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Essay - Page Two |
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by Mortimer J.
Adler
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[Political] Parties and the Common Good, by Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D. (Continued)
1. Before discussing the differences between these two spheres, it is necessary to repeat briefly the main points of the traditional understanding of ethics and politics as sciences. a. They are sciences: bodies of knowledge and not collections of opinion. They comprise truths, reached by rational processes and ultimately founded in experience as all human knowledge is. (If the word 'science' is claimed for a special kind of knowledge obtained by methods of investigation and experiment, then it might be well to add that the word 'science' can be replaced by the word 'philosophy,' so long as it is understood, of course, that philosophy is knowledge, not opinion.) b. They are practical: this must be understood in contradistinction to theoretical, i.e. in terms of the difference between knowledge and action. A practical science is one which ends in action rather than knowledge as such. Briefly, knowledge is practical when the truths it declares are at once understood as prescriptions or directions for conduct. Practical knowledge is always concerned with what should be done if the good is to be achieved in any sphere of operations. Currently, this traditional distinction between theoretic and practical sciences is understood in terms of a distinction between descriptive and normative sciences, the former saying what is the case, the latter what ought to be. But unless it is carefully qualified, this contemporary distinction between the descriptive and the normative is likely to rest in a too shallow understanding of the relation between the theoretic and practical orders. What ought to be done in any case is never independent of the nature of the case, and action always occurs in particular cases. (1) Practical knowledge, in so far as it consists of principles and generalities, is never adequate for the solution of practical problems, since any problem of action always requires a consideration of contingent, singular circumstances. Possession of moral or political wisdom does not free a man from the need to deliberate, i.e. to supplement principles by casuistry. (2) The practical knowledge which is contained in books, in ethical and political treatises, does not solve practical problems, as the theoretic knowledge which is contained in physical and metaphysical treatises can sometimes adequately answer theoretical questions. Furthermore, no practical treatise can ever become adequate in this sense, for additional knowledge of a kind that can never be exhaustively expounded in treatises must be used by the prudent man in applying principles for the direction of conduct. In short, the structure of practical knowledge is much more complex than that of theoretic knowledge.[5] (3) Practical truth is different from theoretic truth. A theoretic judgment is true if it conforms with being, with that which is the case. But a practical judgment is true if it conforms with right appetite, with a desire for what is good as the end of operation. As a consequence, differences between men in their practical judgments cannot be simply resolved by reference to the facts, to the order of existence. The element of subjectivity in practical controversies is not capable of elimination as in theoretic matters. In fact, if the minor premise in what is called the practical syllogism is a practical judgment too, and hence one which is true only by conforming to a right appetite, it may not be possible to arbitrate practical controversies by any simple reference to the facts as such.[6] This has a bearing, it will be seen, upon parties engaged in political controversy and conflict. (4) Finally, there is the point which Aristotle so insistently made. Ethics and politics must not be treated as theoretic subjects. It is not enough to know what virtue is; the student of ethics must aim at being virtuous.[7] And if the study of ethics is not by itself sufficient to make a man virtuous, particularly a young man who lacks moral experience and is swayed by his passions, then ethical principles must be used by someone else to help him, through training and even coercion.[8] This, thought Aristotle; was preeminently the task of the statesman as a moral teacher. But what Aristotle said of ethics is also true of politics. One must not study politics merely to know what just government is; rather one must aim at being a just ruler or a just citizen. And here the problem becomes more complicated, as we shall soon see, if the study of politics is by itself inadequate to direct man in just civil actions. c. In all that we have so far said, there is no striking difference between ethics and politics. So far they are essentially alike. And they are, further, alike in one point which distinguishes them from all the arts, which also belong to the large sphere of practical knowledge. The sphere of the practical includes what is traditionally called action and production, or doing and making. The former is the sphere of the practical sciences, properly so called, namely, ethics and politics; the latter, the sphere of the arts, which include the applied sciences, such as medicine and engineering. The artistic sphere is determined by some good other than the good of man, individually or communally, the good of something to be produced or altered in some way. In short, the sphere of ethics and politics is the government of men, individually or communally, whereas the sphere of the arts, particularly the useful arts, is the government of things. All economic activities thus fall within the sphere of art.