This is probably the longest of the chapters we’ve read so far, no? There’s a lot in it, but as I think I remarked in discussing chapter four many of the topics – like, say, globalization or finance or foreign aid – are being treated in a strangely repetitive and fragmented way; they recur here and there and make arguments when brought together, but it’s unclear why they weren’t presented in a more linear fashion in the first place. At least in this instance, though, there is a key theme that helps to unify the chapter, namely the understanding of the human race as “a single family working together in true communion, not simply a group of subjects who happen to live side by side” (sec. 53; and note that there is more in a similar vein at the start of ch. 6). By my lights, the discussions of the place of religion in the public sphere (see secs. 55-56), the importance of human solidarity and the principle of subsidiarity, and the proper role of a global political authority can clearly be seen as tied into this fundamental claim.

For present purposes I’ll just focus on the latter two topics, since the claim that sectarian convictions have a constructive role to play in political deliberation is one that I’ve discussed at length before. The importance of solidarity is made evident in the passage I just quoted from, at the very start of the chapter: we need “a better understanding of the implications of our being one family”, Benedict writes, so that the greater interaction among the world’s peoples “can signify solidarity rather than marginalization” (sec. 53). Importantly, however, just as membership in a (global or local) human community should not be a threat to human individuality (ibid.), so the organization of such communities even on a very large (e.g. global) scale must proceed in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, i.e. by providing “assistance to the human person via the autonomy of intermediate bodies” (sec. 57). Indeed, Benedict proposes that the reliance on autonomous intermediate bodies in offering assistance can be “the most effective antidote against any form of all-encompassing welfare state”, and goes on to argue that this is especially true in the case of globalization: dealing justly and effectively with global issues “certainly requires [political] authority” (on which more in a moment), but this authority “must be organized in a subsidiary and stratified way, if it is not to infringe upon freedom and if it is to yield effective results in practice” (ibid.).

Among the topics that Benedict goes on to treat according to this framework (including the international tourism industry (!) in sec. 61), the one that strikes me as most interesting is that of international aid. Benedict argues that in order for such aid to avoid encouraging corruption and exploitation, and fostering a problematic dependence, its distribution must involve “not only of the governments of receiving countries, but also local economic agents and the bearers of culture within civil society, including local Churches”; hence it must “increasingly acquire the characteristics of participation and completion from the grass roots” (sec. 58). And as he goes on to note, a crucial element of successful foreign aid is the way that it allows developing countries to introduce their products into international markets. (The discussions of micro-finance and cooperative economic endeavors in secs. 65-66 are also relevant here, and are helpfully read as furthering the discussion of alternative models of business enterprise that was initiated in chapter three.) So the goal of political assistance is to foster “freedom and participation through assumption of responsibility” (sec. 57), and the best way to do this is to put its operations in the hands of local and small-scale agents.

(As an aside: Much of this, together with the brief case in sec. 60 for allowing private citizens a direct role in allocating some portion of their tax dollars and “eliminating waste and rejecting fraudulent claims” in the welfare systems of economically developed countries, is of course the sort of thing that many conservatives will stand up and cheer for, but if cheering is all that they (we) do then it doesn’t count for much. It is one thing to say that subsidiarity is important, but quite another to do something about it; and as things stand the kind of community-centered service and charitable work that ought indeed to be the all-encompassing welfare state’s worst enemy is far too often the province of the Left. Somewhere on one of my bookshelves I have an edition of Nisbet’s The Quest for Community where George H.W. Bush’s famous image of “a thousand points of light” is quoted in the front matter – but aside from using such rhetoric as a way to argue against “big government”, how much does the average conservative really do to strengthen local institutions and so really help the point he occupies to shine? I am all for devolving power and reconstituting our little platoons, but it’s hard to deny the charge that subsidiarist rhetoric frequently cuts in only one direction, and is more at the service of causes that treat us as “group[s] of subjects who happen to live side by side” (sec. 57), rather than essentially interpersonal creatures in need of authentic communities.)

