Edward Feser's Blog, page 8

Damnation roundup

The realityof hell is the clear and infallible teaching of scripture and tradition.  I would argue that even purely philosophicalargumentation can establish that the soul that is in a state of rebellionagainst God at death will remain that way forever.  The universalist heresy denies these truths,and insists that all will be saved.  Ithas in recent years seen a remarkable rise in popularity.  In Catholic circles, Balthasar’s view thatthere is at least a reasonable hopethat all human beings will be saved has also gained currency.

These are extremelygrave delusions which, by fostering complacency, are sure to add to the numberof the damned.  In reality, there is noreasonable hope whatsoever that all are saved. The relevant philosophical and theological considerations make this conclusionunavoidable.  I have addressed theseissues in some depth in many articles over the years, and it seemed to me agood idea to collect them in one place for readers who might find thatuseful. 

My most detailedand academic presentation of the philosophical considerations showing that asoul that is locked on evil at death will remain so perpetually can be found inmy New Blackfriars article “Aquinason the Fixity of the Will After Death” and in chapter 10 of my book ImmortalSouls: A Treatise on Human Nature. 

I have alsoaddressed this issue, along with other questions that frequently arise inconnection with the idea of damnation, in a series of articles here at theblog.  Why can a soul that is damned notrepent?  Is there a sense in which Goddamns us, or are we damned only insofar as we damn ourselves?  Would annihilation not be a more suitablepunishment than perpetual suffering?  Couldwe really be happy in heaven knowing that some are in hell?  Might we deny that hell is everlasting withoutalso denying that heaven is everlasting?  If there is no hell, why is it urgent torepent and be baptized?  Is it hateful towarn people that they are in danger of hell? Wouldn’t it be pointless for God to create people who end updamned?  These and other questions areaddressed in the following posts:

How togo to hell

Does Goddamn you?

Whynot annihilation?

A HartlessGod?

No hell,no heaven

Nourgency without hell

Speaking(what you take to be) hard truths ≠ hatred

Geach on hell

The evidencefrom scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and the Magisterium thatthe reality of hell has been infallibly taught is overwhelming.  I set this evidence out, and address somecommon attempts to get around it, in the following articles:

Scriptureand the Fathers contra universalism

Popes,creeds, councils, and catechisms contra universalism

Helland conditional prophecy

Wishfulthinking about Judas

In recentyears, the most influential defender of universalism has been David BentleyHart.  At Catholic Herald, I reviewed Hart’s book That All Shall Be Saved:

DavidBentley Hart’s attack on Christian tradition fails to convince

Hart respondedto this review, and in reply to his response I wrote the following much more detailedcritique of his book:

Hart,hell, and heresy

I had reasonto revisit Hart’s arguments in a further article:

Divinefreedom and heresy

I addressBalthasar’s views and the dangerous complacency they foster in another seriesof articles:

Afallacy in Balthasar

Hell isnot empty

Damnationdenialism

Finally, afew posts that are not on the topic of hell per se, but are relevant.  I would suggest that contemporary discomfort withthe doctrine of hell is, at least in part, more a reflection of the softness ofmodern Western society than a genuinely Christian understanding of the divinenature and the human condition.  Modern peoplesimply cannot fathom a God who would permit great suffering, much less a Godwho would actually inflict it as punishment. But Christianity has always taught that suffering is necessary even forthe righteous, and is a feature rather than a bug of salvation history.  And if even the righteous must suffer, howmuch more the unrepentant wicked?  A few relevantarticles are:

The“first world problem” of evil

Augustineon divine punishment of the good alongside the wicked

Nietzscheand Christ on suffering

Word on Fire Institute course

My six-partvideo course on Six Arguments for theExistence of God is available for free from the Word on Fire Institute.  A short preview and sign-up information are availablehere.  An interview about the course can be read here.

More on the GOP and social conservatism

For thosenot following me on X (Twitter), someposts from the last couple of days attempting further to clarify what is at issue, andat stake, in the debate over the direction of the GOP:

Now is the time for social conservatives to fight

Readers who follow me on X (Twitter) will know of theintense debate occurring there over the last week between social conservativescritical of Trump’s gutting of the GOP platform and those defending it.  A pair of bracing, must-read articles at FirstThings and NationalReview recount how pro-lifers were brazenly shut out of the platformprocess.  For social conservatives toacquiesce out of partisan loyalty would be to commit assisted politicalsuicide.  Today I posted the following,which elaborates on considerations I raised in anearlier article:

A brief memoto social conservatives worried that criticism of the GOP will cost it votes,and who claim that the critics are politically naïve:

First, yes,criticism could cost the party votes. That’s precisely the point. The party couldlose votes IF, in the months remaining before the election, it does not try seriouslyto meet the concerns of social conservatives. In particular, the GOP must bemade to see that it cannot take their votes for granted. And the party must dosomething to make up for the appalling injustice that was done to socialconservatives during the platform process, as recounted in the First Things article linked to. 

Second, itis not the critics, but those who urge their fellow social conservatives tokeep their mouths shut, who are politically naïve. The only thing politicianscan be relied on to respond to is the prospect of losing votes or losing money.If the GOP fears that it might lose the votes or financial contributions of acritical mass of social conservatives, it will have to take their concernsseriously. If, instead, social conservatives acquiesce to what has happenedrather than fighting back, the party will have no incentive to try to addresstheir concerns in the future – and every incentive not to do so, given theunpopularity of social conservatism in the culture at large.

The stakesare high, and that is precisely why social conservatives must raise the alarmNOW, while they might still influence the direction of the party, not in somefantasy post-election future. The actual political reality is that if the GOPwins, having thrown social conservatives under the bus without any pushbackfrom them, the party will draw the lesson that it no longer needs to worryabout them or their concerns.

Fight, yes, but for what?

