Russell Hittinger on the Common Good

"Some Reflections on the Common Good in Modern Catholic Social Doctrine"

Russell Hittinger's lecture given to the @PFIC_DHS on Feb. 26 — as part of the 2nd installment of the annual Thomistic Circles series: What is the Common Good? — is now available: https://t.co/HgdlVPFC5d. pic.twitter.com/UZnLTBQILL

— Thomistic Institute (@ThomisticInst) July 21, 2021

FUS Conference on Politike

Many thanks to @PostliberalTho1
for a tremendously fun and thought provoking conference.
https://t.co/eZdRI0nFoG

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) March 21, 2021

Blast of a conference with the New Polity crew—@PostliberalTho1, Marc Barnes, Jacob Imam, Andrew Willard Jones, & many others

They’re also actively revitalizing the downtown area where the conference was hosted. Amazing work!

Saturday’s panel is here 👇🏻https://t.co/yvktZUQuFE

— Gladden Pappin (@gjpappin) March 21, 2021

A Common Good Approach to Constitutionalism?

Here is the video of 'Toward a Common Good Approach to Constitutionalism' with @Caseyco231 It was a great conversation in our 'What is the Common Good?' series and we hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed hosting Conor. https://t.co/0rtQCGz9ey

— CommonGoodProject (@CommonGoodProj1) March 18, 2021

Vermeule's Explanation of the Common Good

Here is @Vermeullarmine discussing 'What is the Common Good?'https://t.co/9tUlYhXnSC

— CommonGoodProject (@CommonGoodProj1) February 25, 2021

“What is the Common Good?” https://t.co/2vSfnUZx1q

— Ius & Iustitium (@iusetiustitium) February 25, 2021

A Blackfriar Project

What is the Common Good? Join @RMeade1215, Research Fellow at @AquinasOxford and Director of Regulatory Compliance Studies at @LoyolaLaw in conversation with @Vermeullarmine, Professor of Constitutional Law at @Harvard_Law: https://t.co/XiC47RJWD9

— Blackfriars, Oxford (@BlackfriarsOx) February 22, 2021

Enjoyed watching this—particularly liked @Vermeullarmine’s focus on aggregation as an antonym of the common good. Lots of today’s classical liberals (not including AV in this descriptor!) have forgotten about the CG; too many of those who haven’t conflate it with the aggregate.. https://t.co/vmfl4xc9hb

— Rebecca Lowe (@RMLLowe) February 22, 2021

A discussion of the Common Good

The common good is an example of something that's done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I noticehttps://t.co/EggQswprN8

— Pat Smith (@smithpatrick08) February 16, 2021

Sertillanges Was Wrong About the Nation(-State)

He wasn't critical enough in his assumptions or first principles.

Note that Sertillanges, as orthodox a Thomist as there ever was, took for granted that there is such a thing as a nation, a family of families, bounded within borders, a reasonable object of natural political attachment.

Modern cosmopolitan theory didn’t enter his mind.

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) February 2, 2021

James Matthew Wilson on Maritain

I'm looking forward to this conversation about the great, fallible Jacques Maritain. https://t.co/FEZ0uU6ULf

— James Matthew Wilson (@JMWSPT) December 2, 2020

Defending Maritain with James Matthew Wilson https://t.co/dkLUYtkWBV via @YouTube

— privepezz (@privepezz) December 2, 2020

Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau on CDK and the Personalists

In this discussion of Yves Simon's General Theory of Authority, @FrAquinasOP touches on the dispute between Maritain and De Koninck on the person and the common goodhttps://t.co/5LiUKDGKsG

— Catholic Culture Podcasts (@CatholicPods) November 18, 2020

Scotus on the Public Good

Scotus on the primacy of the political common good pic.twitter.com/rvsln4vu8O

— Jamie McGowan (@LegemPoneMihi) November 9, 2020

12 Principles of Latin International Thought

12 Principles of Catholic International Thought - OnePeterFive - https://t.co/AMQ2gX7zo9 via @onepeterfive pic.twitter.com/lyJI53g6yq

— OnePeterFive (@OnePeterFive) November 5, 2020

Andrew Latham on the 10 principles.

