Man and the State

Charles R. Walgreen Foundation Lectures

by Jacques Maritain

"Of time-transcending value, this book is probably the most succinct and clearest statement of Thomistic political theory available to the English-language reader. Written during his exile from war-torn Europe, Man and the State is the fruit of Maritain's considerable learning as well as his reflections on his positive American experience and on the failure of regimes he closely encountered on the Continent."―Jude P. Dougherty, The Catholic University of America "The lectures that were the basis for Man and the State were delivered at the University of Chicago at a time when Maritain was still in the first enthusiasm of his participation in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He devotes particular attention to the concept of rights, since, historically, rights theories were fashioned to supplant the natural law theory to which Maritain as a Thomist gives his allegiance. Maritain provides an ingenious and profound theory as to how natural law and natural rights can be complementary. For this reason alone it remains a fundamental contribution to political philosophy, but it is filled with other gems as well. Was Maritain too optimistic in his appraisal of modernity? Or have we unjustly lost the optimism that was his? Man and the State is an invitation to rethink the way we pose the basic questions of political philosophy."―Ralph McInerny, Jacques Maritain Center, University of Notre Dame ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), distinguished French Catholic philosopher and writer, was the author of more than fifty books. A preeminent interpreter of the thought of Thomas Aquinas, Maritain was a professor of philosophy at the Institut Catholique de Paris, Columbia University, and Princeton University. He served as French Ambassador to the Vatican from 1945 to 1948. CONTENTS 1. The People and the State 2. The Concept of Sovereignty 3. The Problem of Means 4. The Rights of Man 5. The Democratic Charter 6. Church and State 7. The Problem of World Government

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Nonfiction, Christianity, Law, Theology

219 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

T. S. Eliot once called Jacques Maritain "the most conspicuous figure and probably the most powerful force in contemporary philosophy." His wife and devoted intellectual companion, Raissa Maritain, was of Jewish descent but joined the Catholic church with him in 1906. Maritain studied under Henri Bergson but was dissatisfied with his teacher's philosophy, eventually finding certainty in the system of St. Thomas Aquinas. He lectured widely in Europe and in North and South America, and lived and taught in New York during World War II. Appointed French ambassador to the Vatican in 1945, he resigned in 1948 to teach philosophy at Princeton University, where he remained until his retirement in 1953. He was prominent in the Catholic intellectual resurgence, with a keen perception of modern French literature. Although Maritain regarded metaphysics as central to civilization and metaphysically his position was Thomism, he took full measure of the intellectual currents of his time and articulated a resilient and vital Thomism, applying the principles of scholasticism to contemporary issues. In 1963, Maritain was honored by the French literary world with the national Grand Prize for letters. He learned of the award at his retreat in a small monastery near Toulouse where he had been living in ascetic retirement for some years. In 1967, the publication of "The Peasant of the Garonne" disturbed the French Roman Catholic world. In it, Maritain attacked the "neo-modernism" that he had seen developing in the church in recent decades, especially since the Second Vatican Council. According to Jaroslav Pelikan, writing in the Saturday Review of Literature, "He laments that in avant-garde Roman Catholic theology today he can 'read nothing about the redeeming sacrifice or the merits of the Passion.' In his interpretation, the whole of the Christian tradition has identified redemption with the sacrifice of the cross. But now, all of that is being discarded, along with the idea of hell, the doctrine of creation out of nothing, the infancy narratives of the Gospels, and belief in the immortality of the human soul." Maritain's wife, Raissa, also distinguished herself as a philosophical author and poet. The project of publishing Oeuvres Completes of Jacques and Raissa Maritain has been in progress since 1982, with seven volumes now in print.

Reviews

[Reed Bellingham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably one of the best books I’ve read even if I disagree with it at some parts. I loved it! It pointed out real issues and made key distinctions that I believe are so important for political theory, philosophical anthropology, and life in general.

Chief among these distinctions is that of an individual vs a person and that of a state vs. a political society or a body politic.

The Metaphysical distinction between a person and an individual provides many keen insights into the relationship of man and society. The distinction reveals a double common good as well as a mutual subordination between man and the state. An individual is a material instantiation of a universal form that based on this form has material needs that for man, can only be found in community. The person is an individual of a rational nature that has spiritual needs such as wisdom and love that can only be found in community. The common good of man as an individual is the state which provides for his needs. In this way man is subordinate to the state. As a person however, man is superior to the state because he is the eternal spiritual being that a state exists only as a means to serve. The common good of the state then is to provide those conditions and education necessary for persons to achieve their common good together.

