The Role of Morality, According to Jacques Maritain, in Forming a True Democracy
By: Dr. Donald DeMarco
Dr. Donald DeMarco is a Full Professor and Professor Emeritus from St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario. He is the author of 46 books, some of which have been translated into as many as ten languages. He served as a Corresponding Member of the Pontifical Academy of Life. He and his wife, Mary, have five children and fourteen grandchildren.
Keywords: Democracy, Integral Humanism, Jacques Maritain, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Introduction
The sociologist Gordon W. Allport, in his book, The Nature of Prejudice, understands quite clearly that democracy requires far more than a collection of votes. ‘Democracy,’ he writes, ‘we now realize, places a heavy burden upon the personality, sometimes too great to bear. The maturely democratic person must possess subtle virtues and capacities: an ability to think rationally about causes and effects, an ability to form properly differentiated categories in respect to ethnic groups, and their traits, a willingness to award freedom in others, and a capacity to employ it constructively for oneself.’[i] The moral and intellectual groundwork that supports a true democracy, in fact, can be sufficiently demanding on people that they substitute a false and simpler democracy for the one that would offer them true freedom.
That democracy is simply the result of people being heard, the so-called, ‘Will of the People,’ is the brain-child of Jean Jacque Rousseau. It is, in the words of Jacques Maritain, ‘the finest myth of Jean-Jacques.’[ii] The majority rules and becomes free not to obey anyone but themselves. Those who do not vote on the side of the majority are ‘forced to be free.’ Hence, it follows, according to Maritain, ‘that the first author of society is not God, the author of the natural order, but the will of man, and that the birth of civil law is the destruction of the natural law.’[iii] But mortal, fallible man on his own merits cannot produce a society that is protected against his very weaknesses. It needs help from above. This is why Maritain views ‘The Will of the People’ as ‘political pantheism,’ a naturalization of the Gospel severed from the supernatural—a divinization of man’.[iv]
Rousseau’s political philosophy has had great appeal to those who believe that the best way to establish a democracy is to exclude God. Nonetheless, this view is marred by two insidious factors: the pride of man and the denial of his need for God’s grace. His political philosophy is human, but only too human and insufficiently humane. The words, dear to Americans, ‘God shed his grace on thee and crown thy good with brotherhood’ do not flow from the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Integral Humanism
The word ‘humanism’ seems to embrace everyone who is committed to the betterment of mankind. Yet the term is ambiguous. Is it, in Maritain’s terminology, ‘anthropocentric humanism,’ based solely on human capacities? Or is ‘theocentric humanism’ which includes God and the morality of the Gospel, also referred to as ‘integral humanism’ or ‘true humanism’.
Natural science, it has been believed, operating independently of God, would liberate man from all his ills. It would spearhead an automatic and necessary progress that would bring about an earthly realm of peace. Humanism in this narrow sense was married to secularism. Humanism would be the philosophy; secularism would be its landscape. Together they would be comprehensive. How have things turned out? In his book, The Range of Reason, Maritain makes the following assessment: ‘If I were to try now to disentangle the ultimate results of this vast process of secularization, I should have to describe the progressive loss, in modern ideology, of all certitudes, coming either from metaphysical insight or from religious faith, which had given foundation and granted reality to the image of Man in the Christian system’.[v] These losses spell the ‘tragedy of humanism.’ Among the losses is love. Maritain wholeheartedly agrees with Henri Bergson who states that ‘democracy is evangelical in essence . . . and its motive power is love’. [vi] ‘The tragedy of the modern democracies is that they have not yet succeeded in realizing democracy’. [vii]
Giving credit where credit is due, Maritain recognizes that, ‘The great undertakings of secularized Christian man has achieved splendid results.’ But then he adds, ‘for everyone but man himself; in what concerns man himself things have turned out badly—and this is not surprising.’ He could not be more emphatic. The loss of a Christian morality is devastating.
Maritain, in accordance with his magnanimity, acknowledged that there is no philosophy so erroneous that it may contain some element of truth. He was an indefatigable reader and always searching for ideas that were complete. Errors often sit side by side with truths. He understood only too well that moral virtues such as love, justice, temperance, humility, loyalty, and others were vitally needed in order to build up a true democracy.
Despite the disfigurement of man in the modern world, the Judaeo-Christian tradition that was once honored, ‘has been sadly weakened in its efficiency but not at all destroyed in its potential reserves.’ Maritain could not continue to write unless he harbored some hope for a true democracy. His writing on political philosophy is not a jeremiad but an offering to the world how to correct something than has gone amiss and been torn from its roots.
