it is clear that there is still a problem with anti-Semitism in the West, quite apart from specifically in some parts of the Church. Even assuming some form of Catholic Integralism max, where all the decision making powers of the State were thoroughly Catholic, it would still be to the point to reflect on whether those decisions were informed by anti-Semitism, or by wisdom and by virtuous application of Catholic principles. That is of course no guarantee that such a state wouldn't perform something like the Mortara case again. But equally, there is no guarantee that a liberal state wouldn't abduct Jewish children to prevent circumcision or to enforce one-or-other of the modern shibboleths of sexual liberation contrary to Orthodox Jewish belief. A key point here is that, following both Plato and Aristotle, the role of practical wisdom in politics tends to be emphasised in Catholic thought over that of principles: at the very least, practical wisdom is required to apply principles well. That practical wisdom (prudentia) cannot be replaced simply by articulated rules, and thus it is difficult to step back into a long past, very foreign situation and come to judgment: as Aristotle notes, it depends on the perception of the wise person, and, moreover, (as I will add) that perception is essentially embodied and present and not distanced from the situation of judgment by time, space and culture.

I don't particularly want to turn this into another screed on the virtues of conservatism, but it does strike me that a refusal to avoid perplexity, a refusal to express unnecessary judgment whether about the past or fantastic futures is indeed a very wise and thoroughly conservative thing. And it's a habit that social media with its constant demand for verbal responses and constant temptation to imitate the role of the public judge that most of us actually are not will of course regard as cowardice. There is no particular reason to think that we can say anything very sensible about whether a decision made in very different circumstances from ours was the right one, even if we can, carefully, reflectively, tease out some of the ethical background from which those decisions emerge. The real task for Catholics from this case is to learn lessons about the sneaking pervasiveness of anti-Semitism, the sacredness of the family and the impossibility of ever getting any institution that always works properly.

And that will of course sound to many like a cop out. But that's because they are children of modernity (or perhaps more exactly here Kant), who believe that there exists an entirely rational ethics of principle, smoothly applicable at least in theory by human beings across all times and cultures without the need for the virtue of prudentia, while I believe the only panopticon exists in the mind of God, whose vision we glimpse only sporadically and partially. And moreover I believe both that we should refrain from judgment where we can and also that, where we cannot, we should exercise it with fear and trembling and in the knowledge that we are scurrying creatures on sacred ground.

                             Judges properly attired for entering the sacred space of judgment

I am conscious in arguing this that it might sound, particularly to a Jewish audience, that this is a typical attempt to avoid the admission of guilt, a tendency typical of Western anti-Semitism in general and a general Catholic inclination to preserve an illusion of infallibility. Perhaps. But the constant demand to revisit the past and to exact precise judgment on it seems to be a very modern, very western habit, one fuelled in large part by recent changes in technology. Moreover the de-sacralization of judgment, the viewing of it as an everyday activity to which all of us are called all the time, is again of fairly recent and geographically limited occurrence. So while there is a constant temptation, particularly if one has a shared identity with a victim group in a particular case, to feel the urgency of just this event, of the exceptional call to judgment here, I would simply ask someone feeling this whether you are sure that the general practice, of which this is merely just one example, is so obviously a good or possible thing that you will set aside more general worries about it in the face of the urgency of just this one case?

Sex (and Aristotle)

Mudblood Catholic (Gabriel Blanchard) is currently doing an excellent series of posts (first here) in response to Ed Feser's equally excellent natural law analysis of sex (best to start from this blogpost here accompanied by reading Feser's paper referred to in the article).

As Gabriel has not yet finished his series of posts and because I simply don't have the Lenten patience to give the topic a complete response, what follows is inevitably incomplete. Instead I'm going to focus on some key features of an Aristotelian reaction to what I've read so far, on the grounds that the Aristotelian background is sometimes assumed rather than stated by Aquinas' position (and thus sometimes overlooked by later Thomist thinkers) and, in any case, is of interest in itself. (It is of course anyway the privilege of an analytic Thomist not to be consistently Thomist and sometimes to try on the mantle of analytic Aristotelianism instead.) I'd stress that the following is simply a reflection on some points in the existing analyses: it claims neither completeness nor aspires directly to correct or refute either Feser or Blanchard.

The first thing to note is that Catholicism allows and even requires philosophical thinking in morality. There is a widely held non-Catholic suspicion that philosophy dies with Catholic dogmatic religion: that answers, being laid out and decided, form a telephone directory of morality rather than, say, the desperate existential, but open-ended quest that seems to typify the earlier dialogues of Plato. This is simply false as both the Blanchard/Feser exchange shows as well as does even a passing familiarity with the internal disputes of mediaeval scholasticism. Quite why this is so is a different matter and one that would require a much more extended discussion than I can provide here. But in any case (an insight I think I owe to Leo Strauss) unlike the legalised reasoning of Islam and Judaism, Christianity to a great extent can embrace the fluidity of the philosophical life in a way that these other revealed religions cannot: roughly, the tension between Athens and Jerusalem is one internal to Christianity and external to Judaism and Islam. So the first point is that understanding sex and the morality of sex for Catholics involves hard philosophical thought: it is not something that can be simply read off the page of a dogmatic codex. (I should note in passing that this philosophical requirement is not necessarily one for each individual but for the Church as a whole. I however pass over the details of this for the present.)  To translate this into Aristotelian terms, the tentativeness about moral reasoning that is found throughout the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics is one that is not foreign to Catholicism. To translate this into Blanchard/Feser terms, the debate between them is entirely to be expected and welcomed. As Gabriel notes:

I started having problems with it immediately, which was delicious. People don’t usually realize how spacious Catholicism really is. Seeing it from the outside, they perceive the dogmas merely as boundaries—and they are in one sense, but they are much more like LEGOs: the defined structure is what lets you do all the fun stuff.