So the crucial point here is that solidarity and subsidiarity are mutually implicating principles: “the former without the latter gives way to social privatism, while the latter without the former gives way to paternalist social assistance that is demeaning to those in need” (sec. 59). And it is with this in mind that the closing section on the need for a reform of the U.N. and the establishment of an authentic “world political authority”, which my TAC colleague Lewis McCrary has already discussed at length, ought to be understood: the familial character of humankind as a whole calls for a corresponding international solidarity, and there can be no such thing without the relevant kind of political organization. But this is no more a rejection of local responsibility and national sovereignty than the family is an annihilation of the individuality of its members; rather, international cooperation is meant to encourage freedom and responsibility among states, and is a hindrance to integral development unless it does this. In any case, there is very little to the idea that we can pay anything more than mere lip service to the idea of a universal human family by limiting relations among nations to mere displays of power in the pursuit of self-interest.

Sec. 45 repeats a point discussed earlier, namely that as “the economy, in all its branches, constitutes a sector of human activity”, it is essential that it be structured intrinsically by the logic of caritas:

Efforts are needed — and it is essential to say this — not only to create “ethical” sectors or segments of the economy or the world of finance, but to ensure that the whole economy — the whole of finance — is ethical, not merely by virtue of an external label, but by its respect for requirements intrinsic to its very nature.

This point is further articulated in sec. 46, which spells out in more detail the importance of economic activity that regards profit “as a means of achieving the goal of a more humane market and society” and seems like it would have been better placed alongside the discussion of mutualism in chapter three; similarly, sec. 47 discusses development programs and the phenomenon of international aid, noting that in each case there is a real potential for abuse and bureaucratic waste and, consequently, a need for transparency, for a direct involvement of the people whose interests are at stake with the activities of those aiming to help them, and for a careful responsiveness to the intricacies of concrete situations.

Finally, secs. 48-51 take up the topic of human relationships to the natural environment. Benedict stresses the importance of recognizing the “inbuilt order” of non-human nature: “the natural environment is more than raw material to be manipulated at our pleasure; it is a wondrous work of the Creator containing a ‘grammar’ which sets forth ends and criteria for its wise use, not its reckless exploitation” (sec. 48). The consequent duties have political dimensions as well as individual ones: it is incumbent on technologically advanced societies to reduce domestic energy consumption to allow the distribution of resources to developing countries that lack them; on political authorities to “ensure that the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations” (sec. 50); and on the Church to build up a “human ecology” that will strengthen in turn a proper attitude toward the rest of creation:

The book of nature is one and indivisible: it takes in not only the environment but also life, sexuality, marriage, the family, social relations: in a word, integral human development. Our duties towards the environment are linked to our duties towards the human person, considered in himself and in relation to others. It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties while trampling on the other. Herein lies a grave contradiction in our mentality and practice today: one which demeans the person, disrupts the environment and damages society. (sec. 51)

As its title suggests this chapter is rather wide-ranging, and there is clearly a lot of value in it. What is frustrating, though, is that not much is done to explicate how these issues are supposed to relate to one another, let alone how they tie in to the document’s overarching themes. I’m happy to have someone show that these complaints are misplaced.

P.S. Here is the text of the encyclical, and here are my notes on the earlier chapters. For next Sunday we will read chapters 5-6 as well as the conclusion, because I’m going to be on the road for the week after that.

P.P.S. Maclin Horton has gotten around to posting some thoughts on the encyclical and the surrounding fuss, and they are well worth a read.

It is important to emphasize – as I’ve seen remarked before; I just can’t recall where – that the central argument of this chapter is not that healthy markets require robust regulatory states and political systems that ensure a just distribution of wealth; this is certainly among its claims (see e.g. the second paragraph of sec. 41), but it clearly is not the primary one. Rather, as suggested just above, the point Benedict makes most often is that since economic activity has a “human significance, prior to its professional one” (sec. 41), markets themselves must therefore be geared toward social justice and informed by the logic of gift; and so it is not enough for government to step in and impose these values simply as a corrective. As he puts it in sec. 39 (though note that one could pull a similar quotation from almost any paragraph in this chapter):

When both the logic of the market and the logic of the State come to an agreement that each will continue to exercise a monopoly over its respective area of influence, in the long term much is lost: solidarity in relations between citizens, participation and adherence, actions of gratuitousness, all of which stand in contrast with giving in order to acquire (the logic of exchange) and giving through duty (the logic of public obligation, imposed by State law). In order to defeat underdevelopment, action is required not only on improving exchange-based transactions and implanting public welfare structures, but above all on gradually increasing openness, in a world context, to forms of economic activity marked by quotas of gratuitousness and communion. The exclusively binary model of market-plus-State is corrosive of society, while economic forms based on solidarity, which find their natural home in civil society without being restricted to it, build up society.

