The Need to Teach Political Philosophy and the Study of Statesmanship in Seminaries

I taught in fine seminary programs at the beginning and end of my full-time teaching career, with stints at Catholic colleges and universities in between. I continue to teach part-time for the college seminary of the exemplary diocese of Wichita. I therefore have more experience than most in these important educational venues, important for those who pass through them, and important for the immediate and long-term future of the Church in America. Here I am going to make a case for the teaching and study of political philosophy and statesmen in the seminary curriculum. To do so I will need to say a few words about the mandated course of philosophical studies in American seminaries, which will show a lacuna that the study of political philosophy and statesmanship fills.

For example, the mandatory course on moral philosophy rightly talks up prudence, but rarely (if ever) considers its highest form according to the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition: the prudentia directiva of the statesman. Studying paradigmatic embodiments of the virtue brings the teaching to life, which is a good thing, and shows what all is involved in statesmanly thinking, decision and action, an even better thing.ⁱ This does two things: it disabuses the timid or despairing of the thought that “there’s nothing that can be done” and it disabuses young or inexperienced minds of naïve, sometimes utopian, expectations. More positively, it shows the complexity of factors required for decisions affecting an entire political community. Simplifications, abstractions, and thoughtless “moralizations” are temptations strenuously to be resisted when thinking about politics.

However, while the program of philosophical studies points to the need for political philosophy, it does not make explicit room for it. This is a wonderful opportunity for seminaries. In explicitly including this discipline, seminaries would make a contribution not just to their students (and their sponsoring dioceses), but to the wider academic world. Indeed, it is one of my convictions that seminary education is one of the best-kept secrets of our time. To my mind, they often are like little Bethlehem’s. Now is the time to let their light shine even more broadly. The world desperately needs Catholic truth, and seminaries at their best teach that truth explicitly, systematically and integrally. In my hopeful view, seminaries potentially have a bigger role to play in higher education by way of example (and tacit critique of the alternatives), than perhaps at any time in their history in this country. Adding political philosophy to the curriculum would add a gem to its Catholic philosophical crown.

One more preliminary point: an important motive for making this case is what I regularly heard from seminarians: “Help us make sense of what’s going on in America, and in the wider world! These are stormy times. We want to help our flocks navigate these storms, but we’re not sure how.” The smarter students continued: “Catholic Social Thought gives us some help, but not enough. Help us better understand the world in its political realities, including war and peace.” In part, I am writing this plaidoyer in response to former students and for the sake of future seminarians.

Now to my argument. I begin with the whole within which philosophical studies take place in seminaries.

An Integrated Program

The American Bishops-in-Conference (the USCCB) mandates the seminary program for all seminarians in the United States. It covers four “dimensions” or (in an older St. JPII language) “pillars” of formation. The future priest needs, and needs to embrace, formation in four areas: as a human being (human formation); in his mind and intellect, culminating in theological education (intellectual formation); in his interior life and journey with the Lord (spiritual formation); and pastoral formation, knowing the skills and possessing the qualities requisite to minister effectively. Pastoral formation is the integrating goal – the telos – of the three previous dimensions.

Philosophical education thus takes its place within a very specific academic program, itself at the service of something beyond academics, priestly ministry. Philosophy is studied both for its own sake, to enrich and hone the mind of the seminarian, and as necessary for the study of theology in the Roman Catholic tradition. Given its pastoral finality, philosophical studies also are conducted with an eye to the needs and questions of future flocks. The latter necessarily include political questions. In this domain, the reiteration of platitudes, pious or other, will not do. Below, I will indicate a major inadequacy of Catholic Social Thought in its capacity to guide civic deliberation and judgment. Now, I need to show that the current curriculum of philosophical studies points to political philosophy, but fails to give it a clear place.

The PPF

The “curriculum guide” for philosophy studies in US seminaries in found in an official document, the Program for Priestly Formation (PPF), currently in its 6^th edition. In what follows, I cite the relevant passage for our discussion from the section on philosophical studies (PPF # 283, g.). Remarkably, the passage refers to the discipline of “the study of ethics” – philosophical ethics – and provides an overview of its mandatory range or broadest content. The reader will quickly note its wide-ranging capaciousness, but, along with that, ambiguous borders and unspecified disciplinary competences. To begin:

The study of ethics, which treats of general principles of ethical decision making, provides seminarians with a solid grounding in themes like conscience, freedom, law, responsibility, virtue, and guilt.