The second major distinction that Maritain makes is between the state and the political society. This helps tease out their proper relationship. The state is an artificial society, reasonably constructed, to function as the head or framework of the Body Politic. The B.P. includes the state but also the community, people, and mediating institutions other than the state. Realizing that the B.P. is over the state, and that the state exists as a part meant to serve the whole of the B.P. is a really helpful distinction that keeps the hierarchy of ends in right order.

Although I really appreciate these and plenty of other insights found in this book enough to write my thesis on it, it seems that Maritain's optimism about the direction of common moral understanding after world war two was misplaced. In the 70 plus years after this book was written, Maritain's hope for global fellow feeling and common pursuit of moral truth - in accord with man's nature and not simply his private desires - have not come to fruition. The mission towards an objective understanding of morality has lost its steam.

I have not yet read his Peasant of Garonne, but I look forward to read his reaction to the 19th century's moral and social trends.

[Andrew Figueiredo · Rating 5 out of 5]

People have been telling me I need to read Maritain for a while now, and I emerge from "Man and the State" thoroughly impressed and wondering why I didn't do this earlier! Maritain forcefully defends democracy against tyranny, operating at the intersection of theology and political theory just after World War II.

His model of government is crucial to understanding the rest of the book. The state is not independent of the people, but emerges to represent the body politic, or the multiplicity of families, societies, and communities of the nation joined together. The body politic channels the desires of the people who make up a society, and the state as its representative derives its authority from the governed. Therefore, Maritain rejects conceptions of political sovereignty (separate power reigning over the body politic) existing in a king or in the state itself under the aegis of a murky 'general will'. In turn, elected leaders are called to rule in communion with their people, although they can disagree with voters and an attempt to educate and awaken them. Democracy flows upward in this structure. Those who confusing the state with the body politic end up promoting tyranny, forgetting the directionality of authority.

For Maritain (as for the American founders if I may...), the state is meant to serve man and the common good, centering the individual's God-endowed dignity and human rights. But in Maritain's telling, this personalism (which he elaborates on in other works) doesn't degrade into mindless individualism either. He advocates for the dispersal of tasks to various autonomous organs within the pluralistic body politic. Presumably, these include unions, church communities, fraternal groups, neighborhoods, and all sorts of subsidiary groups that bring people together.

Democracy at its best, mobilizing these pluralistic organs, deploys morally just means in search of the common good, exemplifying "Gospel inspiration." The means used by government must pertain to its ends, which include civic friendship, independence, and human flourishing. This rules out cynical political manipulation and encourages good governance. Maritain therefore provides a wonderful perspective on the ends of government and the state's structure. He criticizes those who would remove faith from the public sphere and urges society to look to the Gospel for inspiration, recognizing the critical role that faith plays as the fountain for civic unity and as existing above the body politic. Above all, freedom maintains a central place in our search for the common good.

With that in mind, he differentiates between the temporal common good and the spiritual one. The state should focus primarily on the temporal one, as opposed to merging with the Church to push for the spiritual one. Yet, it should always "make the leaven of the Gospel quicken the depths of temporal existence" and cannot avoid taking action to foster morality. This stems from the fact that man, the base of the body politic, exists in both the spiritual and temporal sphere.

A Christian civilization therefore eschews religious coercion while seeking practical agreement on rights and duties derived from natural law principles. Together, we can live out Gospel values. While each creed differs on spiritual justifications (in this argument, Maritain doesn't ignore the truth of Catholicism), their practical conclusions often converge. This sustains freedom of conscience, as the Church's moral power is more persuasive to Maritain than any temporal coercive power. This allows Maritain to advocate a broadly shared doctrine of human rights without divorcing it from its religious roots. "Man and the State" promotes a separation of church and state without inimical relationships between either because the temporal common good still depends on a recognition of God's existence. Minority faiths and their moral codes merit juridical recognition in this scenario because they usually promote the temporal good. In fact, throughout American history this model of "sharp distinction and actual cooperation" has been common, which Maritain himself notes, as do authors like Orestes Brownson and John Courtney Murray. He impressively defends tolerance from a theological standpoint.

Today, it seems that human rights have sadly been torn from their faith-based roots, moving domestic and international bodies towards "mutual ignorance" of religion instead of mutual freedom. Therefore, legislation has become disconnected from its moral roots, somethign more polemical post-liberals call out today. This slide towards emotivism surely weakens rights discourse over time and allows the powerful to oppress the weak. These same authors might make this a valid criticism of Maritain's pluralistic model. They would probably argue that too much pluralism waters down the shared bases needed for the common good. However, I would counter that Maritain's proposals read more like Pope Francis' in Fratelli Tutti--encouraging dialogue without promoting relativism. He fully upholds the centrality of faith!

