Tolle Lege 2020

tolle LEGE

Mount St. Mary’s University Emmitsburg, Maryland Volume 13 2020

Staff Editor-In-Chief Julia Cool Assistant Editor Nicholas Starvaggi Editorial Board Julia Baer Patrick Fitzgerald Danny Majerowicz Matthew McKenna John Owens Matthew Pugsley Harry Scherer Paul Welte Aaron Weisel Lexi Zambito

Faculty Advisors Dr. Thane Naberhaus Dr. Luis Vera

Table of Contents Editor’s Note .............................................................................................3 Contributors ...............................................................................................4 Social Media and the Vices of Sloth and Intemperance Damon Tritle ..................................................................................................5 The Moral Permissibility of Public Breastfeeding Kelley Northam ............................................................................................. 20 An Aristotelian Definition of Piety and a Social Analysis of the Virtue Daniel Majerowicz ........................................................................................ 26 Stumbling Blocks: A Brief Look at the Sin of Scandal in the

Summa Theologica

Dale Allder ................................................................................................... 31 Opposed Matthew McKenna ........................................................................................ 41 Plato, King James VI & I, and a Defense of Liberalism Daniel Majerowicz ........................................................................................ 45 Rhetorical Analysis of Francisco de Vitoria’s “On the American Indians” Rachel Wheeler .............................................................................................. 50 Plato, Sex, and Catholicism Matthew McKenna ........................................................................................ 56

Why “Tolle Lege ”?

The title of this journal is a reference to an extraordinary moment of conversion in the life of St. Augustine, the great philosopher and theologian of the early medieval period. The story begins with St. Augustine sitting beneath a fig tree, weeping in distress over his inability to leave behind his life of sin and follow God faithfully.

Amidst his tears he hears the distant voice of a child chanting the words “Tolle, lege!” or “Take up and read!” Aroused from his pitiable state and taking this as a sign from God, he goes to his house, picks up the first book he finds, and reads the first chapter. The book contained the letters of St. Paul, and the verse that Augustine read spoke to his heart with such force that he was convinced beyond any doubt of the truth of God; he was converted on the spot.

This journal of philosophy and theology is meant to embody a spirit of truth-seeking—on the part of both the contributors and you, the reader. Like St. Augustine, we are all faced with the choice between complacency and continual conversion toward truth. We hope that this journal will serve as an aid in the discovery of truth, and thus we exhort you in all earnestness to “Take up and read!”

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Editor’s Note “Tolle, lege”—these words inspired St. Augustine to embark on a journey of faith in pursuit of truth. In 2007, these two words became the cornerstone of our journal. For thirteen years we have inspired students through masterly essays in theology and philosophy written by their Mount peers. With this new issue we continue to offer you, our readers, an opportunity to take up your journey toward truth. This year, our editorial board selected eight fantastic essays on a variety of topics. The prize essay, Social Media and the Vices of Sloth and Intemperance,

by Damon Tritle, is an exceptional philosophical effort to provide an analysis of the vices engendered by social media, using the framework of Aristotelian–Thomistic virtue ethics. As in previous years, the editorial board selected essays after a blind review. The essays that appear in the pages that follow stood out to our editors for their contemporary relevance and clarity of argument.

This past year has been particularly difficult for our university due to COVID-19. Online learning has presented many challenges for the university and the publication of this journal. We thank our readers, editors, and contributors for their patience regarding this year’s publication. In addition, I would like to announce that we plan release a special issue in 2021 that will aim to grapple with the philosophical and theological implications of the virus.

Publication of this volume would not have been possible without the support of many members of the Mount St. Mary’s community. I would like to thank the provost, Dr. Boyd Creasman, and the dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Dr. Peter Dorsey, for their financial support. Furthermore, I would like to give special thanks to our faculty advisors, Drs. Thane Naberhaus and Luis Vera, for their encouragement and guidance. Finally, I want to thank the members of the editorial board, who worked tirelessly over many months to evaluate and select the essays for this issue, as well as all those students whose submissions made this volume possible.

So tolle, lege—take up and read! We hope that through this journal, you will be inspired to participate in a community conversation directed toward the discovery of truth and its revelation to others.

Julia Cool Editor-in-Chief

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Contributors Dale Allder is a Third Theologian studying at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary for the Diocese of Lincoln. He hopes to graduate with an S.T.B and an M.Div. in 2021.

Daniel Majerowicz is a graduating senior majoring in history and philosophy. He will be continuing his education in graduate school next year, focusing on intellectual history. He would also like to thank Drs. Jordan and Anadale for their guidance and patience as the papers that appear here were being written.

Matthew McKenna graduated summa cum laude from the Mount in 2019 with degrees in philosophy and business. He is enrolled in graduate school for moral theology at Mount St. Mary’s and plans to apply to Ph.D. programs next year.

Kelley Northam is a recent Mount graduate, double majoring in communications and history. After graduation, she will be attending Carnegie Mellon University for an M.A. in professional writing.

Damon Tritle earned his Master of Arts in Philosophical Studies degree while completing the pre-theology program at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Moral Theology and a Master of Divinity. He is in the ordination class of 2022 for the Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Rachel Wheeler is an international relations and English major, graduating in the spring of 2022.

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*** PRIZE ESSAY ***

Social Media and the Vices of Sloth and Intemperance Damon Tritle

Introduction With the rise in social media use among all segments of society, there is a related rise in feelings of isolation and anxiety.1 With the emergence of websites and technologies like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat came the promise of ease of communication and new and exciting ways to spend our free time. Like most new technologies, there is an understanding that these media tools would save us time that we could then spend on things we want to do.

However, there is a growing body of evidence, both anecdotal and empirical, which reveals the many problems with social media use.

This paper will consider the sociological and psychological effects of social media uncovered by the psychologist Sherry Turkle and others, acknowledging the proper role of the social sciences in documenting the problems with social media. But my argument will further draw on classical notions of virtue and vice from Aristotle and Aquinas to explore these problems. I will argue that the problems caused by social media, documented by psychologists and sociologists, are best understood and addressed in terms of an Aristotelian– Thomistic virtue-ethics framework: social media, because it is designed to encourage immoderate use, has a tendency to cultivate vices.

While social media platforms could be shown to encourage nearly every vice, I will only be exploring their connection to sloth and intemperance. I have chosen these two vices because the evidence shows them to be prominent among social media users, and because there is a link between them—one of symbiosis. Social media by its nature encourages the mind to become overwhelmed and thus slothful in doing “the good,” and in this state, man consumes and consumes.

American Psychological Association, Stress in America 2017: Coping with Change, part 2, stressinamerica.org, 2017.

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The vices of sloth and intemperance, I will show, feed off of one another as a result of social media use.

Common Praise of Social Media In defending this thesis, I must anticipate views which hold that social media actually fosters virtue. For instance, social media is widely celebrated as facilitating ease of communication and stronger friendships. Not many years ago, the address book and phone book were the ways you stayed in touch with friends and family from whom you were separated by distance. Since the mid-2000s, with the advent of Facebook, friends and family have gained the ability to share photos, invitations, news, and much more with great ease. Being able to maintain contact with loved ones in this way, we are able to maintain and strengthen friendships, it is argued. Friendship, according to Aristotle, is a virtue, or at least it “involves virtue.”2 Further, social media has been recommended as an important tool for evangelizing, one that should be embraced by Catholics. Bishop Robert Barron is very much a proponent of using new media and social media for the purposes of spreading the faith and engaging in dialogue with the secular culture. When he was the Rector of Mundelein Seminary, speaking to his seminarians he said: “Know it [social media]; use it; it’s in your blood. Your generation grew up with this. You grew up with computers, so use them and don’t be afraid of technology.”3 Knowing that the millennial generation lives online, and that millennials by and large do not practice religion, the easiest way to reach them would be to go where they are: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.

Responding to these positions, we can acknowledge that friendship is a virtue, but I will argue that the types of relationships that form and are maintained online can hardly be called friendships in any real sense. Aristotle sees friendships as primarily being a way we grow in virtue and help others grow in virtue. Most everyone active on social media should be able to testify to the divisive nature of so many of these online interactions. One can easily see that there is not much virtuous behavior being exhibited there among so-called friends—“for friendship, as Aristotle says, “is said to be reciprocated

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1999), 165.

3 Quoted in Brandon Vogt, “Becoming a Priest of the New Evangelization,” in Our Sunday Visitor, www.osv.com, accessed Oct. 10, 2017.

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goodwill.”4 Aristotle discusses three types of friendship in his Nicomachean Ethics: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure, and virtuous or true friendships. Friendships of utility and friendships of pleasure are both lesser forms of friendship, and are not to be called friendship in its fullest sense. There is no virtuous pursuit involved in these types of friendship but rather two people finding something pleasant or pleasurable about each other, or finding a common motive for joining into a relationship. These relationships are fundamentally self-serving, although to an outside observer that may not be easily seen right away. It may have the appearance of a true friendship. These lesser forms of friendship are what is fostered on social media. It is pleasant to have others “like” or “retweet” your post, to see an old friend’s vacation pictures, or to find an ally to help you argue a point on someone else’s Facebook post, but this is not the stuff of true friendship. Friendships are built by people being together, by their sharing real experiences.

In her book Reclaiming Conversation, Sherry Turkle writes of a virtuous circle. She posits, as did Henry David Thoreau, that one must seek silence and solitude in order to engage properly in friendship and with society as a whole. “Solitude,” she writes, “reinforces a secure sense of self, and with that, the capacity for empathy. Then, conversation with others provides rich material for self-reflection. Just as alone we prepare to talk together, together we learn how to engage in a more productive solitude.”5 To be able to go out and spread the Gospel, we must have that security in ourselves that Turkle writes about. This is a foundational idea within the Christian tradition. We seek solitude with Christ, in Eucharistic Adoration and meditation. We seek the silence where we meet God. When we try to be yet another equal voice in the marketplace of ideas online, where we are already overstimulated and inundated with arguments and defenses for just about any kind of belief out there, we are not making the best use of our time. We are simply adding another yelling voice to the cacophony.

Social Sciences Document the Problems with Social Media Statistics on the rise of social media use help us grasp the scale of the problem. In 2016, 86% of adults owned a computer, 74% owned Nicomachean Ethics, 121.

Sherry Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (New York: Penguin Press, 2015), 156.

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a smartphone, and 55% own a tablet.6 With an upsurge in the number of people owning these devices there comes an increase in the use of social media on them. Between 2005 and 2015, social media use among American adults increased from 7% to 65%.7 Looking just at the generation to grow up with computers, young adults ages 18–29, the number is even higher—9 in 10.8 To describe new behaviors associated with social media use, the term “constant checker” has emerged. Constant checkers are those who, in their idle moments, are constantly pulling out their smartphones, tablets, and computers to check their social media accounts. The American Psychological Association, in their study “Stress in America,” has found that “this attachment to devices and the constant use of technology is associated with higher stress levels.”9 This study has identified four generations to study their social media use: millennials, Gen Xers, boomers, and matures.10 Unsurprisingly, social media use is highest among millennials, 36% of whom report that social media has helped them find their identity. It should be noted that 63% of millennials also report that they are attached to their phones or tablets, and 48% “worry about negative effects on their physical and mental health.”11 The study has found that among the four groups identified, “millennials also report the highest stress level related to technology.”12 As stress and anxiety have increased, so has the recognition that something must change in the way people are using social media and technology. 65% of Americans somewhat or strongly agree that periodically unplugging or taking a digital detox is important for mental health. This is quite significant. People are coming to an awareness that while they do heavily rely on social media and digital technology, there is something that makes it hard to be fully present and even robs them of peace of mind. The need to unplug or detox that people are starting to do really brings to mind addictive, drugseeking behavior. As shown by the statistical evidence cited above, this is only getting worse.

In Reclaiming Conversation, Turkle, a psychologist and one of the loudest voices advocating a return to sanity regarding social media, has one anecdote after another from her field research regarding the American Psychological Association, Stress in America 2017.

Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

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deleterious effects on our social and relational faculties and indeed our very selves. Unsurprising are the many stories of younger people, millennials and younger, who are completely unable to imagine a world without their smartphones and social media accounts. One of those interviewed is a college junior named Vanessa who says something most of us would not readily admit: “As long as I have my phone, I would never just sit alone and think . . . . When I have a quiet moment, I never just think. My phone is my safety mechanism from having to talk to new people or letting my mind wander. I know this is very bad . . . but texting to pass the time is my way of life.”13 This is not an isolated or minority phenomenon.

Also quite startling is the way that the forty-and-over age bracket is being affected by this technology. Turkle reports several accounts of children begging their parents to put down their phones at dinner, to stop live-tweeting their time spent together. These children are being neglected in a very new way. The parents, in an effort to be better parents, more in tune with their tech-savvy kids, are trying to play at their game. In one of the families that Turkle interviewed, she tells of a recently divorced father and his seven-year-old daughter. He doesn’t know how to talk to her. He wants to be able to spend time with her, but all he winds up doing on school trips and weekend events is taking pictures, posting them to Facebook, and commenting on his Facebook feed about the pictures he has posted. Meanwhile, his daughter is sitting next to him, wanting his attention. This is a profoundly sad anecdote; one which our not-very-distant ancestors could never ever have imagined. But this is the reality of social media.

We unlearn how to be human, and retrain ourselves to neglect those whom we love the most, often, and ironically, in an effort to be closer to them. This anecdote illustrates just how important it is to stop and reflect on our behavior before it completely diminishes our capacity for the important things: our friendships, our familial relationships, and our ability to pursue virtue.

It is, unfortunately, true that “social media speak to the vast loneliness in the world,”14 and as the APA study shows, our time spent using social media makes it less and less possible to enjoy anything else. When we are perpetually engrossed in our own false, deceptive, tiny world of social media, we are doing violence to our own happiness. The stories which many social scientists and researchers are Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation, 79.

Christine Rosen, “Virtual Friendship and The New Narcissism,” The New Atlantis, thenewatlantis.com, summer 2007.

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documenting all point to the overuse and misuse of what could be a fun and helpful technology. They have instead become tools for neglecting our loved ones and our obligations, and social media networks have become schools of vice.

As I have shown thus far, social media facilitate distraction. The coining of the term “constant checker” points to this trend. And it is this constant checking which encourages a perpetual uneasiness.

Constant checkers are always asking how many “likes” or “retweets” they have since they last checked their phones, or whether anyone has commented on their last Facebook post. It is very difficult to be at peace when this is constantly on one’s mind. The authors of A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction ask a series of very important questions regarding this lack of peace and constant agitation. They ask the reader, “are you preoccupied with social media to the point of compulsively checking updates, statuses, and likes?” and “are you finding less joy in conversation, reading, and prayer than you used to?”15 For many, the answer is a resounding yes. The fact that this question has to be asked is rather frightening. Conversation, reading, and prayer are profoundly human acts, and we are finding ourselves less able to engage in the most basic of human acts.