(Whatever translator came up with “world context” should never be allowed near the English language again.) Hence our questions should be: In practice, what does it mean for everyday economic activity to incorporate such relationships? Beyond obvious demands like those of fair pay and honest disclosure, what does market ethics (if we might coin a term) consist in?

One suggestion that comes up repeatedly as an answer to the first of these questions is that the market must have room  for the economic activity of those “who freely choose to act according to principles other than those of pure profit, without sacrificing the production of economic value in the process” (sec. 37); hence for “commercial entities based on mutualist principles and pursuing social ends” (sec. 38) that exist alongside enterprises that are public or more narrowly profit-oriented. Benedict calls this a way of “civilizing the economy” (ibid.), and it can be seen as a counterpart to the call for dispersed, multi-leveled, and cooperative political authority that comes in the second paragraph of sec. 41. Similarly, in sec. 40 there is an articulation of the more familiar demand for corporate managers to be attentive to more than just the demands of their shareholders: workers, clients, suppliers, producers, and the broader “community of reference” all have a stake in the life of the business, and so a long-term and appropriately wide-ranging view of the ends of economic activity is consequently is an inescapable demand.

Ultimately, then, it seems best to read this chapter as directed toward business leaders even more than political ones, since as Benedict puts it “attitudes of gratuitousness cannot be established by law”, while markets and political institutions alike “need individuals who are open to reciprocal gift” (sec. 39). It certainly seems right to regard a widespread failure to embody such openness as among the chief causes of social injustice.

Thoughts?

P.S. Here is the text of the encyclical, and here are the previous entries for this reading group. Next weekend, we’ll discuss chapter four.

Here’s an example of the kind of claims that have got free market critics rather up in arms about the message of this document:

Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end that provides a sense both of how to produce it and how to make good use of it. Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty. (sec. 21)

Can this really be controversial, though? That there are such things as improper means to profit, and that it is possible for the profit motive to realize itself in ways that are exclusively self-seeking and that do not serve the common good as fully as they could, are claims that any reasonable person should accept as axiomatic; we need look no further than the example of the Madoff scandal for a case in which the destruction of wealth was the direct product of the disordered and improper attempt to realize individual profits. So the crucial questions, then, are those of what forms the proper sorts of profit-seeking should take, and of how it is that the production of wealth can best be in service of the good of the whole of human society. And what could be more reasonable than the thought that the answers to these questions have got a lot to do with caritas?

By my lights, the key phrase of this opening paragraph is opportunity for discernment: the present situation gives us a real opportunity, inasmuch as it is often times of crisis that best enable us to pay attention to fundamental matters; but it must be, contra many of our pundits and political leaders, a time for careful and attentive thought before it is a time for action – let alone the kind of action that centers on rewarding favored political constituencies. Benedict offers a glimpse into the form that such discernment must take when he talks in sec. 21 about interconnection, and revisits this theme throughout the chapter, perhaps most notably in secs. 30-32. For example:

… moral evaluation and scientific research must go hand in hand, and that charity must animate them in a harmonious interdisciplinary whole, marked by unity and distinction. The Church’s social doctrine, which has “an important interdisciplinary dimension”, can exercise, in this perspective, a function of extraordinary effectiveness. It allows faith, theology, metaphysics and science to come together in a collaborative effort in the service of humanity. It is here above all that the Church’s social doctrine displays its dimension of wisdom. (sec. 31)

Benedict laments the “excessive segmentation of knowledge” that allows, for example, economics to be regarded by many as a purely descriptive science without a normative dimension of its own, and calls instead for us to “broaden[] our concept of reason”, and to see it as perfected by love.

