Lent and Easter Wisdom from Pope John Paul II Book

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.