My selection this week from The City of God comes from Book I, Chapter 9, just after Augustine has been
discussing the objection from his pagan adversaries that it does not seem right that Christian divine compassion is extended both to the wicked and the good; likewise, why should the wicked and the good suffer the same evils in the earthly city? What kind of God would inflict the same hurts on the good and the wicked alike?
Augustine first says that what matters is not the event of suffering itself, but the person undergoing the suffering: "though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers." I.8.
Fair enough, one might respond, but if the sufferers are not alike, why should they undergo similar pain? This seems unjust. Augustine argues that it is right that God's "corrections" be administered in the earthly city to good and bad men alike because these corrections are reminders to good men that "although they be far from the excesses of wicked, immoral, and ungodly men, yet they do not judge themselves so clean removed from all faults as to be too good to suffer in these temporal ills." I.9.
What are the particular failings of good people that Augustine emphasizes in this chapter--those sins that warrant their suffering in this world, indeed, that warrant their suffering similar pain to the wicked? Here is Augustine's answer:
For often we wickedly blind ourselves to the occasions of teaching and admonishing them [the wicked], sometimes even of reprimanding and chiding them, either because we shrink from the labor or are afraid to offend them, or because we fear to lose good friendships, lest this should stand in the way of our advancement, or injure us in some worldly matter, which either our covetous disposition desires to obtain, or our weakness shrinks from losing. So that although the conduct of wicked men is distasteful to the good, and therefore they do not fall with them into that damnation which in the next life awaits such persons, yet, because they spare their damnable sins through fear, therefore, even though their own sins be slight and venial, they are justly scourged with the wicked in this world, though in eternity they quite escape punishment. Justly, when God afflicts them in common with the wicked, do they find this life bitter, through love of whose sweetness they declined to be bitter to these sinners.
If anyone forbears to reprove and find fault with those who are doing wrong, because he seeks a more seasonable opportunity, or because he fears they may be made worse by his rebuke, or that other weak persons may be disheartened from endeavoring to lead a good and pious life, and may be driven from the faith--this man's omission seems to be occasioned not by covetousness, but by a charitable consideration. But what is blameworthy is, that they who themselves revolt from the conduct of the wicked, and live in quite another fashion, yet spare those faults in other men which they ought to reprehend and wean them from; and spare them because they fear to give offense, lest they should injure their interests in those things which good men may innocently and legitimately use....They abstain from interference, because they fear that, if it fail of good effect, their own safety or reputation may be damaged or destroyed; not because they see that their preservation and good name are needful, that they may be able to influence those who need their instruction, but rather because they weakly relish the flattery and respect of men, and fear the judgments of the people, and the pain or death of the body; that is to say, their nonintervention is the result of selfishness, not love.
Accordingly, this seems to me to be one principal reason why the good are chastised along with the wicked, when God is pleased to visit with temporal punishments the profligate manners of a community. They are punished together, not because they have spent an equally corrupt life, but because the good as well as the wicked, though not equally with them, love this present life; while they ought to hold it cheap, that the wicked, being admonished and reformed by their example, might lay hold of life eternal. And if they will not be the companions of the good in seeking life everlasting, they should be loved as enemies, and dealt with patiently. For so long as they live, it remains uncertain whether they may not come to a better mind.
There are many interesting and difficult observations in this passage. First, the obligation of the good to admonish the wicked is laid out plainly. 'Follow your own star and the world will be a better place' is not the ethical, or, for that matter, the political, message here. Indeed, the failure to meet this obligation is one of the "principal" reasons that both good and wicked are afflicted with suffering in the earthly city.
Second, note the psychology of admonition and failure to admonish that Augustine proposes. One's motivations for failing to take a stand in opposition to wrongful conduct make a difference. The failure to rebuke is culpable when the motivation for that failure is self-interested. But failure to rebuke is not culpable if it is motivated by love of the object of the admonition. So that the failure to take a stand in response to wrongful conduct would not be culpable if it were motivated by non-egoistic prudential considerations--the efficaciousness of the rebuke, for example, or its tendency to dissuade others from leading a good life.
Third, one of these prudential considerations might be the preservation of one's own good name or reputation, provided that the motivation for such a preservation were to keep in play the possibility of altering wrongful conduct in the future. Such a preservation would not be included as a prudential consideration if the motivation for it were the weak desire for the "respect of men, and fear [of] the judgments of the people." Even the fear of "pain or death of the body" would not be an adequate reason to refrain from rebuke. This is demanding indeed. Professor Robert Dodaro, in his excellent volume, Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine, has this to say about the last point: "Because [Augustine] believes that happiness is predicated upon the knowledge and love of God as the supreme good, he concludes that fear of death epitomizes the fundamental threat to the formation of a just society. Justice is not found wherever fear of death impedes action aimed at the attainment of lasting happiness. Virtue is therefore necessary to overcome fear of death, all the more so because it leads human beings to choose permanent over temporal goods." Id. at 35-36.