We are very much in the territory of moral or ethical theory. The focus is on the individual and his or her “ethical decision making.” Among the themes, “law” sticks out a bit, and its meaning is a bit ambiguous. Does it refer to what is often called “positive law” and hence invoke the political community? Or does it refer tacitly to “natural law” as a principle of ethical action, indeed one of the most important “general principles” of ethical decision making in the Catholic moral tradition? Given that it refers simply to “law,” the first alternative is preferable, which would indicate a certain breadth to the scope of ethics. Indeed, the passage continues:

Ethics also considers the common good and virtue of solidarity as central to Christian social political philosophy.

Here is a significant expansion of the discipline! Ethics now “also considers” the common good and a distinct social virtue, solidarity, both said to be “central to Christian social political philosophy.” Thus we move – rather abruptly – from ethics to Christian social political philosophy. The latter seems to be its own discipline, but apparently it receives “central” elements from ethics, or at least ethics treats them on its own. However, these “central” elements include what one would think is one of the defining objects of political philosophy, Christian or not, “the common good.” What the connection is – if any – between the ethics’ consideration and that of “Christian social political philosophy” is unstated and unclear. Indeed, what “Christian social political philosophy” is, is also unspecified, and the accent is clearly on philosophical “ethics” and its “consider[ations]”. One could be forgiven for seeing political philosophy as something of a second cousin, rather than a discipline with its own methods and integrity.

The passage continues, as does the increasing range of “ethics”:

Ethics should consider the Church’s social doctrine as central to Christian social political philosophy. The social encyclicals and other documents foundational to the Church’s rich social doctrine should be utilized in the study of ethics. These principles and documents provide a foundation for the seminarian’s study of moral theology.

Whatever it is, Christian social political philosophy has a number of “centers”! The common good and the virtue of solidarity, both of which are philosophical ethics’ concern, and an entire corpus of teaching, “the Church’s rich social doctrine,” are all “central to Christian social political philosophy.” Its content and importance grow, but also the opaqueness of its nature and status. Worse, this second occurrence of the term is the last occurrence in the document. What we have is a discipline whose existence is asserted, but not developed, and its nature and place in the curriculum left unclear.

I would venture two reasons for this ambiguous status of political philosophy. On one hand, in general, the philosophy curriculum in the PPF is a mélange of three sources: a broad ordo disciplinarum of a by-gone scholastic curriculum; additions from JPII such as “the nuptial nature” of man; and a few elements from the pontificate of Pope Francis (e. g., concern for the environment). While not simply a mishmash – the scholastic ordo tends to be the framework -, in some areas, such as political philosophy, it is not specified with adequate precision. Behind what we just read may be the old Aristotelian-scholastic division of individual ethics, domestic ethics (or “economics”), and political science, but that is far from clear and in truth is a stretch. Nor is it the trifecta of Catholic Social Thought that Russ Hittinger has written about so well, which deals with three societates (family, polity, Church). As it is, it exists in a kind of curricular limbo.

Leo XIII

The second reason is the diminished status of political philosophy in Catholic thought in general, but especially in Catholic Social Teaching since the pontificate of Leo XIII. For reasons that are understandable, Leo inaugurated what I call “the Polyphemusing” of political philosophy in magisterial Catholic teaching. (Polyphemus, of course, was the one-eyed monster encountered by Odysseus.) Leo put forth the thought that the Church can offer adequate political instruction without taking the regime into account. This half-blinds the Catholic citizen in his deliberations.ⁱⁱ

In 1881’s Diuturnum (“On the Origin of Civil Power”), in order to remove the Church from the interminable debate between monarchists and republicans in France, Leo wrote: “There is no question here respecting forms of government, for there is no reason why the Church should not approve of the chief power being held by one man or by more, provided only it be just, and that it tend to the common advantage.” This is a most fateful concession and claim. It presumes that justice and the common good are regime independent. This was far from the thinking of the major figures in the pre-modern tradition of philosophical reflection on politics.

A turn to Aristotle and to Plato will allow us to begin to see what is missing when the form of government – the regime – is left out.

