My friend Jordan Ballor takes the occasion of this conversation at the American Enterprise Institute to revisit a question he (and we) have canvassed before. His answer, which I find attractive, if not altogether satisfying, is that libertarian political philosophy can be regarded as conservative, but a libertarian Weltanschauung (worldview, for you trendy evangelicals out there) cannot. The former, he says, treats liberty as the highest political goal, while the latter apotheosizes liberty altogether.
Permit me two quibbles with this formulation. First, I’m not so sure that the distinction between political philosophy and worldview is as self-evident as Ballor believes. It presupposes a limit on the claims of politics, which (John Rawls to the contrary notwithstanding) can only be accomplished on the basis of a comprehensive reflection on the human good. Such reflection has typically been undertaken by people I’d call political philosophers.
Now, Ballor (I suspect) would offer a biblical response to this claim, attempting to vindicate his distinction between a merely political (and rational) understanding of human communal life and a religious understanding that subordinates those natural considerations to supernatural ends. (Am I right? I’ll look for a response on Facebook or over at PowerBlog. But not on Twitter.)
I’ll anticipate his response by posing the following question: would the first adjective that comes to mind when describing St. Augustine’s political philosophy be “libertarian”?
My second quibble has to do with the place of liberty as our highest political good. Would not justice, to the extent that it can be promoted by finite, fallen, and fallible beings, come closer to the highest political good (as described by almost every political philosopher)? Liberty might be one of the answers to the question 0f what we deserve in this world, but focusing on justice has the advantage of situating us in a community as bearers of rights and responsibilities and of compelling us to reflect substantively on what the human good is. With these considerations in mind, it would be much easier to draw a line between liberty as a limited political good and the wilfulness too often associated with the “libertarian worldview.”
February 9th, 2012 | 1:35 pm
Thanks, Joe, for your thoughtful concerns (certainly more substantive than quibbles!).
I think you are right in the first case about my instinct (as a theologian) to refer back to what we know about the limits of political order on the basis of Scriptural revelation. There are a number of reasons that the first term I would think of in reference to Augustine’s political thought would be something other than “libertarian,” in part because of the historical anachronism. Perhaps you can clarify in a bit more detail what you are getting at with that question.
What I really mean to distinguish between libertarianism as a political philosophy and libertarianism as a world-and-life view is the rather more limited claims of the former. I do think that anthropology (developed to a greater or lesser extent, perhaps) is a postulate of a political philosophy. But it isn’t the case, I don’t think, that the same (or very similar) positions with regard to political thought require precisely the same anthropological assumptions. Another way of putting it is that rather different anthropologies might yield remarkably similar political judgments. Perhaps it is true that a principled limitation on the political “can only be accomplished on the basis of a comprehensive reflection on the human good.” As I’ve noted elsewhere and in related discussions, you don’t need to be a contemporary libertarian (worldview or otherwise) to worry deeply about the limits of positive law.
http://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/FS/FS096.html#FSQ96A2THEP1
On the second point, I’ll admit that a view of liberty as the highest political good is not the majority view, but in the interest of hoping to explore this fruitfully, I’ll take on the task of attempting to defend, or at least describe and put into coherent context, Lord Acton’s claim: “Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.” Such a claim is, as you note, decidedly the minority report.
As you also note with respect to the first “quibble,” one way that such a claim might be tenable is that it subsumes the political to a kind of instrumental value, in service of other areas of life. (Such a claim means something quite different if you think politics is where we realize our highest ends.)
To see how Acton orients the political, you have to read on to the next line: “It [liberty] is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.”
So Acton identifies our highest ends in other realms (civil society and private life, including religion). He thus locates justice in its fullest social sense (viz. social justice) as the object of not merely the political arena, but of civil society itself: “The object of civil society is justice, not truth, virtue, wealth, knowledge, glory or power.” This helps us from conflating political justice with social justice, from collapsing the vibrantly social into the merely political. I submit that the “justice” realized in the political realm has much to do with respecting and protecting space for the activities and flourishing of mediating institutions, and that this looks remarkably like Acton’s understanding of “liberty” as a political end. Surely justice in its fullest sense is not monopolized by the political.
So perhaps one place to draw the line would be with respect to the value placed on not merely the dichotomous dynamic of the individual and the state, but on the institutions of civil society (cf. the contemporary “civil societarian” perspective of someone like Arnold Kling, for instance, or what Jonah Goldberg had to say about civil society in the AEI debate).
February 9th, 2012 | 1:43 pm
[...] Knippenberg raises a couple of important points over at the First Things site in response to my post earlier today about the relationship between conservatism and [...]
