by Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist.<\/em><\/p>\n
The following article is the first in a series of translations from the works of Jacques de Monl\u00e9on (1901-1981). Along with his friend Charles De Koninck (1906-1965), de Monl\u00e9on was a key figure in Laval School Thomism. So much so, in fact, that the school was sometimes called the \u201cde Monl\u00e9on-De Koninck School.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n
De Monl\u00e9on was born in 1901 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on the French Riviera. He was sent to the Catholic boarding school Coll\u00e8ge St. Jean in Fribourg, Switzerland (where Antoine de Saint-Exup\u00e9ry was a fellow pupil). He then studied at the university of University of Aix-Marseille, earning degrees in law (1922\/1923) and philosophy (1924). He then moved to Paris to continue his philosophical studies. In Paris he became close to Jacques Maritain.[2]<\/a> But after a few years he began to diverge from Maritain. One point on which he disagreed with Maritain was the question of \u201cmoral philosophy adequately considered\u201d (that is, on whether moral philosophy can be properly scientific without being subalternated to theology).[3]<\/a> De Monl\u00e9on was moving towards what he saw as more consistently Thomistic position. He was therefore happy to be invited to the Universty of Laval in Quebec in 1934.<\/p>\n
Thomism of the strict observance was established in Quebec by Msgr. Louis-Adolphe P\u00e2quet (1859-1942), who had studied under Cardinal Satolli in Rome. Paquet wrote a commentary on the Summa <\/em>in Latin,[4]<\/a> and an intransigently ultramontane-integralist treatise on ecclesiastical public law, written in French.[5]<\/a> As dean of the faculty of theology at the University of Laval, P\u00e2quet steadily expanded the teaching of philosophy, until it was possible to establish a full pontifical faculty of philosophy.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n
It was during the expansion of the teaching of philosophy that Laval hired De Koninck and de Monl\u00e9on. Through a miscommunication they both arrived to fill the same position. In the end, both were retained\u2014De Koninck as professor of natural philosophy, and de Monl\u00e9on to lecture in political philosophy and ethics. De Monl\u00e9on was, however, to split his time between Quebec and the Institut Catholique in Paris. P\u00e2quet was originally skeptical of the two laymen, since he thought scholastic philosophy should be taught by clerics, but he was soon won over by their love of St. Thomas.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n
De Koninck and de Monl\u00e9on became dear friends. They wrote many letters to each other during the months of each year that de Monl\u00e9on spent in France. Florian Michel has analyzed their correspondence, showing how they developed the typical theses of Laval School Thomism in the philosophy of science and in political philosophy together.[8]<\/a><\/p>\n
\nWe [have hitherto] certainly not [been] Thomistic in the way we teach. […] It is indisputable that we proceed in the manner of mathematicians and idealists. […] We immediately plunge poor little immature minds into the dark depths of being and non-being. […] One must lead such minds by the hand if one is allowed to forge such a twisted image. Manuducere<\/em>. Sicut Zo\u00e9<\/em> (my dear little Zo\u00e9[9]<\/a>) manuducit pueros suos<\/em>.[10]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It was in Laval th\u00e9ologique et philosophique <\/em>that the following \u201cShort Short Notes on the Family and the City\u201d were first published<\/a>. Later they were included in the volume: Personne et Soci\u00e9t\u00e9, Overtture Philosophique (Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 2007)<\/a>. <\/em>Many thanks to Alessandra Fra of L’Harmattan for permission to publish this translation. The translation was originally made by a group of tutors at Thomas Aquinas College for a seminar on Catholic Social Teaching<\/a>. Many thanks to Anthony Andres for permission to publish the translation on The Josias.<\/em><\/p>\n
The nature and scope of political authority, and its relation to the incomplete community of the family, is a key issue in recent debates among integralists.[11]<\/a> I am convinced that de Monl\u00e9on\u2019s profound reflections can contribute key insights to this debate. A printable version of the essay can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nShort Notes on the Family and the City<\/h1>\n
Jacques de Monl\u00e9on<\/p>\n
