The Totality of Society: From Justice to Friendship

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDIToRs: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington 17, D. C. VoL. XX JANUARY, 1957 No.1 THE TOTALITY OF SOCIETY: FROM JUSTICE TO J;~RIENDSHIP UMAN society has become for the modern world a very complex reality, far too intricate for the mind of any one man to know thoroughly. Consequently, it is rarely understood in its totality, in the basic structure that makes up its unity. Some know this phase, some that. Yet, the basic structure of society can be grasped since man can reflect on his experience and therefore can know the means and ends of his in the city. In reality, there are many ways to discover the basic totality of society, but perhaps the clearest way open for such a comprehension is by means of an analysis of the various aspects of law as it was set down and understood by St. Thomas Aquinas. It would be also possible to begin with the notion of justice, or of the common good, or of friendship ; but these problems, as we shall see, are one; the starting point alone is different. In this analysis, the most striking 1 JAMES V. SCHALL thing to note about the treatment of St. Thomas is that, within the context of the problem as he saw it, he implicitly, if not actually, uses the political definitions and distinctions between state and society and their functions which have become such an important part of the thought of such excellent thinkers as R. M. Maciver, Jacques Maritain, Ernest Barker, J. T. Delos, and Johannes Messner.1 In treating of law, Aquinas uses several ideas and terms which shall serve as our basic outline. Here, however, let it be clear that we do not wish to treat of the essence of law. This writer accepts the Thomistic doctrine as the true one consistent with rational psychology and ethics; that is, " an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated." 2 Rather we wish to inquire about law as it exists in a society, what it commands, what it does, what effects it has. The most fundamental truth about human law is that it deals only with external, human acts.3 These external acts must be ordered in such wise that the temporal peace and tranquillity of society be maintained. This is accomplished by regulating and prohibiting anything that could distu:rb the conditions of concord in society. St. Thomas calls this peaceful order the end of human law. "For the end of human law is the temporal tranquillity o£ the state, which end law effects by directing external actions, as regards those evils which might disturb the peaceful condition of the state." 4 Here it is necessary to inject some thoughts on terminology, for SL Thomas when dealing with the essence of law maintains in several in1 Cf. R. M. Maciver, The Modern State (London: Oxford University Press, 1946), esp. pp. l-22, and passi11;1,; Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), ch. 1; Ernest Barker, Principles of Social and Political Theory (Oxford, 1952), pp. 42 ff.; J. T .. Delos, 0. P., La Societe lnternationale (Paris, 1929), ch. 1; J. Messner, Social Ethics (St. Louis: Herder, 1949), bk. 3. 2 Summa Theol., I-II, q. 90, a. 4. 3 Ibid., q. 98, a. I; q. 91, a. 4. • Ibid., q. 98, a. 1. THE TOTALITY OF SOCIETY stances that the end of law is the common good.5 His idea seems to be this, that the principle according to which these external acts are regulated is the objective order of just relations without which a society cannot at all exist. Consequently, when speaking of the end of the law as the common good, he means the common good as a final cause by which particular external acts can achieve their end. ". . . Actions are indeed concerned with particular matters: but those particular matters are referable to the common good, not as to a common genus or species, but as to a common final...