But the growing body of research documenting the problems with social media can only supply empirical observation and factual analysis. It cannot render a moral judgment. It can help provide evidence that there is some sort of problem with social media, but it cannot fully diagnose the problem, or offer recommendations for responding to it. These tasks can and must be picked up by moral and political judgment. For this, the Aristotelian–Thomistic philosophy, and specifically the tradition of virtue ethics, is especially appropriate.

The Key and the Solution: Aristotelian–Thomistic Virtue Ethics A seemingly innocuous technology, social media can completely reshape and redefine how we relate to other individuals and society at large. We are learning and rewiring ourselves to see others as a means to an end and not to see ourselves as part of a larger community, but as the center of it. Social media have rightly been called “vast celebrations of solipsism,”16 which turn us inward, and away from the pursuit of virtue. In addition, our capacity for leisure, which finds its fulfillment in contemplating the divine, Eucharistic adoration, and Christopher Olaf Blum and Joshua P. Hochschild, A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction (Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 2017), 1–2.

16 Rosen, “Virtual Friendship.”

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Liturgy, is wounded, yet we turn to the same tool that diminished it in the first place to fill the void it leaves. This leaves room for a host of vices, including curiosity, intemperance, injustice, lack of charity, and pride. It could most certainly be shown that social media is involved in a whole host of vices, but I will explore just two connected vices, namely, sloth and intemperance. These vices stand out in a particular way because they seem to feed off of one another. St. Alphonsus Liguori, the moral doctor, notes that there are many instantiations of sloth.17 Among the examples he gives of these iterations are curiosity and verbosity, which work together to fuel an intemperate use of social media. This is the reason for my including the vices of sloth and intemperance: their tendency to perpetuate one another, especially regarding social media use.

Sloth Sloth is one of the most widespread vices of our day. It is also a rather misunderstood vice. It can take innumerable forms, whether mindless web browsing, looking at other people’s lives online for prolonged periods of time, or actual laziness. St. Thomas Aquinas defines sloth, or acedia, as “a sluggishness of mind which neglects to begin good.”18 This can be seen in the modern phenomenon of boredom. Despite having a plethora of things we ought to be doing, we become sluggish and bored. That which we ought to be doing is the “good” which St. Thomas refers to in his definition above.

Nevertheless, we replace that which we ought to be doing with lesser goods. In this digital age, that consists of the constant checking and use of our social media accounts, as shown in the above research. Most people, especially young people, are likely to keep more than one social media account active, and so the time spent checking and posting increases with each account, despite the fact that the same people are being “followed” on each platform.

The sluggishness which St. Thomas identifies with sloth is a result of essentially pushing pause on our “analog” world and stepping into a superficial and ultimately false world of likes and dislikes, retweets and shares. Within this artificial world, we are lulled into the pursuit of things contrary to our good. Among the behaviors that can spring from social-media-induced sloth, which, again, is not merely laziness, Alfonso Maria de Liguori and Ryan Grant, Moral Theology (Post Falls: Mediatrix Press, 2016), 492.

18 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Latin/English ed., trans. Laurence Shapcote (Lander: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012), IIa-IIae, q. 35, a. 1.

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are a sort of mindless curiosity about things which do not concern us, and even busying ourselves with other things to avoid doing what we ought to be doing. It is, of course, not new to man’s condition to avoid doing what we ought, but social media exploits this human weakness in a very new way. It is quite literally designed to make you care about what is happening on it more than you should. Social media users are constantly picking up their phones to check if there are any new “likes” or “shares.” This is usually done with no thought at all. This serves to show another example of this sluggishness of our intellect when engaging in social-media-related activities. It is precisely this vicious exploitation of our own human weakness that encourages us to avoid doing that which we ought to be doing, without our being aware of it.

Social media has created a need to be busy with the wrong things.

This is the essence of sloth. But what is it then that we are busying ourselves with? So often it is the “consumption of intimate details and images of . . . other’s lives.”19 In Summa Theologiæ IIa-IIae, St. Thomas Aquinas addresses this unholy curiosity, which is among the manifestations of sloth defined by St. Alphonsus, confirming that while knowledge of the truth is “strictly speaking good . . . it may be evil accidentally, by reason of some result, either because one takes pride in knowing the truth . . . or because one uses the knowledge of the truth in order to sin.”20 It seems innocent enough to keep up with your “friends’” posts, but in practice, I would argue, this is rarely what happens. Social media is exploiting this sprawling vice in many ways.

It is taking our natural curiosity about the world around us, which is a good, and perverting it by over-exposing us to other people’s private lives. It is sloth that is behind this thoughtless digging into the intimate and personal details of other people’s lives. With the flood of personal, overshared information at our fingertips, we engage in mind-numbing activity like “Facebook stalking” because we are distracted from doing anything important by this most trivial of activities. We wind up using this information to pry, to gossip, and to use against people when convenient to us.

Sloth is a capital vice, one which by its very nature leads one into many other types of sin. This is what is so dangerous about socialmedia-encouraged sloth. It does not merely encourage peccadillos but rather goes to the very roots of our fallenness. When we become Rosen, “Virtual Friendship.”

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne), IIa-IIae, 585.

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slothful about doing the good, we distance ourselves from what we see as uncomfortable. Because man is ordered to God, there is something within each and every one of us that is inclined to the pursuit of the good, and when man is slothful, he finds pursuing that end uncomfortable or even painful.

This is how sloth works. So what seems most easy, and what will bring pleasure, or perceived pleasure, is what is pursued instead of pursuing virtue. This is seen in the constant craving for sharing and the constant checking. It is seen in the craving for validation and approval. Again, this is the fault not only of the individual social media users but also of the designers of these platforms.21 Considering the research referenced above regarding the very design of social media, this vicious mindlessness and sluggishness is the goal. The social media user feels the need to have more and more “friends” and followers.

The less a person is attending to what he ought to be doing, the more he is scrolling through these “friends’” Facebook pages. Social media users are being encouraged to sit around for hours doing this mindless activity because the promise of instant gratification is always there.

They do not have to work for the pleasure that these media tools deliver. It is easy and cheap pleasure.

It is because of this spiritual sluggishness that people fall into more vices, often without knowing that that is what is happening.

Another example of sloth manifesting itself is detraction. When the social media user has let himself believe practically that his Facebook account is the only reality, it is much easier to say uncharitable things which cannot be taken back. The fact that a person is not face to face with those with whom he is interacting facilitates vicious behavior. As Thomas puts it, “the busy inquiry into other people’s actions is directed to detraction.”22 This is not a controversial point, because this can be seen in people’s daily lives lived in close contact with one another, but it gets more pronounced and intensified online. Thomas goes on in his Summa Theologiæ to cite St. Augustine and Ven. Bede regarding “concupiscence of the eyes,” which “refers not only to the learning of magic arts, but also to sight-seeing, and to the discovery and dispraise of our neighbor’s faults.”23 This last point is of particular importance regarding the activity of most social media users.

Again, these myriad vices are ultimately rearing their heads because of the sloth encouraged by social media. This is one of the Julian Morgens, “Your Addiction to Social Media Is No Accident,” Vice, May 19, 2017.

Ibid.

23 Ibid.

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most common, and yet most serious of vices encouraged by social media. This is because sloth is a mortal sin.24 Sloth can manifest itself in numerous ways because it is really putting oneself in a particular state or disposition in which a number of other vicious behaviors can emerge, as demonstrated above.

Intemperance Beyond sloth, but certainly related to it regarding social media use, is the vice of intemperance regarding our consumption of and participation in online social media. The nature of social media is that it encourages immoderate use, and the overconsumption of images, videos, and details of other people’s lives. According to the news outlet interestingly enough named “Vice,” there are in fact many tricks and subconscious ways in which social media companies are creating a need for their products. A former Google designer writes about something called the intermittent variable reward,25 which plays on a binary win/lose outcome and makes one crave the pleasure of the win.

Every time a person pulls up his Facebook page or Twitter account, the first thing he tends to check, and, in fact, the reason he is constantly checking the account, is how many “likes” or shares he has accumulated since last signing in—often only a moment ago. This is why most, if not all, of the social media platforms have adopted the binary like/dislike option for posts and tweets. It creates a need, thereby fostering the vice of intemperance. And it does not stop with just the gratification from what the individual user has posted. Think of a Twitter or Facebook feed that keeps updating, keeps feeding the user data. A person could put down his phone, pick it back up one minute later, and find that there are more comments or pictures in his online feed. In fact, Facebook’s marketing chief bragged in a speech that most millennials are checking their phones about 157 times every day.26 This all cries out to be moderated. Temperance is the virtue which “withdraws man from things which seduce the appetite from obeying reason,”27 but social media companies are working very hard to see that users are spending as much time as possible on these sites and networks. People are giving up their time and energy in pursuit of something which is making them more and more dependent on it, and to no good end. Temperance regarding social media, and indeed all Aquinas, Summa Theologica, IIa-IIae, q. 162, a. 5.

Morgens, “Addiction to Social Media.”

26 Ibid.

27 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, IIa-IIae, q. 141, a. 2.

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aspects of our lives, is of the utmost importance. St. Thomas believes intemperance to be among the capital vices, in fact. Temperance governs our appetites, which, if not controlled, will pull us away from God. Temperance or moderation is required in all aspects of our lives, and in the practice of all other virtues. This is summed up by one of the men responsible for the “Like” button: “These are our lives. Our precious, finite, mortal lives. And if we’re not vigilant, computer and mobile devices will guide our attention poorly.”28 What is at Stake: Virtue at the Service of Happiness Thus far I have put forth much evidence and documentation done by the social sciences of the problems caused by social media, and have shown the role of the classical philosophical tradition in understanding and addressing these problems. Lastly, I wish to point to the reason for an end of this and indeed all virtuous pursuit: man’s happiness.

These social networks have become an escape from the difficulty of awkward and uncomfortable conversations. When there is a natural lull in a conversation, we pull out our phones. When there is tension or arguing in the family, we retreat to Facebook and Twitter. We are not able to face the challenges of very normal human situations. When we are no longer practiced in how to handle these situations, we diminish our capacity for things like empathy and basic social skills.

This inability to be present and in the moment takes its toll on our higher faculties as well. If we are not able to converse with our friends and family without “having an out” with our phones, how are we going to kneel before our creator in silence? How are we able to keep focused on conversation or even find enjoyment in simple things like watching the clouds pass on a summer afternoon? Social media users have become so focused on and obsessed with the small, inconsequential things online that they find it harder and harder to make time, or even want to make time, to just daydream, let alone philosophize and contemplate important questions. An essential part of what makes us human has atrophied. The very necessary social skills, things like empathy, are being crippled, and along with them, happiness. People have become frightened by silence, and seek to fill it with the noise of social media. This is the crux of the problem. This is what all of the research of the sociologists and psychologists is pointing toward but unable to fix. This is why I have argued for the 28

Morgens, “Addiction to Social Media.”

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use of virtue ethics language. It is only in understanding and seeing the problems which have arisen from social media use with the hermeneutic of Aristotelian–Thomistic virtue ethics that this problem can be properly dealt with.

Man naturally takes delight in doing that for which we were made: to flourish and be happy, properly understood. While this paper is not dealing with friendship per se, it is important to see how friendship fits in to our happiness. The social aspect of social media should be a sharing of oneself with another, as friendship is, in which we see a reflection of our end. It should be a going out of oneself. Despite the fact that social media would seem to allow for a turning away from self and an engaging in interpersonal dialogue and friendship, the opposite is happening. Man is turning in on himself in an ego-centric pursuit of self-promotion. It is not allowing us to be social and thus schooled in other-centeredness, but rather complete self-absorption.

Something else rather important to consider is the fact that happiness consists not only in loving the beloved, the object we strive for, the highest of which is, of course, God, but in the beholding of the object striven for. It is essential to have proximity to it, not only in the physical realm but even more so in the intellect. Scripture and tradition tell us that the heavenly kingdom is being in union with God. We can love the objects of our desires, but we are only happy when we know, see, and are with them. Think of this also on the human level of friendship or family. When we are away from our loved ones, we know that happiness would consist in being with them again.29 Now if what was just established is applied to the realm of social media, it would seem obvious that a barrier is actually being created to our happiness instead of a tool to realize it. While the user of social media is trying to foster closeness with those whom he wishes to remain in contact with, he is just allowing himself to keep them at a distance. A person cannot truly be with another through digital channels. It is merely an appearance that is being maintained, while the substance of the relationship—the closeness, the time spent together, the memories built and experiences shared—are falling away.

And with the withering of social and contemplative faculties, we lose our ability to attain happiness.

Robert Cardinal Sarah recently wrote a book on this very idea.

Although not specifically about social media, it is a book about silence, Josef Pieper, Leisure: the Basis of Culture, trans. Alexander Dru (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 69–70.

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titled The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise. The noise he references is embodied in man’s distractions online. He notes that noise is a type of hell because it unsettles and makes impossible the peace man needs in order to be happy. He says, “This age detests the things that silence brings us to: encounter, wonder, and kneeling before God.”30 It only deceives and numbs, and it is because of sloth and intemperance that man is less able to relearn virtue and step away from the noise.

As I have documented above, it is clear that the role of the social sciences is important in documenting and shedding a light on the problems which stem from social media. But they are a tool to better understand, not to fix, the problem. This is why man must turn back to the philosophical tradition of Aristotle, refined by St. Thomas Aquinas. It is in their virtue ethics that the way out of the hole which unvirtuous social media use has dug for us is found. It is in the practice of virtue, of not just performing virtuous acts but of becoming virtuous people, that the social media user can begin to overcome the inherent problems caused by social media, from alienation and isolation to intemperance, sloth, and imprudence, anxiety and depression.

Conclusion Social media has gone from being a fun and novel way to keep in touch with friends to become a nearly universally used and integral part of the fabric of modern man’s life. This has happened in a rather short period of time. With the rise in social media use, society has been presented with a new way to become distracted, vicious, and unhappy.

Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and the like are encouraging and fostering sloth and intemperance. Users of these platforms have let these seemingly innocuous technologies numb and dull the natural inclination to be engaged in a real way with reality. As a result, the user has become spiritually sluggish. It is in these conditions that the many vices are able to grow and flourish. Certainly, social media could be seen to foster a whole host of vices. Our intemperate use of social media, born out of and further perpetuating our spiritual sluggishness, has made these vices more deeply entrenched.

Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017), 56.