1. \u2013 We know that many very eminent authors do not recognize the essential difference between domestic society and political society. Plato, for example, writes: \u201cWell, then, surely there won\u2019t be any difference, so far as ruling is concerned, between the character of a large household, on the one hand, and the bulk of a small city on the other? \u2013 Not at all. \u2013 So, in answer to the question we were asking ourselves just now, it\u2019s clear that there is one sort of knowledge concerned with all of these things, and whether we call it the science of kingship or political science or household management makes no difference.\u201d[12]<\/a> The nineteenth century political philosopher, Louis de Bonald, writes in a similar vein: \u201cSuch is the likeness, or rather the complete identity that everyone recognizes between domestic and public society, that from the most ancient times kings have been called the fathers of their peoples.\u201d[13]<\/a> And the same idea is found in Fustel de Coulanges\u2019s The Ancient City,<\/em> and this opinion is the one of its directive principles: \u201cFamily, brotherhood, tribe, city, are societies in exactly the same way, and are born one from another by a succession of federations.\u201d[14]<\/a><\/p>\n
3. \u2013 Because it starts with facts, history might seem immune to the abuse of the dialectical method. But what do we actually find in Fustel de Coulanges\u2019s History of the Ancient City<\/em>? Of course, the author does insist on the growing strife between the city and the family, and on the final victory of the city against the family and the tribe; but by itself this does not prevent him from asserting that there is an exact likeness between these diverse societies. And that makes sense: it is not unlikely that beings of the same species fight among themselves and that the greater and stronger wins. \u2013 Again, one of the fundamental themes of his book is that religion, according to the ancients, has been the chief inspiration and the principal organizer of society. Fustel emphasizes the opposition between one kind of religion, a kind which worships domestic divinities, and another kind, which worships political divinities.[15]<\/a> He neatly indicates the subjective allure of the first, the objective character of the second, and we can appreciate this contrast. But in fact Fustel is not as surprised as he should be. He does not appreciate enough the importance and the reason for this difference. His starting point, the likeness of societies in a common genus, is insufficient for understanding the progression between these things.<\/p>\n
\nIf from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea “Fruit\u201d, if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea “Fruit\u201d, derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then in the language of speculative philosophy \u2014 I am declaring that “Fruit\u201d is the “Substance\u201d of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be a pear is not essential to the pear, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea \u2014 “Fruit\u201d. I therefore declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to be mere forms of existence, modi<\/em>, of “Fruit.\u201d My finite understanding, supported by my senses, does of course distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond, but my speculative reason declares these sensuous differences inessential and irrelevant. It sees the same thing in the apple as in the pear, and the same thing in the pear as in the almond, namely “Fruit\u201d. Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is “the substance” \u2014 “Fruit\u201d.[16]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
4. \u2013 In contrast, Bonald refuses to accept the fundamental difference between the domestic and political societies because he deliberately contradicts those who base civil society upon a human and free convention. Society is necessary; it is natural. It is natural because<\/em> it is necessary for the production and conservation of man. And since the society that is most clearly necessary for the production and conservation of man is the family, he reduces civil society to the family. But his error comes, not in saying that the family is necessary to the production and conservation of man, nor in holding that political society is natural and necessary to man. His error is not to see that the words \u2018natural\u2019 and \u2018necessary\u2019 have different meanings, and that we cannot apply these terms to the family and to the city in the same way. The family is necessary for the formation and preservation of the very being<\/em> of man, while the city is natural and necessary for him to achieve his end: For the end of the generation of man is the human form; still, the end of man is not his form, but through his form it is fitting for him to work to an end.<\/em>[17]<\/a><\/p>\n
Such a serious mistake leads to unsettling consequences. For example, Bonald generalizes from the fact that in the family the subject proceeds from the sovereign (the child from the father) to infer that it will be the same in every society. He says that \u201csubjects, insofar as they are subjects, proceed from sovereign and his ministers, just as the child proceeds from his father and mother.\u201d[18]<\/a> If we too argued this way, we might think that we have enlarged the family. We might also think that in (clumsily) establishing civil society upon this basis we further assure the solidity of the family. What we have actually done, however, is to justify beforehand and in principle the dissolution of the family into the State.\u00a0 In fact, it is one of the pretensions, or if we wish, one of the ideals of the totalitarian State, that its subjects proceed from its power.<\/p>\n
