Peace

The common idea of peace is a negative one: Peace is not war. Thomas Hobbes, one of the fathers of liberalism, is partly to blame for this impoverished view. In Leviathan, he writes, “the nature of war, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is Peace.” Hobbes argues that peace is simply the absence of war, and war is the natural state of man’s relation to man. For Hobbes, therefore, peace is not a natural inclination, but an imposition. But evidence against this view is everywhere: The best and most humane human beings desire peace, not conflict. And to anyone actually acquainted with war, the idea that peace is enforced because war comes naturally must seem a bit funny.

Hobbes’ argument about the nature of peace and war is a new one. Saint Augustine, who was well educated and heavily influenced by Plato, Cicero, and the Stoics, maintains that all things strive for peace. In City of God, he clearly explains what he means by ‘peace’; a “harmony of congruous elements” and “the tranquility of order.” Augustine always speaks of peace with respect to order: The peace of the body is ordered proportion, the peace of the irrational soul is the order of appetites, the peace of the human soul is the order of intellect and will, etc. Peace with respect to human association is, as Augustine says, “the ordered agreement of mind with mind.” This peace is what characterizes the peace hoped for in the “earthly city” (human society). Still more noble than this peace is the peace of the Heavenly City, “a perfectly ordered and perfectly harmonious fellowship in the enjoyment of God, and a mutual fellowship in God.”

Peace, therefore, is an attribute of perfected nature. Because man has a rational nature which inclines him to associate with other men, the perfection of human association must involve an accordance of reason. It is contrary to man’s nature to place the goods of the body above spiritual goods, hence a man who does so is disordered and is not at peace. Likewise, it is contrary to man’s nature to love himself over the commonweal, hence one who sacrifices the common good for the sake of personal gain destroys the peace he enjoys with other men.

Of course, the earthly city is marred by a variety of evils that corrupt the natural order by which man attains peace. The earthly city (along with its rulers and laws) is not evil by nature, because nothing is naturally evil. But because of the effects of sin, it is perennially disordered. We can enjoy true peace only in the Heavenly City, whose order is the Love of God.

The greatest sign of the earthly city’s inability to attain true and lasting peace is the state of human justice. Justice, according to Augustine, is the virtue which sets man in relation to the city as a citizen. It is the virtue by which man participates in society for the sake of the common good. In other words, peace is realized through justice. But justice is practically impossible due to the effects of original sin. Man is damaged, born into a state of disorder. He cannot attain justice without grace. Therefore, the only recourse one has for attaining true peace is to God: That is, only by receiving grace as a citizen of the Heavenly City can one be a true citizen at all.

Saint Augustine acknowledges the goodness of man’s nature, and by extension the goodness of political association. But he adamantly opposes the notion that the earthly city can be perfected in practice; for man is corrupt and in dire need of God’s grace. Yet, even in his low estimation of the merits of human politics, Augustine holds that the earthly city can help its citizens attain true peace by helping them to participate in the Heavenly City. And when citizens have true peace, the earthly city itself can benefit from the grace merited by that participation.

Peace is a positive good that is shared between persons. It requires active participation by those who share it. It is the natural state of relations between human beings; it is integral to human nature. We crave it from the depths of our being. Because peace flows from human nature, we must put our natural capacities -- our minds and our hearts -- to work in it. Peace, then, is not synonymous with truce. It involves cooperation and commitment to a mutually held understanding of the true and the good. Hence, the most challenging aspect of peace: In order to share peace, we must share the truth.

It is no surprise then that a misunderstanding of peace would follow a denial of our ability to share the truth. And this was exactly the motivation behind Hobbes’ thesis. He was well aware of the terrors of the Religious Wars, which spread a despair for peace throughout Europe.

But Hobbes did not offer a new and effective way to achieve peace amidst a growing divergence of opinion. Rather, what he and his legacy embraced was a method of waging war more efficiently. As all the great military strategists have taught, a skilled general will overwhelm, deceive, divide, and intimidate his enemy. He controls the terms of engagement. He knows all. But most importantly, a general has mastered war when he can conquer his enemy without shedding blood. The ruler of the state, in Hobbes’ vision, is not concerned with peace at all, but with waging war on his own citizens.