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Those who rely on social media without the necessary virtues are becoming more and more unhappy. This is no surprise, as the virtues are essential to living the kind of life worth living, one of happiness and fulfillment. People have become distracted and nervous. Social media users have often rendered themselves unable to daydream and sit still. Think back to the last time you were standing in a line at the grocery store or sitting in a doctor’s waiting room. Within seconds of being bored, there arises the tendency to shut oneself in. Social media has facilitated the retreat to one’s own safe space where there is no need to have to think or converse with anyone or use social skills to interact with the world. Social media users have made themselves unhappy, because all of the things they have lost, and are unable or unwilling to do, are essential to being happy.

But is it rotten to the core? Do we keep the good and throw out the bad? With the rise in social-media-related stress, anxiety, and disillusionment, it is hard to justify a social life lived online. But as with most technologies, they are tools, albeit tools which intrinsically and by design promote vice and unhappiness. The evidence, both anecdotal and empirical, points to the negative impacts on society, and on the individual. But if these tools are to be used, which seems almost unavoidable these days, they must be used virtuously, and by virtuous people. This is of the utmost importance if one is to use social media.

Because of the intrinsic problems of social media, the user must be inoculated. The user must be well practiced in the habits of virtue and must use it for a virtuous purpose. This is not easy, as I have shown throughout this paper. I have argued that although social media is merely a tool, it does intrinsically exploit weakness in human nature.

If one must use these new forms of communication and media, one must do so with great discipline. If allowed to play the role of laborsaver, which would be in accord with virtue, and not of a replacer of human acts, which would be vicious, social media, when used with great prudence and temperance in mind, have the potential to be a powerful tool for communication. A former Facebook employee, having had enough of the corporate practices that encourage addictive and vicious use of social media, says that “by demanding more ethical design practices from companies—in the same way that we demand ethical environmental practices—we’ll force change and claw back our free time”31 So there is no need, yet, to implement a full scorchedearth policy against social media. There may be hope. But certainly, 31

Morgens, “Addiction to Social Media.”

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the blame for the ill effects of social media is shared. The designers and companies are creating programs that exploit human weaknesses and attempt to foster addiction, but man is a moral agent who has free will. The user of social media is allowing himself to fall into vice and consequently unhappiness. With that said, and with all of the facts and observations weighed against any positives, social media use is in many cases not worth the risks. It is simply not worth staining our souls just to get a few more “likes.� And while the social sciences have done much to document the ills plaguing social media users, a deeper analysis draws on the philosophical tradition of Aristotelian– Thomistic virtue ethics.

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The Moral Permissibility of Public Breastfeeding Kelley Northam

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here is little debate that, historically, women’s bodies have been the subject of stigmatization, objectification, and blatant discrimination. However, there has been a recent trend in American society that has encouraged women of all different ages and backgrounds to embrace their unique body types and reject ideologies that tell them otherwise. Often referred to as the body positivity movement, this trend, which began on Instagram and Twitter, has now permeated mainstream media and modern thought. While the body positivity movement has made a noticeable impact on the views and portrayals of women’s bodies, many women face social discrimination, condemnation, or ostracization when they attempt to breastfeed in public, behaviors that persist despite a growing acceptance of femininity. This paper argues that public breastfeeding is a morally permissible practice (though not a mandatory one), as it provides more opportunities to strengthen the health and bond of both mother and baby, is economically and environmentally beneficial to society, and fosters a positive societal respect for the human body.

Furthermore, this paper calls for a stricter enforcement of laws that prohibit the morally reprehensible practice of discriminating against women who breastfeed in public.

It is paramount to first address the fact that some may claim that arguing for the moral permissibility of public breastfeeding is irrelevant, as both federal and state governments in the United States have recognized it as a permissible practice under law. Indeed, all fifty states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands do grant women the right to breastfeed in public settings.1 However, the existence of these laws has not eradicated the longstanding practice of discrimination against nursing mothers and their babies. A 2001 national public opinion study regarding breastfeeding National Conference of State Legislatures, “Breastfeeding State Laws,” http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/breastfeeding-state-laws.aspx.

1

found that “only 43 percent of U.S. adults believed that women should have the right to breastfeed in public places.”2 Furthermore, this study found that many business owners would deter women from breastfeeding in their respective establishments and that many women who have attempted to breastfeed in public have been asked to desist or leave.3 Additionally, a 1999 sociological study concluded that, due to intense social stigmatization, “many of the women in this study went to great lengths to make sure that they were not seen breastfeeding outside their homes.”4 Clearly, the need still exists to defend women’s right to breastfeed in public, as this discrimination is persisting despite these laws and “no actual social contract or constitutional convention, however representative, is guaranteed to produce fair terms of cooperation.”5 Simply put, public breastfeeding, or public lactation, is the practice of a mother feeding a child from her breast in a public place in order to provide for her baby’s intrinsic need for sustenance. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, infants should be “exclusively breastfed . . . for about the first 6 months of life” and should “continue to be breastfed for at least 12 months.”6 This is largely due to the physical health benefits that breastfeeding provides for both mother and baby. For the baby, this includes a decreased risk of leukemia, asthma, obesity, ear infections, eczema, diarrhea, vomiting, lower respiratory infections, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), and type 2 diabetes.7 Breastfeeding also decreases the risk of type 2 diabetes for the mother in addition to a decreased risk for certain variants of breast cancer and ovarian cancer.8 Finally, pediatric research has hypothesized that “if 90% of families breastfed exclusively for six months, nearly 1,000 deaths among infants could be prevented each year.”9 With these health benefits alone in mind, public breastfeeding can be deemed a moral practice. As is stated by John Stuart Mill, Office of the Surgeon General, “The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding,” National Center for Biotechnical Information, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK52688/.

3 Ibid.

4 Cindy A. Sterns, “Breastfeeding and the Good Maternal Body,” Gender and Society, 14, no. 3 (1999): 314.

5 Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2009), 143.

6 Cria G. Perrine, et al., “Vital Signs: Improvements in Maternity Care Policies and Practices That Support Breastfeeding,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 64, no. 39 (2015): 1112.

7 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Breastfeeding,” Office on Women’s Health, https://www.womenshealth.gov/breastfeeding/making-decision-breastfeed#9.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

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“actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness . . . . By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.”10 Breastfeeding biologically increases the odds of pleasure for both parties by decreasing the odds of pain caused by health-related issues.

Furthermore, since breastfeeding in public places increases situations where potential pleasure can be maximized and pain minimized, public breastfeeding is a just practice.

The moral permissibility of public breastfeeding can be further shown by its positive societal impacts as a whole. In addition to the potential health benefits that breastfeeding provides, it is environmentally practical, as it significantly cuts down on the plastic waste that accompanies the use of formula.11 It is also economically beneficial, as it is a free method for mothers to provide for their babies’ nutritional needs. Furthermore, medical bills for breastfed infants are predictably lower, as breastfeed babies have been shown to have fewer sick-care visits, prescriptions, and hospitalizations.12 Again, fostering environments that allow women to breastfeed in public allows society to reap these widespread benefits more fully. Michael Sandel’s argument that a just society “must find a way to cultivate in citizens a concern for the whole, a dedication to the common good”13 shows the need for a societal acceptance of public breastfeeding, as it benefits the whole. A just society would, therefore, be a society that unequivocally supports the practice of breastfeeding in public simply out of concern for the common good of society.

As previously stated, women’s bodies have long been objectified in a seemingly infinite variety of way. Particularly in American society, women’s breasts are extremely sexualized, as they are a “part of the ‘doing’ of femininity and the presentation of heterosexuality,” according to West and Zimmerman.14 However, despite breasts being depicted sexually in popular media, “visual images of breastfeeding are rare, and a mother may never have seen a woman breastfeeding.”15 As a result, exposed breasts are often seen as purely sexual objects, thought to be revealing only of woman’s femininity and sexual desirability, thus reducing the worth of a woman to something that John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2001), 7.

Department of Health and Human Services, “Breastfeeding.”

12 Ibid.

13 Sandel, Justice, 263.

14 Sterns, “Breastfeeding and the Good Maternal Body,” 309.

15 Office of the Surgeon General, “Call to Action.”

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can be defined by another person’s perception of her. This practice goes directly against Kant’s principle of morality, as it treats human beings, specifically women in this scenario, as a means rather than an end. As is stated by Kant, “morality is the condition under which alone a rational being can be an end in [herself],”16 and furthermore this “lets the worth of such a disposition be recognized as dignity and puts it infinitely beyond all price, with which it cannot in the least be brought into competition or comparison without, as it were, violating its sanctity.”17 Public breastfeeding reduces the practice of women being reduced to sexual objects, as it provides an expression of the fact that women are not a means defined by outside qualification. It demonstrates that women are an end by sanctifying their womanhood as something that is not given to them by another individual, but something intrinsic that does not require the perception of others to be valuable. Therefore, public breastfeeding is a just practice.

Despite these claims, however, many individuals object to the moral permissibility of public breastfeeding. One popular objection is that, in most areas of the United States, public nudity is not permitted for sanitary reasons and to prevent indecent exposure. As such, the argument exists that because breastfeeding involves partial nudity, it should not be permitted in public. Additionally, this argument remains pervasive in state-level legislation, as twenty states still do not exempt breastfeeding from public indecency laws.18 However, public breastfeeding cannot be defined as simply a form of public nudity, as being naked for the sake of being naked, in contrast to breastfeeding, serves no biological purpose. Rather, breastfeeding seems to be the only example of partial nudity that supports another human life. In regard to the sanitary concerns surrounding breastfeeding, many hospitals, as well as other organizations, offer training to women, such as the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative, that teach nursing mothers how to breastfeed correctly and hygienically.19 Therefore, public breastfeeding can be considered a justified form of public nudity.

Another objection that runs parallel to the former argument is that public breastfeeding is distracting to the general population, particularly to men. Because of this distraction, public breastfeeding should not be permitted in public spaces. One can acknowledge that Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), 40.

17 Ibid., 41.

18 National Conference of State Legislatures, “Breastfeeding State Laws.”

19 Perrine, et al., “Vital Signs,” 1112–13.

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breastfeeding can be jarring due to the fact that women’s bodies are constantly sexualized. This fact is supported through the various testimonies found within Stern’s sociological study, as “breastfeeding women fear that the exposure of their breasts will be misread as a sexual invitation to male strangers and they fear potential consequences of that misreading.”20 However, the claim that breastfeeding should not be permitted in public places simply because it may be distracting is not a valid reason to deny women the right to breastfeed in public. Many practices that can be considered distracting, such as protesting and public displays of affection, are still viewed as morally permissible. For those who feel distracted by these practices, it is easy enough to look away. Public breastfeeding should be held to the same standard.

Finally, the seemingly most common objection is that there is no need to breastfeed in public because women have access to free areas where they can breastfeed discreetly. However, most public places do not have nursing or sitting areas, forcing the mother to breastfeed in a bathroom. Not only is breastfeeding in the restroom unhygienic, but it also encourages the practice of weaning the baby off of breastmilk too soon.21 This reality often discourages breastfeeding altogether, due to the fact that if a woman did breastfeed in a public restroom, she would most likely be sitting on a toilet. In 2010, the Obama administration recognized the need for women to have an appropriate space to breastfeed or express breastmilk in the workplace, and the Affordable Care Act now requires employers to provide a space other than a bathroom to express breastmilk.22 For these reasons, the claim that there are private spaces within public places that allow women to breastfeed is an incorrect one, suggesting the need for women to breastfeed in public without interference, as they have no other viable option.

Various scientific and sociological evidence supports the claim that public breastfeeding is a morally permissible practice, as it is beneficial to physical well-being, is environmentally and economically conscious, and encourages a positive perception of women’s bodies.

While federal and state governments have begun to recognize this, the discrimination that women continue to face when they attempt to breastfeed in public is abhorrent. This fact calls for further action to protect women who breastfeed and their babies, in addition to Sterns, “Breastfeeding and the Good Maternal Body,” 316.

Office of the Surgeon General, “Call to Action.”

22 National Conference of State Legislatures, “Breastfeeding State Laws.”

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repercussions for establishments and individuals who discriminate against them. Social movements and forms of activism are simply not enough to protect a woman’s right to publicly breastfeed. It is time to fully recognize public breastfeeding as what it is: a just and morally permissible practice that fosters the good of all humankind.

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Stumbling Blocks: A Brief Look at the Sin of Scandal in the Summa Theologica Dale Allder

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he sad reality of scandal manifests itself everywhere—in governments, companies, famous individuals, and even in the Church. In the age of rapid information-sharing, rarely can a week go by when a person does not read or hear about some “new scandal,” whether big or small. However, the more frequently a word is used—especially if that word is emotionally charged—the more quickly its true meaning can become obscured or distorted. The proliferation of “scandals” (whether accurately named or not) is a natural invitation to re-examine the true nature of scandal. The Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, explores the topic in the Secunda Secundae of his iconic work, the Summa Theologica.1 An internal look at his treatment of scandal will not only clarify its meaning, but it will also yield some helpful distinctions and practical insights in an age where “scandal” seems to be the go-to word for any public wrongdoing.

Any fruitful discussion of ideas will require a definition of terms from the outset. One practical reason for this comes from everyday experience since almost anybody can identify the feelings of frustration and confusion that come from discussing or arguing with a person over an issue that is really only a matter of misunderstanding ideas. St. Thomas himself recognizes this need for clarity because his first article in Question 43 immediately establishes a definition for scandal. He defines scandal as “something less rightly said or done that occasions spiritual downfall.”2 Of course, merely giving the elements of the definition is not always enough—a closer look is sometimes necessary.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1948). Q. 43 of the Secunda Secundae will be used here, and can be read on its own, but an understanding of Aquinas’s writings on the other vices and virtues is helpful for a fuller picture.

2 Ibid., II-II, q. 43, a. 1, obj. 1.

1

Etymologically, “scandal” comes from the Greek word “σχανδαλον” (pronounced scan-dah-lon), which, he notes in the corpus of the first article, can be translated as an “offense, downfall, or a stumbling against something.” He also says that the actions of a person may dispose others to a spiritual stumbling or downfall, and this stumbling or downfall would be sin.

There are evidently external and social elements to this definition because it is something that is said or done, rather than merely thought about or desired. Of course, the things one thinks about or desires can turn into actions, but unless there is some kind of external manifestation of one person to another—even if it is by way of omission—it cannot be scandal. This is why St. Thomas, in his introduction to Question 43, says that scandal is a kind of injustice because justice directs a person’s relationship to others by giving them their due, and therefore scandal is unjust because one ought to help a neighbor attain to spiritual goods, but this sin directly conduces to the opposite.3 Because things that are perfectly right do not dispose somebody to a downfall, only the things that are less rightly said or done fit the definition. This is particularly interesting because it means that not only do objectively sinful actions bring the threat of scandal but rather that even good actions can be scandalous if they have the appearance of being evil or malformed. On a practical level, discerning these appearances requires a great deal of prudence, because it may be fitting to sometimes conceal or entirely omit certain things to preserve others from scandal out of concern for that neighbor’s spiritual welfare. The idea of giving up certain things to avoid scandal will be touched upon shortly.