There may be a fine line, but Maritain is a worthy alternative for those with criticisms of modern liberalism who also fear the anti-democratic impulses of certain critics. Maritain knows democacy needs a common good and a common civic faith dependent on conclusions reasoned from natural law. But church and state require some degree of separation, as noted. Sometimes, imposing a law based on religious grounds will set back the temporal common good by tearing apart the body politic or causing worse impacts. Maritain's prudent approach is a handy roadmap for those seeking to moderate liberalism's excesses while valuing pluralism.

The only major issue I had with this book was with his advocacy of global federalism, a utopian idea that would surely end in disaster, or at least the flattening of everything that makes culture special and particular. That's close enough to disaster for me! I would have downgraded the book to four stars on this basis alone, but the author nuances his federalism enough for me to think he didn't seriously imagine this outcome happening in our world. Seen more as an aspirational, but still flawed, vision it's more excusable, especially with WWII and the Cold War in mind.

In sum, Maritain answers to many relevant questions about man, community, government, and Church. It's a shame he isn't being hailed in Catholic circles like he once was, because his schema makes sense in an American context, reaching for both freedom *and* the common good. Of the post-liberal crowd, I've seen some authors who are further from Maritain and a few who approach his arguments. The latter group includes Nick Timothy, Brad Littlejohn, and Adrian Pabst, writers who focus more on reining in the excesses of modern liberalism than on undermining the whole project.

[Adam Marischuk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everything that Rises Must Converge

Why the title of Flannery O'Connor's book for a review on politics? Hopefully that will become clear in a moment.

I bought the book in French prior to realising that the book was initially a series of lectures delivered at the University of Chicago in 1949, immediatedly following Maritain's work on the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. The English book first appeared in 1951 and the French edition in 1953. Despite being initially in English, I still maintain the hope that the French, the language of M. Maritain's inner thought, allows more clear access to his ideas. I always try to avoid translation when possible.

Maritain's Aristoteleanism and Catholicism are on full display. He begins by making the tripartite destinction (awkwardly absent in the title) between man, the corps politique (body politic) and the state. As a semi-realist, he leans heavily on the concept of corps politique, a sort of species or form in itself. He here is attempting to avoid the mob rule of nominalism on the one extreme and the Platonist style idea of the state as an independent "person" on the other.

Key to this is the body politic, which is the people collectively, "Le Corps politique ou Société politique est le tout. L'État est une partie, la partie dominant de ce tout." (p. 28) Maritain takes pains to note that the body politic and the state are clearly different, as the state fulfills the role of vicar of the people and is not above it.

But the modern state forgot the Medieval concept of vicar, "Mais ils ont négligé ou oublié le concept de vicariance sur lequelles les auteurs médiévaux avait mis l'accent. Et ils l'ont remplacé par le concept de transfer matériel et le donnant." (p. 53) This is a brilliant answer to Edmund Burke's notion of rights and freedoms being based on compromise and barter between man and the state as it places rights as the legitimate outgrowth of the body politic, from where political power originates. In fact, God aside, it is neither the state, nor the body politic where souvergnity resides, but in the individual person.

The bastardised concept of état souverain he traces to Jean Bodin, what Maritain calls "l'erreur originelle" only to be further developed by Hobbes and Rousseau.

Maritain reserves much of the book to discussing practical reason's role in developing the various forms of governement and notes that usually practice predates theory and it would seem that all attempts to invert this ends in totalitarianism. Thus it is interesting to note that the passage on human rights defends the UN declaration as a practical and not theoretical exposition of the natural rights of man, agreeable to nearly everyone in letter, but not in underlying philosophy.

The chapter on the role of the state in education reads dated and the modern western state has amassed so much more power and centralised so many more services that I can't help but feel Maritain would be a) alarmed and b) dismayed at the leviathan that is continuously growing and treatening the sovereignty of the citizen and the liberty of the Church.

Likewise, the chapter on Church and State has some interesting insights and parallels to the modern antagonism between church and state. Maritain notes the difference between the American and French (European) understanding "En Europe, elle signifie, ou signifiait, cette situation de complet isolement qui provient de malentendus et de conflits séculaires, et qui a produit les résultats les plus infortunés. En Amérique, elle signifie, en réalité, tout ensemble le refus d'avoir une religion d'État et d'accorder aucun privilèdge à une confession religieuse..." (p. 211) Much of this is informed by the French State's policy of laïcism and open hostility to the Church while the body politic remained more-or-less Catholic. However, one is left wondering about the relationship between Church and State as the body politic itself becomes openly hostile to the Church and the state cannot be justifiably seen as a perversion of the will of the people but an extension of it.