[9] And since, all practicable goods are ordered ultimately to the good of the human person, the various arts are subordinate to the practical science, and, in the realm of the practical as a whole, ethics and politics are said to be architectonic. 1. There is a traditional distinction between ethics and politics in terms of their ends. The moral end is the good of the human person as such, happiness. The political end is the good of persons united in a community, and this community end is what is called the common good, the social good, the welfare of the state. a. But which is prior, ethics or politics? Which of these two goods is paramount? Aristotle never succeeded in fully answering this question, as any reader of his Ethics and Politics must know. But in the light of the integral humanism which M. Maritain has explained to us, -- a doctrine in which Christian practical philosophy clearly improves upon that of the Greeks, -- the answer can be given.[10] The good of the human person as such is paramount. The good society is not an end in itself, though it is an intrinsic good. The common good is a means to the happiness of men. But in so far as men are individual members of a community, they must be ordered to the common good, which is superior to the private interests of each and every individual. In short, man must be viewed as both a moral and a political being, in the one case seeking happiness, in the other serving the common good. Since the common good is a means to happiness, the moral obligation to act well politically is, in a sense, more fundamental than the political obligation to lead a good civil life. b. One modem misconception must be noted here, because it bears on the relation of parties to the common good. The common good is not determined by a utilitarian arithmetic which results in the greatest good for the greatest number. The common good cannot be achieved by a compromise among conflicting private interests, whether of individuals, sects or parties. It is rightly determined in two ways: first, as a means to happiness, and thus no social arrangement is good which interferes with the attainment of happiness, in its strict meaning as ultimate moral perfection; secondly, as the good intrinsic to the social order itself, the good of the organization, which is not the summation of the good of its several parts, any more than the organization is a mere sum of these parts.[11] As the virtues are the proximate and constitutive means of happiness, so peace, order and justice constitute the welfare of the community. Justice must here be taken as including both justice in general and economic or special justice, the latter being concerned with the ordering of all the arts and operations involved in the production and distribution of goods which serve the needs of man and society. 1. Now it is my contention that there are still further differences between ethics and politics, which the traditional discussion has failed to make explicit. I cannot say whether these further differences are essential or whether they are only marked differences in degree, but in either case, they make the problem of political action different from that of moral conduct. I shall enumerate them briefly.[12] a. First, an objective difference: Ethics, or moral philosophy, is much more independent of history than politics. While it is true that the moralist does not only consider the good man absolutely, but also what is good for men differing individually in temperaments and abilities, nevertheless this relativity is, for the most part, independent of the contingencies of time and place, because the range of individual differences is for the most part the same at any historic moment and under widely diverse conditions of society and culture. The constancy of human nature, both the specific sameness and the limited range of individual differences, gives moral problems a universal character and moral principles a universal adequacy in application to their solution. But, as we have seen, the practicable political good is relative to historic conditions, since a good form of government must be one adapted to the social, economic, and cultural character of a given concrete community. And in this historic order there is genuine novelty, as there is not in the order of human nature, specifically or individually. (1) Thus, Greek and Christian moral truths are as applicable today as they ever were. I do not mean that for their application, casuistry, and with it some local interpretation, is not needed. I mean only that an adequate moral philosophy is not essentially impaired by historic changes in human life. He who speaks moral truths speaks them for all times. To whatever extent moral philosophy guides me in the conduct of my life, I can avail myself of its ancient wisdom, though I must supplement it by counsel, sound judgment and prudence in applying it to action.[13] It can be both ancient and adequate in principle. (2) But political philosophy cannot be both ancient and adequate in principle. More than casuistry and interpretation is needed to make the political wisdom of Aristotle and St. Thomas applicable today; and the more that is needed is more or different wisdom, wisdom about the justice of political arrangements which they could not have foreseen because political potentialities reside not in human nature simply, but in the historically changing matrix of social life. Genuine novelty in the material conditions requires new political forms to be devised, and although the common good is everywhere the same in essence, although peace, order and the principles of justice do not change, politics as practical thinking must implement these principles by workable institutions.[14] (3) This is well illustrated by the problem we are considering. Representative government and the party system are new political forms evoked by modern economic and social conditions. They have raised a host of fundamental problems which must be solved if political democracy is to be soundly established.