It isimpossible not to admire the resilience and fighting spirit with which DonaldTrump responded – literally within moments – to the failed attempt to take hislife.  And that he is among the luckiestof politicians is evidenced not just by his survival, but by the fact that the momentwas captured in photographs as dramatic as any seen in recent history.  His supporters are understandably inspired,indeed electrified.  And his enemies aresure to be demoralized by the sympathy this event will generate – not tomention the blinding contrast between Trump’s virility and the acceleratingdecline of his doddering opponent.  Naturally,that those enemies include some very bad people only reinforces Trump’ssupporters’ devotion to him, which is now at a fever pitch.  But it is precisely at moments of highemotion that the cold water of reason, however unpleasant, is most needed.

In the weekbefore the assassination attempt, a fierce controversy began to arise withinconservative ranks over some radical changes to the Republican Party platform madeat Trump’s insistence, and apparently rammedthrough without allowing potential critics sufficient time to study them ordeliberate.  The changes involved guttingthe platform of the staunchly pro-life position that has in some form or otherbeen in it for almost fifty years, and also removing the platform’s statementof support for the traditional understanding of marriage.  The platform no longer affirms the fundamentalright to life of all innocent human beings. Instead, it opposes only late term abortions, while leaving it to thestates to determine whether there should be any further restrictions, and explicitlyendorses IVF (which typically involves the destruction of embryos).

In short, theplatform now essentially reflects a soft pro-choice position rather than aclear anti-abortion position.  As Robert P.George has noted,the platform has in this respect become what liberal Republicans like ArlenSpecter had long but heretofore unsuccessfully tried to make it.  That would be alarming enough by itself, butit is made more so when seen in light of other recent moves by once pro-life Republicansin the direction of watering down their opposition to abortion.  For example, Senator J.D. Vance, apparentlythe frontrunner for the position of Trump’s running mate, has said that hesupports access to the abortion pill mifepristone, which is said to beresponsible for half of the abortions in the U.S.  Senator Ted Cruz supportsIVF, despite the destruction of embryos that it entails.  Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake hasdenounced a ban on abortion she once supported, and atone point even appeared to adopt Bill Clinton’s rhetoric to the effect thatabortion should “safe, legal, and rare.” 

Trumphimself now not only favors keeping abortion legal in cases involving rape,incest, and danger to the mother’s life, but declines to say much more, otherthan that the matter should be left to the states.  He no longer treats the abortion issue asfundamentally about protecting the rights of innocent human beings, but insteadas a merely procedural question concerning which level of government shouldmake policy on the matter.  Nor do most observersseriously believe that abortion (much less the defense of traditional marriage)are issues that Trump is personally much concerned about, given his notoriouspersonal life and the pro-choice and otherwise socially liberal views heexpressed for decades before running for president in 2016.  The most plausible reading of Trump’s recordis that he was willing to further the agenda of social conservatives when doingso was in his political interests, but has no inclination to do so any longer nowthat their support has been secured and their views have become a politicalliability.

Some socialconservatives have defended the change to the platform precisely on thesepolitical grounds, arguing that they cannot accomplish anything unless thecandidates who are least hostile to them first win elections.  They note that a federal ban on abortion ishighly unpopular and has no chance of occurring in the foreseeable future, sothat for Trump to push for such a ban would be politically suicidal.  But the problem with this argument is thatTrump does not need radically to change the platform in order to win theelection.  For one thing, even hisbitterest opponents have for some time judged that he is likely to win theelection anyway, despite the unpopularity of the GOP’s traditional stance onabortion.  For another thing, he could letthe existing platform stand while basically ignoring it.  Or he could have merely softened the platform,preserving the general principle of defending the rights of the unborn whileleaving it vague how or when this would be done at the federal level. 

In short, itis one thing to refrain from advancinga certain position, and quite another positivelyto abandon that position.  The mostthat Trump would need to do for political purposes is the former, but thechange to the platform goes beyond this and does the latter.  If this change stands, the long-termconsequences for social conservatives could be disastrous.  Outside the churches, social conservatism hasno significant institutional support beyond the Republican Party.  The universities, corporations, and most of themass media are extremely hostile to it. And those media outlets that are less hostile (such as Fox News)tolerate social conservatives largely because of their political influencewithin the GOP. 

Some social conservativeshave suggested that while the change to the platform is bad, it can be reversedafter Trump is elected.  This isdelusional.  Obviously, the change hasbeen made because Trump judges that, politically, the best course of action isto appease those who are hostile to social conservatism and gamble that socialconservatives themselves will vote for him anyway.  If he wins – and especially if he wins without significant pushback from social conservativeson the platform change – then this will be taken to be a vindication of thejudgment in question.  There will be no incentiveto restore the socially conservative elements of the platform, and everyincentive not to do so.

The resultwill be that the national GOP will be far less likely in the future to advancethe agenda of social conservatives, or even to pay lip service to it.  Opposition to abortion and resistance to othersocially liberal policies will become primarily a matter of local rather thannational politics, and social conservatives will be pushed further into the culturalmargins.  They will gradually lose theremaining institutional support they have outside the churches (even as thechurches themselves are becoming ever less friendly to them).  And their ability to fight against the moraland cultural rot accelerating all around us, and to protect themselves fromthose who would erode their freedom to practice and promote their religiousconvictions, will thereby be massively reduced.

In short, forsocial conservatives to roll over and accept Trump’s radical change to theRepublican platform would be to seek near-term electoral victory at the cost oflong-term political suicide.  Robert P.George, Ryan Anderson, Albert Mohler, and other socially conservative leaders have called onthe delegates at this week’s Republican National Convention to vote down therevised platform and recommit to the party’s traditional pro-life position.  It is imperative that all socialconservatives join in this effort in whatever way they are able.

The future of the Magisterium

The latest issue of First Things features a symposium on thefuture of the Catholic Church, to which I contributed an article on the futureof the Magisterium.  You can read the entiresymposium online here.

