Macintyre, Aquinas, Politics

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MacIntyre, Aquinas, and PoliticsAuthor(s): Thomas S. HibbsSource: The Review of Politics, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Summer, 2004), pp. 357-383Published by: Cambridge University Pressfor the University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of Review ofPolitics

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MacIntyre, Aquinas, and PoliticsThomas S. Hibbs

In recent years, Alasdair MacIntyre has supplemented his longstandingcritique of the liberal nation-state with a defense, grounded largely in aninterpretationof the writings of Aquinas, of the politics of the common good asembodied exclusively in local communities. Even after MacIntyre'saccount oflocal politics has been clarified and distinguishedfrom the distortionsof some ofhis critics, there remain weaknesses, chief among which are that the localcommunities he promotes are pre- or subpolitical and that his hasty dismissal ofmodem politics involves the sort of caricatureof existing political realities aliento Aquinas's prudentialassessment of regimes.At the end of their introduction o a recent collection of es-

says on VirtueEthics, RogerCrispand Michael Slote assert, virtueethics needs to expand its recent moral horizons so as to take inlarger questions of political morality. 'As they note, some of themost telling objectionsto virtue ethics as an independentand com-prehensive theory focus either upon the lacuna concerning politicsor the implausibility of developing a viable political theory fromthe notion of virtue. The silence of virtue ethicists on politicalmatters is especially disconcerting for the followers of Aristotle,who allies ethics with politics, the architectonicscience.2This essay is an expandedversion of a piece I composed as respondenttoAlasdair MacIntyre's lecture, Politics, Philosophy and the Common Good,delivered as partof the BradleyLecture Series in Politics and Religion at BostonCollege on February 5, 2000 I am grateful o ProfessorMacIntyre or his responsesto the questions posed to him on that occasion. I am also grateful to JohnO'Callaghan, Jay Bruce, WalterNicgorski, and two anonymousreviewers at TheReview for helpful commentson previous draftsof this essay.1. VirtueEthics, ed. Crispand Slote (Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress, 1997).2. The problem is not a dearth of available material on politics and virtue.See, for example, William Galston, Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues,and Diversity inthe LiberalState (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1991); QuentinSkinner,TheRepublican deal of PoliticalLiberty, n Machiavelliand Republicanism, d.G. Bock, Q. Skinner,and M. Viroli (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1990);Amy Gutmann,DemocraticEducation Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1987);Richard Sinopli, TheFoundation ofAmerican Citizenship: Liberalism, the Constitution,and Civic Virtue Oxford:OxfordUniversity Press, 1997); RichardDagger, CivicVirtues: Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1997).

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358 THE REVIEWOF POLITICSSince the appearance f After Virtuen 1981,AlasdairMacIntyrehas been a vigorousproponentof an ethics of virtue.Yet through he1980s and into theearly1990s,he had littleto say aboutpolitics,exceptby way of reiteratingand amplifying vituperationsagainst modemliberalism.Eventhe sequelto AfterVirtue,whichbears the promisingtitle, WhoseJustice? WhichRationality?, supplies little in the way of po-liticalphilosophy.Of course,much of MacIntyre's arlywritingwasdevoted o Marxistpolitical heory,butwiththe abandonmentf Marx-ism came a concomitantshift in attention rompolitics to ethics. Inrecentyears,however,MacIntyre as hadquitea bit to say about thepoliticaland social structures f the commongood, as he putsit in thetitleof a chaptern his latestbook,DependentRationalAnimals.3In theserecentwritings,MacIntyre upplementshis long-standingcritiqueofliberalismwith a defense of the politics of the commongood as em-bodiedexclusivelyin local communities,whichare,as he puts it, theonly places wherepoliticalcommunitycan be constructed, politicalcommunityvery much at odds with the politics of the nation-state. 4Like his propheticcall at the end of After Virtue or a new St.Benedict, MacIntyre's advocacy of local communities has earnedhim rebuke and scorn, mostly from those who have failed to takethe time to understandwhat he has actually written.5In whatfol-lows, we will look carefullyat what MacIntyrehas writtenrecentlyon politics, especially on the politics of local communities.In thefirst section of the essay, we will examine MacIntyre'sreasonsforthe promotionof the politics of local communities and the weak-3. See Politics,Philosophyand the CommonGood, StudiPerugini 3 (1997),reprintedn TheMacIntyre'sReader,ed. Kelvin Knight(NotreDame:UniversityofNotre Dame Press),pp. 235-52; The Theses on Fuerbach:A Road Not Taken, n

Artifacts, Representations, and Social Practice: Essays for Marx Wartofsky Hingham,MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers,1994), reprinted n TheMacIntyreReader,pp.223-34; NaturalLaw as Subversive:The Case of Aquinas, ournalof MedievalandEarly Modern Studies 26 (1996); Dependent Rational Animals: WhyHuman Beings Needthe VirtuesChicago:OpenCourt,1999).To these, we mightadd, The Privatizationof 'Good':An Inaugural ecture, Reviewof Politics 52 (1990) and the preface o the2nd edition of Marxismand ChristianityNew York:Duckworth,1995).4. Politics,Philosophy,nd the CommonGood, n TheMaclntyreReader, . 248.5. But perhapsnot as much scorn as his embraceof CatholicismandThomism.See the vitriolic reactions of MarthaNussbaum, Recoiling from Reason, NewYorkReviewof Books 36 (1989): 36-42 andAnneteBaier, WhatWomenWant n aMoral Theory, in Moral Prejudices: Essays on Ethics (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversityPress, 1995), p. 17.



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MACINTYREAND AQUINAS 359nesses in the standardobjectionsto his position. Indeed,more thanmost contemporaryAristoteliansor Thomists,MacIntyrehighlightsthe distinctive features of a political theory that takes its bearingsfroma conceptionof the commongood, most evident to us in localcommunities.In the second section, we will arguethat, despite itsvirtues,the sort of small, fleeting, marginalcommunitiesMacIntyrepromotesare sub- or prepoliticalnot just by modem standards,buteven by the standardsof the Aristotelianpolis. In the thirdsection,we argue that MacIntyre'sattempt, in the wake of the failure ofMarxism,to develop a politics of the commongood by means of afusion of elements from Marx, Aristotle, and Aquinas leaves himwith a severely truncatedand distortedpolitical theory,whose dan-gers consist less in posing a radical, subversive threat to theconventional order than in restricting our ability to think aboutmodernpolitical orders in anything other than reductionistterms.

The Common Good as the Basis forRepudiating the Modern State

A seriesof faulty interpretationsf his writings,especiallyof theirpolitical implications, promptedMacIntyreto write Politics, Phi-losophy and the Common Good, in which he responds to twomisconceptions.The first concerns the accusation,voiced by HilaryPutnam, hat,by its attitude o alternativeways of life, MacIntyre'spolitics immunize[s]institutionaloppressionfrom criticism. Thesecond has to do with the tendencyof friendsand foes alike to alignMacIntyre with communitarianism.6 For all the alterations in6. For criticisms of MacIntyre'saccounts of traditionand of liberalism, seeGary Gutting, Pragmatic Liberalism and the Critique of Modernity (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1999),pp. 69-112; JeanPorter, Traditionn the RecentWorkof AlasdairMacIntyre, n AlasdairMacIntyre, d. MarkMurphy Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 2003), pp. 38-69; and Jeffrey Stout, Democracy andTraditionPrinceton: rincetonUniversityPress,2003), pp. 118-39. The best criticismscan be found in Stout who argues that, in his hasty and sweeping dismissal ofmodernity,MacIntyrealls shortof his own standardsor debatewith rivalpositions.Stoutwrites, Theresultis utterlyunsympathetic aricatureat the very point wherethe narrativemost urgentlyrequiresdetailed and fair-minded xpositionif it meansto test its author'spreconceptions ithanyrigorat all (p. 127).For a luciddiscussion

of MacIntyreon traditionand modernity,see TerryPinkard, MacIntyre'sCritiqueof Modernity, n AlasdairMaclntyre, d. Murphy,pp. 176-200.