Aquinas further distinguishes the two major types of scandal, which are active scandal and passive scandal.4 Active scandal—which is the proper meaning of scandal—is when a person specifically intends to lead another into sin by word or deed, or (if the person does not intend to lead another into sin) they do some deed which has the nature of leading another to sin. Passive scandal is where a person is led to sin only through their own ill disposition because the “scandalizer” neither intends nor does anything that is evil or has an evil appearance. A simple example of passive scandal would be if a person began to blaspheme God after seeing St. Teresa of Calcutta 3 4

Ibid., q. 43, pr.

Ibid., a. 1, ad. 4.

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selflessly feed a starving person. There is nothing wrong with feeding the starving and poor, but the person who blasphemes God may have done this because of some previous hatred that was triggered by witnessing the scene.

Passive scandal may not only come from malice or hatred, though.

It may also come from weakness, which is called the scandal of the little ones.5 St. Thomas says that weakness is the term that denotes a person’s proneness to being scandalized, and this proneness can stem from something as basic as ignorance.6 Because passive scandal can be taken even from good actions, any word or deed whatsoever—whether sinful or not—can be the matter of passive scandal. On a practical level, this is one reason why it is crucial to properly instruct and form people both intellectually and morally, for it is one thing to be led into sin through the sinfulness of another, but it seems especially disordered to be led to sin through the good deeds of another.

Although passive scandal can be avoided through instruction, correction, or formation, it is not always possible in every circumstance. Therefore, one’s solicitude for a neighbor’s spiritual welfare can pose the question of whether it is prudent to give up spiritual or temporal goods to preserve that welfare.

Regarding temporal goods, sometimes it is never permitted to give them up, such as when a person is keeping or using something that belongs to another.7 This is because the actual owner is the one who has the right to decide whether those goods are to be kept or yielded.

If the person actually owns the goods or has a claim to them, it might be prudent to forego them when passive scandal would arise from weakness if instruction or admonishment could not help the situation.

But if a vicious person tries to stir up scandal out of malice—which St. Thomas calls Pharisaical scandal—then he says those temporal goods should not be foregone on behalf of the vicious person.

For spiritual goods, Aquinas makes the distinction between goods that are necessary for one’s salvation and ones that are not necessary.

Since a person’s primary care is their own spiritual welfare rather than another’s (although the person should care for the spiritual welfare of

Ibid., a. 7, co. The special term “scandal of the little ones” first appears in the corpus of the seventh article, but the concept is initially discussed in the objection replies of the first article.

6 Ibid., a. 1, ad. 5.

7 Ibid., a. 8, co. The whole corpus of the article gives an excellent breakdown of permissible and impermissible circumstances.

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others), it is never permissible to sacrifice one’s own necessary spiritual goods through mortal sin to avoid passive scandal.8 It is not good to commit even a venial sin to prevent mortal sin arising from passive scandal in others. St. Thomas argues for this fact by pointing out that it would be a contradiction to say that one ought to sin to stop passive scandal, because if it ought to be done, then it is no longer evil or sinful.9 One example would be intentionally teaching something erroneous to avoid scandalizing a person. Although such an action would be immoral and therefore forbidden, the solution for the teacher is to be discreet about who, when, and what they are teaching while still remaining truthful.

Like the example with temporal goods one personally owns, sometimes it may be permissible to give up non-necessary spiritual goods if the passive scandal arises out of weakness that cannot be admonished or corrected through instruction.10 And, as was stated earlier, they ought not to be foregone if scandal arises out of malice— such a person is simply trying to scandalize themselves or others.

There are several important, practical takeaways from these distinctions that can help in the modern day. In the age of rapid information-sharing, each person needs to carefully scrutinize reports of things claiming to be scandalous. A scandal leads another person into sin. Many times, one can hear about a heinous evil committed by a public figure, but it would not strictly be called a scandal because the person is neither intending to lead others to sin and the action does not have the nature of leading others into sin. One possible example might be if a person committed murder. Although it would commonly be regarded as scandalous, it is extremely unlikely that anybody else would be induced to imitate the murderer, and the murderer himself almost certainly was not intending to lead others into sin by committing that act. However, this does not detract from the fact that the murder is shocking and extremely immoral.

A contrary example would be a Catholic politician who vocally supports or legislates pro-abortion laws. Even if the politician did not mean to induce others to sin, the very nature of such an action would tend to produce confusion about the Church’s definitive stance on the immorality of abortion, especially if members of the Church’s hierarchy were weak in responding to such actions. This would more Ibid., a.7, co.

Ibid., a.7, ad. 5.

10 Ibid., a.7, co.

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fittingly be called a scandal, although proper judgment for using that term can be difficult.

For a final example, if some action was intrinsically good and was done in a fitting way, it is clear that any claims of it being scandalous or wrong are likely malicious and are to be corrected, if not completely denounced.

Another important takeaway is that nothing in the definition of Saint Thomas included the notion of fame or notoriety. Although the influence of public figures is considerable—and therefore they have a greater chance of causing spiritual harm due to their influence— scandals can arise even from one ordinary person to another. All levels of society are susceptible to this issue in some way. On a smaller scale, a scandalous action may sometimes be referred to as “setting a bad example,” but the implication for spiritual harm may be no less serious for such a person than if the scandalizer was rich and famous. There is a need for acute self-awareness regarding one’s own example to others. This also calls for an increased awareness of the examples set by others, whether it is good, bad, or gives the appearance of being something bad.

Finally, it bears repeating that the need for proper intellectual and moral formation is essential, because passive scandal may be an even bigger issue than active scandal. An easily scandalized person is a hindrance to both themselves and others, because not only do they lead themselves into sin, but they can prevent others from doing many good works. The double darkness of sin and ignorance needs to be actively combatted in each individual so that everyone can freely pursue spiritual goods, and this requires a love for the spiritual welfare of one’s neighbors. Both charity and justice demand it. It cannot be ignored.

The precise and practical thoughts of St. Thomas Aquinas regarding scandal help ground a person in the truth. A firm grasp of the nature of scandal serves to protect the vulnerable, one’s own self, and society as a whole. Not only does it protect, but it helps everyone in the struggle for virtue and holiness. Where spiritual obstacles abound, the need for grace and wise guidance becomes increasingly necessary. St. Thomas, by sharing his own wise guidance, does his part in providing assistance for overcoming those stumbling blocks.

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An Aristotelian Definition of Piety and a Social Analysis of the Virtue Daniel Majerowicz

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iety is one of the more confounding virtues. Because of this, it is not always easy to define what the pious person looks like.

Even more troubling is pinpointing how society either promotes or discourages pious behavior. This paper will attempt to address these issues by demonstrating the effects of higher education on church attendance, as it relates to piety, using relevant sociological data. This data seemingly suggests that the correlation between higher education and church attendance will increase our likelihood of achieving a pious soul. However, upon closer examination the data is not as straightforward as it seems, creating flaws with the original claim that will have to be rectified. This will lead us to examine the role of religious universities’ effect on church attendance and whether piety is better fostered within that specific institution. First, however, it is imperative to grasp what exactly piety is. Using Aristotle’s method as a guide, a definition of the virtue will be specified.

“Alas! my companion, and will you leave me in despair?”1 Many ancient philosophers must have felt this same despair that Socrates vocalized at the end of his conversation with Euthyphro when trying to define piety. In fact, Aristotle seemingly ignores piety altogether when discussing the virtues and how they lead to human flourishing in his Nicomachean Ethics. Sarah Broadie admits that “such an omission should surprise us”2 since piety was held in such high regard in the ancient world. However, while Aristotle did not provide a definition of piety, it is still possible to craft an Aristotelian definition of virtue.

If we are to accept that we can define piety in an Aristotelian manner, then we must accomplish two things. First, we have to define what piety is in relation to, as, for example, courage is related to fear.3 Plato, Euthyphro, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Project Gutenberg, 199AD EBSCO eBooks), 18.

Sarah Broadie, “Aristotelian Piety,” Phronesis 48, no. 1 (2003): 54–70. doi: 10.1163/156852803321219789.

3 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Roger Crisp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 30–32.

1 2

Second, we need to define virtue as a mean between two extremes.

The mean, or the virtue we are striving to hit, in this case, is naturally, piety. For its excess and deficiency, Broadie gives two possible examples: “between contempt for religion and superstitious excess . . . or between casual or sluggish observance and excessive zeal.”4 However, Broadie does say that there are numerous sets of excesses and deficiencies for piety.5 Because of this, it is important to have a more concrete definition of piety itself in order to establish its best excess and deficiency.

Augustine tells us piety “in its strict sense . . . means the worship of God.”6 Yet he goes on to say that it has other meanings pertaining to respect for parents, pity, and mercy.7 If we take the example of being pious toward a parent, it may become clearer how someone is pious toward God. If Augustine is correct and the pious person is one who shows a “dutiful respect for parents,”8 it follows that the pious person also shows some sort of “dutiful respect” toward God. Furthermore, Aquinas says, “Piety . . . pays duty and homage to our parents and country,”9 but he goes on to say, “things relating to creatures are transferred to God as the summit of excellence and causality, as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. i): wherefore, by way of excellence, piety designates the worship of God.”10 Augustine and Aquinas seem to be in agreement that piety is the duty people have to worship God. Put another way, we can call people pious when they carry out the worship of God in the manner in which an obedient son carries out the wishes of his father—not only because he has to, but because he also wants to fulfill his father’s commands, whatever they may be.

We can now formulate the first half of our Aristotelian definition, that is, what piety is in relation to. It is clear that piety is related to the worship of God. But it is not just any form of worship. It is the duty we all have to worship God as He intended. Therefore, piety is a virtue related to the dutiful or correct way to worship God.

Broadie, “Aristotelian Piety,” 55.

Ibid.

6 Augustine, City of God, ed. Vernon Bourke (New York: Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1958), 188.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, New Advent online edition, 2017, q. 21, a. 3, “Piety,” http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3101.htm.

10 Ibid.

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It is with this definition of piety that we can now comfortably define its excess and deficiency. Returning to Broadie, her second example fits well: piety is the mean “between casual or sluggish observance and excessive zeal,”11 where “casual or sluggish observance” is the deficiency and “excessive zeal” is the excess. The casual observer fails to carry out the worship of God consistently, and such observers perhaps take liberties on how they choose to worship God, if at all. Zealous worshipers go too far in their piety and worships either for selfish glory rather than out of a sense of duty or to condemn others.

We must now answer what the pious person looks like. Because piety can manifest itself in many ways, however, this is a difficult task.

Let us first illustrate what the impious look like, because these examples are bountiful. We see the impiety of the Apostles when they sleep in the garden as Jesus prays (Mark 14.32–42).12 Here, Jesus gives a simple command to Peter: “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation” (Mark 14.38).13 Yet, when Jesus returns to him, he finds Peter asleep. Peter demonstrates sluggish zeal—the deficiency of piety—while sleeping in the garden. His duty was to pray, yet because he was tired, he slept instead.

In modern times, we see impiety with megachurches and preachers making millions of dollars. Take, for example, Jesse Duplantis, who in May asked his congregation to help fund the purchase of a fourth private aircraft.14 Now, Mr. Duplantis believes he needs this plane to fulfill what God has told him: “[G]o into the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, now how we gonna do that?

I can’t live long enough to travel by car or by ship or by train, but I can do it by an aeroplane.”15 Yet there is a clear contrast here between piety and greed. The fact that Mr. Duplantis is asking for other people to pay for his fourth airplane demonstrates how one can be too extreme in piety. He clearly is not worshiping God solely because he has a duty.

Instead, he is doing so for earthly riches. In this case, Mr. Duplantis, and other megachurch ministers like him, have excessive zeal insofar as their worship of God has gone past what is dutiful.

Broadie, “Aristotelian Piety,” 55.

The Holy Bible: New International Version (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1978).

13 Ibid.

14 BBC News, “US Preacher Asks Followers to Help Buy Fourth Private Jet,” May 30, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44305873.

15 Ibid.

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In both of these cases, the mean is missed. Both cases demonstrate how the impious put themselves first over God. So, if the impious person is selfish in his worship, then the pious will be selfless. There is no better contemporary example than Mother Teresa.

Mother Teresa quickly translated her calling into concrete actions to help the city’s poor. She began an open-air school and established a home for the dying destitute in a dilapidated building she convinced the city government to donate to her cause. In October 1950, she won canonical recognition for a new congregation, the Missionaries of Charity, which she founded with only a handful of members—most of them former teachers or pupils from St. Mary’s School.16 This clearly shows what it is to be pious. Mother Teresa exposed herself to sickness and death because she believed God called her to do so. In other words, it was her duty. And she carried it out not for praise or personal gain but solely because it was how God told her to worship Him. Not all cases of piety will be as extreme as that of Mother Teresa.

In fact, and maybe thankfully, most of us can be pious in simpler ways.

God seemingly gives all of us a blueprint for piety with the Ten Commandments. Consider, more specifically, the commandment that states, “Keep holy the sabbath day.” In contrast to the pious acts of Mother Teresa, following this commandment should be easy. Yet from 1994 to 2014, the percentage of people who attended worship services more than “seldom or never” fell by nearly ten percent.17 What effect has this drop-off had on society? Has society itself had an impact on church attendance?

Before we can answer these questions, we must take a step back.

Recall our definition of piety: a virtue related to the dutiful or correct way to worship God. This definition served its purpose for our prior task, namely, to define piety in an Aristotelian sense. However, it will not suffice for our present inquiry. We must now be more specific.

We must ask what kind of worship is meant, for there are a wide variety of ways one can worship God correctly. Let us focus on one form of piety, foreshadowed above: church attendance in America.

But this raises a prior question: why is going to church regularly pious?

Biography.com, “Mother Teresa Biography,” February 27, 2018, https://www.biography.com/religious-figure/mother-teresa.

17 Tobin Grant, “Graphs: 5 Signs of the ‘Great Decline’ of Religion in America,” Religion News Service, religionnews.com, Aug. 1, 2014.