The second thing to note is that, coupled with this philosophical openness is indeed a dogmatic certainty. In the present case, for example, homosexual intercourse is clearly morally wrong: I won't attempt to defend that here except to note that, for 2000 years, that's been the clear teaching. Whatever the philosophical openness, there is also a dogmatic closure. This element of brute assertion is also typical of Aristotle:

That is why in order to be a competent student of the noble and the just, and in short of the topics of politics in general, the pupil is bound to have been well trained in his habits. For the starting point is the fact that a thing is so; if this be satisfactorily ascertained, there will be no need also to know the reason why it is so. (EN I 1095b)

The combination of these first two points is that moral philosophy will have to deal with some moral truths being clearly established and yet the precise reasoning for those truths being open to the sort of fluidity of debate typical of philosophical discussion.

Related to those points is a third point: that what is clear to the wise (moral) person (phronimos) will not be clear to those who are not.

Virtue then is the settled disposition of the mind determining the choice of actions and emotions, consisting essentially in the observance of the mean relative to us, this being determined by principle, that is, as the prudent man [phronimos] would determine it. (EN II 1106b-1107a)

Consequently the unproved assertions and opinions of experienced and elderly people, or of the prudent [phronimoi], are as much deserving of attention as those which they support by proof; for experience has given them an eye for things, and so they see correctly. (EN VI 1143b)

To sum all this up, there will be limits in what philosophical reasoning can establish, both in terms of coming to clear conclusions and in terms of coming to conclusions which might overthrow the common sense of the wise person. (At this point, we might add as Catholics, the certainties of revealed teaching will help. But the space for certainties intruding into philosophical reasoning from external wisdom has already been made by Aristotle.)

More specifically, in relation to the Blanchard/Feser debate, at some points, what will be clear to the clear sightedness of the moral will not be clear to those of us who are not so gifted. We may remain unconvinced by their arguments. But that does not mean that we are right not to be so convinced: such a failure is a result of our lack, either because we are corrupt or because we are in some other way impaired. As the modern neo-Aristotelian Rosalind Hursthouse puts it:

Aristotle's view allows that his answer will not work for everyone. It fails for two different sorts of people. One is the sort of person who has been sufficiently corrupted by their upbringing not to be able to see anything amiss in the life of the person who is 'successfully' non-virtuous...The other sort of person for whom Aristotle's answer may not work would be an 'unnatural' human being... (Hurthouse in Warburton, 2005, pp182-183)

Given the Catholic understanding of the effects of original sin, particularly on concupiscence, all of us are likely to find ourselves constantly wondering how many of our own judgments are thus impaired.


I now move on to a different aspect of the debate. One may be an Aristotelian either in believing that Aristotle has usefully set out a basic framework of approaching ethics, and/or in believing that how he applies that framework has produced useful results. So, for example, one might accept that the basic Aristotelian approach sketched above (and perhaps adding such matters as teleology) is a good approach to sexual ethics, while denying that the sort of traditional Aristotelian conclusions on such ethics are actually necessitated by such an approach. Aristotle's own treatment of sex, for example, is primarily set out in Books VIII and IX of the Nicomachean Ethics where it is seen as part of the overarching concept of philia (friendship) rather than through, say, the prism of Lewis' The Four Loves. It would be perfectly possible to argue that Aristotle is correct in his basic approach to ethics while suggesting that the treatment of sexual ethics in the Nicomachean Ethics is inadequate. Indeed, it would be hard to argue that sexual ethics is adequately treated by Aristotle because he says very little indeed about it. That said, I am going to argue that what Aristotle does say provides a rather more helpful starting point than (say) Lewis' divisions between the four various types of love (which form an important part of Blanchard's analysis).

Aristotle's analysis of friendship divides it into three main types: that of virtue, that of pleasure and that of usefulness. The friendship of husband and wife is, in terms of its function, one of pleasure (obvious), one of usefulness (both in procreation and other support) and also potentially of virtue 'if the partners be of high moral character' (EN VIII 1162a). A number of points emerge from this analysis.

First, a philosophical analysis can be useful for what it leaves out or passes over as well as for what it includes. I confess that Aristotle's rather brisk way with sexual feelings and romantic attraction attracts me. As he says elsewhere:

We must therefore be content if, in dealing with subjects and starting from premises thus uncertain, we succeed in presenting a broad outline of the truth...for it is the mark of an educated mind to expect that amount of exactness in each kind which the nature of the particular subject admits (EN I 1094b).

That many writers over the years have agonised over the nuances of romantic sensibility does not mean that every nuance so produced is worthwhile: in addition to the erratic nature of the sensibilities of fallen humanity, in general some oversensitivity to detail will tend to disguise the core of the matter. (I find for example the erotic hesitancies and wanderings of Iris Murdoch's characters often intensely irritating in this way and long for a brisk sensibility such as that of Flora Poste.)

Secondly, sex is analysed primarily through the household and the nucleus of that household, the man/woman couple. In essence, this is because the tele (ends) of the organism and parts of the organism make sense within an overall ordering of the cosmos: the species imitates eternity by its eternal existence while its members undergo a cycle of birth, procreation and death. The individual's life takes place within the social units of (eg) the state and the household, which themselves have goals and to which the individual's actions are subordinated and contribute. In other words, sexual activity and the proper use of the sexual organs forms part of an ordered structure of the universe and cannot be understood or even noticed apart from that structure.

Why does that matter? Well, take Blanchard's following observation:

Thirdly—and this is a lesser point, but it’s important, given the claims made by Neo-Scholasticism for what shows something to be natural—it must be pointed out, as a matter of historical record, that romantic love was not regarded as a dignified or spiritual phenomenon until the twelfth century, at least in Christendom and its Euro-Levantine predecessors—except, in Greece and later in Rome, for homosexual Eros. To revere romantic love, that fanatical, self-abasing, inconstant, reckless, and involuntary phenomenon, was as ridiculous to our Christian ancestors of the early Middle Ages as it was to their pagan ancestors of the classical era. Nor, until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was the romantic tradition linked to marriage even by Romantics; for the Troubadours who originated the tradition of courtly love, adultery was of its essence. The idea that Eros is shown by actual human habits to be naturally directed toward marriage is an artifact of a long and localized cultural development—or, more bluntly, pure moonshine.


