The Theory of Democracy—Part III—The End of the State: Happiness

THE THEORY OF DEMOCRACY PART m THE END OF THE STATE: HAPPINESS THE reader of this series of articles is by now fully apprized of our aim-to demonstrate the proposition that Democracy is, on moral grounds, the best form of government. But he may wonder why an objective which can be so simply stated requires us to go to such great lengths in the way of theoretical analysis. He may even have felt that the elaborateness of our theoretical effort has carried us away from rather than toward our stated objective which, after all, is eminently a practical concern. Since the present article will be more theoretical than its predecessors, and will appear to take us still further afield, we feel obliged to explain why the ambit of our thought must encompass so much to reach the conclusion we have announced as our goal. To those who are impatient of this undertaking because it is remote from the hurly-burly realities of the political upheaval which has unsettled the whole world, we can appeal only by repeating the perennial defense of philosophy whenever it has been charged with retreating from the scene of action. The work of the philosopher is thought, not action, and it is a work which some men must do so that the actions at which others labor can ultimately be guided or judged by reference to the truth. Action loses its brutality and becomes human only by regarding itself as an expression of right, not might. Once this distinction is admitted, once the notion of right is introduced , even in the most rudimentary way, the philosopher is called into collaboration with the man of action, and it is for him alone to decide how far it is necessary to go to establish in :reason the rights his fellow-men would uphold by deeds. How far either must go is determined by the exigencies of his chosen 121 M. J. ADLER AND WALTER FARRELL sphere-in action, to the risk of life itself; in thought, to the very edge of the truth that is knowable to man in this life. There are no more difficult truths for man to know in the natural order than the existence of God and the subsistence of the human soul-and their inwardness is difficult to penetrate even with the light of faith-yet certainly action will be affected by their affirmation or denial, and any consideration of rights must reach to these ultimates for their foundation. In the domain of practical problems, which are never resolved except by action, the work of the philosopher is necessarily remote from the sort of judgments which derive from practical experience or which express the decision of prudence in the particular case. But however " abstract" and " theoretical" they may appear to be, the philosopher's judgments are essentially practical so long as they are not simply knowledge, but directions of action, albeit from afar. Herein lies the distinction between the speculative and the practical philosopher, on the one hand, and between the practical philosopher and the man of prudence, on the other.113 Impatience with speculatively-practical considerations is not the only source of dissent from what we are trying to do. There are some who think the proposition about Democracy does not need to be proved, or that the reasons for its truth are so obvious that it might almost be regarded as a self-evident principle rather than a conclusion. There are others who think it is neither self-evident nor capable of being proved, however much they would like to believe that it is true, for " reasons " difficult to state.114 Curiously enough, both types of friendly criticism require us (though not for the same reason) to go deeply into traditional political theory, and beyond that into 113 The paradox that some may find in the phrase " practical philosophy " is paralleled in the phrase " speculatively-practical " which names the highest level of practical thought-and also the most distant from action-beneath which the philosopher qua philosopher cannot go. Cf. our discussion of these matters in Part I, supra, in THE THOMIST, III, 3, pp. 413, 446-447, and fns...