Let us once more revisit Hobbes’ thesis: Peace is the absence of conflict, and conflict is only avoided by the threat of an all-powerful state with a monopoly on violence. But intimidation and threats are the marks of a power at war. So, if peace is simply the absence of war, is there such a thing as peace? The answer is, “no.”

In short, the Hobbesian idea of peace -- i.e. the modern, liberal idea of peace -- is indistinguishable from war.

A Crash Course in Thomistic Politics

To properly understand the political order as St. Thomas understands it, we must begin with human nature. A thing’s nature constitutes formal, material, and final cause. With respect to man, his formal cause is the soul, which acts in and through his material cause, the body by which it lives. But man’s soul is preeminently rational, so he is endowed with reason and will, in whose activity man is not dependent upon the material, but is capable of knowing the truth and directing his will in love toward the good.

The true and the good are the proper objects of intellect and will, respectively. Hence, man’s knowledge and love are not mere “capacities” in the sense that a porcupine is capable of flight (provided it gains enough momentum). Rather, man finds his perfection in the operations proper to his nature, to which he is ordered by a final cause. It is with respect to final cause that St. Thomas understands the good, since what accords with a thing’s final cause is identical to its own perfection, and is said to be that thing’s good.

It is important to note that, although man finds his supreme good in the perfection of his intellect and will, the highest faculties of his soul, he exists as a suppositum, a substantial whole which includes every aspect of his nature, including his body. Hence, man’s good is both material and spiritual, involving every perfection of his body and soul.

The Common Good

The common good is defined as that good which is had by participation. Because St. Thomas identifies absolute Good as an aspect of Being, he says, “in the whole created universe there is not a good which is not such by participation.” However, we can understand the common good more narrowly with respect to the goods of human association, as opposed to goods which are exclusive to an individual.

In other words, a good is a common good if and only if it is common. Individual goods are exclusive, and are proper only to the individual as such. For example, food is an individual good, because it can only be consumed as food by an individual; peace is a common good, because it can only be enjoyed as the tranquility of order between persons. Multiple individuals cannot eat the same morsel, nor can one man enjoy peace in isolation.

The more particular goods one identifies, both common and individual, the more it becomes apparent that material goods are always proper to the individual as individual goods, whereas common goods are always proper to rational beings as goods of the soul. Hence, Aristotle notes that man, by virtue of his rational nature, is most suited to social life and is appropriately defined as a political animal. It is in light of this relation between reason and political participation that De Koninck identifies the common good as the greatest good proper to man:

The highest good of a man belongs to him not insofar as he is himself a certain whole in which the self is the principal object of his love, but "insofar as he is part of a whole," a whole which is accessible to him because of the very universality of his knowledge[…] Thus it is indeed as part that we are ordered to this greatest of all goods which can only be ours most completely through being communicable to others.

In other words, because the highest perfection of man is the perfection of his rational soul, and the common good is available to man insofar as he is rational, then man’s highest good must be a common good.

The End of Politics

Aristotle, whose thought is a major influence on Thomas’ political philosophy, begins his discussion of politics in the Ethics, identifying the “master art” as that which deals with the most excellent good proper to man:

If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good[...] We must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is, and of which of the sciences or capacities it is the object. It would seem to belong to the most authoritative art and that which is most truly the master art. And politics appears to be of this nature…”

What Aristotle then treats of in the Ethics, namely, the development of virtue, which St. Thomas ultimately considers to be the perfection of man’s nature, is brought to completion in the Politics.

Aristotle understands political association as an activity with the express view of attaining the good: “Observation shows us, first, that every polis is a species of association, and, secondly, that all associations come into being for the sake of some good -- for all men do all their acts with a view to achieving something which is, in their view, a good.” St. Thomas follows Aristotle closely on this point, but stresses an important qualification, as he comments, “all men perform everything they do for the sake of that which is seen as a good, whether it is truly good or not.”

The subtle shift from the good in itself to “what is seen as a good” reveals an important characteristic of political association. Only beings of a rational nature are able to direct themselves to the good according to their own understanding. When man understands and chooses what is truly good, this constitutes human freedom, a freedom which non-rational beings do not have. Therefore, the ability to enter into political association for the sake of the common good can be seen as a manifestation of this freedom, though this freedom is only realized with respect to what is truly good.