Rawls on religion

Though JohnRawls wrote much that is of relevance to religion – and in particular, to thequestion of what influence it can properly have on politics (basically none, inRawls’s view) – he wrote little on religion itself.  After his death, his undergraduate seniorthesis, titled ABrief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith , waspublished.  Naturally, it is of limitedrelevance to his mature thought. However, published in the same volume was a short 1997 personal essaytitled “On My Religion,” which is not uninteresting as an account of thedevelopment of his religious beliefs.  Ithink it does shed some light on his political philosophy.  From Rawls’s best-known works, theconservative religious believer is bound to judge Rawls’s knowledge andunderstanding of religion to be shallow. And indeed, I think his views on these matters were shallow.  But as the essay reveals, that is not becausehe didn’t give much thought to them.

In his earlylife, Rawls was an Episcopalian, and he was religious enough to have consideredgoing to the seminary.  He lost faith intraditional Christianity while serving as a soldier during World War II, and headmits that he does not know for certain what the reasons were.  But they seem to have had primarily to dowith the problem of evil, and in particular with the way the significance ofthat problem was impressed on him by experiences he had during the war, such asthe death of a friend and learning of the Holocaust.  Not unrelatedly, he later came to findChristian doctrines such as predestination and damnation morallyobjectionable.  In general, he says, hisdifficulties with Christianity had to do with moral matters, rather thanevidential ones such as the question of whether there are any good argumentsfor God’s existence.

What he hasto say about all this is pretty commonplace and doesn’t add anything new toskeptical arguments already familiar (not that it was meant by Rawls to addanything – he’s just summarizing the considerations that he personally foundmost significant).  Rawls also expressesthe view – totally wrong in my opinion, but common in the late twentieth centuryespecially – that arguments for God’s existence like Aquinas’s lack anyreligious significance.  For reasons I’veexplained elsewhere,I don’t think someone could properly understand those arguments and still saythat.  But Rawls merely makes a passingremark to this effect, so there’s no actual worked-out position there tocomment on.

This much ispretty pedestrian and wouldn’t make the article of much interest (though infairness to Rawls, it was not written for publication, and starts outexplicitly saying that his personal religious development was not especiallyunusual or likely to be of interest to anyone else).  However, there are several other remarks hemakes that are of interest for the light they shed on how Rawls’s views aboutreligion influenced his political philosophy.

First, Rawlsis fairly frank about his hostility to Catholicism in particular.  He says that the history of the Inquisitionwas of special interest to him in the years immediately after the war, and heis critical of the Church’s “use of political power to establish its hegemonyand to oppress other religions” (p. 264). He indicates that it is natural that it would do so, given that it is “areligion of eternal salvation requiring true belief,” so that “the Church sawitself as having justification for its repression of heresy” (pp. 264-5).  He says that he has “come to think of thedenial of religious freedom and liberty of conscience as a very great evil, andfor me it makes the claims of the Popes to infallibility impossible to accept”(p. 265).  These freedoms and liberties,he goes on to tell us, would become “fixed points of my moral and politicalopinions” and “basic political elements of my view of constitutional democracy”(Ibid.). It is significant that his judgment on papal infallibility remainsharsh despite his acknowledgement of the qualifications Catholicism puts onit.  It is also significant that he doesnot mention the teaching of Vatican II on religious liberty, which seems tohave been irrelevant to him in evaluating Catholicism.  That the popes are said to be infallibleunder certain circumstances, yet the Church once claimed and used temporalpower in the way she did, is for him enough to falsify the doctrine.

It is noteworthythat some of Rawls’s basic political convictions traced precisely to ahostility to the medieval Church and its doctrinal inflexibility and claims todivine authority, since that was, of course, true also of progenitors of theliberal tradition like Hobbes and Locke. Rawls, widely considered the most influential modern theorist ofliberalism, is in this way very much in line with the early liberal traditionand its primary concerns.

A secondnoteworthy set of remarks made by Rawls evinces hostility to Christianity moregenerally.  He says that “to the extentthat Christianity is taken seriously, I came to think it could have deleteriouseffects on one’s character” (p. 265).  That’sa pretty strong statement.  What is hisbasis for it?  The problem, as he seesit, is that the Christian’s concern for his personal salvation in the afterlifetends to make him insufficiently attentive to his social obligations in thisworld.  He spells this out in thefollowing curious passage:

Christianity is a solitary religion:each is saved or damned individually, and we naturally focus on our ownsalvation to the point where nothing else might seem to matter.  Whereas actually, while it is impossible notto be concerned with ourselves, at least to some degree – and we should – ourown individual soul and its salvation are hardly important for the largerpicture of civilized life, and often we have to recognize this.  Thus, how important is it that I be savedcompared to risking my life to assassinate Hitler, had I the chance?  It’s not important at all. (p. 265)

Note firstthat the example is very odd.  We canagree that it would be extremely important for someone to stop Hitler,including by way of an assassination that might risk one’s own life, if one wasin a position to do so.  But thoughperhaps a few Christians would disagree with that (pacifists, say), why onearth would Rawls think Christians in general would?  Yet maybe he doesn’t mean to imply that theywould, but instead intends only to say that while Christians would agree thatstopping Hitler is important, they would regard salvation as even moreimportant.

The examplestill seems odd, but put that aside.  Forit is also very odd for Rawls to claim that salvation is “hardly important for the larger picture of civilized life,” andindeed “not important at all.”  For salvation concerns the eternal happinessof one’s immortal soul, and the avoidance of eternal damnation.  Not even the greatest blessings of this lifecan compare to salvation, and not even the greatest evils of this life cancompare to damnation.  Hence, it is obvious that nothing could be moreimportant than these things.  Why onearth, then, would Rawls suggest that in fact they are “hardly important” andeven “not important at all”? 

No doubtRawls believed that there is no such thing as salvation or damnation in thehereafter.  But that is beside thepoint.  For the fact remains that if salvation and damnation are real, then they would indeed be far moreimportant than anything that occurs in this life.  What Rawls should say, then, is not thatsalvation is unimportant, but that itis unreal, if that’s indeed what hethinks.  It would be silly, and indeedmad, to say that salvation and damnation might indeed be real but still somehow hardly important oraltogether unimportant.

