The Crisis of Modern Times: Perspectives from The Review of Politics, 1939-1962

9 “The Person and the Common Good” (1946)

C h a p t e r 9 The Person and the Common Good Jacques Maritain Among the truths of which contemporary thought stands in particular need and from which it could draw substantial profit, is the doctrine of the distinction between individuality and personality. The essential importance of this distinction is revealed in the principles of St. Thomas. Unfortunately, a right understanding of it is difficult to achieve and requires an exercise of metaphysical insight to which the contemporary mind is hardly accustomed. Does society exist for each one of us, or does each one of us exist for society? Does the parish exist for the parishioner or the parishioner for the parish? This question, we feel immediately, involves two aspects, in each of which there must be some element of truth. A unilateral answer would only plunge us into error. Hence,wemustdisengagetheformalprinciplesof atrulycomprehensiveanswer and describe the precise hierarchies of values which it implies. The nineteenth century experienced the errors of individualism. We have witnessed the development of a totalitarian or exclusively communal conception of society which took place by way of reaction. It was natural, then, that in a simultaneous reactionagainstbothtotalitarianandindividualisticerrorstheconceptof thehuman person, incorporated as such into society, be opposed to both the idea of the totalitarian state and that of the sovereignty of the individual. In consequence, minds related to widely differing schools of philosophic thought and quite uneven in intellectual exactitude and precision have sensed in the notion and term of “person” the solution sought. Whence, the “personalist” current which has developed in our time. Yet nothing can be more remote from the facts than the belief that “personalism” is one school or one doctrine. It is rather a phenomenon of reaction against two opposite errors, which inevitably contains elements of very unequal merits. Not a personalist doctrine, but personalist aspirations confront us. There are, at least, a dozen personalist doctrines, which, at times, 174 The Person and the Common Good 175 have nothing more in common than the term “person.” Some of them incline variously to one or the other of the contrary errors between which they take their stand. Some contemporary personalisms are Nietzschean in slant, others Proudhonian ; some tend toward dictatorship, while others incline toward anarchy. A principal concern of Thomistic personalism is to avoid both excesses. Ourdesireistomakeclearthepersonalismrootedinthedoctrineof St.Thomas and to separate, at the very outset, a social philosophy centered in the dignity of the human person from every social philosophy centered in the primacy of the individual and the private good. Thomistic personalism stresses the metaphysical distinction between individuality and personality. Schwalm1 and Garrigou-Lagrange2 not only called attention to this distinction but were, to my knowledge, the first to show its fecundity in relation to contemporary moral and social problems. Following them, other Thomists— including Eberhard Welty3 and myself4 —have tried to make explicit its meaning and develop its consequences in social and political philosophy. Thetruesenseof thedistinctionhasnotalwaysbeengrasped.First,asindicated above, it is a difficult distinction (especially, perhaps, for sociologists, who are not alwayssensitivetotheluresof thethirddegreeof abstractionandwonderforwhat purpose they should first equip themselves as metaphysicians). Second, certain minds,despitetheirmetaphysicalinclination,preferconfusiontodistinction.This holds especially true when they are engaged in polemics and find it expedient to fabricate monsters which for the lack of anything better, in particular for the lack of references, are indiscriminately attributed to a host of anonymous adversaries. II The Positions of St. Thomas on the Ordination of the Person to Its Ultimate End The human person is ordained directly to God as to its absolute ultimate end. Its directordinationtoGodtranscendseverycreatedcommongood—boththecommongoodof thepoliticalsocietyandtheintrinsiccommongoodof theuniverse. Hereisthefundamentaltruthgoverningtheentirediscussion—thetruthinwhich nothing less than the very message of Christian wisdom in its triumph over Hellenic thought and every other pagan wisdom, henceforth toppled from their dominion , is involved. Here, too, St. Thomas Aquinas, following the precedent set by Albert the Great, did not take over the doctrine of Aristotle without correcting and transfiguring it.5 “The most essential and the dearest aim of Thomism is to make sure that the personal contact of all intellectual creatures with God, as well as their personal subordination to God, be in no way interrupted. Everything else, the whole universe and every social institution, must ultimately minister to this purpose; everything must foster and strengthen and protect the conversation of the soul, every soul, with God. It is characteristically Greek and pagan to interpose the universe between God and intellectual creatures.”6 It is...