\nHere again nature has taken extraordinary measures to favor the union of males with females. If she had devoted half the genius she lavishes on crossed fertilization and other arbitrary desires to making life more certain, to alleviating pain, to softening death and warding off horrible accidents, the universe would probably have presented an enigma less incomprehensible, less pitiable, than the one we are striving to solve.[19]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Nature\u2019s \u201c. . . constant cry on all sides is, \u2018Unite and multiply; there is no other law, or aim, than love,\u2019 while she mutters under her breath: \u2018and exist afterward if you can; that is no concern of mine.\u2019\u201d[20]<\/a> \u00a0The full meaning of the passage is this: the art which provides for the conservation of the offspring is marvelously displayed and used in the hive; but the union of the male and the queen happens far from the hive, in the depths of space, as if nature wished to show that she is self-sufficient for generation. And we<\/em> are the bees.<\/p>\n
Of course nature calls upon art and reason for the preservation of the individual most urgently and clearly in man. In the case of man, nature both intends the preservation of the species and is entirely charged with the execution of that intention. But, although nature intends the preservation of the individual man, she requires the prolonged and multiplied aid of reason for the execution of the intention. The first foundation of marriage is here. Marriage is the union of a man and a woman who are deliberately and determinately tied to one another. But mere generation does not require such a union because generation occurs in every species by the simple momentary joining of the sexes. The problem is that, left to herself, the female would not be able to fittingly provide for the nourishment, protection and education of the child.\u00a0 The man must remain with the woman after generation, and this occurs only by a deliberate determination.[21]<\/a>\u00a0 Thus, nature first has recourse to reason in order to nourish the engendered individual.<\/p>\n
7. The third object of the family is the education of children, their apprenticeship in human life. But what do the words \u2018human life\u2019 signify in the sense in which it is now necessary to take them? \u201cLife\u201d does not designate being but acting. Human life is made up of specifically human acts, i.e., acts which proceed from a deliberate will. Thus education is something so different from generation and conservation that it seems at first difficult to assign it to the family along with them. Insofar as it generates and conserves children, the family as a cause ought to provide for the being of children. Insofar as it educates children, it regards them, on the contrary, as principles of action. But since the milieu par excellence<\/em> of properly human acts is political society, ought not education pertain to it? Education is inevitably contested terrain, a sort of perpetual Gran Chaco[22]<\/a> where the two communities, the family and political society, face each other.<\/p>\n
Still, nature seems perplexed and hesitant on this point. It inspires certain kinds of generators to restrict themselves pretty strictly to generation.\u00a0 In these cases, they have hardly put their offspring into the world before they lose interest in them. They say to them something like: \u201cWe have begotten you; our job as far as you go is done. You are living; it\u2019s up to you to move yourself; it\u2019s up to you to keep out of trouble.\u201d Fish, for the most part, and often men too, end their association there. For others the reverse is true: they seem to more or less forget that the limit of their activity in regard to their offspring should almost be a refutation of their activity; that the goal to be attained is to enable their descendants spontaneously to move themselves well. There are parents who tend to bind their children to themselves indefinitely; to exaggerate and prolong their causality. \u201cI want my daughters. I made them. They\u2019re mine,\u201d says Pere Goriot.[23]<\/a> The root of this tendency is found in generation, the first basis of paternal behavior. My daughters, I made them; thus, the daughters do not belong to themselves. Poor Goriot reasons very formally once the principle is posited. What has been engendered, as such, is entirely an effect. It is not the cause nor the master of its own life: it owes<\/em> that to its parents. So it is that, rather than sustain and animate from within, the voice of the generator can, in the father, overmaster the voice of the educator. It is difficult, indeed, for the cause of something to see it otherwise than as an effect; to know, when the time comes, to treat its effect as a principle; more: to exercise its causality so as to make its effect itself be a cause.<\/p>\n