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360 THE REVIEW OF POLITICSMacIntyre'sphilosophical positions over the years, there remainsaunifying thread:opposition to liberalism and the modern, nation-state. Implicit in After Virtue'sdiscussion of practicesas providingthe indispensablecommunalsetting for the understandingand cul-tivationof virtue, he notion of the commongoodhas cometo occupyan increasingly mportant lace in MacIntyre's ashioningof a politi-cal alternativeo the liberalism f the modemstate.Indeed, he revivalof a Thomisticunderstandingf the commongood is at the heartofMacIntyre'srecentpolitical writings.The problemwithmost criticswho embracePutnam's bjectionsthatthey typicallyignorewhatMacIntyrehas to say about the ratio-nalityof traditions, is repudiationf a Burkean onception f tradition,and his emphasison the necessity of, and conditionsfor, debatebe-tween rival traditions of inquiry.7In Politics,Philosophyand theCommonGood, or example,MacIntyre istinguishes etweena Volkandapolis, the latterof which is alwayspotentially r actuallya soci-ety of rationalinquiryand self-scrutiny. n fact, MacIntyreseemsincreasinglyinclined to turnPutnam'sobjection against liberalism.WhereasMacIntyreadvocatesan active and engagedtoleration hatwould take seriouslythe possibilityof learning he truth rom a rival,modempoliticsfosterspassivetolerance, hatis, publicindifferenceothe good. Toward he end of Politics,Philosophyand the CommonGood, MacIntyreassertsthat while inequalitymay involve oppres-sion, the chief form of oppressionconsists in the deprivationof thepossibility of learningabout the good in and through inquirywithothers.As MacIntyre ees it, modempolitics systematically rustratesthis type of inquiry.8The unstatedconclusion would seem to be thatmodernpolitics is the trueoppressor.9

7. See, for example, Whose Justice? WhichRationality? (Notre Dame: Universityof NotreDamePress, 1988),pp. 349-69. For a response o the chargethatMacIntyreis a political conservative,see Kelvin Knight's RevolutionaryAristotelianism, nContemporaryoliticalStudies,ed. I. Hampsher-Monknd J. Stanyer,1996,vol. 2.8. Inthis,modernity,ccordingo MacIntyre,ailson its own terms. Insteadf theever-wideningeducatedpublic of the democraticintellect, which Enlightenmenttheoristshadpredictedwouldbe the resultof liberalism, we have the masssemiliteracyof the television udience AnIntervieworCogito, n TheMaclntyre eader,p. 272).9. Even morepowerfully, he argumentof DependentRationalAnimals s thatphilosophical iases,rooted n a distinctivelyWestern elebration f rational utonomyand a Lockeanconceptionof the person,have led certainstrains of contemporaryliberalism o defendpolicies of unjustexclusion.In this book.MacIntyre etractshisearlierrejectionof naturaleleologyanddepicts he virtuesas constitutinghe formof



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MACINTYREAND AQUINAS 361MacIntyrehimself suggeststhat therevolutionary truggles re-garding slavery, suffrage,and organized abor involveddegreesandkinds of politicalparticipationhat are quiteas alien to the democraticformsof the politicsof the contemporarytate as theyare to nondemo-cratic forms. 10Althoughmuch more would have to be said aboutthese matters, here aregrounds or thinking hatMacIntyre's ccountof oppressionas a deprivationof opportunitiesor communaleduca-tion about the good could help us to recover features of Americanhistorythatwe areincreasinglyn dangerof forgetting.The tendency,for example, o depictAfrican-Americantruggles xclusivelyas a civilrights struggle s reductionistic, resentinga version of Americanhis-torythat is suspiciouslycomforting o proceduraliberalism.Part of what MacIntyrethinks we might recover from a moreaccuratehistory is a notion of the common good, irreducible to asumming of individual goods. Precisely because MacIntyreadvo-cates a politics of the common good and thinks that the commongood can be pursued only within the context of local communi-ties, he has often been labeled a communitarian.One of the pointsof the essay Politics, Philosophy and the Common Good, is to

life appropriate forbeings biologically constitutedas we are. The book seeks torecovera greater ense of the animal onditions f humanagencyand of the natureand extentof humanvulnerabilitynddisability p. x). If theturn o naturaleleologyseemsa noveltyto readersaccustomed o MacIntyre's efense of an historicist, ocialteleology, t is nonethelessomething f a return. n Notes romthe MoralWilderness,firstpublishedn TheNew Reasoner n 1958,MacIntyre rgued hatthe bridgebetweenmoralityand desire, severedin a varietyof ways on modemthoughtandlife, is theMarxistconceptionof humannature.He writes, Capitalism rovidesa formof life inwhich men rediscover desire in a number of ways. ... One meets the anarchicindividualist esireswhicha competitive ocietybreeds n us with a rediscovery f thedeeperdesire to sharewhat is commonin humanity,o be divided neither rom themnor fromoneself, to be a man ( Notesfrom the MoralWilderness, eprintedn TheMaclntyreReader,pp. 46-47).10. Dependent Rational Animals, p. 142.11. Contemporaryiberalpolitical theory may itself be at odds with importantfeatures of the African-American truggle.In Rawls and Libertyof Conscience,(Review of Politics 60 [1988]), Andrew Murphy cogently argues that underlyingRawls's liberalism is, at best, a belief-action plit that has historicallyworkedagainstliberty of conscience; at worst, a scheme of repressionand self-censorshipwhichrenderscomprehensivedoctrinesmeaningless p. 250). I am currentlyworkingonan essay on MacIntyre nd African-American hought he thesis of which is thatsomething very much akin to MacIntyre'saccount of rationalityand cooperativeinquiry s operative n the writingsof FrederickDouglass and W. E. B. DuBois.



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362 THE REVIEW OFPOLITICSassure us that this is not so.12 MacIntyre's depiction of the par-ticular or local aspiration for the universal good cuts across thecontemporary divide between particularists or communitarians,on the one hand, and universalists, on the other. Political reflec-tion is at first, and to some extent always, local. Debatesand issuesare framed in local terms, but even here the answers given haveuniversal import and, if followed to their logical term, engenderquestions about the human good, not just about the good for meas an individual or about the good of my community.13Furthermore,whereas communitariansare relatively silent onthe question of the common good, MacIntyreis committed to anaccount of the common good that sets him in opposition to thenation-state. MacIntyre'smost concise formulation of this oppo-sition and of the importanceof recoveringa notion of the commongood can be had in the following passage from Politics, Philoso-phy, and the Common Good :

We now inhabit a social order whose institutionalheterogeneityanddiversityof interests s such that no place is left any longerfor a politicsof the commongood. Whatwe have instead is a politics from whoseagendas enquiry concerning the nature of that politics has beenexcluded, a politics thereby protected from perceptions of its ownexclusionsand limitations.Enquirynto the natureof the commongoodof political society has become therefore crucial for understandingcontemporary politics. For until we know how to think about thecommongood, we will not know how to evaluate the significance ofthose exclusions and limitations.14

Of course, the modem nation-state is characterizedby all sorts ofcooperative endeavors, as individuals give allegiance to a host ofcommon pursuits. But the justification of political authority ismerely instrumental, in so far as it provides a secure social orderwithin which individuals may pursue their own particularends,whatever they are. 1In this context, the common good is noth-ing other than a summing of individual goods, a conception of

12. As MacIntyre sees it, communitarianism .. is a diagnosis of certainweaknesses in liberalism, not a rejection of it ( Politics, Philosophy and theCommonGood, p. 244).13. Ibid.,p. 249.14Ihid- , p 23915. Ibid., p. 241.