Fourth, and finally, admonition--even when it is necessary--is always to be "gentle and patient." Presumably this is not only for reasons of prudence or efficacy, but also because one can never know--that is, "it remains uncertain" to the rebuker--what people's fate will be and what end they will come to. As R.A. Markus puts it: "[T]he Augustinian vision springs from a sense of conflicting purposes, of uncertainties of direction and of tensions unresolvable in society. In place of the Aristotelian confidence in the established order, the Augustinian tradition is inspired rather by a sense of its precariousness, and by an awareness of the perpetual proximity of disintegration." Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine 177.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Recently -- both online at Public Discourse and in the pages of First Things -- there has been an interesting conversation about law, liberalism, happiness, culture, etc. among Robert Miller, Patrick Deneen, David Tubbs, and others. Here is a link to Prof. Miller's latest intervention, "The Practical Eudaimonist." Here is a bit from his opening paragraphs:
[My first point] was that, although the liberal political institutions of
the United States can easily and naturally be justified on the basis of a
liberal political philosophy, they can also be justified as pragmatic
political compromises worked out by people who disagree sharply on moral
issues and have divergent interests and life goals. I called the former
kind of justification for liberal institutions philosophical liberalism and the latter pragmatic liberalism.
My second point was that a Roman Catholic like me, who understands
morality to be eudaimonistic in the manner of the Aristotelian-Thomistic
tradition, can and should be a pragmatic liberal, because, in the
totality of current circumstances, liberal political institutions
comprise the best available system of government in the sense that they
afford the best chance of allowing people to lead good human lives,
which is the central concern of eudaimonistic moral philosophy. . . .
I am sympathetic to Miller's claims (and think that his responses to his critics -- including my friend and neighbor Deneen -- are convincing). Of course -- and I'm sure Miller would agree -- there are dangers posed by "liberal political institutions" like ours to human flourishing. One of those dangers, in fact, is that these institutions will become less liberal and more (illiberally) statist and monistic, and this danger is a very live one, I think, today. Still, I think that Miller (like John Courtney Murray) is right to think that America's "liberal political institutions" can be regarded, and defended, by Catholics as maintaining the space and order within which the work of moral formation and integral human development can be done by families, communities, the Church, and so on.
John Gray has an incisive and learned comment on the occasion of the first English translation of Giacomo
Leopardi’s Zibaldone–partly a notebook and partly a diary from this brilliantly melancholy Romantic mind. Much of Gray’s commentary considers Leopardi’s relationship to Enlightenment rationalism, on the hand, and Christianity, on the other. For those with an interest in Leopardi’s political and moral thought, may I also recommend Joshua Foa Dienstag’s superb discussion of Leopardi in his Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit.
Probably Leopardi’s poetry (his “Canti” especially) is the best known of his corpus, but my favorite of his work has always been Le Operette Morali or “Little Moral Tales.” These have been translated into English before, and for some years, I have set myself the project of doing a new translation. Let’s just say it’s in progress.
Here is a translation (Iris Origo and John Heath-Stubbs) of the opening passages from the first of the Operette Morali, “The Story of the Human Race”:
The story is told that all the men who first peopled the earth were created everywhere at the same time, and all as infants, and were nourished by bees, goats, and doves, as the poets describe in their fable about the nurture of Jove. They say, too, that the earth was much smaller than it is now, and all the land was flat, that the sky was starless, that there was no sea, and that there was much less variety and magnificence in the world than we see there now. But men, nevertheless, delighted in the pleasure they took in regarding and considering the earth and sky with great wonder, thinking them most beautiful, and not only vast but infinite in size, majesty, and loveliness; and they also nourished very joyous hopes, deriving an incredible delight from all their awareness of this life, and became most contented, so that they almost believed in happiness.
Having thus passed their childhood and early youth most sweetly and having reached a riper age, a change came over them. For their hopes, which they had postponed from day to day until then, had not yet been realized, so that they lost faith in them. And they did not feel that they could still be content with what they were then enjoying, without some promise of an increase of happiness, particularly as the appearance of nature and of every part of their daily life–whether because they had become accustomed to them, or because their spirits were no longer so lively as they had once been–no longer seemed as delightful and pleasing to them as in the beginning. They wandered about the earth visiting very distant regions–for they could do so easily, since the land was flat and not divided by seas or any other impediments–and after many years most of them became aware that the earth, even though it was large, had definite boundaries, instead of ones so vast that one could not define them; and that, but for a few very slight differences, all the places in the earth and all its inhabitants were just alike. And their discontent increased so much on this account that, though their youth was scarcely at an end, they were all overcome by a conscious distaste for their own nature. And in their manhood, and still more as their years declined, their satiety was converted into hatred, so that some of them came to be so despairing that they were no longer able to bear the light and the life they had at first loved so much, and thus of their own accord–some in one way, some in another–they brought their life to an end.
It seemed terrible to the gods that living creatures should prefer death to life, and that–without the compulsion of necessity–they should become the instruments of their own destruction….Therefore, Jove, having decided–since it seemed to be necessary–to improve the human condition and to help it to further the pursuit of happiness, reached the conclusion that the chief human complaint was that things were not as beautiful, various, and perfect as they had believed at first, but instead were very restricted, imperfect, and monotonous….
For Jove’s strategy to cure this state of depression and “noia” (ultimately unsuccessful, I’m afraid), get yourself a copy of Le Operette Morali.