8. From the principle posited, \u201cI have made them,\u201d Goriot logically infers that his daughters are his. But must we not question the principle itself and ask whether a father pronounces it from within the plentitude of fatherhood? In fact, neither Goriot nor Grandet[24]<\/a> represent the father in his absolute and complete idea, in his Platonic essence. What Balzac depicts in these characters is rather, in the twilight of a fading day, the disparagement of human paternity. Speaking as he does, Goriot sinks far below the perfect Father of whom one cannot admit that He uses the word make<\/em> with regard to his Son: genitum non factum<\/em>. And even with regard to human generation we sense something trivial, inelegant about using the word make<\/em>. In truth, the physical generation of living things, adequately grasped, encloses a conflict which the story of Oedipus symbolizes in a striking way. The destiny of Oedipus is, among other things, a paternity which sinks from its royal, almost divine heights:<\/p>\n
\nChildren, young offspring of ancient Cadmos\u2026,[25]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
into the ambiguous and pitiful obscurity of the lower regions:<\/p>\n
\nBut today the gods have abandoned me. I am the son of impure beings, and I, miserably, have seeded the womb whence I came.[26]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
At bottom, isn\u2019t this the antithesis between life and subject? If we agree to call \u2018subject\u2019 that which receives or possesses in itself a determination, a movement, and act, every life is a victory over subjectivity. For the living is not such because it receives<\/em> an act in itself, or because it possesses it in itself, but rather because it moves itself, applies itself, and determines itself to action. This feature of the living thing led Bergson by extrapolation to deny that any coming to be demands a subject. \u201cThere are changes, but there are not, under the change, things that change: change has no need for a support.\u201d[27]<\/a> Bergson goes too far, first of all because change demands a subject, and then also because life has consented to being participated in by a subject. We find the right manner of thinking about and saying these things in these lines from John of St. Thomas: \u201cThe vitality of an act does not belong to it precisely due to its inherence in a living subject (for this only implies passivity, and what is passive as such has nothing vital about it); the vitality of an act belongs to it insofar as it proceeds actively from a living thing, for the most formal <\/em>notion of the living thing is that it moves itself, not that it undergoes something.\u201d[28]<\/a><\/p>\n
Because it is a transmutation, \u00a0an alteration of a subject, biological generation is a signpost of becoming. It is in itself a riotous movement, a paroxysm of life. It is transitory and repeats itself indefinitely. Entirely concerned with bringing things into existence, but not with conserving them in existence, it pursues multiplication in an unlimited becoming. But all of this is not sufficient for achieving the full perfection of paternity. No one can really lay claim to the title of father except by the care which he gives to the preservation and the development of those whom he begets. There are peoples for whom the legal father is the one who takes charge of the children, and not simply the procreator.[29]<\/a> This is because to preserve something in being is more perfect and demands a higher and more universal causality than it does to bring things into existence. To nourish is, in a sense, more noble than to beget. To nourish is to procure food. Food presupposes a being which is already able to move itself, since the one being fed must vitally assimilate its food, and in fact food is the very object for this vital power of assimilation. Now every movere seipsum<\/em> [self-mover] confronts an object, while the moveri ab alio<\/em> [things moved by another] is completed by an efficient cause. For living things, food is the first object which they have the ability to make use of themselves. Finally, as we have already noted, food presupposes the cooperation of reason. Let us add to this the protection and education of the offspring and we will begin to see that it is in going beyond mere generation that paternity develops its true greatness. It is by this sort of extension and enlargement that paternity is elevated unto a royal dignity, even unto divinity, as we find in Egypt, where the Pharaohs were fundamentally the food suppliers of the people.<\/p>\n