Now I take an Aristotelian response here to be something along the following lines. People have all sorts of desire for pleasure. To the extent that romantic love is just a desire for pleasure, it hardly matters. (One might as well worry about the finer points of playing tiddly winks. Even if you are very keen on tiddly winks, it still doesn't matter that much.) It does matter to the extent that it is directed or can be directed towards one of the great ends of human nature. The most obviously relevant one here is that of creating the household (and thus ensuring the continuity of the species by procreation and education of the children). The erotic disorder of romantic love needs to be canalised to that end. (And despite the received wisdom that in long term marriages, such romantic intensity burns low after the initial turbulence, as a member of such a long term relationship, I think I'd have to say that, in many ways, though undoubtedly canalised towards sustaining a childbearing household, its intensity has grown to an extent I never would have dreamed of as being possible those many years ago.)

But in addition to that creation of the household, Aristotle would also have pointed to the greatest end of human beings as being relevant here: that of the contemplation of divine things (EN X 1177a). That contemplation is easier with a few co-workers (1177b) but in general requires minimal external help.

But the friendship of the good is good and grows with their interaction. And they seem actually to become better by putting their friendship into practice, and because they correct each other's faults, for each takes the impress from the other of those traits in him that give him pleasure -whence the saying:

             Noble deeds from noble men.

(EN IX 1172a)

The telos of contemplation is aided by having a few friends. That is possible within a good marriage (although it is certainly not either exclusive to marriage or indeed necessary to marriage). The household by its other directedness of procreation and education of children disciplines romantic love towards the second best life of active moral virtue (EN X 1178a). In the best scenario, it can also discipline romantic love towards the end of contemplation. Both those ends matter because they fit into the wider pattern of the cosmos (through the imitation of eternity in procreation and death, and in the imitation of god by contemplation of the divine). To the extent that romantic love can be turned towards those great ends, it matters. But to the extent it cannot, it is only a constellation of bodily pleasures, the precise nature of which hardly matters at all. (So to take up Blanchard's point, that romantic love is only a comparative late comer to our cultural imaginary and to our understanding of marriage is really neither here nor there: only to the extent that it fits in with the understanding of human teleology sketched above should it be be attended to. However marriage as the possible site of important and virtuous friendship is there in Aristotle, and. I'd suggest, it is this rather than the focus on romantic love which provides a sounder base for the analysis of marriage's (and hence sex's) importance.)


Let me try to sum up the main points of this post:

1) An Aristotelian analysis of love (and of other things) will not always be obvious to all people (or indeed in parts to anyone!) It requires hard philosophical thought and debate. (And may need to be resolved by the assertion of the wise or revelation.)

2) Aristotle's own analysis of romantic love is quite coarse grained and leaves out a lot of detail that later thinkers might introduce. This may well be an advantage.

3) For any human activity, it is always necessary to ask towards what goal it is directed. That direction in turn will fit into a wider, teleological understanding of the universe as a whole. Without that understanding of the whole, it is likely that the telos (and thus nature) of the part will be misunderstood.

4) Sexual attraction is to be analysed primarily in the context of the procreating household and the establishment of the male/female pair. Other cases are of marginal importance.

Virtue ethics and motherhood

 

The downfall of Andrea Leadsom as prospective Prime Minister was at least strongly associated with her apparent claim that being a mother gave her an edge over the childless Theresa May.

Putting aside the details of what she said, didn't say and the tone with which she said it, I found the resulting Twitter flood of mockery utterly depressing. Whilst appreciating the inevitability of the brutal knockabout of politics, many comments from people not directly involved displayed a general acceptance of the view that being a mother offered absolutely nothing in the way of a worthwhile experience or endeavour.

Let's consider another way of spending, say, eighteen years of one's life: military service. If a political leader said something along the lines of, 'I think my eighteen years of military service has helped make me a better politician', then I doubt anyone would have objected. It's of course not a knockdown reason to vote for someone. (On the whole, you might suspect that military service would be less important than (say) successfully running one of the more important ministeries.) But it would count for something.

Note a few things here. First, to claim that it gives you an advantage implies that it gives you an advantage over others -and that those others could be (if you wanted to or thought it tactful) be identified. So it is implicitly claiming that, ceteris paribus, you have an advantage over those who have not served. The mere fact of claiming an advantage isn't unreasonable, even if that advantage might be outweighed by other experiences that your opponent has and you haven't. The reluctance to mention motherhood in this way (particularly when May had made it clear that her childlessness was both involuntary and regretted) says more about our implicit acceptance of how important motherhood is to people's flourishing: we expect people (especially women) to be extremely sensitive about failing to have children in a way that we don't consider people likely to be so sensitive about other lacks (such as military service). Paradoxically, the 'horror' that some claimed to have felt about Leadsom's remarks is a testimony to the sui generis importance of motherhood.

But what is that importance? Let's take two aspects. First, it achieves something. Giving birth to a child and rearing it is essential if humanity is to continue. To the extent that we need or want a new generation, we need mothers. It is, we might normally think, right to honour people who achieve an important good. Secondly, it opens up a range of experience that profoundly affects our character and understanding of the world. Going back to the example of military service, fighting in the front line might plausibly be thought to open up an aspect of the world and to produce changes in character that others who had not undergone this might not have access to. This doesn't mean that everyone will be so altered and it doesn't mean that there mightn't be other experiences the importance of which again might outweigh the importance of military experience. But we might once more say that, ceteris paribus, the experience of war is something that would count for something. Turning to parenthood -and especially the experience of motherhood- I find it difficult to see how, normally, such an intense and extended experience wouldn't have a profound effect on people.