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The answer to this question can be found in the holy texts of the Abrahamic traditions. In the book of Exodus, we find God directly saying, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God.”18 Again, in Leviticus God says, “[O]bserve my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary. I am the Lord.”19 In the New Testament, Jesus and his apostles note the importance of congregating together on multiple occasions. Jesus says in Matthew, “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”20 Furthermore, in the Acts of the Apostles it is written, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”21 In the Qur’an: “The mosques of Allah shall be visited and maintained by such as believe in Allah and the Last Day, establish regular prayers, and practice regular charity.”22 Among the three major religions in the United States, Christianity, Judaism and Islam,23 each holy text is littered with passages commanding believers to gather with others. It is quite clear that it is the religious person’s duty to go to church (at least among the Abrahamic traditions).

It is equally clear that Americans are either unaware of this duty or ignoring it outright. Pew Research shows the number of adults in 2014 who “seldom/never” attend a religious service was 30 percent, compared to 27 percent in 2007—a trend that is likely to continue as those aged 18 to 49 are far more likely not to attend a single religious service in a year than someone 50 or over.24 In the Catholic Church alone “from 2014 to 2017, an average of 39% of Catholics reported attending church in the past seven days. This is down from an average of 45% from 2005 to 2008 and represents a steep decline from 75% in 1955.”25 Church attendance among Protestant groups is holding steady at 45 percent,26 yet that is still over half of Protestants not going to weekly service.

The Holy Bible, Exodus 20.8–10.

Ibid., Lev. 19.30.

20 Ibid., Matt. 18.20.

21 Ibid., Acts 2.42.

22 The Holy Qur’an, Quran Index, Surah At-Tawba 18, https://www.sacredtexts.com/isl/quran/00903.htm.

23 Pew Research Center, Religious Landscape Study (2018), “Religions,” https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/.

24 Pew Research Center, Religious Landscape Study (2018), “Attendance at Religious Services,” https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/attendance-at-religious-services/.

25 Lydia Saad, “Catholics’ Church Attendance Resumes Downward Slide,” Gallup News Service, April 4, 2018, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=129182361.

26 Ibid.

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One possible explanation for this decrease is higher education, or more specifically the secularization of higher education. Schwadel explains that it was a commonly held idea among early sociologists that “education and other aspects of modernity are detrimental to religion.”27 He goes on to say, “the most prevalent view of secularization is the ‘decline in religion thesis’ . . . which posits that greater levels of education erode individuals’ religious belief and participation.”28 We can then hypothesize that those who have higher levels of education are less likely to attend church services regularly.

However, more recent evidence seems to disprove this theory. A bar graph from Pew Research Center clearly shows that adults who graduated from college are more likely to attend religious services than graduates who report they almost never attend:

But perhaps more shockingly, there is virtually no difference between college graduates and the general population in any of the three main categories regarding going to church:

Philip Schwadel, “The Effects of Education on Americans’ Religious Practices, Beliefs, and Affiliations,” Review of Religious Research 53, no. 2 (2011): 161.

28 Ibid., 162.

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It would appear then that those early sociologists were wrong.

Schwadel’s findings challenge their notions even further: The odds of attending religious services in the last 7 days increases by 15% for each year of education beyond 7 years of education. The odds of attending other types of religious activities in the last 7 days increases by almost 20% for each year of education. The effect of education on religious volunteering is even more robust. Each additional year of education is associated with more than a 23% increase in the odds of volunteering for a religious group. These results support . . . education has a strong, positive effect on religious participation.29 These findings seem to prove the opposite of traditional thought on this relationship. Schwadel explains why this is the case: “education is positively associated with social and organizational participation . . . .

In most respects, religious organizations are not tremendously different from other voluntary organizations. Thus, just as education is positively related to participation in secular organizations, education should also be positively related to participation in religious organizations.”30 Albrecht and Heaton back up this claim, saying, “a cursory review suggests that on virtually all measures of the expression of religiosity except that of attendance at church or synagogue, the evidence strongly supports the belief that higher levels of education have a negative impact on religiosity.”31 They suggest that this could lend credence to the idea that “attendance at church . . . is simply another form of participation in a type of voluntary association such as a club, business association, and so on.”32 Schwadel’s reasoning seems to support this claim as well. This implies that even those who do attend mass regularly are doing so in an impious manner, as they also are “casually” going to mass.

However, that is beside the point we are trying to make. It would appear that if there is an effect on church attendance from higher education, it is a positive one, and at the very least that there is no effect at all, thus proving the original hypothesis incorrect. It then follows that attaining a higher level of education will increase the Ibid., 175.

Ibid., 166.

31 Stan Albrecht and Tim Heaton, “Secularization, Higher Education, and Religiosity,” Review of Religious Research 26, no. 1 (1984): 48, doi: 10.2307/3511041.

32 Ibid.

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likelihood of regular church attendance. We can claim, therefore, that if one is concerned with achieving a pious soul, then they should attend an institution of higher education.

But we must remember that piety is not achieved so simply. Recall that in order to act piously we must do our duty not out of a sense of mandate, but because we want to do it or enjoy it. We will need a further examination of our claim to be certain that higher education does, in fact, lead to a better state of piety. An article by Glaeser and Sacerdote gives us the chance to do so. They claim: The negative relationship between religious beliefs and education occurs because the content of secular education often opposes the content of religion. We do not believe that this opposition is automatic; teaching secular knowledge does not automatically call religious beliefs into question.

However, in practice, secular education has often had a distinctly antireligious tint.33 Thus far we have only analyzed the correlation between worship attendance and higher education. We now have introduced an extra element, namely, religious belief. This is a key factor in determining the piety of those who have higher education. In order for going to church to be considered pious, church attendees must be going for the right reasons. Much like the megachurch minister, who is doing God’s work by preaching God’s word yet misses the mark on piety because he does so for the wrong reasons, going to church for any reason other than wanting to fulfill the duty to God will likewise miss the mark.

Glaeser and Sacerdote give us reason to be concerned that this is the case in people who are highly educated: If education has two opposite effects on religiosity, raising the social returns to attendance and reducing the level of belief, and if there is a social multiplier in the formation of beliefs, then we can understand the observed aggregation reversal in which education is positively associated with religion at the individual level and negatively associated with religion at the group level. The social multiplier in the formation of beliefs makes the negative effect of education on religion that works through beliefs much more powerful at higher levels of aggregation.34 Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote, “Education and Religion,” Journal of Human Capital 2, no. 2 (2008): 194, doi: 10.1086/590413.

34 Ibid., 214.

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Put more simply, education plays a positive role in socializing people.

The more educated you are, the more experience you have in social settings, meaning you are more likely to attend social events—church being one of those. However, higher education is at odds with religious belief and does have a negative impact on those beliefs.

Therefore, we can claim that while higher education does have a positive impact on people going to church, they do so for the social setting and not because they believe it is their God-mandated duty. We must, therefore, revise our original claim.

While it is true that the more educated a person is, the more likely he or she is to attend church services regularly, this does not equate to going to church in a pious manner, for such people are doing so out of a sense of community and not because they believe it is their duty.

Of course, as Aristotle would believe, these people are much closer to virtue than those who don’t attend church at all. But we cannot claim, as we previously thought, that they are acting piously in their church attendance. We will have to say, therefore, that while higher education has a positive impact on church attendance, it does not help us become pious insofar as its negative impact on religious belief causes us to attended church in the wrong manner. Does this mean that if we are concerned with piety we should not seek out higher education?

We should not diminish the role higher education has on church attendance. It is clearly better to attend church for the wrong reasons than to just skip it altogether. While we may bemoan its effects on religiosity as a whole, we have to be charitable in regard to this specific example. What then can we claim to best illustrate the effects of church attendance and higher education?

Let us briefly look at a case study of the Mormons to come to a conclusion. Albrecht and Heaton found that “Mormons with college experience have attendance rates notably higher than any other group.”35 Why is this so? The authors claim that “many Mormons who have received higher levels of education may have received that education at institutions like Brigham Young University, Ricks College, or BYU-Hawaii where their commitment and belief are strongly supported by the nature of their educational experience.”36 This creates an environment where “Mormon men with higher levels of education report that their beliefs are stronger than those with lower levels of education.”37 This particular example holds true on a Albrecht and Heaton, “Secularization,” 50.

Ibid., 54.

37 Ibid., 52.

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larger scale: “Those who have attended a Church university have very high attendance rates. Almost 90 percent report weekly attendance, ranking them ten to twenty percentage points higher than those who did not go to a Church university.”38 This correlation makes our claim quite clear. Americans should attend a religious university in order to achieve a more perfect state of piety in regard to church attendance.

On the surface, higher education seems to promote piety.

However, due to the virtue’s difficulties, simply showing up to church is not sufficient to obtain it. It has to be done in the correct manner, which is more readily promoted within an even more specific area of society—religious universities. On one level, then, society is hindering piety. But there are sections within the general society that have carved out space to promote the virtue. If those specific areas are sought out, then the goal of developing a pious habit, through regular church attendance, will be more easily accomplished.

38

Ibid., 55.

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Opposed Matthew McKenna

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iberalism is incompatible with Catholicism. This statement will shock most people and make others angry; a few will be giddy with excitement. It arouses a wide range of responses. People in the Church have many different—wildly different—opinions concerning political systems. In this paper, I will argue that due to liberalism’s basic anthropological assumptions, it is directly contrary to the Catholic faith. The liberal vision of the human person, the vision upon which liberalism’s principles are based, is fundamentally wrong and against the Catholic view of the human person. This makes the two views incompatible. I do not think that everyone will agree with me because most of us have been brought up, socially and intellectually, within a liberal society, which values individual rights and autonomy. We generally believe in these ideas fiercely. Therefore, while I realize I will not convince everyone, I urge people to seriously reflect on this question over an extended period of time.

In his first chapter of Why Liberalism Failed, Patrick Deneen says: Liberalism is most fundamentally constituted by a pair of deeper anthropological assumptions that give liberal institutions a particular orientation and cast: 1) anthropological individualism and the voluntarist conception of choice, and 2) human separation from and opposition to nature.1 This is the basic framework of the anthropological views of liberalism.

Human beings are first and foremost individuals. Humans are selves.

Humans are solitary beings without ties or obligations to others. The only thing in liberalism that grants legitimacy to authority, or any contract of any kind, is consent. As individual selves we have freedom of choice, and that freedom of choice, to choose who we are and what we do, is fundamental to us. It is our highest and most basic right in this anthropology. Next, and following from that I think, is the human opposition to nature. Since we are individual, autonomous selves, we 1

Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 31.

choose who we are and what we do. Our choice is the highest authority. Therefore, since nature puts limits on the choices we can make, liberalism pits individuals against nature. Nature is something to be conquered, something we need to be freed from. Once we conquer it, the range of choices we are capable of making expands.

Since our capacity to make choices is the most primordial basis for liberalism, when our range of choices expands, we expand. Liberal people are freer and more actualized when they have more choices to make, regardless of whether they ever actually make those choices; merely having them is uplifting.

In liberalism, freedom of choice is the highest good. Free consent is the highest moral authority. The end of the state is to protect these things and help people live as they want by destroying obstacles to their choices. These obstacles can come from institutions, social pressures from the majority, and even nature.

Contrary to the anthropology of liberalism is that of Catholicism.

The Catholic view of the human person is centered on our relationship with God and His plan for us. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: Of all visible creatures only man is “able to know and love his creator.” He is “the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake,” and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity.2 The purpose of a human person’s life is to know and love God. Because humans can know and love God and are made in His image, humans have dignity. Humans exist in relationship. Relationship primarily with God, by knowing and loving Him, and then with other people, by knowing and loving them. The Catechism expresses this: Man and woman were made “for each other”—not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a communion of persons, in which each can be “helpmate” to the other . . . . In marriage, God unites them in such a way that, by forming “one flesh,” they can transmit human life . . . . By transmitting human life to their descendants, man and woman as spouses and parents cooperate in a unique way in the Creator’s work.3 Catechism of the Catholic Church, #356, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2c1p6.htm.

3 Ibid., #372.

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Catholic anthropology is that the human person was made to be in communion with others. Humans are made and ordered to love.

In addition to being in communion with God and others, the Catholic anthropology says that humans are meant to be in relationship with nature, not opposed to it: In God’s plan, man and woman have the vocation of “‘subduing’ the earth” as stewards of God. This sovereignty is not to be an arbitrary and destructive domination. God calls man and woman, made in the image of the Creator “who loves everything that exists,” to share in his providence toward other creatures; hence their responsibility for the world God has entrusted to them.4 Man is meant to rule over the earth, yes. But not in the sense of a conqueror who crushes his opposition and rules with an iron fist. Man is meant to cooperate with nature and to help nature. Man is meant to be like a gardener who tends nature tenderly, not one who forces it into submission with sheer force. By subduing nature, man aids God in His work of perfecting all creation.5 One can easily see from these brief descriptions how opposed the anthropologies of liberalism and Catholicism are. Liberalism, following thinkers like John Locke, sees people as selves, alone in nature. Political policies are based on “the idea of voluntarism—the unfettered and autonomous choice of individuals.”6 Humans have no ultimate purpose besides what they choose for themselves.

Catholicism sees people as fundamentally in relationships with God, others, and nature. There is a purpose to all human life, namely, union with God. Man is given freedom to make autonomous choices in order to love. That freedom is not the end goal in itself for human life.

The relationship man has to nature is critically different under the two anthropologies. Liberalism pits man against nature. Nature is an obstacle in the way of autonomous choices and must therefore be conquered. Catholicism sets man to tend nature, not just for man’s own sake and production but for nature’s sake too. When man tills the ground and subdues the earth, nature is supposed to be perfected.

Liberalism conquers nature for man’s own sake, for production and greater freedom to make choices. Catholicism subdues nature to partake in God’s active role of perfecting all creation.

Ibid., #373.

Ibid., #378.

6 Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed, 31.

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Liberalism and Catholicism are incompatible. Their basic, absolutely fundamental beliefs about what humans are are not merely different but are directly opposed to each other. Since any system of government is ultimately based on an anthropology, liberalism and Catholicism are incompatible.

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Plato, King James VI & I, and a Defense of Liberalism Daniel Majerowicz

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mong the vast sea of criticisms against liberalism rolls a particularly strong wave aiming to wash away the proverbial liberal sands before it. This critique is mapped out cleverly by Patrick Deneen in his book Why Liberalism Failed. He writes in the introduction, “liberalism has failed . . . because it was true to itself. It failed because it succeeded.”1 What started out as a rather small political movement championing the rights of the individual has now grown to a point where those rights are “extensively compromised.”2 It is not my goal here to analyze this critique, nor to argue that Deneen is really pointing out the flaws of some sort of post-liberal system.

Instead, I wish to offer a defense of liberalism by granting this notion that liberalism has failed. By analyzing the proposed (non-)solutions from Deneen and, similarly, Rod Dreher, it will become clear that liberalism, while flawed, is still the best political ideology with which to govern men and women as they are: flawed individuals.