\nLacedaemonians\u2026you do not show much comprehension of foreign affairs\u2026. Alone among the Greeks do you remain inactive\u2026You have no idea, moreover, of the adversaries you have in hand with the Athenians. How completely different from you! They love innovations, are prompt to conceive and to realize what they have resolved; even if you intend to safeguard the way things are, you lack invention, and you do not even do what is necessary. They show themselves audacious even beyond their strength, bold beyond any expectation, full of hope even amidst dangers. Your line of conduct consists in doing less than you might…. They act and you temporize; they travel abroad while you are the most domestic of men\u2026. Rest without occupation burdens them more than laborious activity. In brief, in saying of their nature that they are as incapable of remaining quiet as they are of leaving others in peace, we would be speaking the absolute truth.[30]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
But since being is the root of action and acting well is the end of being, society naturally has a responsibility even for being. Thus we cannot purely and simply deny that it has a responsibility for action and acting well. Man does not receive only his being from his causes. They must set a man in motion, give him his start, otherwise he would not be in a position to move himself. The role of familial education is precisely to begin us in life, in human acts, by putting us in act in such a way that we can in the end act and act well on our own. This beginning is a long and laborious affair. For the angel it needs only an instant; for the animal it sometimes demands a certain length of time; but in the case of man it needs a very long time, for he can only slowly acquire the formation and the necessary experience to face the indefinite and shifting sea of life.[31]<\/a><\/p>\n
But the family does not secure a man\u2019s entire education. Familial education always implies that the child is moved to some degree by his causes, increasingly less so as the child grows up. Thus, the aptitude to move oneself cannot be perfected without being exercised in the city. On the other hand, familial education is accomplished in a certain way by impressed motions, by undergoing impulsions. In the family there is always a kind of \u201cinculcation.\u201d We may recall here the observations of Plato on the role and mode of familial education in the acquisition of good order<\/em>, on the \u03b4\u03bf\u03ba\u03bf\u1f56\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1 \u03bd\u03cc\u03bc\u03b9\u03bc\u03b1 [apparent laws], the \u03c0\u03ac\u03c4\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03b9 \u03bd\u03cc\u03bc\u03bf\u03b9 [paternal laws]. In the family there are all kinds of prescriptions that resemble law: Remain quiet, stand up in the presence of your elders, etc. It would be ridiculous to make \u2018laws\u2019, in the proper sense of the term, for all the little matters and uncertainties. It is necessary however to immerse children in them, to provide them the sense of what is right, what is legitimate, and thus prepare them to obey the legal. But this immersion proceeds by way of \u03bd\u03bf\u03c5\u03b8\u03ad\u03c4\u03b7\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2, \u201cputting yourself in the mind, in the head . . .\u201d[32]<\/a><\/p>\n
In the funeral speech that Thucydides puts in the mouth of Pericles, one of the reasons for loving Athens is its shows and festivals.[33]<\/a> To offer to the eyes of men the objects that affect, open and form them is in fact a very important part of public education. We cannot explore this here since the details are endless. Let us say simply that in every matter and every order, from monuments to displays, and from landscaping to hats, the city must thoroughly maintain an atmosphere such that the things surrounding the citizens are not crude but are presented with the quality, harmony and excellence commensurate with the good life of man. Bread, for example, consists not only of carbohydrates, proteins and vitamin B; its nutritive power must be flush with true flavor and harmonious with the first degree of wisdom, namely, the first discernment of order that is the sensation of taste. Wine, too, should have its bouquet. Men should not allow themselves to be buried in a materiality that is scientific and brutish, the funeral of comfort, but convenience should raise itself up to a little of true and free beauty. The city watches over language, which is not simply a kind of exchange but an incomparable means of formation through its phonetics, through the expressive power and intelligence of which it is objectively full. The city must attend to public performances, music, theater, cinema, contests, matches, races, Olympiads, ball games, fireworks, festivals, fairs, broadcasting and bullfights. It must not only sustain artists but also protect and promote a certain quality in the works themselves, even if it must act contrary to the artists themselves. It should abandon neither the artists nor the public to the mercy of snobbery, clique, ambition, or moneyed interests. Clear the air, as much as possible, above the marshes of literature. All this is not easy. It requires neither edicts nor bureaucrats nor the nationalization of the arts and letters, but a kind of superior and free judgment and a sense of life. But how can this be accomplished?<\/p>\n