[15] The great political treatises of the past simply do not, nor could they be expected to, solve these problems. For the most part they are silent on the question of parties,[16] if one is not misled by the analogy between parties and factions, social classes or estates. Even such modern essays as those by Locke and Rousseau, though respectively moving rightly and wrongly in the direction of democratic principles, provide little or nothing that is relevant, because even they are too early in the modem development to be more than proclamations of a turn in human affairs. In short, I am saying that the work of political theory, of devising institutions, of extending and adding principles, is not done, now or ever, as it is possible for moral theory to be complete at any time that the human effort is well made under happy intellectual auspices. b. The foregoing difference between ethics and politics is objective because it concerns the adequacy with which they can solve their respective problems. We must now consider a second difference which is subjective, a difference which each individual must realize in the solution of his own ethical and political problems. It can be stated as follows: The achievement of the moral end is within our own power for the most part; except for the possession of health and a minimum of external goods, which may be given or withheld by fortune, our happiness lies within our grasp, since the virtues which constitute its activity are entirely within the sphere of our interior and inviolable freedom. (For the purposes of making this comparison, I am restricting myself to the consideration of temporal happiness and the natural virtues.) It is possible, however difficult, for a man to know what the virtues and happiness are and so to exercise his freedom in good acts as to become virtuous and attain happiness. But the proper end of political action, the common good, is not within the scope of my individual power, whether I be ruler or ruled. It is only by the concerted just action of a sufficient number of men in the community that the political end toward which each is directed can be effectively realized in any degree. In short, the common good by its very nature requires the cooperation of men of good will, as well as the coercion or resistance of their opponents. From the point of view of each individual, there is here something which his will cannot command in the same way that it can command his own free acts. This difference is signified by the fact that in the political sphere the authority of a right will must be made effective either by force or persuasion. (1) Since all men in a community are not of good will, nor do they all possess the same virtues, or virtues to the same degree, nor are they placed by fortune in the same class according to gifts of birth, ability or wealth, a society is necessarily divided into friends and enemies in varying degrees of affiliation or opposition. This is the inevitable source of political groups, of classes, estates, factions and, ultimately, political parties. (2) Precisely because every society is thus constituted, power in the sense of force and persuasion, exercised by one man upon another, is the indispensable supplement of authority, which is nothing but the voice of reason speaking, and speaking ineffectively to those who will not hear or cannot understand. (It is an interesting paradox that because the political good lies beyond the reach of each man's interior power to achieve, men must use their powers externally upon one another for this end.) (3) It follows, furthermore, that no societies are good in their concrete embodiments in the same sense or to the same degree in which there are really good men, even apart from the saints. Happiness can be achieved essentially, but the common good is never more than remotely approximated, for the very reason that authority must suffer the alloy of force or be ineffective. Similarly, whereas the only means to happiness are good acts, we are frequently faced in political action with a choice between bad alternatives, acting well if we choose the lesser evil.[17] (4) Rhetoric is a necessary adjunct of political science, as it is not of ethics.[18] In moral matters, counsel and persuasion occur only between those who are truly and closely friends, and consequently there is no impurity of rhetoric. But the need for rhetoric in politics is to conquer the distances which separate men in virtue or class or disposition, to overcome differences, to move passions, often violently. Not only is political rhetoric impure, merging with sophistry, but political thought is itself contaminated by its intimate association with rhetoric. There are few political treatises, even among the great and famous ones, which are purely scientific, free from any admixture of rhetoric. (Thus, Hobbes was a propagandist for the Tories, and Locke for the Whigs.) The political thinker cannot help addressing himself to contemporary problems, cannot restrain himself from taking sides, cannot resist trying to win adherents to his party, and in consequence he conceives a treatise but delivers a tract. His doctrine becomes doctrinaire! (5) All the foregoing facts bear on the existence of parties in politics. Since good men, or bad, must cooperate to achieve their political ends, the community is always divided into political groups, affiliated or opposed in varying degrees. If the division were simply in terms of good and bad men, we would have a problem no different from the one arising from the fact that there are law-abiding and criminal elements in the population. But it is generally supposed that men of good will can divide into opposing parties. We shall subsequently face the question, whether there can be diverse parties to the common good. Here the point to be made is that under the conditions of representative government in a democratic society, the party system imposes certain inescapable