Anyway,these remarks evince a very this-worldly moral and spiritual orientation, and arejection of Christianity’s traditional emphasis on the hereafter.  And here too Rawls has much in common withthe early modern liberals, who also wanted to reorient the West away from theotherworldly concerns of medieval Christianity and focus it on the here andnow.

A finalinteresting set of remarks made by Rawls in the essay concerns thesixteenth-century French thinker Jean Bodin, an advocate of religioustoleration who Rawls says was especially influential on his own views aboutreligion.  Rawls says there are threethings in particular that he finds striking in Bodin.  First, he says, Bodin advocated religioustoleration on religious grounds, rather than for merely political reasons orbecause of any tendency toward skepticism. Second, he says that Bodin thought of dialogue between religions asabout seeking mutual understanding, rather than being a matter of givingcriticisms and arguments intended to convince. Third, he says that the sort of religious belief that Bodin regarded asinadmissible seems to have been the kind that did not advocate toleration, andwas thus not “reasonable.”

Thosefamiliar with Rawls’s PoliticalLiberalism will no doubt notice the echoes of what he says in thatbook.  He claims there that his brand ofliberalism is neutral between the diverse religious, moral, and philosophical“comprehensive doctrines” that exist in modern pluralistic societies.  Or at least, it is neutral between what Rawlscalls “reasonable” comprehensive doctrines, which he thinks of as those thatare willing to accept liberalism’s constraints about what sorts of views can bepermitted to influence the political realm, including constraints of religioustoleration.  He says that a commitment toliberalism can be grounded in what he calls an “overlapping consensus” betweencomprehensive doctrines, but that claims that derive from a particularcomprehensive doctrine that are not shared by the others ought to play no rolein “public reason,” i.e. the considerations that guide deliberation betweencitizens over matters of public policy.

In fact, the“neutrality” of Rawls’s political liberalism is bogus and the argument of thebook is problematic in other ways too. (See, for example, Michael Sandel’s devastatingreview of the book.)  Whatmatters for present purposes, though, is that it entails a vision of religionas a purely private matter that believers ought to keep to themselves, ratherthan as something that is no less entitled to public voice and influence thanare, say, the views of economists, medical doctors, or scientists.  Bodin’s conception of religion dovetailsnicely with this, and perhaps influenced Rawls as he thought through the positionof Political Liberalism.  But it is far from the traditionalself-understanding of Christianity, and certainly of Catholicism.

Here onceagain, Rawls echoes his early modern liberal forebears, who tried to makeChristianity safe for liberalism precisely by redefining it, neutering it ofany doctrinal content that might conflict with the liberal conception of theproper scope and limits of government.  Buthe also evinces the parochialism evident throughout his work.  Rawls is often criticized for presenting as auniversal and objective set of political principles what are really just the intuitionsof the average mid twentieth-century liberal New England college professor.  His views about religion are no different,and lack the self-awareness of Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke and company, who knewthey were proposing a radical reconceptualization of Christianity rather thansomething they could glibly expect their critics to go along with.

Hobbes and Kant on capital punishment

ThomasHobbes and Immanuel Kant both had an enormous formative influence on modernmoral and political philosophy, and on liberalism in particular.  But their approaches are very different.  Hobbes begins with what strikes the averagereader as a base and depressing conception of what individual human beings arelike in their natural state, and sees society arising out of an act of cold,calculating self-interest.  Kant, bycontrast, seems committed to a lofty and inspiring conception of human beings,and regards society as grounded in a respect for the dignity of persons.

Contemporaryopponents of capital punishment often appeal to a Kantian conception of humandignity, which they suppose naturally entails such opposition.  And it might seem like advocacy of the deathpenalty would have to reflect something closer to Hobbes’s grim realpolitik.  Yet when we consider the actual views ofHobbes and Kant themselves on thematter of capital punishment, we find that something closer to the opposite isthe case – Kant being enthusiastically (indeed excessively) favorable tocapital punishment, and Hobbes, if not utterly opposed to it, at leastsignificantly more negative about it.

This is noaccident, for each of these positions on the death penalty in fact fits quitenaturally with the premises from which Kant and Hobbes respectively derive them.  And this, I submit, teaches us somethingabout the conception of human beings that modern opponents of capitalpunishment – and indeed many citizens of modern Western liberal democraticsocieties in general – are really operating with, at least implicitly.  Modern people like to think of themselves ascuddly Kantians, when they are in fact closer to coldhearted Hobbesians.  And their hostility to capital punishmentreflects, not a robust conception of justice but, on the contrary, an aversionto such a conception. 

Hobbes on the death penalty

For Hobbes,the state of nature is essentially a state of amorality.  Everyone has a perfect liberty to do what helikes, not because there is some moral imperative on everyone to allow othersto do so, but on the contrary because there are no moral imperatives atall.  If you find your bliss in writingpoetry by moonlight, you are perfectly free to do that.  And if some other person finds his bliss inbeating up people who write poetry by moonlight, he is perfectly free to do that.  There is no objective fact of the matter aboutwhat either you or he ought toprefer, but merely facts about what you and he do in fact prefer, and such individual preferences are bound oftento be at cross purposes. 

This, ofcourse, is why for Hobbes the state of nature is “a war of all against all,”with life inevitably “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  It is to avoid this frightful situation thatrational individuals will, in Hobbes’s view, agree to leave the state of natureby giving up their liberty to do whatever they wish and consenting to beingruled by a sovereign.  It is only at thispoint that rules of morality come into being, and they are essentially justwhatever laws the sovereign decrees.  Butthey are binding on individuals only because they have consented to beinggoverned by them.

Now, Hobbesfamously draws an absolutist political conclusion from this, but what isrelevant for present purposes is this. For Hobbes, the default position is liberty to do whatever one likes;what makes it rational to give up some of that liberty is that, otherwise, onewould lose all of one’s liberty inslavery or death; and we are obligated to follow rules that limit liberty onlyinsofar as we consent to them.