Aristotle’s Regime-Focus

Aristotle made regime-analysis the central focus and theme of political science or philosophy. The regime or politeia is the form of a city or political community. It is an arrangement of ruling offices (or “honors”), to which this-that-or-these members of the civic body have access. A regime embodies a certain understanding of justice and, more broadly, a way of life – a healthy democratic way of life, an aristocratic, or even a monarchical way, or their opposites. The variety of regimes is a fundamental political fact and must be taken into account to understand politics. It gives rise to a number of questions, including which one, if any, is the best?

In Book II of the Politics, in order not to “play the sophist” and immediately pretend to the right answer without having done his intellectual homework, Aristotle critically surveys a number of theoretical and practical versions of “the best regime,” starting with proposals in Plato’s Republic. During the course of this critical survey, an initial statement of what he would consider the best regime comes to light. It has four elements.

First, and perhaps surprisingly, the best regime is the best at avoiding the worst, civic factionalism and its tendential consequence, civil war. To do so, it attaches the various parts of the city – typically, the few, the many, and the excellent – to the politeia, the regime, by way of philía, civic friendship. Because of its governing order and their access to it, no part feels left out. Third, this order allows and indeed promotes good government: it puts people in offices they can perform well. And finally, the best regime, knowing that politics, whether of peace or war, is not the whole of a good life, enables and encourages a good life by way of leisure (skolé) and the cultivation of the mind and taste by “philosophy,” what we would call liberal studies, including grand poetry.

Politics thus comes to sight as a matter of regimes and their differences, and political philosophy as the sustained effort to analyze them, capped by the thoughtful search to articulate the best one among them. That is political science or philosophy at its peak. But it has other tasks as well. The first chapter of Book IV of the Politics lays them out. It is here that Aristotle’s sober realism and his philanthropy – his benevolence toward human beings – show themselves. And it is here that we find a lesson conspicuously absent from Catholic teaching today about politics. The short version of the lesson is: you can rigorously conceive the best, but you also have to deal with the reality before you. Here is what Aristotle says in Chapter 1 of Book IV:

[I]t is clear that, with regard to the regime, it belongs to the same science to study

1) what the best regime is, …. ; [then 2] which regime is fitting for which cities – for it is

perhaps impossible for many to obtain the best, so neither the one that is superior

simply nor the one that is the best that circumstances allow should be overlooked

by the good legislator and the political ruler in the true sense; further, 3) thirdly, the

regime based on a [specific] presupposition – for any given regime should be studied

with a view to determining both how it might arise initially and in what manner it might

be preserved for the longest time once in existence (1288b22-31).

Political science as understood by Aristotle can “sing both high and low” (in Shakespeare’s phrase), and it knows the difference between the two (or three), it knows when it is time to do one or the other. As I said above, there is healthy realism and real benevolence in Aristotle’s political science. The best will be rare, exceedingly rare, therefore as a rule one has to temper one’s hopes, expectations, and demands to what is generally possible, and one always has to consider an actual regime on its own terms first, in terms of its “presupposition” or founding principles. In the latter case, political science is in the “preservation” business.ⁱⁱⁱ Thus, approaching all political life with the same attitude, with some ideal “best regime” or handful of “evaluative principles” in mind, and applying them to present reality is a prescription for disappointment, useless plaints, and utopian hopes and demands. Plato’s Republic showed this in a particularly vivid way.

Exposing Uncritical Idealism

In the Republic, two gifted young men are quite confused and disaffected with contemporary Athenian political and cultural life. Their souls burn for something better, something purer, something More. Socrates gives it to them. Discerning the unreflective ideals buried in their demands for a perfect justice, Socrates distills them into a principle – one man, one art, for a perfectly well-ordered political order – and sets about showing them what results. What results is an ever-greater distortion and repression of human nature and human beings, not to mention dictating to the gods and the cosmos what they must be if Perfect Justice is to be realized on earth. What purports to be perfection is really the tyranny of a certain desire and demand on the part of these confused and ardent young men. The purpose of this Socratic dialectical exercise is to show the terrible narrowness of this particular view of justice and the injustices involved in applying it to real human beings. It requires both lies and coercion. Caveant idealists.

Aristotle’s Political Education

This is where Aristotle’s Politics can be so useful. A former teacher of mine called it “the political education of the moral man.” To that, I would add: the pious man as well. It takes the reader through just about everything that needs to be thought about in politics, with the regime being the central reality and focal point.