Before a proper analysis takes root, I want to provide a definition for what I take liberalism to be. First and foremost, liberalism sets out to protect the intrinsic rights of people found in the state of nature.

People have the right to live, and therefore a liberal society is justified in banning murder, for example, to protect this right. All laws in a true liberal order work as such. A freedom (such as the freedom to murder) is negated to protect and promote a primary right (the right to life).

The job of liberalism, therefore, is to protect not the freedoms of the individual but the individual’s rights as a natural “owning and laboring animal.”3 A government following this order would be rather limited and would only interfere with an individual when rights were being put at risk. This may sound quite different from the liberalism that Deneen is attacking, but if Deneen is correct, then this small Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 3.

Ibid., 7.

3 Pierre Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism, trans. Rebecca Balinski (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 42.

1 2

government will necessarily grow into the large quasi-tyrant he describes in his book.

What are we to do to escape the liberal machine? Dreher proposes a system, one which Deneen endorses, in which like-minded people, in this case Catholics, withdraw from society and “work on building communities, institutions, and networks of resistance.”4 These small communities would not work on fostering any individual right but would rather foster knowledge of and live out “the good.” This whole system relies on foundations laid by Plato. With his Allegory of the Cave, Plato explained that while it is a painful process, a person can come to know “the last thing to be seen . . . the idea of the good.”

Once seen, it must be concluded that this good is, in fact, “the cause of all that is right and fair in everything.”5 The basic assumption made

by Dreher and Deneen is that in order for their small communities to flourish, people can obtain and act on this conception of the good.

This is in stark contrast with the liberal tradition, which at least claims to be neutral with regard to any definition of what the good might be. If a government only exists to protect individual rights and the individual is free to act on those rights, insofar as individuals do not infringe upon other individuals’ rights, they are free to act as they please. To forbid an individual to practice a religion which holds that the world is six thousand years old would infringe upon that person’s ability to believe in what he or she chose to believe in. And since this ability does not interfere with another person’s belief system, the government, having no opinion on the matter (for to do so would be to define how one ought to believe and live), cannot establish any law forbidding the belief.

Yet in Dreher’s society, certain beliefs and practices would have to be forbidden in order to promote the good. If believing the world is six thousand years old is contrary to what the good is, then one cannot put one’s faith in it. The sovereign of such a place is compelled to make sure individuals fall into line. The success of the society depends upon it. But this raises an enormous question. Who has the ability to know what this good is? Once again, we can turn to Plato for an answer. In book nine of the Republic, he argues that the “lover of wisdom,” or the philosopher, is “most experienced in all the pleasures” and is therefore “the finest judge.”6 And since philosophers are best suited to judge the pleasurable life, they are the most fit to be Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option (New York: Sentinel, 2018), 12.

Plato, Republic, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 196.

6 Ibid., 263–64.

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rulers. And so Dreher’s community would need a sovereign akin to Plato’s philosopher-king in order to keep the society in tune with the good, since only a few members of this society would have true knowledge of it.

Yet we have to ask if Plato’s assertions are correct. If it can be shown that no individual could obtain knowledge of the good, then the small local communities would seem to be operating on a false assumption. Furthermore, if true knowledge of the good can be obtained, but no person is capable of acting perfectly with that knowledge, then again, the whole system seems to be in vain. For if the success of Dreher’s project relies on the knowledge of the good and the means for at least one person to see to the fostering and growth of that good, it must be shown that such an endeavor is possible.

A good case study would be the reign of King James VI and I of Scotland and England. As a boy, James was taught primarily by the humanist George Buchanan.7 This entailed learning ancient languages, which allowed James to read the likes Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and other philosophers of old.8 At a time when most kings made war, King James wrote pamphlets and treatises. And in the swaths of material he produced, it is common to find themes and similarities pulled right from ancient philosophy. For example, James wrote, As there is not a thing so necessarie to be knowne by the people of any land, next the knowledge of their God, as the right knowledge of their alleageance, according to the forme of gouernment established among them, especially in a Monarchie (which forme of gouernment, as resembling the Diuinitie, approacheth nearest to perfection, as all leanerd and wise men from the beginning haue agreed vpon). 9 He constantly wrote in favor of peace over war, and while he did believe in the absolute authority of the king, he did so not fully out of lust for power, but because he believed the king had a duty “to care for the nourishing, education, and vertuous gouernment of his children.”10 Any squabbling with his subjects would not allow King James to promote and foster the good in his nation.

Charles Williams, James I (London: Arthur Baker, 1951), 22.

For more on King James VI and I’s education, see ibid., 19–50.

9 King James I, “The Trew Law of Free Monarchies,” in The Political Works of James I, ed.

Charles McIlwain (New York: Russell & Russell, 1965), 53.

10 Ibid., 55.

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Yet the king’s reign was flush with controversy, as he would spend lavishly on clothing and parties.11 This seems to suggest that even a boy with the best educators, reading the most respected philosophers, could be susceptible to the appetites. In theory, King James should have been the perfect embodiment of Plato’s philosopher-king. But alas, his kingship ended with his country thrust into a foreign war, one which James fought incredibly hard against.

This seems to suggest one of two things. The first possibility is that King James never really had knowledge of the good. But if a man who was educated by the top teachers Europe had to offer, and who spent more time on philosophy than he did in a suit of armor, could not obtain knowledge of the good, what does that say about the common person’s chances? While it certainly does not rule out the possibility, it does suggest that obtaining any true knowledge of the good in unlikely, especially in a small community where there are simply not enough people to raise the odds. However, the second option suggests that King James, in fact, did possess a knowledge of the good. But there was a problem. The King could not control his appetites, which led to the appearance of tyranny (at the least). This appearance led his subjects to question his authority and knowledge, which in turn made any chance of fostering the good almost unachievable. And so, even though all signs pointed to defeat in the Thirty Years War, signs that James clearly saw, he was not able to convince his subjects of the same, and off went England to war. In this scenario, it is more likely, albeit still difficult, for a person to know the good. Yet this knowledge does not guarantee that the sovereign will be able to foster an environment in which others can shape their lives around the good.

This is where Dreher, and for that matter any system that relies on some kind of absolute authority, fail. Either the absolute sovereign is not capable of the knowledge needed to foster a healthy society, or the sovereign will not be able to rise above the human tendencies for corruption. Plato’s philosopher-king, in theory, sounds brilliant, but when put into practice, it is impossible. And since Dreher’s system is predicated on having someone who can both obtain knowledge of the good and use that knowledge to foster a healthy community, his system is unstainable as well.

Unsustainable, that is, unless it exists within a larger system that safeguards against such tyranny. The brilliance of liberalism gives 11

Williams, James I, 200–42.

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Dreher the freedom to attempt his Benedict option. So long as he does not force people to join him, he can establish a community that attempts to foster the good (as defined by that community). And the more successful the community is, the more people will join it and wish to stay. But when that community ultimately fails, people will not be trapped inside the chaos but free to find another niche within liberalism that allows them to grow toward the good.

Now, perhaps one could claim that since it has been established that one could achieve knowledge of the good, that person could then rise above his or her appetites and succeed where King James failed.

Would this still lead to ultimate failure for such a community? In theory, such a society could indeed flourish. The sovereign would know the good, be an example of it, and foster it in his or her subjects.

However, this does not save Dreher’s proposal. Such a sovereign could not live forever, and the chances of being able to string together multiple successive sovereigns who fit the theoretical description above are next to nil. It still seems that, even if this society did have a sovereign who embodied the ideal of the philosopher-king well, it would only prolong the inevitable collapse.

This is not to say that Deneen’s criticism is unfounded. It could very well be the case that liberalism no longer provides such a safety net for people and has grown into something that directly contradicts its founding principles. But the solution proposed, that of an existence outside the liberal order, only highlights the necessity of something like liberalism. No man or woman is capable of being Plato’s philosopher-king. Neither is any governmental body. The only way to protect from the tyranny of absolutism is to allow people to exercise their individual freedoms by protecting their natural and basic rights.

This freedom should allow for small communities to exist inside the liberal order up to the point where they no longer are feasible. But instead of being subjected to chaos when these communities collapse, the individuals in these communities can safely exist within the broader liberal society until they can form a new community.

Considering the fact that humans seem unlikely to ever achieve a society perfectly governed by the good, we should all want such an ideological safety net.

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Rhetorical Analysis of Francisco de Vitoria’s “On the American Indians” Rachel Wheeler

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hroughout history, Christians have used the Bible and other important ethical texts to justify all kinds of immoral ends.

After all, arguing that “God commanded it” presents a false dilemma in which dissenters are forced to argue against “God’s” alleged will. However, would God really command the extermination of an entire civilization purely for the sake of colonization? Francisco de Vitoria’s “On the American Indians” successfully argues that Spain’s enslavement of the Native Americans was unjust by offering better interpretations of important texts previously used to justify colonization from the stasis of jurisdiction, definition, and assimilation.

Vitoria operates under the stasis of jurisdiction by arguing at an opportune time and place, offering reasons for the necessity of the argument, and establishing good ethos to convince readers of his authority to speak on the matter. Vitoria reveals that his interpretation is qualified by offering it at a critical point and place in history. In his Arguing over Texts, Martin Camper explains that appropriate time and place, or kairos, is a general qualification for successful interpretation.1 This text was written in the midst of Spain’s mistreatment of the Natives and published shortly after Pope Paul III’s decree Sublimis Deus in 1537, opposing the enslavement of Natives. As people began to cast doubt on the morality of Spain’s treatment of the Natives, Vitoria preached his sensible arguments at the root of all the chaos: Spain. In seizing this kairotic moment, Vitoria ensured that his arguments would transform Spain’s treatment of the Natives.

Vitoria convinces readers of the necessity of the argument by acknowledging and refuting arguments for silencing discussion about the treatment of Native Americans. Vitoria claims:

Martin Camper, Arguing over Texts: The Rhetoric of Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 155–66.

1

It may first of all be objected that this whole dispute is unprofitable and fatuous, not only for those like us who have no warrant to question or censure the conduct of government in the Indies irrespective of whether or not it is rightly administered but even for those whose business is to frame and administer that government.2 Recognition that it does not make sense to constantly argue about everything is an appeal to ethos as Vitoria confirms his desire to say only what must be said. Vitoria also establishes goodwill by showing consideration for opposing viewpoints.

Vitoria immediately refutes the argument that the discussion of American Indians is unprofitable by using counter-arguments from the stasis of jurisdiction to convey the purpose of his writing. In Arguing over Texts, Camper writes, “An interpretation can be qualified or disqualified based on what motivates or drives his interpretation.”3 Vitoria convinces readers that he has a moral purpose in offering this argument using Aristotelian philosophy. He writes, “Where there is some reasonable doubt as to whether an action is good or bad, just or unjust, then it is pertinent to question and deliberate, rather than acting rashly without any prior investigation of what is lawful and what is not.”4 In this, Vitoria appeals to ethos by revealing that it is morally responsible to argue about questionable topics. As Vitoria is arguing about a questionable topic, he includes himself in the definition of a morally responsible person to convince readers of his trustworthy and credible character, which will persuade them to accept his argument.

Vitoria offers support for the necessity of the argument once more as he claims, “It is not unusual in theology to debate questions whose answer is certain . . . undertaken not to argue about the truth, but to explain it.”5 Vitoria uses dialectical reasoning to compare the current situation to past situations and advance the credibility of the argument by convincing readers that argument is an appropriate response to the situation.6 These counterarguments and arguments partially resolve the stasis of jurisdiction by explaining the necessity and felicity of the argument.

Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 233–34.

Camper, Arguing over Texts, 156.

4 Vitoria, Political Writings, 234–35.

5 Ibid., 238.

6 Edward S. Inch and Barbara Warnick, Critical Thinking and Communication: The Use of Reason in Argument (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2002), 42.

2 3

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Vitoria further argues from the stasis of jurisdiction by outlining who has a right to speak about such matters. At the same time, he establishes good invented ethos by putting the responsibility of interpretation on himself. Vitoria claims, “So in doubtful cases, I say, we must consult those whom the Church has appointed for the purpose: that is, the prelates, preachers, confessors, and jurists versed in divine and human law.”7 Vitoria convinces readers that he has the right to interpret the argument by arguing that he is a theologian who falls under the listed category. Camper writes that “Having particular qualifications confers a certain amount of automatic credibility to the interpreter.”8 Vitoria’s qualification to speak on the matter resolves the stasis of jurisdiction by convincing readers of his expert ability.

Vitoria uses the stasis of assimilation to refute interpretations of texts that were previously used to justify the enslavement of Native Americans. Vitoria writes: “A slave cannot own anything as his own” (Institutions II. 9.3 Item vobis; Digest XXIX. 2. 79 Placet), hence everything a slave acquires belongs to his master (Institutions 1. 8. 1 Num apud omnes). But these barbarians are slaves by nature. The last point is proved by Aristotle, who says with elegant precision: “the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master” (Politics 1254 20).9 Vitoria acknowledges the validity of arguments by claiming that slaves should be under the rule of another and may not own anything of their own. Vitoria accepts that, due to these propositions, the treatment of Native Americans may be justified by this text because, “if the barbarians were slaves, then the Spaniards could appropriate them.”10 However, using the conditional “if the barbarians were slaves” sets Vitoria up to provide a counter-argument asserting that the barbarians were not truly slaves.

Vitoria argues that the barbarians were not slaves from the stasis of definition to combat Spain’s inclination to include Native Americans in the definition of a “slave.” In Arguing over Texts, Camper writes, “A question or dispute over the definition of a term in a text concerns the intended or appropriate scope, limits, or reach of the

Vitoria, Political Writings, 236.

Camper, Arguing over Texts, 146.

9 Vitoria, Political Writings, 239.

10 Ibid.

7 8

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basic sense of that term.”11 Vitoria defines the scope of the term “true master,” which broadly means someone who is not a slave, to test if that term includes the Native Americans. Vitoria uses Peter Lombard’s Sentences (IV.15) and Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (II-II.62) to demonstrate that Spaniards believe the barbarians are not true masters because they are sinners, unbelievers, madmen, and insensate.

Vitoria explains a commonly accepted belief that “sinners, or at least those who are in a state of mortal sin, cannot exercise dominion over anything” and offers several examples in support of sinners’ inability to exercise dominion.12 However, he refutes this claim by arguing that sinners still have natural dominion over their own bodies and acts and that sinners could never legally lose the right to civil ownership. In the Bible, sinners like Solomon and Ahab are given titles such as “king” and do not lose their kingship. Mortal sin does not deprive a man of spiritual jurisdiction, so it cannot deprive him of civil property either. Therefore, Vitoria explains that sinners are capable of being true masters by arguing “against a definition of a word in a text based on that definition’s sensibility.”13 Vitoria goes on to speculate about whether unbelievers can be true masters and uses similar analogies to enforce the conclusion that barbarians are not impeded from being true masters by mortal sin or unbelief and may not be enslaved by the Christians. This argument works by shutting down popularly held beliefs with simple and sensible analogies to demonstrate the ridiculousness of these beliefs.