That bringsus to what Hobbes says about capital punishment.  Unsurprisingly, given his absolutism, Hobbesdoes not deny that the sovereign may resort to capital punishment in order touphold the law.  Interestingly, however,this does not for Hobbes entail any obligation on the part of the condemnedcriminal to go along with such a punishment. In chapter 21 of Leviathan,Hobbes writes:

Covenants, not to defend a man’s ownbody, are void.  Therefore, if the sovereigncommand a man (though justly condemned) to kill, wound, or maim himself; or notto resist those that assault him; or to abstain from the use of food, air,medicine, or any other thing, without which he cannot live; yet hath that manthe liberty to disobey…

In case a great many men togetherhave already resisted the sovereign power unjustly, or committed some capitalcrime, for which every one of them expecteth death, whether have they not theliberty then to join together, and assist, and defend one another?  Certainly they have: for they but defendtheir lives, which the guilty man may as well do, as the innocent.  There was indeed injustice in the firstbreach of their duty; their bearing of arms subsequent to it, though it be tomaintain what they have done, is no new unjust act.  And if it be only to defend their persons, itis not unjust at all.

This makes sensegiven Hobbes’s account of the basis of morality.  If the default position is liberty to dowhatever I want to do, and I can lose this liberty only insofar as I consent to losing it – and if I can rationally consent to losing it onlybecause I would face death otherwise – then it is clear why Hobbes wouldconclude that I cannot lose my liberty to preserve my own life, not even if Iconsent to doing so.  For, again, it isprecisely the desire to preserve mylife that is the only reason I could rationally consent to give up any libertyat all.

As LeoStrauss remarks in Natural Right andHistory, this introduces a tension into Hobbes’s system.  If it would in some cases be just for thesovereign to punish me with death, how could I justly resist?  Or if I can always justly resist, how can itbe just for the sovereign ever to inflict such a punishment?  As Strauss writes, “this conflict was solvedin the spirit, ifagainst the letter, of Hobbes by Beccaria, who inferred from the absoluteprimacy of the right of self-preservation the necessity of abolishing capitalpunishment” (p. 197).  Hobbes’s accountof morality in fact entails this abolitionist position even if he only gothalfway to it himself.

Straussmakes another crucial observation. Hobbes’s account only works if death is indeed the worst fatepossible.  But “in many cases the fear ofviolent death prove[s] to be a weaker force than the fear of hell fire or thefear of God” (p. 198).  Naturally, suchfear could change the whole calculation even for those in Hobbes’s state ofnature.  Perhaps, if people feared Godand damnation most of all, they would resist the sovereign far beyond whatHobbes would allow, choosing to risk offending the state rather than to riskoffending God.  Or perhaps, in apenitential spirit, they would submit even to punishments like enslavement andexecution, looking forward to a reward in the hereafter.

To make hisaccount of morality and politics work, then, Hobbes requires a social contextthat is secularist rather than otherworldly in its basic orientation.  For only in such a context can the fear ofdeath be more vivid than the fear of eternal damnation, and thus do the workHobbes needs for it to do.  As Strausswrites:

The whole scheme suggested by Hobbesrequires for its operation the weakening or, rather, the elimination of thefear of invisible powers.  It requiressuch a radical change of orientation as can be brought about only by thedisenchantment of the world… Hobbes’s is the first doctrine that necessarilyand unmistakably points to a thoroughly ‘enlightened’, i.e., a-religious oratheistic society as the solution of the social or political problem. (p. 198)

In short, Hobbes’ssystem of ethics and political philosophy entails an abolitionist position oncapital punishment because of its radical individualism and secularism.  In particular, it holds that limitations onthe individual’s freedom to do whatever he wants are justifiable only if heconsents to them, and that no individual could consent to being executedbecause death is worst of all fates.

Kant on capital punishment

Kant takesthe fundamental principle of morality to lie in what he calls the categorical imperative, the secondformulation of which is: “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity,whether in your own person or in that of any other, never simply as a means,but always at the same time as an end.”  Theidea here is that human beings, as rational beings possessing intellects andfree will, have by nature a kind of autonomy or self-determination thatnon-human animals, plants, and inorganic things do not.  When we treat human beings as nothing morethan resources for the realization of our own ends (the way we might treat asub-rational being of one of the kinds mentioned) we thereby fail to deal withthem in a way that is appropriate given their nature.  This formulation of the categoricalimperative is thus taken to give expression to the idea of the special dignity of the human person, and of thespecial respect we owe such personsgiven their dignity.

Now, inrecent decades this notion of “the dignity of the human person” has beendeployed, especially in certain Catholic contexts, to criticize capitalpunishment, harsh and humiliating punishments more generally, and the idea thatretribution is the central function of punishment.  Interestingly, though, Kant himself drewexactly the opposite of these conclusions, at every point. 

Hence,consider his treatment of the topic of punishment in The Metaphysical Elements of Justice.  In the name of respect for persons, manytoday suggest that retribution is not an appropriate motivation for any punishment,and that instead it can only be inflicted if it is needed to protect society orto promote the rehabilitation of the offender. But here is what Kant says:

Judicial punishment can never be usedmerely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or forcivil society, but instead it must in all cases be imposed on him only on theground that he has committed a crime; for a human being can never bemanipulated merely as a means to the purposes of someone else and can never beconfused with the objects of the Law of things. His innate personality [that is, his right as a person] protects himagainst such treatment, even though he may indeed be condemned to lose hiscivil personality.  He must first befound to be deserving of punishment before any consideration is given to theutility of this punishment for himself or for his fellow citizens.  The law concerning punishment is acategorical imperative, and woe to him who rummages around in the winding pathsof a theory of happiness looking for some advantage to be gained by releasingthe criminal from punishment or by reducing the amount of it. (p. 100, Laddtranslation)

Note firstof all that Kant argues here that to punish someone merely for the good ofsociety (which would include protecting it from him) or even for the sake ofsome utility it may afford him (which would include rehabilitation) violatesthe categorical imperative, because it treats him merely as a means rather thanas an end in himself.  The only motivefor punishment that respects his nature as a person is the motive of simplygiving him what he deserves – in other words, retribution – and only with thatmotivation first in place can any thought be given to what might promote thegood of society or of the offender.