For me, the Leadsom stooshie demonstrates yet again how the natural centrality of the family and the experience of parenthood, especially motherhood, is being marginalised. It brought to mind passages in a book I hadn't read for probably around twenty years in which the virtue ethicist Rosalind Hursthouse reflects on the nature and value of motherhood:

So, I conclude, bearing children is intrinsically worthwhile. To do it, and do it well, is to have done something morally significant. Doing it well involves exercising courage, fortitude and endurance, and, moreover, exercising them in the achievement of something worthwhile, not, like being a wall-of-death rider, something worthless. What is done is, I claim, not just worthwhile and significant but morally worthwhile and significant, because of its connection with, on the one hand, the value or sanctity of life and, on the other, with what I have roughly categorised as 'family life' -the field of our closest relationships with other people. For these two areas are the concern of morality if anything is.

[…]

Perhaps the general conclusion to be drawn from any serious discussion of 'the worthwhile' is that all of us who lead ordinary lives should consider whether

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

(William Wordsworth)

Then the particular conclusion to be drawn from the particular discussion of the worthwhile we have been going through in this section is that no woman who has borne children well in the ordinary way should say humbly to herself, 'Well, I haven't done anything with my life really; I've “laid waste my powers” ', for she can say, 'I have done this much'. But anyone who has not borne children well might have to say, 'I haven't done anything with my life really'.

[Hursthouse, 1987, Beginning Lives, pp315-18]

The legitimacy of rebellion -another bite

One of the promises I've made and not yet fulfilled is to respond to Cathy Barry's combox response to my previous post on the issue of rebellion. Partly this is just procrastination, but partly it's because I wanted to get some objectivity on the nature of the debate by letting the ideas bed down  a little more. (And I should point out that I'm not expecting any response to all this! It's too long and just the effluvia of an overexcited mind.)

Once again, this is merely some jottings in this area and is more to keep a note of progress I've made in case I or anyone else wishes to return to the subject. It consists of three parts: the first dealing with the background issues and the reason why I think the issue is particularly interesting; the second dealing directly with Cathy's responses; and the third dealing with some further (partial) explorations which may be worth recording to take further.

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Part I: Context

There is of course a reason to find the legitimacy of rebellion interesting in itself, particularly in the context of celebrations of 1916. And given the overwhelming influence of Catholicism on the Easter Rising, a specific interest in the Catholic theology and philosophy behind the Rising is again natural.

Whilst not dismissing those aspects, my main personal interest in this issue is, on reflection, concerned with the issue of subsidiarity. I've long held the view that one of the prime neuralgic points between secular modernity and Catholicism is the issue of the existence of forms of communal life between the individual and the State. This is especially a matter of the family, but also those communities of civil society, which possess a legitimacy which is not derived either from the voluntary accession of individuals nor from the delegation of authority by the State. So I'm interested in rebellion primarily as an occasion when (perhaps) those sources of authority which tend to become invisible when the State is working well, suddenly have to act independently of the State or indeed to oppose the State. (There's the added interest here in times of Brexit of being reminded of supra-national authorities (traditionally the Papacy and the Empire but with the EU and UN as possible successors) and the recourse to their legitimacy against the authority of the State.) In sum, rebellion highlights the multi-layered sources of authority in Catholicism as opposed to the tendency of modernity to concentrate all authority in the hands of the individual and the State.

In particular, one of the lacks of (some) modern Catholic social teaching is the lack of much developed thinking on the nature of these little platoons. Crudely, subsidiarity is often treated as an injunction simply to delegate authority to local or regional government without much thought about what the legitimacy (or even reality) of those lower authorities might be. This is (for example) at odds with Aristotle's treatment of entities below the State particularly in books 8 and 9 of the Nicomachean Ethics where he examines how human social life has a variety of forms all based on the drive of philia (friendship). I won't try to explore this issue in any depth now, but I'm interested in the way varieties of communal life in little platoons arise naturally (and this of course involves the way modernity might undermine such communities as described eg in Putnam's Bowling Alone). A specific case in this area which I noticed recently has been the emphasis in some Dark Enlightenment discussions on the 'tribal' nature of human beings (and in that context, Ross Douthat's article on the tribal nature of cosmopolitan elites makes interesting reading). One doesn't have to be a fully paid up member of the gene machine/evolutionary psychology brigade to wonder what effect a naturally selected tendency to live together in chimpanzee like bands might have had on our current psychology and on our politics.

Anyway, much for another time. But if anything like this line of thought is right, the crisis of the State in rebellion ought to throw into relief these other communities and sources of authority.

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Part II: Replies to Cathy's points in combox.


Her comments were as follows:

1. The great issue with seeking to establish legitimate authority in advance is that you are signalling your intention to revolt. Imagine North Korea rebels sought legitimacy from the Pope (or the UN) in advance, or sought to get signatures from a large number of officials - what action would the regime take as the news inevitably seeped out? The effect is to make revolt against tyranny extremely difficult, and the more effective the tyranny, the more difficult it is.

Any moral restriction on violence is going to make it more difficult to use and, in particular, is going to make it less likely to succeed. (So the conditions on a just war 'chafe' most precisely in the most desperate situations such as the allied bombing of Germany or the use of the atomic bomb in Japan.) The mere fact of some additional difficulty in rebellion is thus not in principle an objection to the applicability of a moral requirement. Moreover, that difficulty may be so great as to rule out a particular rebellion (or war): a war or rebellion might be highly desirable on many grounds, but might still be ruled out on the moral tests (certainly in the case of the just war and (I'd argue analogically) in the case of a rebellion).

A stronger objection might be if the tests ruled out *any* case in which war (or a rebellion) could be justly waged. But even if the requirement for just authority were more burdensome for rebellions (and I'm not sure in general it is), that doesn't seem to make them impossible. For example, in the case of the 1916 rising and the Scottish Wars of Independence, authority was actually sought from the papacy. Moreover, any rebellion involving more than a single agent requires some sort of communication between individuals and thus the risk of discovery. All that seeking legitimate authority would add to that unavoidable difficulty would be that certain individuals as authorities would have to be sought out (and given the dispersal of authority in (say) mediaeval societies, a general move in that direction does not seem overly burdensome in most cases, even if it might be in some).