conditions upon the effort of any man to make his political action effective by cooperating with his fellows. To whatever extent the party system is corrupt and contrary to the common good, individual action is vitiated by the necessity to work through the medium of parties. These are matters to be discussed more fully. Suffice it here to say that in the moral sphere there is nothing like the problem of factions or parties. Moral action is always directly in contact with its ends, whereas political action is like action at a distance and through a medium which is not ethereally pure. a. Before turning now to the problem of parties, as focusing these difficulties which are peculiar to political thought and action, we must note the prevalent opposition between what is called realpolitik and any normative approach to the subject. (1) Denying the validity of norms, realistic politics reduces itself to a descriptive account of the struggle for power between nations and between factions in any society. It identifies authority with force, which is equivalent to denying authority. It converts every political doctrine which speaks the language of good and evil, justice and injustice, to mere rhetoric used by leaders or parties as instruments of conquest or domination. There is nothing wrong, of course, with the notion of political description, as an extension of political history disguised as a science by the use of statistics and pseudogeneralizations. But realpolitik, while denying the traditional norms, is not satisfied with being merely descriptive. It, too, tries to be a practical science and to direct political action. And in doing so it substitutes the norm of power for the standards of justice and the common good.[19] (2) Thus we have the opposition in political thought today between the practical politics of power and that of justice, an opposition that had an early exemplification in the contrast between the De Regimine Principum of St. Thomas and Machiavelli's advice to the prince who would succeed. We need not hesitate to condemn the politics of power as normatively false, but we must be careful not to dismiss the true or probable descriptions of political action which realpolitik has amassed. Only utopian theorists can afford to ignore such facts. The practical politics of justice must be no less realistic than realpolitik about the nature of political parties as actually operative in the world today. (3) But being realistic is not enough; it is not enough to know how parties operate, but whether they are essentially good or bad as political institutions, the standard being justice and the common good. That almost all existing party systems in democratic societies today are bad as a matter of fact, -- the evidence being clear that they implement the struggle for power rather than serve the common good, -- does not fully solve our question. The practical question is whether, under democratic conditions, and in full view of all the facts, political parties are indispensable instruments of representative government? If they are indispensable, then the next practical question is how to remedy the prevalent abuses, how to make parties serve justice rather than power.
Footnotes: 5. Vd. J. Maritain, Les Degrés du Savoir, Paris, 1932: Annexe VII; Science et Sagesse, Paris, 1935: pp. 228-374. Cf. Y. Simon, Critique de la Connaissance Morale, Paris, 1934; and Trois Leçons sur le Travail, Paris, 1938. Although these works have done much toward making an explicit formulation of the practical order in terms or traditional principles, many problems remain to be solved. 6. Vd. St. Thomas Aquinas, In Libros Ethicorum, Bk. VI, 2:1128-1132. 7. Nichomachean Ethics, II, 2, 1103b 26-30. 8. Nichomachean Ethics, I, 3, 1095a 1-10; X, 9, 1179b31-1180a13. 9. Vd. Maritain, Freedom in the Modern World, New York, 1936: Appendix I. Cf. my discussion of these matters in Art and Prudence, New York, 1937: Ch. XII, esp. pp. 428-441. The Marxist notion of the "withering away of the state" as an ideal is based upon the false supposition that an adequate administration of things will completely dispense with the need for a government of men. Vd. V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1918; Eng. trans., London, 1934. This summarizes the views of Marx and Engels and extends them somewhat in view of later conditions. For a critique of this doctrine, vd. Kung Chuan Hsiao, Political Pluralism, New York; 1927: Ch. V on pluralism as a solution of the problem of the relation between economics and politics. 10. Humanisme Intégral, Paris, 1936; pub. in English under the title of True Humanism, New York, 1938. Cf. Freedom in the Modern World, pp. 52 ff. 11. Vd. St. Thomas Aquinas, De Regimine Principum, I, 1, 2, 14, 15; II, 3. 12. I have not included in this comparison the difference between ethics and politics in their relation to theology, as differently requiring the supplementation of theology to be adequate practically. Moral theology is obviously a much more extensive body of doctrine than theological politics. The latter is concerned, for the most part, with two points: (1) the Divine government as the source of political authority; and (2) the movement of history, of both progress and decline in human affairs, as reflecting Providence. Vd. Note 35 infra. 