\nWe must look for those craftsmen who have the gift of following the trail of true beauty and grace, so that like the inhabitants of a healthy country, the young may receive benefit from all things about them, whence the influence that emanates from works of beauty may waft itself to eye or ear like a breeze that brings health from wholesome places, and so from earliest childhood that influence must insensibly guide them to friendship, to imitate the beautiful and to establish between it and them a perfect harmony.[34]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
12. Just as art presupposes matter and the gifts of nature, so the city presupposes men. Receiving them from nature by way of the family, the city has for its object not to make<\/em> men, but to perfect<\/em> them, to give them a sufficiency of those means necessary for attaining by reason and will the end of human life: Homines non facit politica, sed sumens a natura, utitur ipsis.\u201d<\/em> \u201cPolitical [science] does not make men, but taking them from nature it uses them.\u201d[35]<\/a><\/p>\n
\nFor in all things, as we affirm, Nature always strives after \u2018the better\u2019. Now \u2018being\u2019 . . . is better than \u2018non-being\u2019: but not all things can possess being, since they are too far removed from the principle. God has therefore adopted the remaining alternative, and fulfilled the perfection of the universe by making \u2018coming-to-be\u2019 uninterrupted, . . . because, \u2018that coming-to-be\u2019 should itself be perpetual, is the closest approximation to eternal being.[36]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Let us note here a few points:<\/p>\n
Also, the religion of the city is not a simple expansion on domestic religion, in such a way that there is an historical continuity which leads from the second to the first. Rather, when we pass from one to the other, we enter a different order of things. Fustel himself insinuates this using excellent terms which we wish to emphasize: \u201cOn the other hand, man applied his idea of \u200b\u200bthe divine to the exterior objects that he beheld, that he loved or feared, to the physical agents who were the masters of his happiness and his life.\u201d[37]<\/a> The political religion is turned towards its own objects and its own ends.<\/p>\n
But the supernatural is precisely a participation in the nature and the intimate life of God. It confers on us a likeness to God so particular and appropriate that the creature is seen to be associated with the knowledge and the joy which God has in Himself. The supernatural order is not at all defined by God in his function as creator, nor by creatures insofar as they descend from their principle. We must leave behind the consideration of Him as efficient cause. The supernatural order is formally defined by the return of the creature to God.\u00a0 He makes his intimate life, considered as object and end, as happiness, the eternal life of angels and men.[38]<\/a> If I\u00a0 consider grace only as an effect which God brings into existence \u2013 which in truth it is \u2013 I manifest it only under an aspect common to all created things and I am incapable of seeing it as a participation in the divine nature. How could we hold onto a univocal<\/em> participation in deity while staying within the limits of efficient causality? An effect of God as such can only have an equivocal<\/em> and extended likeness to Him.<\/p>\n
We often criticize Aristotle because in the Metaphysics<\/em> he only sees God as the end, not as the author of the universe. But perhaps he has very serious reasons to do what he does in this oft-criticized book. May I stammer out some brief remarks on a subject so large and which none should be allowed to discuss lightly? The intention of Aristotle is to rise up to the perfection of God as pure act, absolutely immobile. \u201cAs pure act\u201d: what does this mean? We can understand by this that God possesses in Himself all the perfection of being, and consequently that He is the source of being for all other things. Such a meaning is certainly not excluded from the text of which we speak. But the intention of Aristotle goes further, is more profound and more daring. \u201cAs pure act\u201d can signify not only all of the perfection which pure act possesses, but also the manner in which pure act possesses all perfection. But the manner in which pure act possesses all perfection is as an act which cannot be made determinate by any other, by any act which is before any other, outside of any other, and more ultimate than any other. But, between the two orders of causality, efficient and final, it is only the latter that by its very formality entirely excludes being made determinate by something other than itself. An efficient cause must be made determinate by the end, but the end in itself is an immobile mover. Thus with wonderful certainty Aristotle adheres to final causality in his effort to rise up to the supereminent mode of divine perfection. And thus he approaches, insofar as man\u2019s unaided reason is able, not only to God as a being or substance containing all perfection, but also to God as a nature<\/em>, that is, as an interior principle of operation, a nature which is the actuality of life, a life which is thought, and a thought which is thinking itself. All this is a more and more rigorous and ascending expression of pure act considered under the mode most determining its own perfection: non determinatur ab alio<\/em> [it is not determined by another].