#4 regarding scale is a questionable claim regarding Aquinas, though probably true of neoscholastics who didn't know any better. #3 re: the end of a state is questionable as well.

Missing Something, and It's not Small

This piece is correct on the importance of a common culture for a community. But this recommendation is naive and more akin to liberalism than any sort of moral realism. "Instead of either self isolation or a live and let live attitude which hides the deep divides in our communities, we must meet this moral division head on and seek to convince each other to reject the immoral and live together in unity."

Building a Common Life https://t.co/2aOQChOsX6

— The Josias (@josias_rex) November 2, 2020

A Protestant Defense of the Common Good

A Protestant Defense of the Common Good @jordanballor https://t.co/1y8SyCCCkp via @PublicDiscourse

— Ryan T. Anderson (@RyanTAnd) August 17, 2020

The Public Discourse

Reconquest: Integralism & the Common Good of the Community w/ Fr. Thomas Crean, OP

Common-Good Constitutionalism

Common-Good Constitutionalism: Collected Links https://t.co/nA607zKE8s

— Ius & Iustitium (@iusetiustitium) June 26, 2020

Don't Start Where Communities Don't Exist

Most people can't relate to the common good or imagine it, because they don't live in a community.

The Public Discourse: Where (Not) to Begin with the Common Good by Mark Hoipkemier

The question “Who are we to become?” is always answered together. In a world where this fact were understood, we would use the grammar of the common good in the course of deliberations about how to act justly. Needless to say, that is not our world. https://t.co/ziSxBwWZcj

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) June 16, 2020

Thomas Pink on Latin Integralism

Public Discourse: Philosophy, Politics, Religion and the Public Square by Thomas Pink

Integralism, Thomas Pink writes, "involves a rejection of the metaphysical foundations of most current legal and political philosophy." https://t.co/jGwe2SIcnh

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) May 10, 2020

Brilliant new article by @thomaspink1, explaining why integralism matters even nand especially in our curret, secular age: https://t.co/hkf1ncZfDl

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) May 10, 2020

Integralism further involves a conception of the church as an authority over religion that replaces the state. The church is a sovereign potestas, with the authority to make laws and enforce these through punishments, just as is the state. Its authority is based not on natural law as is the state’s, but on the revealed law of Christ. Any interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae that denies this conception of the church as potestas over religion runs directly against the interpretation of that declaration given officially at Vatican II by the commission that drafted it. (For more on this, see my “Dignitatis Humanae: continuity after Leo XIII”.)

Latin integralism depends upon and promotes Latin maximalist conceptions of ecclesial authority, especially the authority of the bishop of Rome.

It is tempting to suppose that there are two quite different kinds of state: an integralist state that prioritizes the good of the community, and a liberal state that fosters the autonomy of the individual. But perhaps the better view is that there simply exist states that serve the common good in a way that involves enforcing an ethical consensus.  

The questions that should be asked are: what is the common good, what defines a political community, and is any state, integralist or otherwise, able to bring about the common good. Maybe integralists will have a new response to MacIntyre and Cavanaugh--until they do, they theorizing merely serves statism, and at best they serve as controlled opposition, inconsequential and no threat to the status quo.

Russell Hittinger on the Compendium of Catholic Social Doctrine

From Pecknold's essay:

Hittinger’s critical analysis comes to a head when he discusses the Compendium’s treatment of the common good. He notes that the older metaphysical definition of the common good—that which belonged to the common philosophical infrastructure of Leo XIII and Pius XI—had given way in the Catechism to a weaker definition lifted from Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes, which suggested that the common good was concerned with “the sum total of social conditions.” But the compilers of the Compendium are aware that this “sum total” account differs from the older and more precise definition of the metaphysical primacy of the common good. So what do they do? As Hittinger observes, they don’t try to reconcile them, they just “juxtapose” them, like this: 

a. The common good indicates “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily.”

b. The common good does not consist in the simple sum of the particular goods of each subject of a social entity. Belonging to everyone and to each person, it is and remains “common”, because it is indivisible.