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MACINTYRE AND AQUINAS 363the common good at once individualist and minimalist. l6 Nolonger the architectonicpractice organizing all other practices inlight of the common good, politics becomes one specialized sphereamong many.17The common good performs the function in MacIntyre's po-litical thought of the best regime in classical political theory; itprovides a vantage point from which one can gauge a variety ofpolitical orders and perceive their limitations and exclusions.To limitations and exclusions, we should add distortionsand deceptions. Here MacIntyreturns to Marx as an indispens-able analyst of modern liberalism:

Even if the Marxist characterizations of advanced capitalism areinadequate,he Marxistunderstandingf liberalismas ideological, as adeceiving and self-deceiving mask for certainsocial interests,remainscompelling.Liberalism n the name of freedomimposes a certainkindof unacknowledged ominationwhich in the long run tends to dissolvetraditional ties and to impoverish social and cultural relationships.Liberalism,while imposing throughstate power regimes that declareeveryone free to pursue whatever they take to be their own good,deprivesmost people of the possibilityof understandingheir lives as aquest for the discoveryand achievementof the good.'8MacIntyre'spolitical thoughthas at least one advantageover whatoften now passes for Aristotelian and Thomistic political thought.His thought forces upon us a question that followers of Aristotleand Aquinas have rarely formulated,let alone answered: In whatsense can modernpolitics be considered an Aristotelian craft?AsMacIntyre explains, the various expressions of good, such as'good at,' 'good for,' the virtue words, the expressionswhich ap-

16. Ibid., p. 242.17. MacIntyre s quite clearly aligning himself with those Thomists such asCharlesDeKonninckwho advocateda strongsense of the priorityof the commongood. For a discussion of a varietyof Thomisticconceptionsof the commongoodand for helpful clarification of the meanings of common good in Aquinas'sown thought,see Greg Froelich, TheEquivocalStatusof the Bonum Commune,New Scholasticism63 (1989): 38-57. On Thomist debates over the common good,see Mary Keys, PersonalDignity and the Common Good: A Twentieth-CenturyThomistic Dialogue, in Catholicism, Liberalism, and Communitarianism, ed. KennethGrasso,GeraldBradley,and R. Hunt(Lanham,MD: RowmanandLittlefield,1995),pp. 173-96.18. An Interviewwith Giovanna, n TheMacIntyreReader,p. 258.



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364 THE REVIEWOF POLITICSpraise performance of duty, and 'good for its own sake' are atonce socially and semanticallyordered. They have their primarysense and meaningin the context of practices,where we have clearstandards of excellence, of progress and failure. Outside of suchpractices, especially in social orders in which practice-basedre-lationships have been marginalized ... such expressions ...inevitably degenerate into what appearto some as no more thangeneralized expressions of approval. '9But if modernpolitics-because of its size, its impersonal modes of bureaucraticorganization, its penchant for according preeminence to instru-mentalreason-no longermeets the criteriafor a craft in Aristotle'ssense, then our situation is grave indeed. Not because we shallhave trouble knowing how to think about modern politics in Ar-istotelian or Thomistic terms, but because, if MacIntyreis right,our very usage of the terms good and its cognates will be ren-dered deeply problematic.MacIntyre'sresponse to the crisis of the good, the waning ofour appreciationand practiceof virtue, is a shift in attentionawayfrom the nation-stateto local communities and specific practices,wherein the language of good, the pursuit of common goods,and the fostering of virtues perdure. In these locations, we candiscover the residual elements of premodern politics, a politicsthat is diametrically opposed to the modem political structuresofthe nation-state.

The Dilemmas of Local GovernmentIn his boldest statements, MacIntyre is Kierkegaardianre-garding the situation of virtue in the modern state. Either one

accepts the communitarianattemptto invest the nation-statewiththe task of moral education, of providing an ethos for the culti-vation of virtue, or one repudiates the moral legitimacy of thestate entirely. MacIntyre's assertion that the modern state can'tadvance any justifiable claim to the allegiance of their memberswould seem to make opposition to the nation-state morallyobligatory. Of course, a majority of citizens could not believethis about the modern state and go on serving it in the way theydo. Hence, the modern nation-state must masquerade as a lib-19. An Interview for Cogito, pp. 273-74.



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MACINTYRE AND AQUINAS 365eral democracy. His precise description of modern states is thatthey are oligarchies disguised as liberal democracies. GivenMacIntyre's persistent opposition to capitalist economics, it re-mains unclear why his goal should not be to undermine entirelythe nation-state. We have already quoted the passage in whichMacIntyre concedes that the Marxist characterizations of ad-vanced capitalism are inadequate. Since MacIntyre describescapitalism in the same sweepingly negative terms as does Marx,it remains unclear precisely where MacIntyre thinks Marx wentwrong about capitalism.20As Kelvin Knight suggests, MacIntyre has indeed continuedthe project some have criticized him for abandoning, namely, theproject of articulating emergent socialist consciousness withincapitalist society, a consciousness evident in the ways in whichmen and women seem to be more 'realized' as rational or moralagents, when acting collectively in conscious rebellion (or resis-tance) against capitalist process. 21 The reason the socialist andanticapitalist features of MacIntyre's thought are not so evidentas they once were is that MacIntyrehas given up the hope of re-placing or reformingthe nation-state along socialist lines.Yet, MacIntyre himself retreats from his dismissive attitudetoward the nation-state, which, he concedes, has massive re-sources and exercises coercive legal powers. 22While remainingdeeply suspicious of it, we should acknowledge that the nation isineliminable and not despise its resources. 23But the relianceon resources and coercive power raises other sorts of difficulties.

20. In The Theses on Fuerbach, MacIntyre traces Marx's failures to hisprecipitate abandoningof philosophy, but this is a failure in Marx's attempt toarticulatea viable alternative o capitalism,not in his analysis of capitalismitself.For MacIntyre'saccount of the inadequaciesof Marx as an economist, especiallyin his prophetic predictions about the imminent and inevitable collapse ofcapitalism, see Marxism and Christianity.A recent attemptto apply MacIntyre'sthought to economics and social theory is Peter McMylor's Alasdair Maclntyre:Critic of Modernity (London: Routledge, 1994).21. Kelvin Knight, RevolutionaryAristotelianism, . 885. Knight is quotingE.P.Thompson'slament that MacIntyreabandonedthis line of inquiry.See E. P.Thompson, An OpenLetterto Leszek Kolakowski, n The Socialist Register,ed.Miliband and Saville (London:The MerlinPress, 1974), pp. 58-59.22. Dependent Rational Animals, p. 142.