Particularly interesting in this section is the emphasis on the relationship between the two spheres and the danger of cleaving man in two, "Il serait coupé en deux si comme membre de la société temporelle et membre de la société spirituelle il appartenait à deux mondes séparés." (p. 204)

Another prescient insights is: "la suppression de tout contact et de tout relation réelle, c'est-à-dire de toute assistance mutuelle, entre l'Église et le corps poliitque équivaudrait simplement au suicide." (p. 205)

But the final chapter is terrible. After spending so much time disavowing utopianism, relying on practical knowledge, placing sovereignty in the people as individuals, Maritain closes with a discussion of a world governement or state as the ideal goal. Not satisfied with the United Nations, nor with the unifying aspects of international trade, he proposes a very gradual movement to a global governement (still respecting national differences), initially led by a group of disinterested experts. I can only think this strange departure from his Aristoteleanism to Platonism was the product of naïve optimism.

[Rory Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a significant text about (Catholic) Christianity and Politics. It offers some thoughtful distinctions about concepts such as ‘state’ and ‘sovereignty,’ and it makes some pertinent historical observations about how political bodies functioned in previous centuries.

The book is also interesting in the way that it presented arguments for Religious Freedom, and the compatibility of the idea with previous Catholic teaching, especially as it did so some ten years before Vatican II taught similar points.

The fact that this text preceded Vatican II is significant for scholars of Vatican II, because it illustrates the kinds of background ideas and discussions which were influencing thinking before and during the Council. That is not to say that this text itself influenced the council in anyway. But it bears witness to common ideas which were being discussed at the time of the Council, so it offers a potential glimpse into mindsets and thought patterns of the era.

We also know that the author was widely read by many of the bishops who attended the council. He was a personal friend of pope Paul VI and Paul VI even referred to him as ‘my teacher’ (!). The book was originally published in 1951 and it was in its twelfth printing by 1966, which again shows how widely read the book was in the years leading up to Vatican II.

The text of the book raises some fascinating issues. For example, chapter 1 presents an argument about the inappropriateness of the state exercising coercion in religious matters. Those same issues cropped up at Vatican II.

The text also offers a very interesting discussion about how the concept of ‘state’ has changed over time. The author believes that prior to the twentieth century the ‘state’ was (wrongly) viewed as a person, as if it could have rights and duties. He thinks that in the twentieth century, that model has given way (or started to give way) to a more accurate view which sees the state as an agency of the people, which has rights and duties only to the extent that it can represent a will of the people.

If the author is right about a changing model of state, then this becomes the background to a potentially interesting argument about how and why Church teachings could be different in two centuries, without Church teaching changing at all, as different teachings would be directed at different models of the state.

These are fascinating issues but they are not explored and developed as much as readers post-Vatican II would undoubtedly like to see. Instead, the arguments in this 1951 text are presented in a pre-Vatican II context where the author was necessarily hesitantly proposing new (and potentially controversial) ideas, rather than explaining published Church teaching. In an ideal world a chapter should have been added after the Council, so that there could a clearer focus on explaining. But in fairness the author was already 84 years of age in 1966, so that was not feasible. This means that in places the text only offers tantalizing glimpses of potential thinking, rather than properly worked out arguments and conclusions.

Overall, this is a book which was very much of its era, especially the final chapter appealing to the desirability of a single world-government. It has significant limitations, but it still has some interesting insights about core concepts involved in political philosophy.

(This review is based on a reading of the 1966, 12th Printing version of the text).

[Roman Purshaga · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is evident is that by the end of the 19th century, the Roman Catholic Church had come to grips with the role of power. Revolutions and political calamities of the past century (18-19th centuries) were similar in their consequences to the movement of the Earth’s tectonic plates. The Hobbesian mortal god, the great Leviathan, was losing strength in the face of a new political philosophy that flipped the order, submitting the State to the society and desacralizing its nature in previously unimaginable ways. Reflecting upon the material, I find this approach very helpful in understanding God’s power distribution mechanism. Because the State is not a separate organ or an institution but a part of the Political Body, it would be more logical to assume that God shares his power not with the State but with the Political Body, which later delegates power to the State. Thus, no state or
regime can claim exclusivity or inerrancy. Instead, the Political Body holds the ultimate power that originates in God and reserves its right to challenge and oppose the rulers. Seeing the Political Body and not the State as the recipient of power can enliven the sense of responsibility within all the communities that constitute the Body Politic.

[Matt Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional work of political philosophy. Puts forth, in my opinion, a well reasoned, Thomistic solution to liberalism without falling trap to the dangerous ideas of integralism. Exactly what I was looking for in an evaluation of political philosophy that jives with Catholicism.

[Erik]

Recommended by James Schall in Another Sort of Learning, Chapter 5, as one of Eight Books on Christianity and Political Thought.

[Tegum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting

[steds · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great structure, fun first read of Maritain, very useful for future work.