The Person’s Transcendent Social Destiny – An Application to Politics

Heritage

Jan 23

Introduction

All politics is an expression of the meaning and purpose of human life in society, and it is necessary to clarify what this expression of meaning and purpose is, both what contemporary forms of politics assume social life to be, and what in reality human society should look like or aspire to. Politics is, or should be, an expression of the human person’s social flourishing as an adequate response to the reality which surrounds us and in which we are immersed. In each of all the varied forms of cultural expression there is a pattern or structure that corresponds to authentic human living. Politics, as a part of human culture, is made possible and sustained by the many expressions of such authentic human culture. This is the meaning we give to Plato’s insight into society, the polis, as the macro-anthropos, the reflection of authentic human life that is necessarily social.[1]

The loss of transcendence today

Today, we live in an atmosphere that seems to have lost the perception of transcendence, that is, the consciousness of a greater dimension of existence beyond the confines of what is immediate and immanent to this physical world. Our politics is shaped by this assumed limit to our existence. Canadian philosopher C. Taylor has noted that: “the main feature of this new context (secular modernity) is that it puts an end to the naïve acknowledgement of the transcendent, or of goals or claims which go beyond human flourishing” (in this actual existence).[2]

Historical origins of this loss of transcendence: a politics of restraint

From political history, this narrowing of vision is clearly manifest in the political theories of T. Hobbes and J. Locke who assume a minimum social contract among men, in contrast to Aristotle’s summum bonum for society. Contemporary political liberal philosophy, such as J. Rawls’ Theory of Justice (1971), seems to perpetuate this minimalist approach to the common and greatest good, what we can call the approach of a politics of restraint.

The French political philosopher P. Manent, in his Metamorphoses of the City, contrasts the ancient and modern perception of the human condition. He relates that in the classical world the aspiration to glory represented the sought-for desire for something beyond the boundary of death, this aspiration was itself an instinctive reaction to the consciousness of death. For modern thinkers, on the other hand, this desire for glory was something immoderate and such an aspiration subjected human existence to demands that were unreasonable and in fact useless.[3]

Manent explains that in F. Bacon’s new order the political aim was to achieve “the relief of man’s estate”, an easing of the precariousness of human living, nothing more. T. Hobbes follows this lowering of human ambition and recognises that all manifestations of human glory and fame were in fact the cause of human problems and needed to be eliminated. This would be done, according to Hobbes, by curtailing all forms of pride and thus free people from the pressure of greater and transcendent goals, that were in any case futile. The only entity capable of achieving this repression of glory was the state. Only the state could oblige people to lower their ambitions, be satisfied with what this existence offers, and forget any greater, transcendent aspirations. In this way, the state could oblige its citizens to be fixed on the here and now instead of living with heaven on their minds.[4]

A politics of aspiration

In opposition to this politics of restraint, other modern currents of politics have projected the full range of human hope onto political projects of proximate fulfilment. This politics of aspiration, supported by quasi-religious and optimistic beliefs in progress, have been followed by the failure of their promises and a “retaliatory pessimism.”

J. Pieper’s meditation on The End of Time: A Meditation on the Philosophy of History[5] comments on the various Enlightenment views of hope in progress towards a future fulfilment of hope within time in such thinkers as F. Bacon who trusted the sciences to bring forward an ever more civilised human existence, Giambattista Vico, who believed that successive cultures would necessarily advance to a Republic of Mankind, Johann Gottfried Herder who claimed that “reason and equity must gain ground among men and foster an enduring humanity,” and I. Kant, who in his Ideal of a Universal History Based on the Principle of World-Citizenship (1784), also proposes “the attainment of a civil society universally governed by justice.” Even so, Pieper notices that each and all of these optimistic proposals of fulfilment of human hope for the perfect society within time fails and causes the pendulum reaction of pessimism as the result of disappointed hope.

The modern political projects of aspiration are of particular relevance because they appeal to the profound hope, both individual and social, of future fulfilment, but they assume and propose man’s own capacity to achieve this fulfilment. These political projects of aspiration take charge of society and enforce the changes to produce transformation – of the person and of society. As the Italian philosopher Augusto del Noce writes, “revolution . . . replaces metaphysics with the ideal of a meta-humanity,” which, in effect, is the attempt to recreate reality in our own image and likeness.[6]

This last century, in particular, has witnessed totalitarian political ideologies that have justified their doctrines in quasi-religious terms to produce Heaven on earth, thus channelling real transcendent aspirations into illusory plans and projects for earthly perfection. This misplacement of transcendent human aspirations within the actual condition of human society is always a threat to our human society. As J. Ratzinger points out, speaking of this immanent form of paradise on earth:

‘I think we must make it clear to ourselves again today, in all earnestness, that neither reason nor faith ever promises that there will be a perfect world someday. It does not exist. Constantly expecting it, playing with the possibility and proximity of it, is the most serious threat to our politics and our society, because anarchical fanaticism necessarily proceeds from it.[7]

Re-dimensioning human existence: human hope

A more careful and profound understanding of the human person’s original unity and actual condition of rupture is required to understand adequately our real existential circumstances. Theological sources shed light on our human experience of original unity, actual rupture, and transcendent aspiration—the real dimensions of human existence.

The existential experience of hope necessarily moves the human person towards a definitive and perfect goal. This experience is what is expressed in all our lesser hopes and is an expression of a structural orientation of our being towards fulfilment. At the same time, we find ourselves within the limits of human history that seem to frustrate what we hope and expect, in some implicit way.