23. Ibid.,p. 133. In this contextMacIntyrepraisesthose responsible or passingthe Americanswith Disabilities Act.



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366 THE REVIEW OF POLITICSThere is the question of the principles and proceduresin light ofwhich the nation-state should go about distributing its massiveresources in a just and economical way. Every time the state sup-ports the project of one local community, it takes potentialresources away from other communities and other projects.MacIntyre might allow that the local community should articu-late for itself guidelines regardingdistributivejustice, guidelinesthat it would follow in its competitionwith other local communi-ties for the resources of the state. But he seems to think that anyattemptto come up with guidelines for the state is pointless, sincethe nation-state's distributionof goods in no way reflects a com-mon mind. This once again raises the question of the morallegitimacy of the state. And that question becomes more pressingwhen we turn from the state's distribution of resources to its useof coercive power.Now, MacIntyre ranklyadmitsthatpolitical communities,evenon the scale that he is advocating, must exercise coercive power.On behalf of the political nature of these local communities,MacIntyrecan point to ranking and organizing an arrayof prac-tices and to the engagement in deliberation about goods held incommon. But what is absent is any referenceto legislation,the keymark of politics for Aristotle and Aquinas. Indeed, in the SummaTheologiaeAquinastreatspoliticsunderthe topic of human aw.Theonly way that the natural aw of Aquinascan become politicalis bybecoming humanlaw. Within the confines of the nation-statewithits invasive and seemingly omnipresent legal apparatus,what sortof legislative self-determination an a local communityhave?Evenif it decides how to allocate resources and enact local laws, its po-lice force is still fundamentallycommitted to enforcing the law ofthe nation and its economy is largely dependent on the nationaland increasingly the internationaleconomy.A relatedissue concernswar. In keeping with his focus on thelocal rather than the national,MacIntyreavoids references to war.While Aristotle famously argues that the ambition to empire isignoble, he does seem to grant a priority (in the order of genera-tion if not in the order of excellence or nobility)to war.Any nationthat is insecure in its relationships with its neighbors is unlikelyto have the time or the resourcesto pursuethe higher goods, whichconstitute a truly good communallife. Maclntyreis not a pacifist;he is committed to Catholic just war teaching. But does not this



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MACINTYRE AND AQUINAS 367entail some sort of discriminationbetween rival nation-states?Onemight respond that we could determine just wars on an ad hocbasis, by focusing on specific criteria of just war, for example,whether the cause is just and whether the means of executing thewar are just. But this leaves aside another criterion: whether thegovernment that wages the war has the just authority to do so.And if the nation-state's distributionof goods in no way reflectsa commonmind, then it is hard to see how it could reflect a com-mon mind in the most importantmatters of life and death.24MacIntyre made a gesture in the direction of a response tothese sorts of criticisms toward the end of After Virtue,where hecautioned that he was not offering an anarchist critique of thestate. By this he means that certainforms of government maywell be necessary and legitimate. But he adds quickly that themodemstate is not such a form of government. But this is hardlyreassuring; it seems to leave open the possibility that fomentinganarchy in any modern state might well be legitimate and desir-able. At this point, MacIntyreadds a long clarificationthat rendershis position even more baffling:

This does not meanthat there are not manytasks only to be performedin and throughgovernmentwhich still requireperforming: he rule oflaw,so far as it is possible n a modemstate,hasto be vindicated,njusticeand unwarrantedufferinghave to be dealt with, generosityhas to beexercised, and libertyhas to be defended,in ways that are sometimesonly possible throughthe use of governmental nstitutions. But eachparticularask, each particular esponsibility,has to be evaluatedon itsown merits.25There are two serious problems with this line of argument.First,MacIntyrein quick succession takes away and then reasserts thelegitimacy of the modern state. It has no claim to legitimacy andyet we are to uphold its ruleof law, its correctionof injustice,its alleviation of suffering, and its promotion of generosityand liberty. But if the modem state can, even only occasionally,foster these virtues, then it is hardly worthy of the wholesale con-demnationMacIntyrelevels against it. Second, the admission thatthe modem state operates in better and worse ways, that it some-

24. Ibid., p. 131.25. After Virtue,p. 237.



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368 THE REVIEWOF POLITICStimes does and sometimes does not promote certain virtues, sug-gests that we should have a more complicated discussion of itsstrengths and weaknesses, its virtues and vices, than MacIntyreanywhere pursues or even encourages. Instead, MacIntyre sug-gests a piecemeal engagementof the modem state with eachtaskevaluated on its own merits. But this would return us to the sortof sporadic, punctual approach to politics that virtue ethics hasbeen set on removing from ethical theory.26Indeed, some such reflection on modernstates would contrib-ute to MacIntyre's defense of the limited autonomy of localcommunities.Wouldit not be useful, for example,to examinevari-ous conceptions of the relationship between national and stategovernments and between state and local communities?27Wouldit not be necessary to have some sort of position on constitutionallaw? MacIntyre includes the establishment of formal constitu-tional procedures of decision-making as one of the goals ofdeliberative participation in local communities.28 But if localcommunities are going to develop proceduresfor self-legislation,then other constitutional issues shall have to be settled, such asthe proper relationship between local communities and the state

26. In the context of the passage just quoted, Maclntyre adds that modernsystematic politics, whether liberal, conservative, radical or socialist, simply hasto be rejected ibid., p. 237). MacIntyredoes not say precisely what he meansbysystematic politics, although in the immediately preceding pages he hascriticized the political theories of Nozick and Rawls. Between their approachesand that of MacIntyrestand a host of otherpolitical theorists,includinga numberof Thomists,who can hardlybe said to be naive about the prospectsfor virtueinthe modem state. I am thinkingof Yves R. Simon, Russell Hittinger,andAnthonyLisska, among others. Toward the end of this essay, I will take up Maclntyre'sobjection to a certainkind of political theorizing.This much is clear-MacIntyrehas clearly not shown that all types of theorizing about politics in the modernstate are vulnerable to his objections.27. MacIntyredoes preciselythis, if only briefly,when he sides with liberalsagainst communitariansin holding that the nation-state should remain neutralbetween rival conceptions of the human good and that shared visions of thegood shouldbe articulatedn the activitiesof subordinate oluntaryassociations( A PartialResponse to My Critics, in After Maclntyre,ed. by John Horton andSusanMendus[Cambridge,MA: Polity Press, 1994], p. 302). Among the essays inthis volume that addressMacIntyre'spolitical views, see especially CharlesTaylor,Justice After Virtue, pp. 16-43 and Philip Pettit, Liberal/Communitarian:Macintyre'sMesmericDichotomy, pp 176-204-28. Politics, Philosophy,and the CommonGood, p. 248.



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MACINTYRE AND AQUINAS 369and between both of these and national governments. Withoutsuch large-scale political theorizing and activity, it is hard to seehow a local community,subjectto the laws of the nation, could bea political community in any meaningful sense or at least in anysense countenancedby Aristotle or Aquinas.29MacIntyre calls these communities political because theyinvolve ranking of various practices and the communal pursuitof goods internal o the practices.Yet the term sovereigntyis neverused. Would not any local community,committed to the commongood in the way MacIntyredescribes it, aspire to the kind of self-determination that only sovereignty could provide? Would it notalways have to be prepared,not just preparedbut eager, to over-throw the dominant regime? Yet, MacIntyre's admission that thenation-state is ineliminable indicates that he no longer harborsrevolutionary hopes.His repudiation of this project involves more than the pru-dential judgment that the time is not right for revolution. Heasserts: Those who make the conquest of state power their aimare always in the end conqueredby it. 30 The problem,as he nowsees it, is not to reform the dominantorder,but to find ways forlocal communities to survive by sustaining a life of the commongood against the disintegrating forces of the nation-state and themarket. 31 Only in this sense and at this level does he continue toadvocate a subversive and radical politics, a politics of self-de-fense for all those local societies that aspire to achieve some

29. One might argue hatMacIntyre's efenseof local communitieshas been thecenterpieceof at least one influentialmodem,political theory,namely,thatof Alexisde Tocqueville, who praised the New England townships as the very model andsourceof a robustdemocratic olitics.But the comparisonails in threerespects.First,the townshipswere muchmore accommodatingof certain kinds of economics thanMacIntyre's ommunitieswould be. Second,Tocquevilledescribes he citizens of thetownships as transferring heir allegiance from the local communityto the nation,whereas the membersof MacIntyre's ommunitiesmust see themselvesin a state ofundeclared war with the nation-state. Third, the emphasis in Tocqueville on theprimacy of the township for the practice of self-government does not precludereflection on, and taking positions about, issues of modem constitutions,nationalpolitics and so forth.30. Marxismand Christianity, nd ed.(NotreDame:Universityof Notre DamePress, 1995),p. xv.31. The Spectre of Communitarianism, Radical Philosophy 70 (1995): 35,quoted in Kelvin Knight, RevolutionaryAristotelianism, p. 894.