The Politics is also an intensive course for actual or potential statesmen (and their lesser cousin, the politician). When one reads Aristotle, one sees that just about everything relates to the regime, and everything that needs to be related to the regime. Bringing all this together, the French political philosopher Pierre Manent has spoken of Aristotelian political philosophy as “the ‘architectonic’ science, the political and practical science that is concretized in the virtue of prudence, the practical wisdom of the legislator and the statesman.”

Before we end with a suggested course along these lines, two further words about certain grave obstacles to good thinking about politics – undue abstraction and ideological thinking – seem necessary in our times.

Tocqueville on How Not to Think about Politics

The problem of bad thinking about politics is not new, and it might be said to be congenital to modern democracy. Certainly, the first and greatest analyst of modern democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville, made a case along these lines. The case involved converging lines of observation. On one hand, if you deprive intellectuals of political responsibility, they will engage in what he called “literary politics,” abstract schemes applied to imperfect reality, first “theoretically,” then practically. This was one of the main causes of the French Revolution. On the other hand, democracy itself, as a type of society, also tends to impact the habits of thought of its members. Among these are addictions to grand abstractions and to global causal “explanations.” Big Thinkers and Big Talkers in democratic society are often subject to these maladies of the mind and in turn prey on those subject to them as well. Tocqueville would be among the first to warn the unwary: if someone primarily talks of politics in terms of abstractions like “capitalism,” “liberalism,” and “liberal capitalism” without the requisite detailed content,^iv the odds are he is engaging in literary politics. Let the hearer beware.

The opposite of abstraction is not empiricism, but rather concrete regime-analysis, which includes constitutions, founding speeches, and serious historical study.

The bane of political thinking and politics

There are abstractions and there are abstractions. The worst of the lot, indeed qualitatively worse, are Ideologies (with a capital “I”). Ideologies are Manichean forms of thinking that divide humanity into the evil and the innocent, the oppressed and the oppressors, the reprobate and the (potentially) regenerate. There are the classical forms of ideology we find in Jacobinism and Marxist-Leninism, but there are newer, more contemporary, forms as well. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the self-reinventing hydra of Ideology has produced any number of new heads. Here in America, one could track in chronological order the series of transnational progressivism,^v cultural Marxism or identity politics,^vi settler colonialism,^vii and an updated Third Worldism.^viii

Each, as I said, is constituted by false binaries and by their denial of a common human nature, moral law, and the commonsensical (and Augustinian) understanding that this world is not made for perfection. In what they affirm and what they deny, they contain assaults on the metaphysical order, the moral order, and the nature of man. But what holds these together is a false vision of society and History, past, present, and Future. Because of this formality, it is a fit subject for political philosophy. Indeed today, analyzing and exposing Ideology in its forms and works is a necessary task of political philosophy, part of the intellectual hygiene recommended by Orwell.

A Suggested Course

With all this in mind, we can now sketch a course in political philosophy and statesmanship for the curriculum of American seminaries. To begin with, five authors and three texts, judiciously excerpted, would be enough to introduce students to political philosophy: Aristotle’s Politics; Tocqueville’s Democracy in America; and multi-author “Publius” and The Federalist Papers. Aristotle’s work introduces and exercises the reader in the demands and rewards of regime-analysis, while Tocqueville’s great work helps him grasp in depth and breadth the specifics of the modern democratic order. Publius completes the American regime analysis by laying out the argument for our “fundamental law,” the Constitution.

As for statesmanship, Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans provides ample classical models and reflection on statesmanship and its doppelgängers, while John Marshall’s The Life of George Washington brings the greatness of the indispensable man at the founding vividly to life. It is available in a one-volume abridgement.^ix To complete the American consideration, Lord Charnwood’s Abraham Lincoln: A Biography is at once eminently readable, penetrating, and inspiring. The fact that it was written by an Englishman shows that American greatness can be recognized across borders and oceans. In our time of low-grade civil war, the study of these two greatest American statesmen is both relevant and urgent.

As for coming to grips with modern Ideology, selections from The Great Lie: Classic and Recent Appraisals of Ideology and Totalitarianism by F. Flagg Taylor IV would more than do the job.

*

When my first boss at my last seminary brought me on board, he hired me in part to introduce political philosophy into the philosophy curriculum. In his wonderfully direct way, he told me, “Paul, I don’t want them to say stupid things from the pulpit.” Nor, one could add, do their flocks. Truth be told, nor do they.

Endnotes:

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