So far, thisis just the traditional understanding of the purposes of punishment, andcorresponds to traditional Catholic teaching from Genesis to Thomas Aquinas tothe Catechism, at least as Pope St. John Paul II left it.  (See ByMan Shall His Blood Be Shed, my book co-written with JosephBessette, for a refutation of the claim that John Paul II changed Catholicteaching in this respect.)  But Kant’sposition is even more austere than that, ruling out considerations of mercythat in Catholic teaching balance out considerations of justice.  For Kant’s view is not merely that, when we punish, we must have retributionin mind first and foremost.  He holdsthat we must punish an offender.  In his view, respect for human dignity notonly allows the state to inflict on acriminal his just deserts but requires thestate to do so.  And he takes this tofollow precisely from the fact that respect for persons – which includesholding them responsible, and thus worthy of punishment, for the bad thingsthey do – is a categoricalimperative, commanding unconditionally. 

Exactly whatkinds of punishments must be inflicted? Kant answers as follows:

Any undeserved evil that you inflicton someone else among the people is one that you do to yourself.  If you vilify him, you vilify yourself; if yousteal from him, you steal from yourself; if you kill him, you killyourself.  Only the Law of retribution(jus talionis) can determine exactly the kind and degree of punishment... [Thisis] the retributive principle of returning like for like. (p. 101)

This issometimes referred to as the principle ofproportionality, and here too Kant’s position corresponds to traditionalCatholic teaching from the Old Testament to the Catechism of John Paul II.  For example, echoing Kant’s point that it isultimately the offender who inflicts on himself whatever he does to others,Pope Pius XII taught:

Even when it is a question of theexecution of a condemned man, the State does not dispose of the individual’sright to life.  In this case it isreserved to the public power to deprive the condemned person of the enjoymentof life in expiation of his crime when, by his crime, he has already disposedhimself of his right to live.

Here too,though, Kant goes further than the traditional view.  It is not merely that proportionality givesus a criterion for determining what punishment to inflict whenever we dopunish.  It is that we must, as far as we are able, return likefor like.  He notes, for example, that“the imposition of a fine for a verbal injury has no proportionality to theoriginal injury” (p. 101).  Instead, hesays:

The humiliation of the pride of suchan offender comes much closer to equaling aninjury done to the honor of the person offended; thus the judgment and Lawmight require the offender, not only to make apublic apology to the offended person, but also at the same time to kiss hishand, even though he be socially inferior. Similarly, if a man of a higher class has violently attackedan innocent citizen who is socially inferior to him, he may be condemned, notonly to apologize, but to undergo solitary and painful confinement, because bythis means, in addition to the discomfort suffered, the pride of the offenderwill be painfully affected, and thus his humiliation will compensate for theoffense as like for like. (pp. 101-2)

Notice thathere too, Kant draws precisely the opposite lesson from human dignity that manytoday who appeal to it do.  It is oftenclaimed today that it is contrary to human dignity to inflict harsh orhumiliating punishments.  But as Kantargues, in reality, if the offender has himself treated others in a harsh orhumiliating manner, then he deserves such treatment in return, and inflictingit on him thus respects his dignityas a person precisely by holding him responsible as a free and rational agent. 

For thisreason, Kant even argues that justice requires that, as part of theirpunishment, thieves must be forced to labor (p. 102).  For they have stolen from others, and if,while in prison, they are fed and sheltered at state expense, this only compoundstheir unjust taking of resources that rightfully belong to others.  Hence, while it is widely taken for grantedtoday that penal servitude is contrary to a Kantian respect for persons, Kanthimself argued that respect for the dignity of persons requires penal servitude ifthe offender has done something to merit it. (Here again, Kant goes beyond what became standard Catholic teaching,which holds that while penal servitude can for the reasons Kant gives bejustifiable in theory, in practice it should not be used, becauseit has a tendency to degenerate into chattel slavery, which is intrinsicallyimmoral.)

This bringsus at last to Kant’s position on capital punishment.  He writes:

If, however, he has committed amurder, he must die.  In this case, thereis no substitute that will satisfy the requirements of legal justice.  There is no sameness of kind between deathand remaining alive even under the most miserable conditions, and consequentlythere is also no equality between the crime and the retribution unless thecriminal is judicially condemned and put to death.  But the death of the criminal must be keptentirely free of any maltreatment that would make an abomination of thehumanity residing in the person suffering it. Even if a civil society were to dissolve itself by common agreement ofall its members (for example, if the people inhabiting an island decided toseparate and disperse themselves around the world), the last murderer remainingin prison must first be executed, so that everyone will duly receive what hisactions are worth and so that the bloodguilt thereof will not be fixed on thepeople because they failed to insist on carrying out the punishment; for ifthey fail to do so, they may be regarded as accomplices in this publicviolation of legal justice. (p. 102)

In endorsingthe idea that the principle of proportionality justifies executing those whoare guilty of murder, Kant is, once again, echoing traditional Catholic teaching.  But here too he goes well beyond it byinsisting that the moral law not only allows,but requires, the execution ofmurderers. 

Kant addssome further remarks that reinforce how radically different his position isfrom that of Hobbes.  Suppose for thesake of argument that the law were to allow a murderer to opt, instead of thedeath penalty, for the lesser punishment of penal servitude.  Kant comments:

I say that a man of honor wouldchoose death and that the knave would choose servitude.  This is implied by the nature of humancharacter, because the first recognizes something that he prizes more highlythan life itself, namely, honor, whereas the second thinks that a life covered with disgrace is still better than not beingalive at all (animampraeferre pudori).  The first is without doubt less deserving ofpunishment than the other. (p. 103)

For Hobbes,death is the worst thing that can happen to us; for Kant, dishonor is worsestill.  For Hobbes, reason tells theoffender facing execution to do what he can to avoid it; for Kant, reason tellsthe offender to accept execution, precisely because, as a free and rationalagent, he has done something to deserve it. For Hobbes, there is no injustice in resisting execution, even though theoffender has done something to deserve it; for Kant, for a murderer to resistexecution only makes him even more deservingof it.