13. It may be objected here that manners are local and subject to historical and ethnic variation; hence that there are changing, conventional determinations of moral principles. Thus, although courage and modesty are universal and invariant as moral virtues, the kinds of behavior which are recognized as courageous or modest are different at different times and in different cultures. But this objection fails to see what is involved in the distinction between shifting mores and enduring moral principles. Manners have to do with overt behavior, extrinsic, social operations. But the sphere of ethics is the interior domain of the will. Moral problems are all concerned in one way or another, with the rectitude of the will, and only accidentally with the exteriorization or socialization of its commands. The fact that the moral virtues must express themselves socially in the varying dress of conventional manners does not affect the constancy of the virtues themselves as the basic moral form, nor impair the adequacy of moral philosophy as directive of the moral life, an adequacy that transcends local conditions and historically determined mores. To suppose that moral philosophy must be essentially altered by an accommodation to the mores is to suppose that the principles of justice change with changes in positive law or national customs. The changing content of civil law as a set of determinations of natural law is relevant to the subjection of political principles to historic conditions for their fulfillment, but not to ethics. Cf. Art and Prudence, pp. 154-155, 165-166. 14. To say that political philosophy is not adequate in principle for all times and conditions is not to say that there are no political principles which have enduring practical truth. The difference between ethics and politics, here being discussed, is simply that casuistry, and casuistry alone, is needed to apply the principles and rules of moral wisdom for the guidance of life at any time or place; whereas changing conditions of human life and community call for new political principles and regulations. These are general, and not casuistical judgments about singular circumstances. Thus, the constitution as a political form is analogous to the virtues as moral forms. The virtues are constant because they are forms perfecting a constant human nature; but constitutions must vary with historic changes in social conditions. All the working institutions of the political order flow from the constitution as the arrangement of offices and as the principle of more determinate regulation of political processes. Thus, legal justice differs from natural justice in that it is measured by the constitution which confers legislative authority under specific restrictions, and not absolutely. If, then, it is true that a finite set of constitutions cannot be formulated for all times and conditions, political science is necessarily subject to history, and is always inadequate on the level of principles, as well as casuistically. To admit this is not to say that the ancient formulation of the principles of political justice and the ancient analysis of the generic kinds of government are not true today. These principles and forms are anterior in their generality to the specific constitutions and more determinate regulations. But the latter belong no less to politics as practical science and are the focal point of its temporal limitations. Vd. Note 37 infra. Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II, Q. 97, A.1. 15. "James Mill, in his famous article on 'Government,' written in 1814 for the Encyclopedia Britannica, called representation 'the grand discovery of modern times,' supplying the key to 'the solution of all the difficulties, both spiritual and practical,' in the way of organizing 'good Government.' Political scientists have yet to find the solution for the difficulties in the way of organizing good representation" (F. W. Coker and C. C. Rodee, article on Representation in the Social Science Encyclopedia, Vol. XIII, p. 315). Cf. Laski on the discovery of the idea of representation as early as the thirteenth century: op. cit., Vol. V, p. 79. 16. It is significant here that the Constitution of the United States did not anticipate the problem of parties as instruments of representation. 17. A text of Aristotle would appear to be inconsistent. He says: "As it is difficult to hit the mean exactly, we must take the second best course, as the saying goes, and choose the lesser of two evils" {Nichomachean Ethics, II, 9, 1109a33-35). But this apparent inconsistency is removed by the context, for Aristotle is here suggesting practical rules for approximating the mean by tending away from the worse of the two extremes. This does not mean that the act which follows such advice is a vicious act. A vicious act cannot be a cause of virtuous habit; the act is not vicious by reason of approximating the mean rather than hitting it exactly. But in the political, as opposed to the moral, order evils may have to be chosen or endured for the sake of avoiding greater evils. Vd. St. Thomas Aquinas, De Regimine Principum, I, 6. In other words, a means which is intrinsically bad may have to be employed, because all the available means may be defective in one way or another. Under such conditions, of course, the common good can be approximated only in proportion as the means are not entirely corrupt. If it be argued that a man can act well politically if he direct himself to the right end, despite the corruption of the means he consents to employ, it must be answered that a man is responsible for the probable consequences of the instruments he uses; and if he use a corrupt political device which is probably contrary in effect to his intention, he is a. culpable as a man who shoots another man intending only to cure him of a disease. If a revolver and poison are the only instruments at hand, would it not be better to abstain from action? Vd. Maritain's discussion of the purification of means in Freedom in the Modern World: pp. 139-192. 18. Rhetoric, being a formal organon of persuasion, is not a branch of politics, which as science deals with a restricted subject-matter, but so closely is it related to politics in fact that "rhetoric masquerades as political science, and the professors of it as political experts" (Aristotle, Rhetoric, I, 2, 1356a 28). Cf. ibid., I, 4, 1359b10. 19. Vd., for example, C. E. Merriam, Political Power, New York, 1934; H. D. Lasswell, Politics, Who Gets What, When, How, New York. 1936.
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