[39]<\/a> At least we cannot honestly take away from Aristotle the conspicuous merit of having brought to bear, with respect to God, the notions of nature and of end. Without these notions, taken up and elevated by Revelation, it is impossible to discern what the supernatural is. It is really arrogance on our part to hastily blame the insufficiency of Aristotle\u2019s doctrine, because we ourselves have forgotten the insufficiency, in this matter, of considering only efficient causality. But let me close this Aristotelian digression and return to our main subject.<\/p>\n
\nFor by a right which nothing can abrogate, every man, when he comes of age, becomes his own master, free to renounce the contract by which he forms part of the community, by leaving the fatherland in which that contract holds good. It is only by sojourning in that fatherland, after he has come to years of discretion, that he is supposed to have tacitly confirmed the pledge given by his ancestors. He acquires the right to renounce his fatherland, just as he has the right to renounce all claim to his ancestral domain.[40]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nI will begin with our ancestors because it is fair and just, in such circumstances, to pay tribute to their memory. This country without interruption has been inhabited by people of the same race and, thanks to their valor, it has been handed down free until today. Our ancestors deserve praise, but our fathers deserve more still.\u00a0 To the heritage that they received, they added, and have bequeathed to us, at the price of a thousand labors, the power that we possess. We have increased it, we who are still living and who have reached full maturity. It is we who have put the city in the position of being sufficient unto itself in everything, in wartime as in peace.[41]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nThou wast replenished, and made very glorious in the midst of the seas.<\/p>\n
Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters: the east wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas.<\/p>\n
Thy riches, and thy fairs, thy merchandise, thy mariners, and thy pilots, thy calkers, and the occupiers of thy merchandise, and all thy men of war, that are in thee, and in all thy company which is in the midst of thee, shall fall into the midst of the seas in the day of thy ruin\u2026<\/p>\n
What city is like Tyre, like the destroyed in the midst of the sea?[42]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
And here, correspondingly, the fall of the angel:<\/p>\n
\nThou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.<\/p>\n
Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.<\/p>\n
Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.<\/p>\n
By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.<\/p>\n
Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.<\/p>\n
Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffick; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.<\/p>\n
All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.[43]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
18.\u2014Theology shows us that the Holy Spirit necessarily proceeds from the Father and from the Son, not only for this reason, that if He only proceeds from the Father, He would not be distinguished from the Son, but also for a reason taken from His definition, from His proper character: the Holy Spirit necessarily proceeds from distinct persons because he proceeds from a love that is friendship.[44]<\/a> It seems here that theology applies a principle like that which Aristotle opposes to Platonic communism: too much unity corrupts the city. In denying the Filioque<\/em>, we would make the error of exaggerating unity in the procession of the Holy Spirit, and at the same time we could no longer maintain the bond of a union of friendship. Likewise, in exaggerating unity in certain forms of communist or totalitarian societies, we would distort and make difficult, even impossible, the strictly political union of citizens.<\/p>\n