February 9th, 2012 | 1:52 pm
I agree with your quibbles. It may be better to think of the distinction as being between ultimate and fundamental political principles and their application with regard to certain contingencies as is characteristic or practical reasoning as opposed to speculative reasoning. Libertarianism is our policy (when it comes to a certain level of government’s role with respect to certain aspects of the economy) but not our ultimate principle. I’m an evangelical and i approve of this message.
February 9th, 2012 | 4:26 pm
Thanks, Jordan, for those helpful clarifications.
It seems to me that what you describe as “political philosophy” is only a small part of what I understand to be political philosophy, which has to include the anthropology as well. So I agree that very different views of human nature and the human good could lead one to conclude that, in general and for most purposes, limited government is to be preferred to the alternatives. But I wouldn’t call all of the views that culminated in this position “libertarian” (hence my slightly snarky–sorry–question about St. Augustine).
It seems to me to matter very much why we want government to be limited. To take an easy example: do we want government to be limited so that we strong individualists are free to be all that we can be at anyone’s expense, or because we’re concerned about the flourishing of those non-governmental institutions in which human beings truly flourish (not as strong individuals, but as beings called–at the very least–to love and care for one another)?
February 10th, 2012 | 11:55 am
[...] promised in the context of yesterday’s discussion here and at First Thoughts, my piece on the future of fusionism is up over at the Comment site, “Small is Beautiful [...]
February 10th, 2012 | 3:24 pm
[...] Ballor on the relationship between a well functioning economy and a well functioning community. Yesterday Joseph Knippenberg noted this piece; today, Ballor strikes again: Indeed, it was not very long into [...]
February 13th, 2012 | 9:28 am
The founders and forefathers of our country knew well the necessity, import and critical balance that should be given to the dynamic juxtaposition between Liberty and Justice. (Hope I’m describing this coherently and accurately…it’s hard to explain.)
That is why the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America says, “with Liberty and Justice for all.”
These are beautiful, stately and wise words, as are those of the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the Federalist papers… what a treasure we have been given. Second only to the Bible and God’s Golden Treasure: Holy Scripture, The Ten and Two Commandments, upon which our US system of laws and human rights is based.
Too bad we have been prodigals, allowing our treasure, material, political, moral and spiritual to be desecrated, distorted, squandered and stomped upon over the decades.
Like Israel, we must rediscover, repent and return to God’s Way, from our poverty to our treasures the Holy Law and the US Law.
Only God and His Word can save us.
February 13th, 2012 | 9:36 am
Another thought:
During this election, Rick Santorum said something that resonated with me (paraphrase): “Our country is only good, strong, stable when our laws conform to God’s Law.”
However, we have departed from this good and ‘sure foundation.’ Our current US laws enable us to break all of God’s Commandments and now we have some leaders, laws and interpreters of law (judges, lawyers, agencies and agenda groups) that would force us to do so in violation of both the Constitution and the Commandments of God.
February 14th, 2012 | 10:36 am
Hi Joe,
To pick up the thread from a few days ago:
I’m not so concerned with defining “political philosophy” in such a technical way that only academic political philosophers qualify as having one. In using this distinction, I mean something much more popular, relevant to all the citizenry, I suppose. They may or may not have much of an explicitly developed anthropology standing behind or grounding their political views. That’s also not to say that at least some rudimentary anthropological views couuld be inferred from their practical positions.
With regard to “liberty” and “justice,” I wonder if framing our government’s responsibility primarily in terms of the former (with instrumental value related to the latter) would be more helpful in tracing out the dynamics of a debate like the HHS mandate, for instance. It seems to me that if contend the government’s role to consist in promoting “justice” in a broad (and even undefined) sense, you can easily find individual “rights” (e.g. to contraceptive choice and sexual self-determination) to infringe on the “liberties” of other institutions (e.g. the Catholic Church). If, rather, liberty for all is to be defended, then the government must at some level protect the liberties of various groups, institutions, and individuals to disagree, or to see each other as being wrong and still allowing them to live freely. Under a “liberty” regime, wouldn’t it be easier to see why the Catholic Church could have the right to be wrong (from a secularist perspective) than under a “justice” regime?
I don’t mean for this to be a dogmatic formulation, but it is a potential angle of the dynamic that I’ve been thinking about lately.
February 14th, 2012 | 1:20 pm
Jordan,
I see the rhetorical force of the language you want to use, but am not convinced you won’t have the same sorts of line-drawing issues you think my “justice” language will have. The language of liberty is the language of rights, and people are willing to assert rights to just about everything. I’d prefer to keep responsibilties as part of the conversation, which I think is more likely when we speak about justice.
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