Objective norms of morality
Maritain made only a relatively minor contribution to moral philosophy. He does, however, state in Freedom on the Modern World, that ‘there are objective norms of morality, there are duties and rules, because the measure of reason is the formal constitutive element of human morality’ and this measure of reason is the same for all men.[viii]
Human beings, as a matter of fact, have a spiritual component. They are not mere bodily creatures. To dis-acknowledge this dimension is to do him an injustice. It is to represent him as a truncated being. Aristotle understood this and pointed out that to offer man only what is strictly human is to betray him and wish him ill. Man is called to something higher than a purely human life. And this is why democracy must include the moral and spiritual side of man. It is possible, for Maritain to have a humanism that is fed from the ‘heroic springs of sanctity’ (True Humanism). Yes, a possibility, but Maritain has no illusions about the human being. ‘There is nothing a man desires more than a heroic life: there is nothing less common to men than heroism.’
Democracy and the whole person
In his study, Jacques Maritain: The Philosopher in Society, James Schall, S.J. makes the following comment concerning Maritain’s view of democracy: ‘Maritain’s own theory about democracy, as it develops, is one that seeks to give more independence to political life but, at the same time, more force to spiritual life. This spiritual life should influence the public order indirectly. It should foster an understanding of man that properly balances his contemplative and political life in the light of a full understanding of the various orders of reality in which he lives.’[ix]
Democracy, then, should honor the whole person, that is to say, the human being that is simultaneously an individual and a spiritual being who can contribute to the world in a unique way. This concept of democracy should be eagerly championed by Christians, though some are fearful of possibly imposing their views on others. Maritain is emphasizing, however, that this integral vision of the human person applies to everyone.
Essential characteristics of democracy
Lord Acton once stated that, ‘The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality’ Edmund Burke added that, ‘In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority’[x] These statements are truisms and speak to the consequences of building a democracy without universal principles, especially justice for all. Accordingly, Maritain deplored political factions that divided universal values. As he famously remarked, ‘if it is correct to say that there will always be rightist temperaments and leftist temperaments, it is nevertheless also correct to say that political philosophy is neither rightist nor leftists; it must simply be true’[xi] Truth is the great unifying principle. There is but one truth.
In Christianity and Democracy, Maritain outlines the essential characteristics of the democratic philosophy of man and society. 1) the inalienable rights of the person; 2) equality; 3) absolute primacy of the relations of justice and law; 4) an ideal not to engage in war; 5) the amelioration and emancipation of human life; 6) the ideal of fraternity.
These are characteristics or goals that should be repugnant to no one. But people are not willing to accept the ‘burden,’ using Gordon Allport’s word, to achieve this highly desirable state. That burden includes the moral obligation to self-discipline and a host of virtues that are both personal and social.
Common Good
We conclude this essay with a single Maritainian-type sentence drawn from his Integral Humanism that places Aristotle, Maritain, and democracy in perspective: ‘I do say, and Aristotle said it long ago, that political science constitutes a special branch of moral science—not that which concerns the individual, nor that which concerns the domestic society—but precisely that which concerns specifically the good of men assembled in political society, in other words, the good of the social whole: this good is an essentially human good, and this is measured above all by reference to the ends of the human being, and concerns the morals or manners of man, insofar as [he is a] free being having to use his freedom for his true ends.’[xii]
[i] Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, Cambridge Mass: Addison-Wesley Pub, 1954, p. 515.
[ii] Jacques Maritain, Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929, p. 134.
[iii] Idem, p. 133.
[iv] Idem, p. 134.
[v] Jacques Maritain, The Range of Reason, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952, p. 186.
[vi] Jacques Maritain, Christianity and Democracy, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944.
[vii] Jacques Maritain, Christianity and Democracy, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944.
[viii] Jacques Maritain, Freedom in the modern world, London: Sheed & Ward, 1935, p. xi.
[ix] Schall, James, Jacques Maritain: the philosopher in society, Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998, p. 100.
[x] Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. J. G. A. Pocock Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co, 1987, pp. 109-110.
[xi] Jacques Maritain, The Twilight of Civilization, New York: Sheed & Ward, 1943, p. 57.
[xii] Jacques Maritain, Integral humanism: temporal and spiritual problems of a new Christendom, New York: Scribner 1968, p. 216.
