by S. Adam Seagrave
Our modern intellectual context is profoundly at odds with genuine Aristotelian-Thomism. If we want to infuse the public discourse with sound philosophy, we must soberly recognize the obstacles before us and confront them in the spirit of devotion to truth. The first of a two part series.
In the past couple of months, Kenneth Kemp and Robert Miller have provided excellent essays exploring the topic of “Religion and the Foundations of Morality,” to borrow Kemp’s title. Kemp’s argument for the existence of non-religious foundations for morality is superb, and Miller’s explanation of what religious belief adds to this non-religious morality is illuminating. Most Aristotelian-Thomists will find little to disagree with in either essay and much to admire in both. The problem, however, is that until Aristotelian-Thomists become politicians and judges or until politicians and judges become Aristotelian-Thomists (to adapt Plato’s phrase from the Republic), this sort of moral reasoning will find little purchase in the public arena, which is the sphere in which moral reasoning tends to have the highest stakes and the greatest influence on future generations.
Miller acknowledges in his essay that “our contemporary public discourse generally brackets the question of God’s existence and argues about morals on a methodically agnostic basis.” This might not be a problem if public discourse fell back on something like Kemp’s non-religious argument for morality—but, as anyone following public discourse these days knows well, this is far from the case. Contemporary public discourse is not only agnostic about the existence of God but also about the existence of any non-religious foundation for morality, such as Kemp’s “human nature” or the related concepts of natural law or natural rights. Talk of human nature, natural law, or natural rights is simply taboo.
The closest we get these days to a publicly-acknowledged basis for morality is the idea of “human rights,” an idea given birth in the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This idea is, however, not really an idea at all—it is a phrase that answers to very different ideas in different minds, and for most people a phrase that answers more to a vague feeling about justice than to any determinate idea at all. As Jacques Maritain, one of the UDHR’s principal drafters, describes it, the human rights affirmed in the UDHR represent a sort of overlap among many different, and often conflicting, ideas regarding morality. It expressed
a number of practical truths regarding [human beings’] life in common upon which they can agree, but which are derived in the thought of each of them . . . from extremely different, or even basically opposed, theoretical conceptions.
Although Maritain didn’t appear to be concerned about this state of affairs, we certainly should be. You and I may agree that we shouldn’t kill John today, but if you think we shouldn’t kill John today because he possesses a natural right to life and I think we shouldn’t kill John today because I’d rather sleep in, this will lead to problems at some point down the line. Our agreement, though real and useful as far as it goes, is a pragmatic rather than a principled one. Maritain’s rather sanguine neglect of this and other profound difficulties introduced by the modern intellectual climate has, moreover, had widespread influence among post-Vatican II Catholics, who are generally more apt to absorb and accommodate than critically examine contemporary intellectual developments.
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