2. This would make sense if the Church in general thought revolt always a bad thing. Aquinas says sedition (revolt by part of the state against another part) is always wrong, and in reply to the objection that "it is praiseworthy to deliver a multitude from a tyrannical rule...Therefore there can be sedition without mortal sin." Aquinas answers that there is "no sedition in disturbing a government of this kind, unless indeed the tyrant's rule be disturbed so inordinately, that his subjects suffer greater harm from the consequent disturbance than from the tyrant's government." Thus the thing called by some "sedition" is not really sedition when it is (a) aimed at restoring the common good and (b) will not have worse effects than the existing government. There are two tests here to determine whether a revolt is sedition or not. 

I agree. The only question is whether, given that a disturbance [perturbatio] is not a sedition, then the only test of legitimacy is the pragmatic one of whether it advances the common good or not. Aquinas frankly in the Summa is silent on this, but, quite apart from anything else, there is the question of plausibility: why should questions of just war require considerations beyond effectiveness while questions of rebellion require solely considerations of effectiveness? (In the absence of any explicit test beyond effectiveness, is it (eg) legimitate in a rebellion to target non-combatants?)

3. Aquinas does say that sedition is like war (and by analogy, revolt that is just must also be). It is indeed reasonable to look at his other writing to determine the approach to sedition. But it cannot be simply supposed without argument that Just War Theory applies in all parts to sedition or rebellion. Without being an expert on this in any way, earlier medieval writers have certainly supposed that deposing tyrants is rather different from attacking another state.

Again I'd agree. Rebellion is in principle (but see below on Aristotle's acceptance of vagueness in political and moral resoning) not the same as a just war (although it is noticeable that both the 1916 and Arbroath declarations seem to try to frame the perturbatio as war against an external enemy which suggests a certain reluctance to identify the action simply as rebellion). And again, I'd accept that the test of legitimate authority couldn't be simply lifted from the conditions of the just war to that of rebellion without some reasoning to back it up. Assuming both our interests here are primarily in the substance of the issue (ie more in ascertaining the correct conditions for a just rebellion rather than in ascertaining Aquinas' own position) I suppose my argument here would be simply that, if the question of authority is a good test of a just war, why wouldn't analogous questions arise for a rebellion, especially given that, in the Thomist (and I'd argue correct) view of a country, there would be possible sources of authority both above and below the ruler which could be resorted to?


4. If we look at your example, the Declaration of Arbroath was in 1320. In 1306 Robert the Bruce was crowned King of Scots, after Edward had been recognised as king of Scotland the previous year by the Pope. There was ongoing war until Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Based on that timeline, Robert was only attempting to establish his legitimate authority via the Declaration of Arbroath *after* he'd been in revolt for an extended period of time against the king the Pope had acknowledged. So was that prior revolt illegitimate, despite the long list of grievances the Declaration makes against the English monarchs? Is it really possible to declare an authority as legitimate retroactively?  

The Declaration (here) states

And now, the divine Will, our just laws and customs, which we will defend to the death, the right of succession and the due consent and assent of all of us have made him [ie Robert] our leader and our king.

So Robert is King legitimately in 1306 (by authority of 'Barons, Freeholders and all the common people of the kingdom of Scotland') and to the extent that the Pope failed to acknowledge that, he is wrong.

I suppose I'd go back here to Aristotle (both as a matter of exegesis of the Thomist view but primarily because I think he's right!) on the general lack of definiteness of practical affairs. (Eg) Aquinas in his commentary on the Ethics (Book II, 259 here):

The teaching on matters of morals even in their general aspects is uncertain and variable. But still more uncertainty is found when we come down to the solution of particular cases. This study does not fall under either art or tradition because the causes of individual actions are infinitely diversified. Hence judgment of particular cases is left to the prudence of each one. He who acts prudently must attentively consider the things to be done at the present time after all the particular circumstances have been taken into consideration. In this way a doctor must act in bringing about a cure and a captain in steering a ship. Although this doctrine is such as to be uncertain in its general aspects and incapable of precision in particular cases, we ought to study it so that in these matters we may be of some assistance to men in directing their actions.

Practically, someone engaged in the sort of 'perturbation' involved in 1916 or 1320 cannot be certain whether they are engaged in a war or a rebellion. (I think it's pretty clear though in both cases that they would prefer to be seen as being clearly involved in a war against an external aggressor.) Practically (given the dispute about legitimacy of the rulers) they cannot be sure they are acting with legitimate authority. Hence seeking whatever legitimacy falls to hand at the time it falls to hand is what a wise person would do -and that appears to what is happening in both cases: appeals upward to the Pope and appeals downwards to the people/barons etc. It's very hard to imagine a rebellion which was not concerned to show itself as having some reliance on legitimate authority, particularly a rebellion founded on Catholic principles.

It's of course possible to imagine extreme examples where no such authority existed or could be ascertained. But there are also such extreme examples for wars (what happens if all the government are nuked in a first strike?) and in practice there are usually some sort of answers. (I am reminded that in Battlestar Galactica it is the rather lowly Secretary of Education who is the highest surviving official left to take over the presidency.) Moreover, I'm only arguing for the moment that (as I said in my previous post) 'might we agree that mediaeval political theory at least reluctant to concede right of rebellion/revolution to groups/individuals without legitimate authority?'  If that possibility of legitimate authority is not there at all, then that reluctance might be put aside. (See eg on this Aquinas below in his Commentary on the Sentences.) But in practice, I think it unlikely that this situation would often arise.


--------------------------

Part III: Sketchy explorations of other materials.

Some additional points:

1) There is (I discovered!) such as thing as the 'Lesser Magistrate doctrine' in Calvinism which holds the view that lesser magistrates have the duty to rebel against the tyranny of higher ones. (Wikipedia here.) This seems to have produced some rather sparky modern day followers in the American militia movement (here).

Calvin, Institutes, IV, ch 20 (here):

Although the Lord takes vengeance on unbridled domination, let us not therefore suppose that that vengeance is committed to us, to whom no command has been given but to obey and suffer. I speak only of private men. For when popular magistrates have been appointed to curb the tyranny of kings (as the Ephori, who were opposed to kings among the Spartans, or Tribunes of the people to consuls among the Romans, or Demarchs to the senate among the Athenians; and perhaps there is something similar to this in the power exercised in each kingdom by the three orders, when they hold their primary diets). So far am I from forbidding these officially to check the undue license of kings, that if they connive at kings when they tyrannise and insult over the humbler of the people, I affirm that their dissimulation is not free from nefarious perfidy, because they fradulently betray the liberty of the people, while knowing that, by the ordinance of God, they are its appointed guardians.