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370 THE REVIEW OF POLITICSrelatively self-sufficient and independent form of participatorypractice-based community. 32 In these passages, MacIntyreconflates reform and conquest. As we shall see shortly,Aristotle has little patience for the sort of social engineering en-tailed by conquest, both because he was critical of the desire torule over others as an end in itself and because he was suspiciousof radical reform projects. But he, nonetheless, supposes that ev-ery regime presents opportunities for improvement. By contrast,MacIntyre provides no argumentto demonstratethat the discus-sion of better and worse ways for the modem state to engage in ahost of political activities is tantamountto conquest.The more timid hopes for politics corresponds to a contrac-tion in the scope and ambitionsof his political theorizing.Even ifMacIntyre's houghtcan be broughtto bear upon the presentques-tions, one wonders what fruits can come of the sort of politicsMacIntyre recommends. Of course a certain formulation of thissort of question, which accuses MacIntyre of not providing thekind of political theory that would enable us to reform the mod-em state,misses the point entirely.And certainlyMacIntyre s morehonest, or at least more clear-sighted, than are mostcommunitariansabout the sort of common good requiredto cul-tivate virtue. MacIntyre notes that the society he is promotingmustbe small-scale and, so far as possible, as self-sufficientas itneeds to be to protect itself from the destructiveincursionsof thestate and the wider market economy. 33Here MacIntyreadvertsto anotherof Aristotle's criteria for a political regime: self-suffi-ciency. But, given the pervasiveness of the modern state and itseconomy, how could any local community ever attain, let alonesustain, such self-sufficiency?Another sign that something has gone awry in MacIntyre'scurrentpolitical writings is the disjunctionbetween two senses oftradition-constitutedpractice. As we have seen, MacIntyreholds

32. Marxismand Christianity,p. xxvi. MacIntyrewould undoubtedlydefendthe commitment o local communitiesnotjust or primarilyon the basis of a radicalpolitics but as the appropriateresponse for anyone committed to thinking aboutpolitics in the traditionof the commongood. As he puts it, an adequate ense oftraditionmanifestsitself in a graspof those futurepossibilities which the pasthasmade availableto the present After Virtue,p. 223.33. Politics, Philosophy and the CommonGood, p. 248.



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MACINTYREAND AQUINAS 371out hope for political life only in local communitiesexisting at themargins of modern life, communities whose existence beyond ageneration is tenuous. These are the communal contexts withinwhich we can pursue the virtues. But there is another sense oftradition-constitutedpractice, the one to which MacIntyredevotesmuch attention toward the end of Whose Justice? Which Rational-ity?34 He describes the initial development of such a tradition inthree stages:

A first in which the relevantbeliefs, texts, andauthoritieshave not yetbeen put in question;a second in which inadequaciesof varioustypeshave beenidentified,butnot yet remedied; nd a third n whichresponseto those inadequacies has resulted in a set of reformulations,reevaluations, and new formulations and evaluations, designed toremedy inadequaciesand overcome limitations.

As MacIntyre makes clear at the end of Three Rival Versionsof MoralEnquiry, for this sort of tradition-constitutednquiryto flourish inthe modern world would require a restructuringof university lifeand pedagogy. But this ambitious intellectual enterprise wouldnot seem possible in the sorts of communities MacIntyrepraisesfor embodying, however fleetingly, the tradition of the virtues.These communitesare so pressedby the concernsof daily life thatthey barely have time for leisure, much less for the establishmentof textual traditions and the patient engagement of the texts ofrival traditions.Yet, if these are the only sorts of communities inwhich the tradition of the virtues can still flourish, MacIntyre'sentire philosophical project of tradition-constituted nquiry wouldbe otiose indeed.MacIntyre responds directly to the accusation that he is rec-

ommendinga politics of Utopian ineffectiveness. 35His rejoinderis that since the state and the market economy are so structuredas to subvert and underminethe politics of local community, o-cal communities will from time to time have to deal withnation-states and their economies. He adds that in so doing localcommunities will always have to be wary and antagonistic.The most troublingpart of the response is the phrase from timeto time. If the antagonismwere as sharpas MacIntyre depicts it

34. Whose Justice? WhichRationality?, pp. 326-88.35. Politics, Philosophy and the CommonGood, p. 252.



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372 THE REVIEW OF POLITICSas being and if the state were as pervasiveas it seems, then wouldnot any local community serious about its integrity end up beingconsumed by its wrangling with the state? And would not thelong-termsurvivalnecessitate so many compromiseswith the statethat the community'sself-sufficiency would be undermined?Someof the local communities MacIntyrecites as embodying the poli-tics of the common good have survived for no more thantwenty-five years, barely a generation.36Can we call such com-munities, which are unable to perpetuate themselves from onegeneration to another, political ?

Rival Authorities, Conflicting Accounts of PoliticsMacIntyre s fond of puttingto himself the objectionthathe isadvocating utopian politics, but his currentposition marks such aretreat from Marxism or even Aristotelianism that, contrary tobeing utopian, t fails even to rise to the level of politics, at leastasit is conceived by Aristotle, Aquinas, or Marx. Indeed, the prob-lems with MacIntyre's recent political writings concern not justtheir coherence or practicalviability, but also their relationshiptothe authorities and traditions MacIntyre invokes.In the course of elaborating his rival conception of politics,MacIntyre draws upon Aristotle, Aquinas, and Marx. An impor-tant question for MacIntyre's present political views concernstherelativeweight he attachesto the politicalpositionsof each of theseauthoritiesand what he thinks we need to learn from each of them.This is more than an exegetical or historical question. MacIntyreadvocates a conception of rationality as rooted in tradition-con-stituted inquiry and holds that a sign of the flourishing of atradition is its ability to overcome conflicts between rival tradi-tions.37 So, it is a serious and substantivephilosophical question.How well MacIntyre navigates these various sources and inte-grates them into his argument.In his account of the virtues, MacIntyre regularly refers toAristotle; yet MacIntyre almost wholly neglects Aristotle's poli-tics, in spite of the fact that Aristotleoffersa politics of the common36. See, for example,his discussionof hand-loomweavers in LancashireandYorkshireat the end of the eigtheenthcentury( TheTheses on Fuerbach, . 231).37. See Whose Justice? WhichRationality?, pp. 349-69.