The real nature of human hope is for a real, future fulfilment beyond the confines of this actual existence, and beyond the capacity of man to achieve. In classical philosophy, hope was a passion to be curtailed within the limits of this actual existence. The American professor of law Russell Hittinger, in contrasting classical courage with the novel Christian virtue of hope, says the following: ‘The price paid for pressing beyond the limits that seem to be intrinsic to human nature, and thus to uncover new scope and content for hoping, is the recognition that man is radically dependent on a being other than himself. Once this shift is accomplished, hope can be understood as something more than an anticipatory passion. It can be seen as a distinctively spiritual perfection that includes trust and a number of other attitudes that David Hume mockingly called “the whole train of monkish virtues.” These “monkish virtues” make sense if our nature is dependent upon a being other than ourselves.[8]

Conclusions: a politics of authentic hope

It is clear, therefore, that politics does require a summum bonum that is the inbuilt expectation of hope to which the human person is subject. The real answer to the nature and fulfilment of hope requires a comprehension of the human person’s original unity, our actual rupture, and trust in the future fulfilment by Another.

Why is this important for politics? The forces and energies for authentic renewal of political society can only come from persons, whether they are creative minorities or majorities. Political mentalities and structures that stifle and suffocate these forces and energies, whether by benign or hostile means, only produce a subservient, passive, and ultimately frustrated people.

This is particularly relevant today as the politics of restraint seems to dominate our political way of thinking. A. de Tocqueville reminds us of the political subterfuge we can live in, “a servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind” that frustrates our real political vocation – and promotes forms of democratic despotism.[9]

The discovery of the more complete vision of personal existence, our original, actual and transcendent destiny, is a more adequate basis for social and political organization. Not only does it recognise the real aspirations of social unity but also reflects the personal participation and commitment necessary for political achievement. At the same time, the actual condition of the human person requires realistic expectations as to what can be achieved in this existence. The recognition of a transcendent destiny beyond this existence, one that, ultimately, we are given rather than make ourselves, and the dependence on an order that is not of our fabrication, teaches an openness to sources of truth that are not the product of the capabilities of human reason. The practical decisions of politics can be seen in a greater context that requires an openness of the mind to recognise and accept sources of light without which our human problems are insoluble. Nothing can be “just politics’ but requires to be seen in the light of an order and purpose in which we are immersed and to which, ultimately, we correspond, if we are to fulfil the hope of our most profound aspirations. Nor can the difficult questions of politics be dismissed by the claim that they are ‘above our pay grade.” Precisely then we are obliged to look beyond rational calculations, unwarranted simplifications, to sources of truth that enlighten our minds.

The political path to the transcendent fulfilment of man’s social destiny is full of risks and dangers. As we have seen, the hope of fulfilled aspirations can be so easily preyed upon and abused. We have also seen that such aspirations can be stifled and suffocated by mutual agreement, so that politics becomes an abdication of freedom in exchange for political irresponsibility, and an ever-increasing governmental control of welfare with its ever-increasing demands on our freedoms and an ever-increasing economic invoice.

Embedded in these abusive political forms are visions of the person that are truncated and distorted. The attempt to expand and deepen the real dimensions of personal existence is essential if we are to rediscover the real context of all political endeavour, which is fundamentally ethical and religious, because our personal aspirations are fundamentally ethical and religious.

It is also essential to release the energies of participation in the social bond. The human person is a being in relation, called to communion, structured to both give and receive. These potentials need to be awakened to participation.

[1] E. Voegelin notices that the ancient Egyptian and Babylonian symbolizations viewed human society as a micro-cosmos, a tiny reflection of the vast, impersonal, and remote cosmic forces. This is similar, I suggest, to our own view of the human person as a tiny element within vast political forces that determine his existence. There is no freedom here, no personally chosen comprehensive vision, no participation, but just the submission to implacable and impervious forces. In contrast, Voegelin notes that for Plato (‘intimated but not articulated by Heraclitus’) the role is reversed; it is society that is ‘the reflection of the order of the psyche of the ruling character type (of person).’ Cf. D. Germino, Eric Voegelin’s Contribution to Contemporary Political Theory, The Review of Politics, 26 (July) 1964, 384. Thus, for Voegelin, ‘‘In Heraclitus the idea of an order of the soul begins to form which in Plato unfolds into the perennial principle of political science: that the right order of the soul through philosophy furnishes the standard for the right order of society.’ E. Voegelin, Order and History, Vol II, 227, as cited in D. Germino, Eric Voegelin’s Contribution…390.

[2] Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 2007, 21. Of course, what ‘human flourishing’ means changes significantly once a supernatural transcendental dimension of reality is lost.

[3] Manent, Metamorphoses of the City: on the Western Dynamic. London: Harvard University Press, 2013, 263.

[4] The references in this paragraph are to P. Manent, Metamorphosis of the City…262-263.

[5] Josef Pieper, The End of Time: A Meditation on the Philosophy of History, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999.

[6] Augusto del Noce, The Crisis of Modernity (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 200.

[7] Josef Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics: New Endeavours in Ecclesiology. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008, lc.3023.

[8] Russell Hittinger, The Virtue of Hope, The World and I Online, 2014, lc.188.

[9] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Henry Reeve, vol. 2, book four, chap. 6 “What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear,” (New York: Bantam Classics, 2000), Kindle, 13725.