(I owe this insight to:

The American Revolution: Not a Just War
Gregg Frazer
Journal of Military Ethics
Vol. 14, Iss. 1, 2015 )

2) Johnson, J.T. 2013, "Ad Fontes: The Question of Rebellion and Moral Tradition on the Use of Force", Ethics & International Affairs, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 371-378. This baldly says:

"Stab, smite, slay!" These are not the words of Bashar al-Assad telling his forces how they should deal with the Syrian rebel movement, or indeed those of any other contemporary political leader, but rather the words of Martin Luther exhorting the German nobility to a harsh response to the peasants' rebellion of 1524-1525. ¹His writings show that he sympathized with many of the peasants' grievances so long as these did not issue in rebellion, but when they turned to force of arms, he responded sternly. This was not a peculiarity of Luther. Consider the following from an English courtier, Thomas Churchyard, writing admiringly of the treatment of Irish rebels in 1579 by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, commander of the English army sent to put down the rebellion:
He further tooke this order infringeable, that when soever he made any ostyng [military campaign], or inrode, into the enemies Countrey, he killed manne, woman, and child, and spoiled, wasted, and burned, by the grounde all that he might, leavyng nothing of the enemies in saffetie, whiche he could possiblie waste, or consume. ²
Nor was this way of thinking about how to deal with rebellion limited to the sixteenth century. Consider these passages from Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae--the first from "On Strife":
Strife seems to be a kind of private war. [As such,] strife is always sinful. . . . For if an officer of a prince or judge, in virtue of their public authority, should attack certain men and these defend themselves, it is not the former who is said to be guilty of strife, but those who resist the public power. ³
And this from "On Sedition":
Sedition is contrary to the unity of the multitude, viz., the people of a city or kingdom. . . . It is evident that the unity to which sedition is opposed is the unity of law and common good, whence it follows manifestly that sedition is opposed to justice and the common good. . . . It is a mortal sin. ⁴
The only exception Aquinas made was for the case of tyrannical rule, where he argued that subjects are not bound to obey tyrannical orders from the ruler.⁵Still, Aquinas argued that subjects should simply withhold obedience to wrongful orders, not rise in armed rebellion. While in extreme cases it is not a sin to overthrow a tyrant, it is subordinate rulers who should take the lead in this task (here Aquinas anticipated Calvin on the overthrow of an unjust ruler by "lesser magistrates"), not the people at large. The underlying reason is the responsibility the subordinate rulers have to use their ordering power in the service of justice and peace; other people may have the individual right of self-defense, but they do not have this larger responsibility for the common good, given that the overthrow of a tyrannical government by popular uprising may lead to social and political chaos and even worse injustice than that under the tyrant. Thus, Aquinas argues, the situation must be extreme to justify the overthrowing of a tyrant: "If there be not an excess of tyranny it is more expedient to tolerate for a while the milder tyranny than, by acting against the tyrant, to be involved in many perils which are more grievous than the tyranny itself." ⁶The reasoning here is not simply a defense of political order as such, but an acknowledgment of the centrifugal forces always present in communal life and the danger they may pose to justice and peace

[My emphasis]

Unfortunately, Johnson gives only a secondary reference to back up this claim: Gregory Reichberg , Henrik Syse , and Endre Begby , eds., The Ethics of War (Malden, Mass. : Blackwell Publishing , 2006 ), p.195

3)  I mentioned before the article

Thomas aquinas on the justification of revolution

Thomas A. Fay
History of European Ideas
Vol. 16, Iss. 4-6, 1993

I still haven't accessed this, but the four sources from Aquinas mentioned on the preview are:

Commentary on the Sentences II, dst 44, q.2, a.2 (1254-56) (English online version here.)

The most relevant portion here seems to be ad. 5:

To the fifth argument the answer is that Cicero speaks of domination obtained by violence and ruse, the subjects being unwilling or even forced to accept it and there being no recourse open to a superior who might pronounce judgment upon the usurper. In this case he that kills the tyrant for the liberation of the country, is praised and rewarded.

[Note a) preference for recourse to superior authority; b) only in the absence of that is the tyrannicide honoured.]

De Regno (1266) (relevant piece not specified but seems to be Book I, ch.7, ss.47 and 48 (here) ) (Latin and English) This gives a reasonably clear answer:

[47] Should private persons attempt on their own private presumption to kill the rulers, even though tyrants, this would be dangerous for the multitude as well as for their rulers. This is because the wicked usually expose themselves to dangers of this kind more than the good, for the rule of a king, no less than that of a tyrant, is burdensome to them since, according to the words of Solomon [Prov 20:26]: “A wise king scatters the wicked.” Consequently, by presumption of this kind, danger to the people from the loss of a good king would be more probable than relief through the removal of a tyrant. [48] Furthermore, it seems that to proceed against the cruelty of tyrants is an action to be undertaken, not through the private presumption of a few, but rather by public authority.

Summa Theologiae (1271-72) (again, place not specified but seems to refer to STh IIa IIae q.42 a. 1 and 2). (This was the question on sedition discussed in the previous post.) (here.) (English and Latin)

Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1272-73) (presumably on ch13 here) (Only in Latin)

(The dating is relevant because Fay argues that Aquinas seems to move from a greater acceptance of rebellion in his early writings to a 'much bleaker view of rebellion' in his later. I would stress 'seems' here: there appears to be a strong hint that this is a matter of 'seems' but not ''tis'.)

                       
[NB: I haven't worked through the above in detail but they're there for further research by me or anyone else interested.]