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MACINTYRE AND AQUINAS 373good. Human beings naturally desire to live together, both toachieve the goods necessary for survival and to pursue a com-mon life of excellence throughthe practice of the virtues. Indeed,Aristotle's two basic criticisms of existing regimes are that theyaim too low and thatthey aim for only a partof the commongood.The political order provides more than security from injusticeand an arena for exchange and mutual intercourse (Politics1280a35-39).38These are indispensablebut insufficient ingredientsof the political order. The true goal of the political order, whoseorigin is the will to live together in friendship, s a perfectand self-sufficing life, whose centerpiece is noble actions, notmere companionship Politics 1280b30-1281al0). When Aristotleturns his critical eye to actually existing regimes, he finds thateach embodies a part of justice only (Politics 1281a10). Everyregime is organized arounda constitution that specifies the prin-ciples of merit, the particularconception of justice, and who takespartin the deliberative or judicial administration n the regime(Politics 1275b18-19).The most obvious division amongregimes is a quantitativeone,concerning whether one person, or few, or many exercise suchpower. But Aristotle introduces a more fundamentalconsideration,namely,whether those who rule do so for the sake of the commonor the private interest. These two principles-one quantitative,theotherqualitative-generate six possible types of regimes: kingship,aristocracy,constitutional government, on the one hand, and tyr-anny, oligarchy, and democracy, on the other (Politics1279a17-1279b10).Aristotle calls the latter set of three, those thatregardthe private interest, defective and pervertedforms (Poli-tics 1279a17-22).Nonetheless,Aristotle does not dismiss these formsof government;instead, he investigates their partial apprehensionof justice. Equality,which is the principleof democracy,andwealth,which animatesoligarchy,are legitimate claimants to acknowledg-ment andhonorin the politicalorder.Aristotle'sstrategy s to unveilthe limits of each of these perverted orms of regime, to exhibitthe way in which a neglect of othergoods, especially virtue, is del-eterious not just to the flourishing but to the very survival of theregime. How do these argumentsfigure in MacIntyre'spolitics?

38. All quotations from Aristotle's Politics are from the Benjamin Jowetttranslation(Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1941).



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374 THE REVIEW OF POLITICSAlthough MacIntyrenowhere offers a sustained reflection onAristotle's analysis of regimes, he does describe the societies ofadvanced Western modernity as oligarchies disguised as lib-eral democracies. Now, MacIntyre's resistance to oligarchycertainly reflects in some measureAristotle's criticisms of oligar-chy as elevating wealth above virtue and other constitutivegoodsof a regime. Yet, in contrast to MacIntyre's grim and hasty dis-missal of modem oligarchies,Aristotle seeks to engage oligarchiesin light of their peculiar and partial apprehension of the good.Aristotle treats the oligarchas making a legitimate claim to officeand power in the political order; all such claims are based uponthe possession of elements which enter into the composition ofthe state. Thus, the noble or free-born or rich may ... with goodreason claim office, since wealth and freedom are necessary(Politics 1283a14-18). Although Aristotle would clearly shareMacIntyre'sworries aboutthe elevation of the market above otherconstitutingelements of the political order,especially virtue, thereis good reason to doubt that his judgment would be as quick orsweeping as MacIntyre's.Another way to put the difficulty concerning MacIntyre'srelationshipto Aristotle's politics is this: what replaces the analy-sis of the regimes? Has Aristotle's differentiated and prudentialassessment of a variety of legitimate regimes been suppressedin favor of the one regime of virtue? Something like the latterposition seems operative in MacIntyre's Marxist opposition be-tween civil society and some sort of communitythat transcendsthe standpointof civil society.39 If there are types of regimehere,there seem to be only two: the regime of civil society with itsabstract individualism and the regime of the common good withits construal of individuals as always already related to one an-other.Yet, MacIntyre's conception of the rationalityof traditions,of the dialectical encounters between rival traditions, and hisinsistence on the particularist aspiration for the universal goodwould seem not only to allow for, but to require, a differentiatedand prudential engagement of specific communities, indeed oftypes of regime. But the question remains: is Aristotle's focus onregimes helpful for our currentpredicamentor not? What are itsspecific strengthsand weaknesses? So far as I can tell, MacIntyre39. The Theses on Fuerbach, p. 225-28.



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MACINTYRE AND AQUINAS 375nowhere directly addresses these issues. Leo Strauss capturesAristotle's dialectic thus:

Political life is characterized by conflicts between men assertingopposed claims. Those who raise a claim usually believe that whatthey claim is good for them. In many cases they believe, and in mostcases they say, that whatthey claim is good for the community t large.In practically all cases claims are raised, sometimes sincerely andsometimesinsincerely, n the name of justice. The opposedclaims arebased, then,on opinionsof what is good orjust. Tojustify theirclaims,the opposed parties advance arguments. The conflict calls forarbitration,or an intelligentdecision thatwill give each partywhat ittrulydeserves.Someof the material equired or makingsuch a decisionis offeredby the opposedpartiesthemselves,and the very insufficiencyof this partialmaterial-an insufficiency obviously due to its partisanorigin-points the way to its completion by the umpire. The umpirepar excellence is the political philosopher.40

MacIntyre'sconsideredopinion about the political activities of thenation-state must be that it furnishes none of the material re-quired for making ... a decision about justice. MacIntyrecontinues the dialectic only with respect to those residualpremodernelements of our political life. For anythingdistinctivelymodern, there is only repudiation.But this forces MacIntyreinto an odd position in relationshipto Aristotle. He wants Aristotle's ethics without his politics, inspite of the fact thatAristotle presents them as complementary. nhis reaction against the modern separationof ethics from politics,MacIntyreseems at times to go to the other extreme, to fuse hispolitics to an ethical conceptionof the good life. How Aristotelianis such a fusion? While closely related,politics for Aristotle is notsimply an elaborationor expansion of ethics. The Ethics depictsthe model of the good man, whereas the Politics operateswith thedistinction between the good man and the good citizen. No suchdistinction seems to be operative in MacIntyre's political thought.This distinction is closely allied to another distinctionin Aristotle,between the best regime and legitimate regimes. Indeed, the cru-cial, dialectical encounter n the third book of the Politics concerns

40. Leo Strauss, OnClassicalPolitical Philosophy, The Rebirthof ClassicalPolitical Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, edited andintroducedby ThomasPangle (Chicago:University of ChicagoPress, 1989), p. 51.



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376 THE REVIEW OF POLITICSprecisely a conversation between oligarchy and democracy, re-gimes that by their very naturerisk subordinating he commontothe private good of a portion of the citizenry. If Aristotle sharesMacIntyre's exalted conception of politics as the pursuit of thecommon good of virtuousliving, he appearsmore willing to coun-tenance imperfect realizations, even distortions, of this ideal.As Mary Nichols shows in her study of Aristotle's Politics,Aristotle arguesthat the best possible regime is polity, which com-bines elements of oligarchy and democracy.41Aristotle wantshisreaders, the legislators or statesmen, to be acquaintednot onlywith that which is best in the abstract,but also with that which isbest relativelyto circumstances. He urges an investigationof howeach regime is originally formed, and, when formed, how it maybe longest preserved Politics 1288b27-30).He wants what is pos-sible or attainable;but this is not a slavish conformityto tradition,to what is, rather than what might be. The sense of the possibili-ties for improvement latent within any regime is precisely whatleads Aristotle to study in detail the varieties of regime, how manythere are and in how many ways they are combined (Politics1289a7-11). The prudentialassessment of what is given in actu-ally existing regimes, of their complexities and internal conflicts,and of the forces that provide for their amelioration and longev-ity-these are the central preoccupations of Aristotle's politics.Yet these have little or no place in MacIntyre'spolitical thought.MacIntyre'sneglect of the analysisof regimesand his focus onthe opposition between civil society and the virtuous communityraise the question of whether his allegiance in political mattersisnot closer to Marx than to Aristotle.The presenceof words suchas,utopian in Politics,Philosophyand the CommonGood ), revo-lution (MacIntyrerefers us approvinglyto Kelvin Knight's pieceon RevolutionaryAristotelianism )and subversive (see Natu-ral Law as Subversive ) trace their lineage to Marx ratherthanAristotle. This in itself is certainlynot a criticism,much less anun-masking of MacIntyre, who readily admits that contemporaryAristotelianismmust learn from Marx.42 MacIntyreurges a critical

41. Mary Nichols, Citizens and Statesmen: A Study of Aristotle s Politics (Savage,MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1992), especially pp. 85-123.42. See Politics, Philosophy, and the Common Good, p. 251 and AnInterview with Giovanna Borradori, p. 265.