Species of Association

St. Thomas, in his commentary on the Politics, delineates the various types of human association. As the guiding principle of his treatment, he states that, “every human association is an association according to certain acts.” With this observation in mind, he begins with a discussion of the most fundamental sphere of human association, namely, domestic society.

Domestic society, Thomas notes, is an association for the sake of the everyday necessities of human life. These necessities can be divided into two activities; that which generates human life, and that which preserves it. The first activity of domestic society, therefore, is proper to the association of husband and wife, an association that is common also to plants and animals. The second activity of domestic society is that of ruler and subject: This association is not necessarily one of master and slave, but involves any relationship whereby useful work is made effective enough for the fulfillment of daily needs. These two associations together constitute domestic society.

For Thomas, the next order of society is the village, which is composed of several households, and is characterized by communal activity that is not everyday, or at least not of immediate necessity. In modern context, some of the activities which might be relegated to this association are waste disposal, public transportation, or the paving of roads.

 Lastly, Thomas considers the city to be (in the order of nature) the perfect society, because it is entirely sufficient for the necessities of human life. On this level of association, not only daily necessities, but the various activities necessary for the preservation of human society are carried out, such as the levying of taxes or martial defense. However, in each of these associations, reference has been made only to individual goods of a material nature.

As stated above, the ultimate goal of human association is not individual goods, but spiritual, common goods. St. Thomas, well aware of this, states that “from [the city’s] existence it comes about that men not only live but that they live well, in so far as by the laws of the city the life of men is ordered to the virtues.” It is through the city that laws are made, which are necessary to educate its citizens in virtue; and virtue, in turn, is necessary for human perfection.

Law

St. Thomas defines law as having four essential characteristics; “an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated.” The most universal law is the Eternal Law, which is the ratio of divine governance. All of creation, receiving its being from God, attains its perfection according to this intelligible order. The natural law is the participation in the Eternal Law by rational creatures. Insofar as the human person apprehends the order of creation of which he is a part, and directs his action in accord with it, he conforms himself to the natural law.

The law which is legislated by cities is called the human law. This law is derived from the natural law as the application of its precepts for a particular community, but is enforced by human authority:

Something may be derived from the natural law in two ways: first, as a conclusion from premises, secondly, by way of determination of certain generalities. The first way is like to that by which, in sciences, demonstrated conclusions are drawn from the principles: while the second mode is likened to that whereby, in the arts, general forms are particularized as to details[…] Accordingly both modes of derivation are found in the human law. But those things which are derived in the first way, are contained in human law not as emanating therefrom exclusively, but have some force from the natural law also. But those things which are derived in the second way, have no other force than that of human law.”

Every human being is governed equally by the natural law, but human law is subject to change according to culture or custom.

That human law is mutable does not imply that it is arbitrary, as if it followed from the will of civil authority without qualification. Rather, human law, insofar as it is directed for the particularities of a given community, is guided by justice at the service of regnitive prudence: That is, because justice renders to each person what is due according to the order of reason, an unjust law is without reason, and so a human law has the character of law only insofar as it is just.

Human law is not necessary only for the sake of educating citizens in virtue, else a virtuous people would need no law. Yet even a virtuous citizenry still acts for the sake of the common good which can only be enjoyed in community. Hence, the existence of law is not determined by the lack of perfection among the citizens it governs; rather, it is the rational principle by which the order of the community is governed and by which the common good is made possible. Gilson explains this notion as follows:

[R]eason directs a person’s acts for his own welfare; but this individual lives in society and is a member of the body politic, and, as is always the case with groups, he is directed in view of the whole of which he is a part. This or that man’s reason, though qualified to guide his actions for his welfare, is not, therefore, qualified to shape them for the good of the community to which he belongs, and to subordinate them to it.

Human law can therefore be understood as analogous to the Eternal Law: As all creatures find their perfection by participation in the Eternal Law, which precedes them as the principle of that perfection, so too does every human association attain its perfection by cooperation in human law, which is the organizing principle of that association