Unquestionably,here too Kant, though going beyond what traditional Catholic teaching strictlyrequires, is much closer to it than Hobbes is. Consider, for example, the Good Thief, who while dying on his cross saidto his fellow criminal that “we are punished justly, for we are getting whatour deeds deserve” (Luke 23:41) – and to whom Christ went on to promise paradise.  Or consider the original 1992 version of the Catechism of the Catholic Churchpromulgated by Pope St. John Paul II, which, after reaffirming the legitimacyin principle of the death penalty for sufficiently grave crimes, goes on to saythat “when his punishment is voluntarily accepted by the offender, it takes onthe value of expiation” (2266).

Hobbesians in Kantian drag

As I’vesaid, many today, especially in Catholic circles, claim that the notion ofhuman dignity put at the center of modern moral philosophy by Kant requiressoftening the traditional approach to punishment, and capital punishment inparticular.  Yet, ironically, Kanthimself essentially argued that respect for human dignity requires taking a harsher approach than the traditionalone.  Of course, one could try to arguethat Kant was wrong, and that respect for human dignity does in fact requiremoving away from the traditional view.  Butas Bessette and I show in our book, none of the arguments to this effect thathave been offered succeeds.

Moreover, tothe extent that they emphasize the unique awfulness of death and the waypunishment affronts the freedom of the offender, contemporary abolitionistarguments are much closer in spirit to Hobbes than to Kant.  The rhetoricmay often be Kantian, but the substanceis Hobbesian.

And that isa second irony, when the abolitionists in question are Catholic.  For Hobbes was, of course, a great enemy ofthe Catholic Church, which, in Leviathan,he portrayed as the chief agent in what he called the “kingdom of darkness.”  The moderns simply cannot give Catholicmodernizers what they want.  Kant cannotdo so, because his view on matters of punishment is more traditional thanmodern.  And Hobbes cannot do so, becausewhile his position is modern, it is the opposite of Catholic.

Immortal Souls in eBook format

The paperbackversion of my new book Immortal Souls: ATreatise on Human Nature soldout on Amazon within a day of being listed there.  No word on when it will be back in stock, butI imagine it will be soon.  Meanwhile,the eBook version is availablethrough Barnes and Noble.  You canalso order either version through thepublisher’s website or through Amazon’s websites in theU.K. and Germany.

Scruton on tradition

RogerScruton’s essay “Rousseauand the Origins of Liberalism” first appeared in The New Criterion in 1998, and wasreprinted in The Betrayal of Liberalism,edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball. Among the many good things in it, there is an important expression anddefense of the conservative understanding of tradition.  Scruton writes:

Modern liberals tend to scoff at theidea of tradition.  All traditions, theytell us, are “invented,” implying that they can therefore be replaced withimpunity.  This idea is plausible only ifyou take the trivial examples – Scottish country dancing, Highland dress, theCoronation ceremony, Christmas cards, and whatever else comes with a “heritage”label.  A real tradition is not aninvention; it is the unintended byproduct of invention, which also makesinvention possible… [A] tradition, precisely because it is not invented, hasauthority.  “Unintended byproducts” ofinvention contain more knowledge than any person can discover unaided.

The specificexample Scruton focuses on in the essay is the Western system of musicalnotation (which was criticized by Rousseau). He also mentions common law, parliamentary procedures, manners andsocial conventions, dress, and morality. (In order to see his point vis-à-vis this last example, one need notregard all moral principles to be theproducts of tradition in the relevant sense. One can recognize a natural law that is deeper than tradition andunalterable, while allowing that there is also a layer of moral principles thatare of greater binding force than mere etiquette, even if not having theabsolute or unalterable status of natural law – a layer sometimes called the ius gentium or law of peoples.)

Part of whatScruton is saying here is that traditional practices and principles of thesekinds, though not infallible or absolutely unalterable, nevertheless have apresumption in their favor, precisely because they have so far stood the testof time.  That is, of course, a familiarenough conservative theme. 

But there ismore to it than that.  The most importantkinds of tradition, Scruton notes, are not practices or principles that weredeliberately invented by some particular individual and then went on tolast.  Rather, they are practices orprinciples that were not the productof any one person’s ingenuity, but rather evolved gradually as a byproduct ofthe actions of multiple individuals operating over a span of time, none of whomwas deliberately trying to produce them. No one person invented the system of musical notation, for example, orcame up with the principles implicit in common law, or decided what theprevailing rules of etiquette would be. These are rather what the Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Fergusonfamously characterized as “the products of human action but not human design.”

A furtherpoint is that, precisely because such practices and principles evolve in thisway, they often reflect more information about the world than any oneindividual is likely to have available to him. Consider, for example, a system of rules of etiquette that includesprinciples like the following: When you first meet someone, offer your name andacknowledge him with a handshake or nod; do not bring up controversial mattersof religion or politics in conversation with people you do not know well; whendining with others, wait until they have been served their meal beforebeginning to eat your own; when dining with others, do not smack your lips,slurp your beverage, lick your fingers, belch, or otherwise behave in a mannerlikely to be off-putting to those around you; when in an elevator, on a bus,using a public walkway, or the like, allow a few feet of space if possiblebetween you and those around you; do not speak loudly or in any manner thatmight disturb others when in a library, movie theater, or the like; etc.

Any systemof etiquette is going to include innumerably many such rules.  It will also typically acknowledgequalifications or exceptions to the rules. And it will reflect broader cultural circumstances (which may notprevail in other societies, which is one reason not all cultures have the samerules of etiquette).  No one person couldcome up with such a system, because no one person could foresee all thecontexts in which such rules might be needed, all the cultural circumstancesrelevant to determining exactly what the rules should be, all theconsiderations that might justify exceptions to the rules or call forqualifications, and so on.  Such rulesinstead develop over generations by trial and error, and gradually harden intoa set of customs that people simply take for granted. 