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MACINTYREAND AQUINAS 377reappropriation f Marx, one that takes its point of departure romMarx's fatal error,his repudiationof philosophy after his encoun-ter with the inadequatephilosophies of Hegel and Fuerbach.In hisprecipitate abandoningof philosophy, MacIntyreargues, Marx de-prived himself of the philosophical resources for articulatingthecommon good, resources that MacIntyre finds in Aristotle andAquinas. MacIntyre deploys Aristotelian language to articulateMarx's contrastbetween civil society and objective activity:

In activities governed by the norms of civil society there are no endsexcept those which are understood o be the goals of some particularindividualor individuals,directedby the desires of those individuals.By contrast, he ends of any type of practice nvolvingwhat Marx callsobjective activity are characterizableantecedently to...the desires ofparticular ndividuals....Individualsdiscover in the ends of any suchpractice goods commonto all who engage in it, goods internalto andspecific to that particular ype of practice,which they can make theirown only by allowing their participation in the activity to effect atransformationn the desireswhich they initially broughtwith themtothe activity.43

The passage covers what are by now familiar themes and in-cludes a familiar contrast. What I want to suggest is that anyattempt to reconstruct MacIntyre's mediation of Aristotle andMarx would do well to focus on Aquinas's natural law doctrine.Since MacIntyre embraced Aquinas after having already madethe shift from Marx to Aristotle, this would not be a genetic re-construction. Instead, it would be a teleological reconstruction,one which finds in the doctrine of naturallaw the most adequateexpression of what MacIntyre wants from both Aristotle andMarx: a political theory based on the insights of Aristotle's eth-ics, capable of marshallinga critique of advancedcapitalism, andindependent of Aristotle's politics. But how could natural law,which at least on the surface seems alien to both Aristotle andMarx, help?What MacIntyre finds in Aquinas's doctrine of natural lawis a set of precepts specifying the preconditions of rational in-quiry, for a communal life organized around the pursuit ofgoods held in common. In this way, Aquinas's natural law doc-

43. The Theses on Fuerbach, . 280.



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378 THE REVIEW OF POLITICStrine becomes the basis for MacIntyre's politics. The most ex-plicit statementof the political characterof the natural aw occursin the essay Natural Law as Subversive: The Case of Aquinas,an essay devoted to showing that natural law is equally at oddswith local prejudice and centralizing power. MacIntyre writes,

The exceptionless precepts of the natural law are those which, insofar aswe are rational, we recognize as indispensable in every society and inevery situation for the achievement of our goods and of our final good,because they direct us toward and partially define our common good.44In Politics, Philosophy and the Common Good, he urges thatthe key political question is: what form of social and politicallife provides the conditions for individuals to learnabout theirindividual and common goods, so that questions about the justifi-cation of political authority can be asked and answered throughrational inquiry and debate? 45Such a communitywould have topossess three characteristics: irst, it would have to be small-scaleand, second, it would have to find ways of resisting the domina-tion of the market.But, third,it would also have to be a communitywhose members ... recognize that obedience to those standardsthatAquinas identified as the preceptsof the natural aw is neces-sary, if they are to learn from and with each other what theirindividual and common goods are. 46 Natural law provides pre-cepts for structuringpolitical life without recourse to Aristotle'sown political doctrines.Maclntyre repeatedlydescribes the precepts of the natural awas constitutive of practical, communal deliberation. Aquinas fa-mously argues that the precepts are underived, first principles.Maclntyre interprets this to mean that they are presuppositionsof the very activities in which we must engage if we are to makeprogress in the life of virtue. MacIntyreunderscoresthe pedagogi-cal character of law in Aquinas. Conformity to the preceptsprovides an initial formationof the passions, whose education iscrucial to the cultivation of virtue.47 Aquinashimself respondsinpedagogical terms to the question whether it is useful for human

44. NaturalLaw as Subversive, p. 68.45. Politics, Philosophyand the CommonGood, p. 247.46. Ibid., p. 247.47. NaturalLaw as Subversive, p. 80.



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MACINTYRE AND AQUINAS 379beings to frame laws (ST, I-II, 95, 1). Humanbeings, he states, at-tain the perfectionof virtueby training and law suppliesa crucialpart of that training. For example, whenever Aquinas addressesthe issue of private property,he justifies it not in terms of rightsantecedentto civil government,but in light of the common good.The role of laws regardingproperty is to accustom men to giveof their own readily (ST,I-II, 105, 2).Aquinas, MacIntyre notes, does not construe human law asmapping the precepts of the natural law onto existing societies.The limits to human law derive from prudential principles con-cerning moral education. The attemptto forbid all vice frequentlyengenders unanticipated outbreaks of greater evils. Human lawseeks to lead human beings gradually from the imperfect to theperfect. MacIntyrewrites,

Aquinashusdisagreeswithboth aterpuritans nd later iberals.Like thosepuritans ndunlikethoseliberalshe understandsaw as an instrumentorourmoraleducation. ut,likethoseliberalsandunlike hosepuritans, e isagainstmaking awby itself an attempto repressall vice.48MacIntyreis right to insist that Aquinas is no liberal. He wouldresist the privatizationof the good. If human law should not settlefor the low aims of modernliberal regimes, it can certainlymakedo with much less than what is urged by the entirety of the natu-ral law. Sometimes Aquinas writes that human law forbids onlythe most grievous vices, especially those that are harmfulto oth-ers, such as murderandtheft (ST,I-II, 96, 2). Any attempt o reformthe character of a people by the enactment of law must take itscue fromthe existing customs of the society. Customitself, Aquinaswrites, has the force of law, abolishes law, and is the interpreter flaw (ST,I-II, 97, 3). In situationswherethe people are free to maketheir own law, custom has greater authoritythan the sovereign(ST, I-II, 97, 3, ad 3). MacIntyre concludes, one ... would need thestrongestof reasons to interferewith local custom. On MacIntyre'sinterpretation,Aquinas'saccountof custom protects the local com-munity from the incursions of centralized power.49

48. Ibid., p. 66.49. See MarkMurphy, Consent,Custom,andthe CommonGood in Aquinas'sTheoryof PoliticalAuthority, eviewof Politics 59 (1997):323-50. Also see Murphy'sMacIntyre's oliticalPhilosophy, n AlasdairMacIntyre, d. Murphy,pp. 152-75.