The legitimacy of rebellion

This is going to be one of those blogposts where the primary aim is for me to summarise some incomplete thoughts/research rather than to attempt a complete solution. (If I've misrepresented anyone else's views at any stage, my apologies, and do correct me in the combox. I find Twitter particularly frustrating for bringing out detail and nuances and I've quite likely misunderstood a lot of these.)

As a result of Ttony's post on the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Government (here for the text of the proclamation) I got into a discussion with Cathy Barry (on @IrishPhilosophy -follow!!) on the understanding of rebellion in the proclamation and, more widely, in just war/Thomist theory. To start at the end, I suggested the following eirenical formula:

Need longer treatment to deal with all this! But might we agree that mediaeval political theory at least reluctant to concede right of rebellion/revolution to groups/individuals without legitimate authority? And that brings us back to 1916 and rhetorical/real search for such authority

Now Cathy wasn't prepared to concede this -on the grounds that 'they didn't say that' (I'll return to this) - coupled with a reasonableness test from the following scenario:

 Imagine North Koreans with plan to revolt likely to succeed. How could they get authority?

Just to dispose of the latter point quickly, North Koreans (admittedly with a mediaeval Christian outlook on these things!) might seek authority from the papacy (as a universal authority) or from the bodies with authority within the land (eg barons). This is very much the scenario of the Declaration of Arbroath where, having emphasised the independent rights of the Scottish King (as against the English claim of his holding this kingship from the English monarchy) it then goes on to emphasise the rights of the Barones et Liberetenenetes ac tota Communitas Regni Scocie [barons and freemen and the whole commuity of the kingdom of Scotland] to depose a king who acts against their  leges et Consuetudines [laws and customs]. This is a communitas with internal sources of authority from within the state appealing to a source of authority above the state. Unsurprisingly, the Declaration is very mediaeval in this way: it does not simply appeal to the better condition of the Scottish people if they are ruled from Scotland, but to questions of legitimate authority to wage war and govern. It envisages not the modern emphasis on just the state and the invididual, but envisages other corporate sources of power and authority. [If I were developing this point, I'd say something here about a general point of mediaeval hermeneutics: both on grounds of commonsense ideas of (feudal) hierarchy in the mediaeval world and on the grounds of the neo-Platonic influence in (eg) Aquinas, I'd expect such a concern with establishing authority from above -not with the idea that the individual has a right to act himself, but with the idea that authority is bestowed from above and only in certain circumstances where that (state) authority has broken down is it legitimate to look elsewhere.]

Now of course fast forwarding to 1916, we are no longer operating in an entirely mediaeval picture (even for Catholics). But modern Catholic teaching, however far it has moved from the mediaeval world, still maintains a concern for the natural authority of bodies other than the state. Moreover, it maintains a concern for civic peace and preservation of th established order that goes beyond the simple question of effectiveness (would (eg) people be happier under a new regime?) [I leave this paragraph as an assertion, but it is one that I think is easily evidenced from (eg) the Compendium of Social Doctrine.] So I would expect, however changed from the Declaration of Arbroath, a concern in a heavily Catholic influenced document with the legitimate authority for their actions. And I would argue that this is pretty self evident from the text:

In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.

...

We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades in arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.

Now, of course, to assert legtimacy is one thing, to prove it is another. But going back to my eirenic claim above, I would expect Catholics at least to be worried about establishing legitimate authority for rebellion and, mutatis mutandis, I think that concern is evident both in the Declaration of Arbroath and the Proclamation. [There is also the rather interesting attempt (successful?) to achieve support from the papacy for the Easter Rising (Plunkett and Benedict XV here).]

I turn now to consider Cathy's point about texts: 'they didn't say that'. In the context of our discussion, I take that to be a reference to Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, particularly STh IIa IIae qq40 & 42 (on war and on sedition) q40 here q42 here . More specifically, we discussed the legitimacy of applying 'Just War' theory to rebellion. (I think this cropped up as a result of Ttony's focus on this question in his blog and this may have cropped up from the book he was reviewing. In any case, the applicability of Just War theory here is not an unreasonable thought.)

Now I concede immediately that Just War theory, certainly as sketched in q40 is not directly applicable to rebellion. But then neither is the theory of sedition in q42: indeed Aquinas clearly excludes 'perturbatio' of tyranny (and presumably rebellion is a subset of perturbationes of this kind) from sedition.

Consequently there is no sedition in disturbing a government of this kind, unless indeed the tyrant's rule be disturbed so inordinately, that his subjects suffer greater harm from the consequent disturbance than from the tyrant's government.


That just perturbatio is subject to a test of proportionality does not mean that this is the only test: it is a necessary condition of just pertubatio not a sufficient one. (Or at least, there is no indication in the text that this is the only test: Aquinas doesn't say that.) Moreover, although he does say that war is about external strife rather than internal strife ( 'quia bellum proprie est contra extraneos et hostes' (SThIIa IIae q42 a1 resp) note the 'proprie'. Given the usual Aristotelian ideas of focal meaning or paradigms, that somethng may not be said proprie of a case does not mean that this case cannot be illuminated by the case proprie described. Here, I'd expect the case of Just War to illuminate the issue of rebellion, particularly if it is (as was claimed in 1916) a case of perturbatio 'contra extraneos' ('The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people...') Aquinas certainly does seem to say this.

Moreover, there is a danger of reading Aquinas' Summa as a legal code. For example, let's accept for the sake of argument that q40 does not deal with rebellion. And let's also accept that rebellion is covered in q42 where it is subject only to the test of effectiveness. If this were a legal code, one might point to the clear text and exclude any other considerations. (That's debatable, but it is at least arguable.) But the Summa is a theological primer for students: it is no intended to cover every eventuality and nor does it. Now it is pretty obvious that Aquinas has nothing like a developed theory of rebellion: he is not trying for one and he certainly hasn't achieved it here. It is therefore reasonable to look to Aquinas' general approach in related areas to see how they might flesh out ad mentem divi Thomae the little he does say about rebellion. And it is reasonable in such circumstances to look to q40 on Just War.

To summarise. I conclude that a concern for the establishment of a legitimate authority to rebel is present in the 1916 Proclamation. Primarily, that is a matter of the text itself, but the general trend of Catholic teaching on this seems to make this a reasonable interpretation.