Vitoria deliberates about the scope of the term by considering whether or not irrational creatures, children, or madmen may be considered “true masters” in order to determine if the Native Americans may exercise dominion over their land. Vitoria claims that “Irrational creatures such as animals clearly cannot have any dominion, for dominion is a legal right” and that those with no dominion are incapable of having an injustice done unto them.14 Next, Vitoria outlines the connections between children and irrational beings, but answers that children can be masters before the age of reason because they have legal rights and may be the victim of an injustice. Vitoria goes on to define madmen as being true masters as well, for they can have legal rights and be victims of an injustice. By excluding irrational creatures from and including madmen and Camper, Arguing over Texts, 45.

Vitoria, Political Writings, 240.

13 Camper, Arguing over Texts, 57.

14 Vitoria, Political Writings, 247.

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children in the definition of a “true master,” Vitoria argues that the Native Americans have true dominion, just as a madman or child would.

However, Vitoria claims that the Natives do not fall under the category of madmen, stating: This is self-evident because they have some order in their affairs: they have properly organized cities, proper marriages, magistrates and overlords, laws, industries, and commerce, all of which require the use of reason. They likewise have a form (species) of religion, and they correctly apprehend things which are evident to other men, which indicates the use of reason.15 Therefore, Vitoria reasons that even if the scope of the term “true master” did not include madmen, which it does, this would still not exclude the Native Americans from having the right to exercise dominion over their land because of their incredible ability to reason, which separates them from irrational beings, children, and madmen.

In this, Vitoria successfully defines “true masters” in a way that includes the Native Americans. Vitoria’s ability to explore and refute all counterarguments and to generate convincing analogies proving his point reaffirms the stasis of jurisdiction by emphasizing his ability to speak on the matter and adds to his invented ethos by convincing readers of his credibility due to his outstanding knowledge on the subject.

Vitoria’s use of the stasis of definition to define the term “true masters” in a way that includes Native Americans allows Vitoria to formulate a better interpretation of previous texts used to justify the enslavement of Native Americans. As aforementioned, previous texts used to justify the enslavement of Natives claimed, as Vitoria cites, that “A slave cannot own anything as his own” and “the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master.”16 Although the Spaniards would have liked to use the stasis of assimilation to include Native Americans in the category of those who should be enslaved, Vitoria uses a fortiori reasoning to insist that “the differences between the text and situation are too great to sustain the proposed inference.”17 The differences between the “barbarians” and a slave are far too great to justify enslaving Native Americans. In this, Vitoria successfully resolves the Ibid., 250.

Ibid., 239.

17 Camper, Arguing over Texts, 125.

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stasis of assimilation as he reveals that Native Americans are true masters, which implies that these texts may not apply to them.

Using the stasis of jurisdiction, assimilation, and definition, Vitoria offers a better interpretation of texts previously used to justify the enslavement of Native Americans and transforms beliefs about the Native Americans across Spain. Shortly after the widespread publication and preaching of “On the American Indians,” the King of Spain passed the “New Laws” of 1542, which were a series of laws regulating the Spaniards in the New World who were enslaving the Natives in the Americas. Although Vitoria’s political writing led to change, the mission of the Spaniards had already been set in motion, and little was done to rectify relations between the Natives and Christians. Francisco de Vitoria’s careful analysis and widespread knowledge of texts reveals that wrongful interpretations may have damaging consequences, and that it is important to search for better interpretations to gain a greater understanding of morality.

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Plato, Sex, and Catholicism Matthew McKenna

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n The Laws, Plato is seeking to put forth the laws for a city that would ensure all the citizens achieved the highest virtue. He is clear in book I that the purpose of the laws in a city is to encourage, develop, and instill virtue in the citizens. He says good laws are those “that make those who use them happy.”1 On the next page, Plato wants to restart the discussion “by first discussing the practices that contribute to courage and then proceeding through another and then yet another form of virtue . . . . Later, if God is willing, we’ll show how what we just went through is aimed at virtue as a whole.”2 The basic premise of The Laws is to find those practical steps which can be taken to encourage and contribute to the growth of virtue in a society.

In book VI, Plato initiates a discussion on appetite. He begins, “I observe that for human beings everything depends on a threefold need or desire and that if they are guided correctly by these, virtue results, while if they are guided badly, the opposite.”3 Plato then names the three appetites as the desires for food, drink, and sex. Plato is referencing the appetitive part of the soul, which in The Republic he names the lowest part and its desires. If these desires are guided poorly, then vice instead of virtue results. Plato believed that the strongest of the appetites which people feel is sexual desire: “our third and greatest need or erotic longing is that which urges most sharply and comes latest, the one which makes human beings burn with complete madness; that most insolent flame involved in the engendering of offspring.”4 Since the appetite for sex is the strongest which affects people, it should receive a complete examination. Plato’s sexual ethics are based on his understanding of the human person, the tripartite theory of the soul. But his great insight is not merely the rules he proposes, but the relationship among the parts of the soul which will enable one to successfully follow his rules and be virtuous.

Plato, The Laws, trans. Thomas Pangle (New York: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 631b.

Ibid., 632e.

3 Ibid., 782d–782e.

4 Ibid., 783a.

1 2

This paper seeks to do three things. First, it will explain what Plato’s sexual ethics are. These will be taken directly from Plato’s Laws.

Second, it will explain why Plato came to these conclusions regarding sex and how one can effectively follow them. To do this, the paper will consider Plato’s full view of the human person. The Republic will be the main source for this. Since justifying a position such as this can be difficult, this will comprise the bulk of the paper. Finally, this paper will compare the sexual ethics of Plato to those of the Roman Catholic Church, as they are notably similar. Here we will see if there is anything which the Catholic Church can learn from Plato.

In book VIII of The Laws, Plato discusses how one ought to direct and control one’s sexual urges and actions so that one will become as virtuous as possible. He proposes a set of laws that should become common to all. This is clearly not just a theory, but a very practical discussion, which Plato wishes the reader to take seriously and apply in real life. Plato realizes this is a difficult and delicate topic. Before revealing to his interlocutors what he is about to discuss, he says, “there are matters which make no small difference, about which it is difficult to be persuasive.”5 The reasons for this are that Plato believed that it was difficult to persuade people to follow reason instead of the appetites regarding sex.6 Secondly, there are no other societies for Plato to draw upon for inspiration or to use as a guide. He says, “for although in quite a few other matters Crete as a whole and Lacedaimon have been decent enough to give us considerable aid as we established laws that differ from the ways on many, in regard to erotic things . . . they are totally opposed to us.”7 The laws which Plato will propose are very countercultural. Most of Greek society accepted rampant sexual activity of nearly all kinds. Plato does not. So, what are Plato’s sexual ethics?

The first rule which Plato offers in his discussion is that homosexual activity is wrong. He mentions this first but acknowledges that his argument would fail to convince most people. Plato says: If he were to say that it was correct to avoid, with males and youths, sexual relations like those one has with females, bringing as a witness the nature of the beasts and demonstrating that males don’t touch males with a view to

Ibid., 835c.

Ibid.

7 Ibid., 836b–836c.

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such things because it is not according to nature to do so, his argument would probably be unpersuasive.8 While fully recognizing that people are not easily persuaded of this, Plato does believe it is true, and he continues to support this law later in the discussion.

According to Plato, the purpose of sex is procreation.9 Therefore, homosexual acts are wrong as they do not fulfill the purpose of sex.

In fact, they altogether neglect the proper function of sex.

Additionally, masturbation is wrong as it is wasteful and does not fulfill the purpose of sex. Casual sex, what is referred to as hooking up, is also wrong as it is not directed towards procreation. The only sexual acts Plato thinks are good for the person, meaning that they nurture virtue, are acts that are directed towards procreation. Plato says all this very directly in his discussion: I had an art that would promote the natural use of sexual intercourse for the production of children—by abstaining on the one hand from intercourse with males . . . as well as from the wasting of sperm on rocks or stones where it will never take root and generate a natural offspring, and on the other hand by abstaining from any female field in which you wouldn’t wish your sperm to grow.10 From this one easily extrapolates that homosexual activity, masturbation, and fornication are all wrong, in Plato’s view.

When Plato ends his discussion on sex and gives the laws he thinks should be enacted in the ideal city, he also includes one thing not directly mentioned above. The rules stated above simply say that sex is for procreation only. But when Plato gives his proposed law, he clarifies that sex should also only be within marriage. He says: in the case of women, if anyone should have sexual intercourse with a woman other than those who enter his house with the sanction of the gods and the sacred marriage ceremonies, whether they be purchased or secured in any other way, and fails to escape notice of all men and women, we would probably seem to be legislating correctly if we legislated that he be barred from all honors in the city.11 The rules which Plato previously set forth may have permitted procreation outside of marriage, but here Plato clearly clarifies that Ibid., 836c.

Ibid., 838e.

10 Ibid., 838e–839a.

11 Ibid., 841d–841e.

8 9

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both procreation and sex are proper and virtuous only within marriage.

Now I fully realize that just putting forth these rules in contemporary society sounds ridiculous and harsh, outdated even.

Even Plato recognized that people do not respond well to these ideas.

He spends a great deal of time discussing how difficult it is to persuade people to follow reason regarding sexuality. But, if we wish to understand Plato’s sexual ethics and be persuaded, or persuade others, we must explain and comprehend why Plato lays out these laws. We must understand the logic Plato is using. In the next section, we will explore Plato’s reasoning using The Laws, the Symposium, and The Republic.

So, why does Plato believe that sex is only virtuous if it is directed towards procreation? The answer is not short. To begin, we must consider what Plato’s view of the human person is.

In book IV of The Republic, Plato explains the tripartite soul as his understanding of the human person. Each person’s soul has three parts: the rational, the spirited, and the appetitive. Each part of the soul does and desires different things. The rational part of the soul is that which reasons. The spirited part of the soul is that which desires and feels honor. This is where mental strength or fortitude arises. The last part, the appetitive, is that which we share with the lower animals.

From it come our desires for sensational pleasure such as food and sex. Plato shows these three parts of the soul are distinct from each other because they often conflict with each other. He gives the example of drink.12 Sometimes one desires to drink more, but knows one should not; maybe one needs to drive home, but wants another beer. Henry George Liddell explains it thus: “if this desire and aversion are opposite motions, then given the principle about opposite motions, Socrates concludes that this desire and aversion are motions of different parts of the soul.”13 Plato tells a famous story to show that the spirited part of the soul can oppose the appetitive part. In the story, Leontius walks past corpses of people who had been executed.

He does not want to see the disgusting sight, but he is still, somehow, drawn to look at it. Finally, he runs back and glares at the bodies and says, “Look, you damned wretches, take your fill of the fair sight.”14 Here Plato says that “anger sometimes makes war against the Plato, The Republic, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 439b.

Thomas A. Blackson, “The Tripartite Theory of the Soul,” last updated 2020, http://tomblackson.com/Ancient/chapter53.html.

14 Republic, 440a.

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desires.”15 The spirited part of the soul is moving against the appetitive. So, we can see that Plato believes there are three distinct parts of the soul, which do and desire different things.

This is a very natural observation. Often people experience conflicting desires. Everyone can relate to the idea that one desires something, maybe ice cream, but knows that one should eat healthier food. Maybe one is afraid to ask a girl out on a date but has a strong desire to. Plato is simply labeling what everyone can testify to from personal experience. Everyone has the ability to reason and come to knowledge about what is the best choice to make. Everyone can testify to feelings of shame, especially after one gives in to one’s appetites when one knows one should not have. Likewise, all can relate to feelings of victory, honor and mental strength when one pushes through one’s appetites and accomplishes something which one knows to be good. Finally, all feel drawn to the pleasures of the flesh.

These appetites can be simply the desire to sleep in late and skip work, something reason tells us we ought not to do. Or they can be more classical examples, such as eating junk food all day, which all know they should not do. Plato’s theory of the tripartite soul is not some new or controversial theory, but something all can testify to. Therein lies the beauty of it.

According to Plato, the rational part of the soul must rule and have mastery over the other two parts of the soul. He asks in The Republic, “Isn’t it proper for the calculating part to rule, since it is wise and has forethought about all of the soul, and for the spirited part to be obedient and its ally?”16 A few lines later Plato continues, “and these two, thus trained and having truly learned their own business and been educated, will be set over the desiring . . . they’ll watch it for fear of its being filled with the so-called pleasures of the body and thus becoming big and strong.”17 The rational part ought to rule, for it can reason, know what is truly good, and lead to the most and highest pleasure. The spirited and appetitive parts of the soul are not capable of leading one to true happiness, Plato says. This captures how little control the appetitive part of the soul ought to have over one’s actions: none at all. The spirited part of the soul will have a role to play in controlling one’s actions and will be discussed later.

Plato’s idea that the rational part of the soul must rule presupposes some idea of the human good and happiness. For example, if the Ibid.

Ibid., 441e.

17 Ibid., 442a.

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human good consisted of merely satisfying the appetites, then it might follow that the appetitive part of the soul should rule. But Plato believes that the rational part should rule. So, what idea of the human good and happiness does Plato hold that requires the rational part of the soul to lead?

In the Symposium, Plato says, “It’s the possession of good things that makes people happy.”18 Since man is made happy by acquiring good things, the better the things are, the greater and more complete happiness shall be. This leads to the question, what is the greatest good? Whatever it is, it cannot be something that perishes, as perishable things do not remain and therefore cannot provide the most complete happiness, since the most complete happiness would be lasting. So, the greatest good must be eternal. Here it is helpful to see what men naturally long for. Plato says, “The simple truth of the matter is that people love goodness . . . they want goodness to be theirs forever.”19 Plato says the highest good is in the form of beauty: “What else could make life worth living . . . than seeing true beauty?”20 He continues, “How do you think someone would react, then, to the sight of beauty itself, in its perfect immaculate purity . . . don’t you realize that the gods smile on a person who bears and nurtures true goodness and that, to the extent that any human being does, it is he who has the potential for immortality?”21 One beholds the form of beauty itself through contemplation: “You ascend to that final intellectual endeavor, which is no more and no less than the study of that beauty.”22 The contemplation of the good, which Plato identifies in Symposium as the form of beauty, is the greatest good possible. All are drawn to it and only it can make one truly happy.