The unity of society is not attained simply by an attitude of respect for the laws and for the rights of other members of the community. If this were enough, the Arcadians, who lived separately, each in his own home without disturbing each other, would have been real citizens.[45]<\/a> But conversely, to react against the centrifugal\u00a0 tendencies or isolationists tendencies of the individuals, sometimes we crowd the multitude elbow to elbow, so that we form one single mass carried by a single movement. In this way great unity is clearly achieved, but this is not a city at all, but the very opposite. Bringing about a will common to all and tending towards the same goal is one thing, but the birth of an active and communicative, vitally unifying friendship\u00a0 between distinct and different persons who have this common will is another thing entirely. In a mass, individuals are unified and uniform, but also very isolated: each person can only think of himself and can only love himself. The mass, in itself, is not necessarily more than an association of tyrants diligentes seipsos magis quam civitatem <\/em>[each loving himself more than the city]. This is actually the complete dissolution of the city, of the political order. But this dissolution is not opposed at all to a very compact unity: thirty tyrants and plenty more can be vigorously unified, like wolves.<\/p>\n
Yet, in order for the friendship that is the intrinsic bond of the city to be living, it is necessary that the citizens order themselves to the common good. The common good is not only the good in which the citizens take part, or may take part, or must take part; it is the good from which they must receive or take their part, to the distribution of which they have the right. It is true that I have the right to take my turn to sit for a certain time on a bench in the Jardin des Plantes<\/em>.[46]<\/a> It is true, but this is not enough to justify my pretention to citizenship. To consider the common good under this light is to consider it from a social perspective and not a political one. It is certain that this participation in the common good and this distribution of goods must be assured by society and assured in justice. But as long as we rest in this, we see in the member of the community nothing more than the subject of this good, a good in which he ought to participate. But the citizen as such is more than a subject. And to be more than a subject, he must turn towards the common good insofar as it is diffusive or communicative of itself; in other words the citizen must be the source of the communication of the good. The citizen helps himself, but he must pass the plate. It is not the subjective<\/em> participation in the good that defines the activity of the citizen as a principle of the city. This subjective participation does not imply in itself any specifically political activity. When the State gets to providing all the good to each of the atoms of the uniform mass, we will no longer have anything to spontaneously communicate to each other; we will be the society of glutted subjects; we will no longer be citizens at all. This is how society curdles into the State, and how well-being ceases to be the good life.<\/p>\n
\n[1]<\/a> Florian Michel, La pens\u00e9e catholique en Am\u00e9rique du Nord<\/em> (Paris : Descl\u00e9e de Brouwer, 2010), p. 200.<\/p>\n
[2]<\/a> Michel, La pens\u00e9e catholique, <\/em>pp. 204-205.<\/p>\n
[4]<\/a> Michel, La pens\u00e9e catholique, <\/em>pp. 199.<\/p>\n
[7]<\/a> Michel, La pens\u00e9e catholique, <\/em>pp. 207-208.<\/p>\n
[8]<\/a> Michel, La pens\u00e9e catholique, <\/em>pp. 208-215.<\/p>\n
[9]<\/a> Zo\u00e9 was De Koninck\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n
[11]<\/a> See, for example: Andrew Williard Jones, \u201cWhat States Can\u2019t Do,\u201d New Polity, <\/em>July 24th<\/sup>, 2020 https:\/\/newpolity.com\/blog\/what-states-cant-do<\/a> (accessed November 18th<\/sup>, 2020).<\/p>\n
[12]<\/a> Statesman<\/em>, 259b.<\/p>\n
[13]<\/a> Constitutive Principle<\/em>, c. 6.<\/p>\n
[14]<\/a> Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City<\/em>, III, c. 3.<\/p>\n
[18]<\/a> Op. cit., c. 6.<\/p>\n
[19]<\/a> The Life of Bees<\/em>, I.<\/p>\n
[21]<\/a> St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica<\/em>, IIaIIae, q. 154, a. 2.<\/p>\n
[22]<\/a> Area is South America claimed by several countries.<\/p>\n
[23]<\/a> A character in a novel by Balzac.<\/p>\n
[24]<\/a> Another character from a Balzac novel.<\/p>\n
[25]<\/a> Sophocles, Oedipus Rex<\/em>, 1.<\/p>\n
[27]<\/a>[27] H. Bergson, La Pensee et le Movant<\/em>, p. 185.<\/p>\n
[29]<\/a> Encyclopedie Francaise<\/em>, T. VII, 7\u201914-1ss.<\/p>\n
[30]<\/a> Thucydides, Peloponnesian War<\/em>, I, 68-70.<\/p>\n
[31]<\/a> John of St. Thomas, op. cit.<\/em>, disp. 23, a. 2.<\/p>\n
[32]<\/a> Cf. Souilhe, La Notion d\u2019intermediaire<\/em>, pp.146ff.<\/p>\n
[33]<\/a> Thucydides, op. cit.<\/em>, II, 38.<\/p>\n
[34]<\/a> Plato, Republic<\/em> 401c.<\/p>\n
[35]<\/a> Aristotle, Politics<\/em> 1258a21.<\/p>\n
[36]<\/a> Aristotle, Generation and Corruption<\/em> 336b27.<\/p>\n
[37]<\/a> Op. cit.<\/em>, III, c. 2.<\/p>\n
[38]<\/a> John of St. Thomas, op. cit.<\/em>, Disp. 37, art. 2, nn. 1 and 2. (T. VI, p. 353).<\/p>\n
[40]<\/a> J.-J. Rousseau, Emile<\/em>, V, Des Voyages.<\/p>\n
[42]<\/a> Ez. 27: 25-27, 32 (KJV)<\/p>\n
[43]<\/a> Ibid, 28: 13-19<\/p>\n
[44]<\/a> John of St. Thomas, op. cit.<\/em>, disp. 35, art. 4 (T. IV, p. 227).<\/p>\n
[45]<\/a> Aristotle, Politics<\/em> II, c. 1, 1261b29.<\/p>\n
[46]<\/a> The main botanical garden in France.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"