Secondly, I conclude that mediaeval political theory [is] at least reluctant to concede right of rebellion/revolution to groups/individuals without legitimate authority. In the comparative luxury of a blogpost over the 140 characters of Twitter, I'd concede that 'mediaeval political theory' is too wide, and would have to include (if taken literally) everything from Ango-Saxon theories of kingship to Marsilus of Padua and more. But in the context of the present discussion, if it means 'what formed the germ of Catholic political theory particularly in Aquinas', then I'd stand by the claim. This is for two reasons. First (and this is unevidenced but I take it to be intuitively plausible) there is that general hermeneutical point from above that a concern for levels of authority above the individual is what you'd expect (mostly) to find in the Middle Ages. Secondly, so far as the texts of the Declaration of Arbroath and the Proclamation are themselves evidence of what is thrown up by this tradition, both do in fact display such a concern. Thirdly, insofar as the texts of q40 and q42 in tbe Summa are concerned, nothing is said to contradict such an interpretation and much is said to support it.

[And now to acknowledge the lacunae that I'd like to pursue but don't have the time just now!

1) There a highly relevant paper http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0191-6599(93)90181-O I don't have immediate access to it (I think it's pre-digital access but in any case none of the archives I can access seem to allow me to see it. Off for a hard copy at some stage!)

2) I haven't taken detailed account of other texts where Aquinas deals with this issue. (They're listed on the first page preview  of the above. I've had a quick look at them insofar as they're available online (all are apparently available at least in Latin) but won't claim to have done much with them. The above paper seems to suggest a development in his views.]

3) Suarez would be an obvious next step (esp Defensio catholicae fidei contra anglicanae sectae errores ). There are some English translations of at least part of this online but again I haven't pursued in any detail.]

Russell Kirk

Russell Kirk died on this day in 1994.

Wikipedia does a reasonable job of getting the basics right:


Russell Amos Kirk (October 19, 1918 in Plymouth, Michigan – April 29, 1994 in Mecosta, Michigan) was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post-World War II conservative movement. It traced the development of conservative thought in the Anglo-American tradition, giving special importance to the ideas of Edmund Burke. Kirk was also considered the chief proponent of traditionalist conservatism.

Reactions to Kirk seem to fall between idolatry from young men in five piece tweed suits and carrying what the suspicious might take to be a sword cane to having absolutely no idea who he is. (The latter I suspect is much the most common in Scotland.) So why do I think that it's worth taking him seriously everywhere but especially in Scotland? Here are some suggestions:

1. Suspicion of change.  The Scottish political scene is entirely dominated by self-styled 'progressives' including the Conservatives. (The Independent describing the Tory paper on tax reform:  "the word “progressive” features (a nod to mainstream political discourse in Scotland".) Whatever reality lies behind the narrative, the only game in town is one which talks of bright, shiny futures. The biggest lack in Scottish political discourse is anyone who is even talking along the following lines:

[T]he conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity. It is old custom that enables people to live together peaceably; the destroyers of custom demolish more than they know or desire. It is through convention—a word much abused in our time—that we contrive to avoid perpetual disputes about rights and duties: law at base is a body of conventions. Continuity is the means of linking generation to generation; it matters as much for society as it does for the individual; without it, life is meaningless. When successful revolutionaries have effaced old customs, derided old conventions, and broken the continuity of social institutions—why, presently they discover the necessity of establishing fresh customs, conventions, and continuity; but that process is painful and slow; and the new social order that eventually emerges may be much inferior to the old order that radicals overthrew in their zeal for the Earthly Paradise. [Here.]

2. An emphasis on imagination and 'seeing as' rather than party political success. If all of Scotland is now progressive, we are also all now gripped in a political culture where all that matters is effectiveness. The stream (trickle?) of voters away from Labour to the Conservatives is purely about the most effective opposition party to the SNP. Such calculations are of course inevitable.But unless there are the beginnings of a richer political culture with a greater variety of views and a willingness first to explore the nature of homo politicus before entering into the Machiavellian cut and thrust of day to day politics, Scottish public life will wither.

“Imagination rules the world,” Russell Kirk used to say. He meant that imagination is a force that molds the clay of our sentiments and understanding. It is not chiefly through calculations, formulas, and syllogisms, but by means of images, myths, and stories that we comprehend our relation to God, to nature, to others, and to the self. That is why William Wordsworth referred to the imagination as “The mightiest lever known to the moral world.” And that is why Dr. Johnson, in an earthier definition, quipped that imagination is “The thing which prevents [a man] from being as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as in the arms of a duchess.” [Here.]

3. Kirk loved Scotland (and Scott) and his sensibilities are in many ways much closer to Scottish culture than a Conservatism dominated by the London establishment. (At the very least, it is a relief to read a small town republican conservative rather than a scion of the Bullingdon Club.)

4. An emphasis on the transcendent. Although Kirk expresses this differently over the years, a sense of an order, rhythm or simple presence that stands outside the everyday world is a constant, expressing itself variously in his conversion to Catholicism in 1964, his writingof gothic ghost stories, and his Burkean sense of an organic unity of a tradition. This stands, I think, in contrast to both the mechanical Christianity of much of the modern Right in America and to the cynical pragmatism of much of the Right in Britain.

5. Finally, he is (as much as he presents) a 'patchwork' (to borrow Davila's phrase)  or (to borrow mine) a landscape of the mind. His affinities to post-modernism have been noted in that he created less a body of doctrine to be followed but a landscape to be inhabited. Moreover, it is a landscape that is in many ways highly individualistic: the landscape we inhabit in modernity is no longer a village that we can simply be born into, but one that has to be crafted by each of us as a bohemian:

I did not love cold harmony and perfect regu­larity of organization; what I sought was vari­ety, mystery, tradition, the venerable, the awful. I despised sophisters and calculators; I was groping for faith, honor, and prescriptive loyalties. I would have given any number of neo-classical pediments for one poor battered gargoyle. [Here.]