More on CST, Burke and Tradition

CUA Philosophy Professor Bradley Lewis sent along some very insightful comments on my post on the Burkean nature of CST:

1) Leo Strauss famously criticized Burke for perhaps unwittingly setting the stage for Hegel by way of his teaching on prescription, the very teaching to which you analogize (the right notion?) Catholic Social Teaching at least in its methodology. I think that criticism is somewhat strong, since Burke did hold that there were transcendent moral principles known as the natural/divine law (this unclarity about whether they are natural or require revelation is something of a problem in Burke from the perspective of contemporary pluralism)--indeed, he did so with particular eloquence in his writings and speeches on India, especially during the lengthy impeachment proceedings against Warren Hastings. Nevertheless, his rhetoric does sometimes smack of a kind of historicism, which one wants to distinguish from the principles of CST which claim to be universal.

2) Alasdair MacIntyre has alternately criticized Burke's notion of tradition as radically incomplete and unsatisfactory and also as providing sustenance for social policies radically at odds with some principles of CST. I would defend Burke from this in the sense that I don't believe Burke ever intended to produce a theory of tradition, but rather aimed to be the exponent of a particular tradition and one very particularly situated in the face of contemporary controversies over domestic English, imperial British and generall European politics. If one wants a more satisfactory account of tradition by which to account for the development of CST, why not Newman, who did aim to develop something like a theory of tradition in the specific context of the development of Catholic doctrine. On a smaller scale a similar theory seems contained in T.S. Eliot's famous essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (endorsed rather curiously by Ronald Dworkin, of all people, in Law's Empire as consistent with Herculean legal hermeneutics). In a more contemporary vein MacIntyre himself has offered an account of tradition in specifically moral and political philosophy in his two books, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (especially the later chapters) and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. MacIntyre's basic definition of tradition is "an argument carried out and extended over time." Tradition in this sense indicates a characteristic set of problems relying on fundamental principles and canonical texts continuously interpreted, reinterpreted and applied to particular problems and contexts. Traditions break down when they cannot solve the very problems they have set for themselves and are sometimes subsumed by rival traditions, which can provide better accounts than they of why they cannot solve their own problems. Sometimes two traditions breakdown on their own, but succeed in transcending such crises by merging into a new superior tradition: MacIntyre thinks this happened during the middle ages when Aristotelianism and Augustinianism merged into a new tradition in the thought of Aquinas, which is the very tradition out of which CST emerges. This all seems to me a much better and more precise account than what one finds in Burke (who, in other respects, I admire).

3) Taking MacIntyre's account as paradigmatic seems to me to provide a basis for the sort of account of CST you are looking to articulate. The major problem, however, is that I don't think it provides any easy way to transcend contemporary dilemmas about pluralism. Here, MacIntyre's consistent advice is that the best the Thomist tradition can do is to articulate its own view as a tradition and work through its problems, while engaging in disputes with rival traditions (MacIntyre thinks liberalism is a kind of tradition--the dominant one in modern Western societies) to press the case for its own superiority as a tradition of moral enquiry. Pluralism, however, at the level of broad society is here to stay as are its attendant practical problems.

One of the cool things about blogging is getting this sort of feedback, even though Prof. Lewis has left me a lot of homework to do!