Hittinger thinks that the authors of the Compendium juxtapose these two passages without reconciling them because they don’t know how to do so. They are actually perpetuating the problem that John Paul II was trying to solve. The juxtaposition is not only lazy, but dangerous—in such juxtapositions, usually the weaker, less binding of the formulas wins out. This loss of philosophical coherence leads to a loss of moral authority, ecclesial unity, and evangelical witness.

Hittinger observes that “at best these are equivocations about what the common good means.” What was needed was not a mere juxtaposition, but a synthesis that strengthens rather than weakens principles. Hittinger even suggests an elegant way the Compendium authors could have done so. Rather than let a thousand principles bloom, they could have clarified that the first “broadly accepted sense” of the common good is not an aggregate definition at all but simply concerns “social conditions,” whereas the second is a definition of the common good in the strict and stronger sense. If they had done the work that John Paul II had asked for, Hittinger reckons, they would have secured the tradition instead of exchanging it “for a mess of pottage.”

Httinger is correct, and it should be noted that the Compendium was released with Rome's authority.

C.C. Pecknold on R. Hittinger and RCST

First Things: Defend Us From Ideology by C. C. Pecknold

“To guard ourselves against ideology...we need to strengthen principles through coherent philosophical definition and reflection. Hittinger concludes, ‘it is not only rigid thinking...but also weak thinking is vulnerable to ideology.’

My latest. https://t.co/fZ3x6aVQNw

— C.C. Pecknold (@ccpecknold) May 8, 2020

"Some might take this as a counsel of despair, but I take Hittinger to be issuing an invigorating challenge... we need to strengthen principles through coherent philosophical definition & reflection."https://t.co/EjweJOEHKh

— Josh Hochschild (@JoshHochschild) May 8, 2020

Yet Hittinger sees “warning signs” beginning with Pope Pius XII. Pius was well-schooled in the same philosophical infrastructure, yet issued no social encyclicals from 1940 until his death in 1958. Pope John XXIII began writing social encyclicals again, but no longer “to all bishops,” as was the Leonine custom. Rather, he addressed them “to all men of good will.” This shift of address drastically changed the scope and coherence of social doctrine, since it no longer assumed the shared philosophical infrastructure and distinctions that had been essential to the tradition.

Should a bishop be preaching moral theology to non-believers or Christ instead?

Does Rome have the authority to promulgate principles of moral theology, other than precepts of the Divine Law, as definitive? By what competence? Rome can only affirm that such principles (and conclusions of moral theology) are free from heresy but Rome cannot guarantee that their formulation is true or sound as they stand, at least not with the authority of the pope as defined so far. Not only that, but the Compendium does not include an exhaustive list of the precepts of Divine Law regarding political communities and political life.

Some might take this as a counsel of despair, but I take Hittinger to be issuing an invigorating challenge. If we want to guard ourselves against ideology and corruptions of our traditions, we need to strengthen principles through coherent philosophical definition and reflection. Hittinger concludes, “it is not only rigid thinking that’s vulnerable to ideology, but also weak thinking is vulnerable to ideology.” 

This is true for the political common good as well as the ecclesial common good. Skepticism that eschews a strong, coherent public philosophy will not help us. Only a philosophically coherent account of the American common good will save us from our descent into ideological incoherence.

Preaching the "common good" never transformed a tyranny to a just regime. While we need to critically examine the principles of RCST, I do not think that Latins will have the courage to take such an examination that far, as it may run contrary to accepted beliefs about the state and other beliefs taken from liberalism, egalitarianism, and other political ideologies.

European Society of Philosophy CFP

webpage

This call for papers for an issue of the journal of the European Society for Moral Philosophy on political philosophy looks very promising: https://t.co/FZ7l25mZey

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) May 7, 2020