The Root of Friendship: Self-Love and Self-Governance in Aquinas

2. The Eudaimonist Self-Governance Tradition

2 The Euda im onist Self- Gove r na nce T r a di tion The twin theses controlling the first half of my analysis are that Aquinas’s account of proper self-love is a description of the nature and importance of a person’s subjective self-experience and that his notion of self-governance cannot be understood fully unless we grasp its basis in self-love. A corollary thesis claims that distortions or perversions of self-love undermine the possibility of sustainable self-governance. The previous chapter looked at the ways in which self-love, for Aquinas, constitutes the basis of a person’s interior life. This chapter offers an interpretation of key figures in the eudaimonist tradition that is somewhat standard but also elucidatory of easily overlooked aspects of the accounts. I place a strong emphasis on how considerations of the interior dynamics shaped by the ways in which a person can relate to himself structure accounts of self-governance beginning with Socrates. In the ensuing chapters, I show how Aquinas adopts, adapts, and synthesizes into his own account many of the principles and considerations found within this tradition. He does not develop his accounts of proper self-love 25 g 26 The Eudaimonist Self-Governance Tradition and self-governance ex nihilo; rather, they are an extension of the received intellectual tradition. I will start with some general remarks about the notion of selfgovernance itself, beginning with a point of terminology. I employ the term “self-governance” and not the term “autonomy.” In terms of ordinary contemporary usage, the notion of autonomy, or more precisely moral or personal autonomy, is fairly coextensive with selfgovernance .1 However, “autonomy” is sometimes restricted to the Kantian sense of the will legislating to itself the moral law; on this view, self-governance is a generic term with autonomy connoting a specific kind of self-governance. If, however, one understands autonomy in the coextensive sense, the ensuing chapters would concern the eudaimonist tradition of moral autonomy.2 In the introduction, I mentioned that for an account of selfgovernance to be readily applicable to contemporary discussions on the matter, it should address or contain a couple of basic elements, the first concerning the psychological conditions requisite for governing oneself: the epistemic and motivational capacities.3 The for1 . Fred Miller covers several synonymous terms succinctly when he states: “Autonomy is a cardinal value for many modern political philosophers. This is especially true of liberal theorists, for whom the ideal citizens are autonomous—that is, independent , self-directing, self-determining, self-governing, self-ruling. Autonomous individuals act on their own judgment, and not from coercion, fraud, or manipulation.” See “Aristotelian Autonomy,” in Aristotle and Modern Politics, ed. Aristide Tessitore (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 375–402, quote from 357. 2. In the section on the self-promulgation of the law in Chapter 3, I examine more closely the notion of independence as an integral component to autonomy and selfgovernance and how such independence relates to Aquinas’s notion of the moral law. 3. Alfred Mele groups these issues under the heading of “psychological autonomy.” He states: “The capacities involved in personal autonomy are of at least two kinds, broadly conceived. Some are directed specifically at one’s environment. Assuming some autonomy for Prometheus, he was considerably less autonomous bound than unbound; chained to the rock, he possessed only a severely limited capacity to affect his environment . Others have a pronounced inner-directedness, their outward manifestations notwithstanding . Capacities for decision making and for critical reflection on one’s values, principles, preferences, and beliefs fall into the second group. Capacities of both kinds have at least a partly psychological basis. Although human beings lacking a mental life may affect their environment, they cannot do so autonomously; and, of course, such The Eudaimonist Self-Governance Tradition 27 mer constitutes a person’s epistemic access to the moral law or whatever standard is thought to guide one’s actions. The latter pertains to a person’s ability to bring himself to perform an action principally from internal motivational sources versus external and coercive threats of punishment or promises of reward. A second key element is a person’s right to govern himself, or the issue of moral authority. For even if one meets the psychological requirements necessary for self-governance, there is still the question of whether one is morally authorized to exercise...