April 2, 2004
DIGNITY MUST TRUMP DEMOCRACY:
Aquinas for the Democratic Age: a review of Liberty, Wisdom, and Grace: Thomism and Democratic Political Theory, by John P. Hittinger (Robert Kraynak, Spring 2004, Claremont Review of Books)
John Hittinger is a Catholic scholar of political philosophy and, most recently, an academic dean at Ave Maria University in Michigan. This volume is a collection of 16 of his scholarly articles that have been published over the last 20 years. The articles display a deep immersion in the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and the development of Thomism, as well as careful study of modern liberalism and familiarity with the works of Leo Strauss. Hittinger writes with insight and style about all of these subjects, and his volume will therefore be of interest to three sets of readers.One is a Catholic audience that might wish to learn more about the current state of Thomism, the perennial philosophy of the Catholic Church. Writing as "a member of a tradition shaped by Thomas Aquinas," Hittinger gives us sympathetic but critical assessments of some of the leading Thomists of our age, such as Jacques Maritain, Yves R. Simon, Cardinal Newman, Joseph Pieper, James V. Schall, Marion Montgomery, and Pope John Paul II. He explains how they have incorporated and developed the thought of Thomas Aquinas, and in what respects they have departed from original Thomism, either for good or for ill. A second set of readers who will find this book interesting are non-Catholics who are puzzled about the best way to understand and to defend modern liberal democracy. Hittinger offers interesting interpretations of liberal philosophers and their critics, such as John Locke, David Richards, and the conservative critic of liberalism, Aurel Kolnai. He makes it pretty clear that, although he is a deeply patriotic American citizen, he finds the conservative critique of liberalism by Kolnai to be more persuasive than Locke's classical liberalism or the neo-Kantian liberalism of Richards and John Rawls. The third set of readers who will be interested in this book are Straussians, for Hittinger reveals that he has been influenced by Strauss's view of Locke as a thinly disguised "philosophical descendent of Thomas Hobbes" and by Strauss's distinction between the ancients and moderns on the ultimate purposes of political life.
One may surmise, therefore, that John Hittinger is an unusual kind of scholar who blends together Catholic, Straussian, and American concerns and who is driven by the intellectual challenge of finding a Thomistic justification for modern liberal democracy while possessing a keen awareness of the difficulties he faces.
The difficulties are evident in part one of his volume which begins with several chapters on the achievements of Jacques Maritain and Yves Simon. Hittinger clearly reveres these 20th-century Thomists, as well as the college professors from Notre Dame who introduced them to him as a young student. But Hittinger's reverence does not blind him to their shortcomings, as can be seen especially in chapter three, "Jacques Maritain's and Yves R. Simon's Use of Thomas Aquinas in Their Defense of Liberal Democracy." Hittinger correctly describes their historic importance as helping "to shift the axis of Catholic social and political thought away from tradition and monarchy to support for liberal democratic regimes" and as overcoming "the mutual antagonism of the Catholic Church and western liberal democracy dating back to the French Revolution and conditioned by the dramatic rise of totalitarianism." Hittinger also correctly describes the innovative strategies devised by Maritain and Simon to bring about this historic shift in perspective.
Hittinger describes Maritain's strategy as a metaphysical and spiritual approach to democracy. It takes from Thomas Aquinas the concept of the "human person" as a rational substance endowed with free will and inherent dignity and adds the notion that a person is a possessor of inalienable natural rights. Maritain also takes from Henri Bergson the idea that democracy is "evangelical" or inspired by the Gospel's message of universal love. By developing the Thomistic concept of the human person and the Gospel message in this fashion, Maritain articulated the theory of Catholic "personalism" and "personalist democracy" as an alternative to totalitarianism and to debased individualism.
By contrast, Hittinger shows that Yves Simon takes a political approach in his defense of democracy. Simon develops Aristotle's distinction between despotic and political rule into an Aristotelian argument for democracy based on universal suffrage and popular participation. Simon also draws upon a passage in Thomas Aquinas that says law-making for the common good belongs "either to the whole people or to a public personage who has care for the whole people" to make the case that legitimate government arises by a transfer of power from the people to the rulers of the regime. Simon endorses this "transfer" or "transmission" theory of power (originally stated by Neoscholastics such as Suarez and Bellarmine) as the basis of democratic authority.
In evaluating these strategies for deriving democracy from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, Hittinger displays admirable intellectual honesty. He frankly states that Maritain and Simon are stretching the ancient and medieval sources to defend democracy as the best regime or the sole legitimate regime, because the sources indicate that democracy (or polity, properly speaking) is no more than one of several legitimate regimes—and by no means the best. In point of fact, Hittinger says, Thomas argued that the best regime is not a democracy but a mixed constitution which looks "something like constitutional monarchy." [...]
In reflecting on these 16 essays by Hittinger, one can see the outlines of a Thomism for the democratic age that combines the metaphysics of original Thomism in its articulation of the hierarchy of being with the politics of neo-Thomism in its respect for democratic freedom. As Hittinger himself suggests at one point, the key is for "Thomistic political philosophy [to] reverse the rhetorical emphasis": instead of defending liberal democracy as the sole legitimate regime consistent with human dignity or with the Christian view of the human person, it should defend liberal democracy prudentially as one of several just regimes that, all things considered, provides the best approximation to virtue and the good life that is possible in the present age, even if it is by no means the best regime simply. Such an approach would highlight the virtue of prudence, which St. Thomas Aquinas would certainly endorse if he were alive today; and it would provide a useful corrective to Maritain's laudable but overstated case for Catholic personalism and personalist democracy.
Professor Kraynak's own book argues this brilliantly.
MORE:
-Dr. John P. Hittinger (Professor of Philosophy)
-PROFILE: John P. Hittinger has found his niche in life at St. Mary's College.: Now, he is committed to helping the college find its "niche" in the academic world. (Orchard Lake Good News)