In no waydoes this make them arbitrary, though. On the contrary, they serve a crucial function of letting people knowhow to act in a manner conducive to amiable and efficient social interaction,and they are able to do so because they answer real human needs that followupon both human nature and concrete cultural circumstances.  The impersonal process by which suchtraditional practices form reflects all the relevant considerations, which nosingle human mind could have information about in advance. 

There is inthis sense a kind of wisdom embodied in tradition that gives it an authority noindividual could have, because no individual could have the wisdom inquestion.  This is what Scruton meanswhen he says that “a tradition, precisely because it is not invented, hasauthority.” 

Scrutonobserves that tradition, which is an “unintended byproduct of invention,” also “makesinvention possible.”  Naturally, he doesn’tmean that it makes all inventionpossible, which would entail a paradox (insofar as invention would presupposetradition but tradition also presuppose invention).  What he means is that it makes certain further kinds of inventionpossible.  Individuals can, of course,deliberately bring about novelties in common law, parliamentary procedure,etiquette and other social conventions, and for that matter morality.  No one denies that.  Scruton’s point, and that of other conservativethinkers, is that individuals can do this, and do it with beneficial results,only insofar as the novelties are piecemeal additions to or alterations of alarger preexisting body of practices and principles that they did not invent, and could not themselves haveinvented wholesale. 

As Scrutonnotes, this conception of tradition, or ideas in the general ballpark, havebeen put forward by thinkers like Burke, Mises, Oakeshott, and Hayek.  While there is a broad sense in which thesethinkers can be called “conservative,” they are also all in the broad “classicalliberal” tradition associated with the likes of John Locke and Adam Smith.  Should that in some way cast doubt on theconservative credentials of what they have to say about tradition, at leastfrom the point of view a postliberal conservative?

No.  For one thing, it would be foolish and indeedfallacious (specifically, an instance of the genetic fallacy) to assume that anidea must be suspect merely becauseit is associated with thinkers with whom one otherwise disagrees.  Moreover, there is an obvious respect inwhich the conception of tradition described by Scruton echoes themes to befound in the more traditional sort of conservatism that looks to Aristotle andAquinas for its primary inspiration.  AsAristotle emphasizes, moral virtue is acquired first and foremost byhabituation, and theoretical understanding comes only later if at all.  He was talking about the individual humanbeing, but something analogous can be said of the social organism.  The habits embodied in its morals,conventions, and culture more generally can exhibit a kind of virtue even ifthose who make up society do not have a theoretical understanding of the valueof the practices and principles they are following.  Just as Aristotle would say that it is anerror to suppose that theoretical understanding of morality should or couldprecede the practice of morality, so too do thinkers like Burke, Oakeshott,Hayek and Scruton argue that it is a mistake to suppose that theoreticalunderstanding of the value of various specific traditional principles and practicescan or should precede our adherence to those principles and practices.  The point is decidedly Aristotelian, even ifthe thinkers in question have other commitments with which an Aristotelianwould not agree.

There isalso, I would suggest, at least a very general parallel between the conceptionof tradition described by Scruton and the conception of tradition operative inCatholic theology (albeit I am by no means claiming they are exactly thesame).  Newman famously theorized aboutthe development of dogma, and part of his point is that the system of Christiandoctrine is not and could not have been explicitly and entirely formulated allat once.  Rather, precise and explicitformulations came about gradually in response to specific historical circumstances,such as the rise of certain heresies that needed to be rebutted, applicationsto concrete cases that hadn’t previously been foreseen or addressed, and soon.  For example, no one person hammeredout the entirety of what become the Church’s settled doctrine on the mainpoints of Christology.  Rather, it was theresult of centuries of reflection by Fathers of the Church, the teaching ofvarious councils, and so on, each stage being a response to specific aspects ofthe issue that arose under specific circumstances. 

Asunderstood by Newman, “development” is something that happens with doctrine as a consequence of the contribution of manyindividuals.  It is not some action that a particular individualperforms (even if the actions of particular individuals, such as popes, andbishops gathered in councils, contribute to the overall development).  In recent years, however, churchmen andtheologians often do speak of “development” as something active, something thata pope, for example, might decide to do. 

The resultsare not always salutary.  An examplewould be the statements many contemporary churchmen have made on the topic ofcapital punishment.  There have inCatholic tradition always been theologians and churchmen who tended to opposethe death penalty, just as there have been those who tended to support it.  But in recent decades, the rhetoric against ithas often been far more extreme than what can be found in the earlier Catholictradition, and indeed sometimes directly contradicts that tradition.  This rhetoric is grounded less in considerationsabout mercy or the facilitation of repentance (as earlier Catholic reservationsabout capital punishment were) than in an exaggerated conception of humandignity that owes more to Kant and modern philosophical liberalism than it doesto scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, or the consistent papalteaching of two millennia.  While scripturaltexts and earlier magisterial statements are sometimes appealed to in itsdefense, they are given novel interpretations, and scriptural and magisterialtexts that point the other way are ignored.

Scruton pointsout that the liberal in politics who tosses aside traditional practices andprinciples naively and arrogantly supposes that he can do better, when in facthis novelties are grounded in a far more short-sighted view of things than isembodied in tradition.  He often ends upgenerating chaos, and the tradition he has undermined cannot easily be revived.  (To borrow a famous analogy of Wittgenstein’s,restoring the common sense embodied in tradition after it has been lost is liketrying to repair a torn spider’s web with one’s fingers.)

Somethingsimilar is true in theology – indeed, it is moretrue in theology, since the credibility of any claim to represent thedeliverances of divine revelation crucially depends on consistency with whatthat revelation has always been understood to say.  For modern churchmen to imply by their wordsand actions that even two millennia of consistent traditional teaching cannotbe trusted can only generate skepticism about the trustworthiness of thesechurchmen themselves.  In theology as inpolitics, those who undermine tradition saw off the branch on which they arethemselves sitting.