The contemplation of the form of beauty is what will make one completely happy. How does this require that the rational part of the soul rule over the other two parts of the soul? To begin with, one must notice that the rational part of the soul is that which is capable of contemplation. Therefore, it is the rational part of the soul that is capable of making one completely happy. One easily sees that the use of the rational portion of the soul is necessary to happiness, but this does not yet imply that the other two parts of the soul must be mastered.

Plato, Symposium, trans. Robin Waterfield (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 205a.

Ibid., 206a.

20 Ibid., 211d.

21 Ibid., 211d–212a.

22 Ibid., 211c.

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The reason why the spirited and appetitive parts of the soul must be mastered is that they are very strong and influential parts of the soul. Most people are ruled by the spirited and appetitive parts of their souls. They naturally have a strong impact on people, stronger than reason oftentimes. When, in The Laws, Plato is explaining how he will convince the populace to follow his sexual laws, he appeals to the spirited part of the soul. Plato plans on using shame and honor to make people follow what reason tells them is right. He says, “for if shame made their indulgence rare, the infrequency would weaken the sway over them of this mistress.”23 He continues a few lines later and says that “love of honor” would make people follow the laws, as they would be afraid of the shame associated with breaking the law.24 The point is that Plato is not appealing to reason to motivate people to follow his laws, but to the spirited part of the soul. This shows that the spirited part of the soul is very powerful in affecting one’s actions, and that it therefore must be mastered if one wishes to be fully happy.

If one fails to fully master it, then one will not be free to follow reason and contemplate the form of beauty, as the desire for honor will sway one’s actions instead of reason. Therefore, the rational part of the soul must have mastery over the spirited. Additionally, when the rational part of the soul has mastery over the spirited, then the spirited part can be used to control the appetitive, as Plato suggests. The spirited part of the soul, once mastered, becomes a tool of enforcement for the rational part of the soul. The rational will use the spirited to control the appetitive.

This is an experience that all can testify to. Are not we many times dissuaded from doing something because we feel it is embarrassing?

Do not we all spend too much time worrying about what others are thinking of us, worrying if they like us? Again, do we not often realize that we ought to act a certain way, but lack the necessary fortitude to follow through? All can personally relate to what Plato says. The spirited part of the soul is very strong; therefore, it must be mastered if one wants to be free to follow reason. Once mastered, the spirited part of the soul becomes an ally to the rational part of the soul. Unlike the appetitive, the spirited part of the soul is not to be suppressed but properly oriented.

What about the appetitive part of the soul? Why must it be mastered? For the same reason. One can look at the same passage 23 24

The Laws, 841b.

Ibid., 841c.

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from The Laws quoted above and see this. When Plato says that “the infrequency would weaken the sway over them of this mistress,” he is saying that physical pleasures can take a hold of a person and control him.25 If one allows one’s appetites to run wild, one will become addicted to them and be unable to control one’s actions. This would prevent one from contemplation of the form of beauty, or any deep contemplation at all. Plato says, “If they master pleasures they will live happily, but if they’re defeated by them they’ll experience entirely the opposite.”26 In The Republic, Plato says that excessive pleasure “puts men out of their minds no less than pain.”27 In book I of The Laws, Plato says that courage is not only “a combat against fears and pains only” but “also against longings and pleasures.”28 In his commentary on The Laws, R. F. Stalley says that “it is the man who gives way to these [pleasures] who has really lost mastery over himself.”29 One can understand that if one allows oneself too much pleasure, then it begins to take a hold on one. One can become addicted to pleasure.

Therefore, mastery of the appetitive part of our soul is necessary for happiness.

From this understanding of the human person and what makes one happy, it is still not evident how the sexual laws which we began with follow logically. With Plato’s understanding of the human person in mind, why is sex virtuous only within marriage? This is a question about what mastery of the appetitive part of the soul entails.

According to Plato in The Republic, mastery over the appetitive part of the soul means that “they’ll watch over it for fear of its being filled with the so-called pleasures of the body and thus becoming big and strong.”30 There are two things included here which must be examined. First, the appetitive part of the soul must be kept watch over carefully. It cannot be allowed to wander and go unchecked. The second thing which we must examine is the reason for the first. The reason why one must keep careful watch over the appetitive part of the soul is that if one indulges it then it will grow “big and strong.”31 This is the reason why, in The Laws, Plato says if one fails to master

Ibid., 841b.

Ibid., 840c.

27 The Republic, 402e.

28 The Laws, 633d.

29 R. F. Stalley, An Introduction to Plato’s Laws (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), 46.

30 The Republic, 442a.

31 Ibid.

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pleasure then one will never be happy.32 The more pleasures of the appetite one enjoys, the stronger those appetites grow. The stronger those appetites grow, whether for food, sex, or comfort, the greater control they have over one. As R. F. Stalley said earlier, if one cannot control desire for pleasure then one has “really lost mastery over himself.”33 So, mastery of the appetitive part of the soul means that one must not indulge one’s appetites. If one indulges one’s appetites, then they will grow strong and control one. The appetites must, of course, be fed as necessary for health; indulgence refers to giving in to the appetites when it is not necessary or beneficial to health. Going beyond what is necessary or proper is an indulgence.

Based on all this, why does Plato give us the sexual ethics which he does? First, one can see how bad it would be if one totally indulged one’s sexual appetites, seeking pleasure whenever one desired it. As one indulged one’s sexual appetites more, they would grow stronger, and the appetitive part of the soul would rule, preventing one from contemplation and growing in virtue. But does this mean one must completely limit sex only to within marriage and for procreation? At first, those rules do not follow, but we must investigate what the natural purpose of sex is. For Plato, that is procreation. He says in The Laws that a person “should promote the natural use of sexual intercourse for the production of children.”34 Since the purpose of sex, on a natural level, is procreation, the virtuous manner to regard sex would be for procreation. Anything else would be an indulgence of the appetitive part of the soul. Consider food. One who eats in order to be healthy is virtuous, while the one who eats for pleasure is gluttonous, as the purpose of food is nourishment. Plato is applying the same logic here. When, in The Republic, Plato is describing justice within the individual, he says: he doesn’t let each part in him mind other people’s business or the three classes in the soul meddle with each other, but really sets his own house in good order and rules himself . . . in all these action he believes and names a just and fine one that preserves and helps to produce this condition . . . while he believes and names an unjust action one that undoes this condition.35

The Laws, 840c.

Stalley, Introduction to Plato’s Laws, 46.

34 The Laws, 838e.

35 The Republic, 443d–443e.

32 33

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Actions that help the rational part of the soul maintain mastery are just. Actions which hurt the mastery of the rational part of the soul are unjust. Therefore, indulgence in sexual appetites, meaning sexual acts not aimed at the proper end of sex, are unjust, because they feed the sexual appetites and undermine the mastery of the rational part of the soul.

Sex is a natural thing that humanity must engage in, and Plato therefore wants people to do it in a manner which will cultivate virtue.

He says in The Laws, “Isn’t it obvious that we would want to have in our city the type (of sex) which belongs to virtue and desires that the youth become as excellent as possible?”36 Sex’s natural purpose is procreation. Sexual acts should only be done to fulfill the natural purpose of sex, for sexual acts not aimed at its natural end are indulgent acts which strengthen the appetitive part of the soul, thereby making the soul a slave to appetite. Therefore, according to Plato, sexual acts should be done for the purpose of procreation.

Now that we can thoroughly understand Plato’s sexual ethics and why he holds these views, let us compare his ethics to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic Church teaches that sex is proper only within marriage. The Catechism says, “Fornication is carnal union between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman. It is gravely contrary to the dignity of persons and of human sexuality which is naturally ordered to the good of spouses and the generation and education of children.”37 Additionally, the Catechism condemns masturbation of any form when it says that masturbation “is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.”38 Just like Plato, the Catechism condemns homosexual acts as immoral. Referring to homosexual acts, it says, “they are contrary to the natural law . . . under no circumstances can they be approved.”39 So, just like Plato, the Catholic Church condemns all sexual activity outside of marriage, all masturbation, and all homosexual acts.

Plato believes that sex is for procreation. So, it seems that there is a subtle difference between Plato and the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church does believe that sex is for procreation. When explaining why homosexual acts are immoral, the Catechism says, “they close the sexual act to the gift of life.”40 However, the Catholic The Laws, 837d.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (Liguori: Liguori Publications, 1994), 2353.

38 Ibid., 2352.

39 Ibid., 2357.

40 Ibid.

36 37

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Church adds a second dimension to the purpose of sex, the unity of the spouses. The Catechism declares, “In marriage, the physical intimacy of the spouses becomes a sign and pledge of spiritual communion.”41 It continues to say, “The truly human performance of these acts [sex] fosters the self-giving they signify and enriches the spouses in joy and gratitude.”42 Again, the Catechism says, “Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.”43 According to the Catholic Church, sex is not only for procreation but is also for creating and strengthening the union between the spouses. This is a larger view of the purpose of sex than Plato has. The Catholic Church does hold, like Plato, that the mastery of the appetites is necessary to happiness.

Echoing Plato, the Catechism says, “Either man governs his passions and finds peace or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy.”44 So, both the Catholic Church and Plato believe that sex is moral and virtuous only within marriage and, at least, open to procreation.

Furthermore, both masturbation and homosexual acts are immoral.

The difference lies in what each believes the purpose of sex is. While Plato thinks the purpose of sex is procreation, the Catholic Church adds in the second element of unity of the spouses. In a way, the difference is trivial, as the practice of either viewpoint would be the same. Functionally, both views work the same.

While Plato believes that the purpose of sex is procreation, he is very clear about that several times, he realizes that other good things come from sex, virtuous sex, that is. After Plato proposes his restrictions on sex in The Laws, he says: If this law becomes permanent and holds sway . . . tens of thousands of good things would result. For in the first place, it is laid down according to nature; then too, it will prevent the erotic frenzy and madness, as well as all adulteries, and all excessive drinking and eating, and will make men familiar with and dear to their wives. Indeed, there are very many other good things that would come to pass, if someone had enough control to pass this law.45

Ibid., 2360.

Ibid., 2362.

43 Ibid., 2351.

44 Ibid., 2339.

45 The Laws, 839a–839b.

41 42

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What I want to focus on is the last particular benefit he mentions. It “will make men familiar with and dear to their wives.”46 Here, Plato hints at the unitive nature and effect of sex. It would be fair to say that Plato recognizes that virtuous sex will unite the couple and make them dear to each other, to use Plato’s term. I do not think, however, that Plato believes this to be a purpose of sex. There is just not enough evidence in the text. He sees unity more as a benefit of virtue and proper orientation of one’s appetites. It is fair to say that Plato recognizes the unitive aspect of sex as an effect of virtuous sex, but not as an end of sex.

Now, can the Catholic Church learn anything from Plato? I think yes. As previously mentioned, Plato realizes that people are not easily persuaded to follow these rules, and he also knows that reason alone is not sufficient either. When Plato introduces the three appetites in book VI of The Laws, he offers three tools to make people follow the path of virtue: “fear, law, and true reason.”47 Throughout his discourse on the rules for sex in book VIII, he repeatedly mentions a “certain art” which will make people follow the path of virtue.48 This art which Plato claims will make people follow his rules is not reason, but fear.

He says, “We assert that if this custom is sufficiently sanctified, it will enslave every soul and instill it with a fear that will ensure its total obedience to the established laws.”49 Later he continues, “If shame made their indulgence rare, the infrequency would weaken the sway over them.”50 Recall that in our earlier discussion on the tripartite soul, Plato is appealing to the spirited part of the soul to enforce what reason tells it. In The Republic, Plato says that the spirited part of the soul must work with the rational part to rule over the appetitive part of the soul.

Plato makes this clear when he says, “Isn’t it proper for the calculating part to rule, since it is wise and has forethought about all of the soul, and for the spirited part to be obedient to it and its ally?”51 He also says, “And these two [the rational and spirited], thus trained and having truly learned their own business and been educated, will be set over the desiring.”52 Reason alone is usually not enough to rule over the appetites. The spirited part of the soul must work with reason.

Ibid., 839b.

Ibid., 783a.

48 Ibid., 838a.

49 Ibid., 839c.

50 Ibid., 841b.

51 The Republic, 441e.

52 Ibid., 442a.

46 47

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This is a key difference between the treatment of the spirited and appetitive parts of the souls. The spirited part should be properly oriented and used well, while the appetitive must be ruled over harshly and be suppressed.

This can take many forms. In The Laws, Plato suggests that fear of dishonor and love of honor be the motivation that compels people to follow reason. Plato fully acknowledges that people will not follow his rules for reason’s sake alone, so he argues: It was with a view to such that I made my pronouncement, about a certain art I possessed, in one respect the easiest of all things to apply and in another respect the most difficult, which would promote the permanent establishment of this law. It’s very easy to understand that it’s possible and in what way: We assert that if this custom is sufficiently sanctified, it will enslave every soul and instill it with a fear that will ensure its total obedience to the established laws.53 Plato says that his rules must be made into law throughout the society, and people who do not follow his sexual rules must be publicly shamed. When Plato gives the exact laws, he says the punishment should be “that he should be barred from all honors in the city.”54 Public disgrace awaits the intemperate man. But those who follow reason shall be praised and respected by the city. That is what will keep the people’s sexual appetites in check.

So, what can the Catholic Church learn from this? I believe that the Church, as a wise institution with two thousand years of learning behind it, already knows what we have discussed. But I do not think the Church emphasizes this nearly enough. Plato tells us that reason is not enough. Besides knowing what is right, one must develop a certain amount of fortitude and courage to make one’s appetites listen to and obey reason. A strong sense of honor is necessary. The Church simply does not talk about this aspect enough. Whenever a priest gives a homily concerning some virtue or vice, it is not sufficient to explain what the virtue or vice is; he must offer an exhortation challenging the spirited part of the soul. He must appeal to people’s pride, honor, and self-respect. The people must become excited about doing the good.

Simply knowing is not enough; one must have the strength of will to do it. The Church needs to emphasize the absolute necessity of the

53 54

The Laws, 839b–839c.

Ibid., 841e.

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spirited part of the soul for growing in virtue. I do not think that the Church should encourage public shaming as Plato does, however.

In conclusion, Plato says that sexual acts are only virtuous within marriage for the procreation of children. He says this because he wants to discourage any indulgence in the appetites which could weaken the mastery of the rational part of the soul, which ought to rule. The Catholic Church’s sexual ethics are very similar to Plato’s. The difference could easily be missed. It lies in what the proper end of sex is to each, Plato and the Church. Regardless of this difference, the Church, and all of us, can learn from Plato. Plato stresses the necessity of employing the spirited part of the soul to keep the appetites for sex in check. This is a great insight of his which we all need to take deeply to heart and seek to actually apply to our own lives.

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