If I were to offer a criticism of the vision of public policy that begins to take shape in this chapter, it would have much less to do with any of its supposed ignorance about the ways that modern economies “work” (for example, the claim in sec. 27 that hunger and starvation in poorer countries often have less to do with food shortages than with institutional failures and a lack of social solidarity interestingly mirrors Amartya Sen’s research on the mechanisms of famine), but rather with what feels like an insufficiently articulated recognition of the ways that the various means and ends stand in tension with one another. At times the holism is spot on: Benedict is right, I think, to argue in sec. 32 that societal dysfunction, such as that which arises from unhealthy levels of social inequality, has negative economic effects as well, and so to see social capital and ecological health as central to proper economic development; and there is also a lot to the argument of secs. 28 and 29 that respect for human life and of the right to religious freedom are central to the vision of humanity that integral development requires. But to take just one example that jumped out at me: being troubled by the effects of outsourcing (sec. 25), supportive of the rights of trade unions (ibid.), and opposed to the tariffs for which such unions often lobby as a means to labor stability but which come at the cost of “mak[ing] it difficult for the products of poor countries to gain a foothold in the markets of rich” ones (sec. 33), is a challenging line to walk; of course such internal tensions are going to arise for nearly any comprehensive political vision, but it is nevertheless important to acknowledge them as such.

This is, however, hardly a devastating problem. As we were reminded all the way back in sec. 9, this encyclical is not a document that is meant to offer technical solutions to specific political problems, but is rather a proclamation of fundamental truths about the nature and aims of human society. And read along these lines, the central challenge of Caritas in Veritate is to a range of overly narrow conceptions of what the state is for – as a commenter helpfully put it last week, the central idea that is being called into question is that of a state that is scrupulously neutral with respect to visions of what the common good entails. The question of how to realize the goals that a properly ordered state must strive after – of how, for example, to ensure an appropriate degree of labor stability without implementing damaging trade policies, or to identify and respond to those instances in which labor unions (or private corporations!) are not genuinely working toward the common good – remains in many ways an empirical one, and is likely to have a large range of plausible answers. But the striving for these answers cannot be done in a way that reduces persons to labor inputs, or measures output simply in dollars and cents; we need, in other words, to seek that truth that is also the embodiment of love.

There, I think I’ve touched on about two percent of what comes up in this chapter. Your turn.

P.S. Here is the text of the encyclical, and here are the previous entries for this reading group. Chapter three is up for next weekend.

This chapter is meant to provide an introductory overview of Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio, and as other commentators have noted a key goal of Benedict’s (see secs. 10 and 12 in particular) seems to be to show how that encyclical can be understood as continuous with the rest of the tradition of Catholic social teaching; moreover, it seems to me that what he says here should help cast doubt on Michael Novak’s claim to have divined between Rerum Novarum and Centesimus Annus a “development of doctrine” in which the Church reconciled herself fully to the spirit of liberal capitalism. (Having read the encyclicals Novak discusses, I can’t say that I find his view at all plausible.) At the same time, though, Benedict notes in sec. 15 that Paul VI also articulated the sexual ethic of Humanae Vitae, and argues that social ethics and the ethic of life are not at all separable; so score one as well for the “conservatives”. Benedict cautions against treating Paul VI’s words as irrelevant to our present situation; rather, it is our task to determine exactly how they can speak to us today.

Each time I read this chapter, I am struck by this passage from sec. 11:

Without the perspective of eternal life, human progress in this world is denied breathing-space. Enclosed within history, it runs the risk of being reduced to the mere accumulation of wealth; humanity thus loses the courage to be at the service of higher goods, at the service of the great and disinterested initiatives called forth by universal charity. Man does not develop through his own powers, nor can development simply be handed to him. In the course of history, it was often maintained that the creation of institutions was sufficient to guarantee the fulfilment of humanity’s right to development. Unfortunately, too much confidence was placed in those institutions, as if they were able to deliver the desired objective automatically. In reality, institutions by themselves are not enough, because integral human development is primarily a vocation, and therefore it involves a free assumption of responsibility in solidarity on the part of everyone. Moreover, such development requires a transcendent vision of the person, it needs God: without him, development is either denied, or entrusted exclusively to man, who falls into the trap of thinking he can bring about his own salvation, and ends up promoting a dehumanized form of development.

So authentic human development is not a purely material affair; it requires spiritual progress and therefore demands more assistance than that which can be provided by narrowly human institutions. Personal freedom, interpersonal solidarity, and responsiveness to the divine are all integral parts of a human development that does not reduce us to self-serving individualists. This theme comes up often in this chapter, e.g. in secs. 16 and 18.

There is also a terrific discussion in sec. 14 on the need to seek a middle way between two equally false views of specifically technological progress: neither the inclination to “entrust the entire process of development to technology” nor a romanticizing attitude that treats development itself as degrading and anti-human is appropriate; instead, we must acknowledge our constitutional orientation toward development while still maintaining control over its deviations.

From sec. 17 onward, Benedict articulates three characteristics of human development understood as divine vocation: it must be free (i.e., not founded on structures that “reduce man to subservience, to a mere means for development”); it must be truthful (i.e., based on a recognition of Christ’s transcendence); and it must be centered on love (or “charity” – again, like PEG I hate this translation; i.e., driven by a desire for divine brotherhood between all people). The remarks in sec. 19 that point to “the lack of brotherhood among individuals and peoples” as a cause of underdevelopment have occasioned some controversy, though I can’t for the life of me understand why; obviously the crucial question will be that of what restoring such brotherhood will require.

I found this chapter much easier to read than the introduction, though the fact that it consisted mostly of summary may have helped. Thoughts from you all?

By my lights, the central claim of this introductory section is that, just as the loving articulation of truth makes it credible and appealing, so it is the truthful proclamation and practice of the nature of love that gives caritas its substance:

… practising charity in truth helps people to understand that adhering to the values of Christianity is not merely useful but essential for building a good society and for true integral human development. A Christianity of love without truth would be more or less interchangeable with a pool of good sentiments, helpful for social cohesion, but of little relevance. In other words, there would no longer be any real place for God in the world. Without truth, love is confined to a narrow field devoid of relations. It is excluded from the plans and processes of promoting human development of universal range, in dialogue between knowledge and praxis. (sec. 4)

And again:

Without truth, without trust and love for what is true, there is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power, resulting in social fragmentation, especially in a globalized society at difficult times like the present. (sec. 5)

For us to put love in truth is, then, for us to reveal love as the same sort of thing that truth is: not an optional affair or something that is reserved for special occasions or the private sphere, but rather something that is in the essence of the human person as such, and is the defining characteristic of rightly ordered human society. Just as thought and speech that do not aim at truth are not really thought or speech at all, so communal life that is not marked by love can never be a genuine coming-together; hence confining love to what we ordinarily think of as the practice of “charity” (this is the reason why I have often changed the translation of the Latin caritas from “charity” to “love”) means treating as secondary that which is the primary ingredient of authentic human development.

It’s important to see how radical a claim this is. Since the Modern period, we’ve tended to think of human beings fundamentally as individuals and as society as a sort of convenience, held together with the bonds of mutual self-interest and ordered to the protection of individual rights. By contrast, what Benedict is proposing here is that it is by and toward love – love! – that public life is ordered, and that it is the neglect of love’s demands that stands at the root of our societal ills. The force of this proposal is brought out quite clearly in sec. 6, where love is distinguished from mere justice, and “relationships of gratuitousness, mercy and communion” are set in contrast to “rights and duties” – the latter, of course, being the primary concepts of post-Enlightenment political and moral thought. (Cf. also sec. 9, where “technical progress and relationships of utility” are given a similar treatment, in contrast to the “love that overcomes evil with good”.) The terms in which political relationships are commonly understood are incomplete; they pay only lip service to the commandment to love.

Finally, there is the insistence in sec. 7 that such love must manifest itself in a concern for the common good, and not just the good of oneself or those close to one. Obviously the question of what form that concern ought to take is a challenging one (the Church “does not have technical solutions to offer”, Benedict notes in sec. 9), but the crucial points are that love is meant to be a political affair, not merely a private one, and that a commitment to the common good that is animated by Christian love will have “greater worth than a merely secular and political stand would have”. The task of this encyclical is to shed light on what an authentic human development, one guided by divine love and so ordered toward shaping the earthly city in the image of the city of God, ultimately entails.

This initial section was dense enough that I feel like we could be going through the document paragraph by paragraph, rather than a chapter at a time. What did you all think? What is there that’s confusing? Illuminating? Perplexing? Challenging? Otherwise worthy of comment? Over to you, partners in this endeavor.

P.S. Up for next weekend: Chapter One.