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380 THE REVIEW OF POLITICSBut Aquinasnowhere limits himselfjust to local customs;hespeaks of the difficulty of setting aside the customs of a wholepeople (ST,I-II,97, 3, ad 2). Indeed, he ineradicableole of customleads Aquinas in the direction of a sustained, detailed prudentialengagementwith particularregimes. In his discussion of the util-ity of human law, his principal authorityis Isidore, who speaksprincipallyof the negative function of law, its checking of audac-ity through fear, ts providingsafetyfor the innocent n the midstof wickedness through he dreadof punishment ST, I-II, 95, 1).In circumstanceswhere the people is not virtuous,law forbidsonlythe most grievous vices and its goal is to move the people tovirtue, notsuddenlybut gradually ST, I-II, 96, 2, ad 2).50Aquinas repeatedly gives evidence of being committed toAristotle's focus on the regime in political theory. The preceptsof the law, Aquinaswrites, are diversified accordingto the vari-ous kinds of community (ST, I-II, 100, 2). Aquinas understandsdifferent kinds of political communityin terms of differentconsti-tutions or regimes. For example, in response to the questionwhether the old law provided fitting precepts concerning rules(ST, I-II, 105, 1), Aquinas argues that the regime established byGod for the Jewish people at the time of Moses was a mixed re-gime, the best realizable, constitutional structure. It combineselements of kingdom or monarchy (in the rule of Moses) with el-ements of aristocracy (in the function of the 72 elders) withelements of democracy(in the elders being elected by the people).Commenting that this form of constitution ensures peace, com-mends itself to all, and is guardedby all, he refers us to Aristotle'sPolitics, book two. Similarly, in anotherpassage, this one on hu-man laws being framedby those who govern (ST, I-II, 95, 4), heruns throughthe types of regime and concludes that the best gov-ernmentis one that is made up of all the others.50. Aquinas also addresses the regimes in On Kingship, to the King of Cyprus,Book I, chapters 1-6, transl. by Gerald B. Phelan and introducedby Eschmann(Toronto:PIMS, 1978). This treatiseis, in its examples and style, less GreekthanRoman. The examples of political life are not from Greekcity-statesbut from theRoman Republic. On the debates surroundingthe manuscriptsand authenticityof On Kingship, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, VolumeI, The Personand His Work, ransl.By RobertRoyal (Washington,D.C.: CatholicUniversityof

AmericaPress, 1996), p. 350. Torrellalso discusses the incompleteCommentarynthePolitics(p. 344).



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MACINTYREAND AQUINAS 381For Aquinas as for Aristotle, an analysis of regimes brings tolight the multiple ways of embodying and pursuing the goods of

political life, especially justice. MacIntyrehimself grasps the im-portanceof this point. He writes, Every political and social orderembodies and gives expression to an orderingof different humangoods and therefore also embodies and gives expression to someparticularconceptionof the humangood. 'Yet, MacIntyre gnoresregimes entirely, focusing insteadon local communities,communi-ties even smallerthan that of the ancientpolis. By contrast,AristotleandAquinas describe the political order as a composite, a com-plex mixture not just of goods but of levels and parts.The defenseof a mixed, constitutionalregime requirescareful analysis of con-flicts of goods and interests and of the levels of participationanddegrees of allegiance. Second, the analysis of regimes provides asense of the limitations o any particular, oliticalorder,as embody-ing only a part of justice. Conversely, of course, every regimeembodies some part of justice and thus containswithin itself prin-ciples, howeverunarticulated,hat can operateas dialecticalstartingpoints in the movement toward a more adequate conception andpracticeof justice. A corollaryof the second advantageis a lessonabout how an excessive emphasis on the dominant good of a re-gime can exclude from practice, and occlude from theoreticalanalysis, other goods. Thus does the emphasis on regimes allowfor a prudentialassessment of the virtues and vices, the inclusionsand exclusions, of particularpolitical orders.By way of conclusion,I would like to considerbrieflytwo pos-sible, MacIntyrean rejoinders, concerning political theory andregimes. First, there is the problemof the notion and natureof po-litical theory.Although MacIntyre s not the anti-theoristhe is oftentaken to be, he does insist upon the primacy of certain kinds ofpractice for effective theorizing. In The Theses on Fuerbach, henotes that what Marx rejected in his predecessorswas a particularunderstanding of the relationship between theory and practice,which supposes that the theoreticalanalysis of the incoherence ofvariouspracticesis sufficient to bring about,or at least initiate,so-cial change.Moreover,such abstract,detachedtheorizingrests uponan unwarrantedgap between the self-understanding of the theo-rists and how the theorists understand the subjects of their51. Politics, Philosophy and the CommonGood, p. 247.



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382 THE REVIEWOF POLITICSinquiries. The theorists see themselves as rationalagents, whilethey see others in terms of a determinist theory. 52This gap in-vites theorists to think that it is legitimate to impose theirconceptionof the good onto the subjectsof their inquiries.Thus isborn the bureaucratic,modern state with its hierarchical divisionof managersand managed. 53o all this, MacIntyreopposes theprimacy of a particular kind of practice ... informed by a particu-lar kind of theory,rootedin the same practice. Only in the contextof such communal practices can theorists themselves be trans-formed by the practiceof the intellectualand moral virtues.Now,MacIntyre might say that the political theory of Aristotle andAquinasis susceptibleto the Marxistcritique.Is it? The distinctionbetween best and legitimate regimes would seem to presupposesome sort of distinction between theory and practice,but preciselywhat sort is unclear. It is certainly not the case that Aristotle orAquinasthinks that the theoreticalexposing of incoherenceor con-tradiction n an existing regimewill resolve anythingat the level ofpractice.Nor do they supposethat the political theoristcan operateas a social engineer.The dialecticalrelationshipbetween natureandcustom in classical political theory is not an anticipation ofDescartes'srepudiationof all received opinionas a means of arriv-ing at clear,unadulterateddeas. Aristotelianand Thomisticpoliticaltheorytakes its point of departurerom, and never fully transcends,the opinions about the good already operativein existing regimes.As MacIntyrehimself notes, laws, even those informedby the ide-als of the naturallaw, must be appliedprudentially o the existingcustoms of a society.54Second, however central to Aristotelian and Thomistic politi-cal thought is the notion of the regime, such an inquiry mightnow seem to be of no more than antiquariannterest.We may notbe at the end of history,but we no longerwitness a rich varietyof

52. TheTheseson Fuerbach, . 285.53. Ibid.,p. 286.54. Furthermore,one might wonder whether MacIntyre's own thoughtfitshis model of effective theorizing.That is, one needs to ask, out of what concrete,communal practice does MacIntyre's own theorizing arise? He tends to cite asadmirablexamplesocal communities ith whichhe is clearlyveryfamiliar utnot ones in which he has been an active participant. s not his theorizingin someways exactly parallel to the sort engaged in by Aristotle and Aquinas?



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MACINTYREAND AQUINAS 383regimes. The phenomena themselves may warrant MacIntyre'sneglect of the dialectic of the regimes. And yet-here I can do nomore than gesture in the direction of a response-precisely be-cause of the nearly universal dominance of the democratic idea,the dialectic of the regime may still be useful to us. One of themost importantlessons that we are to learn from Aristotle's dia-lectic of regimes is thatno existing regime is perfect and that eachcan be diminished if not destroyed by an excess of its dominanttendencies. Serious thinking about the natureof regimes can pro-voke a sense of alternative possibilities, a sense absent fromconventional liberal theorizing about conventional liberal poli-tics.55 This is the traditional Aristotelian and Thomistic way ofovercoming the unphilosophical politics and unpolitical phi-losophy to which MacIntyreobjects.56

55. At least this is the thesis advancedby the contemporary,Frenchpoliticalphilosopher, Pierre Manent, whose two most important books are The City ofMan and TheNatureof Democracy.But the elaborationof thatposition must awaitanother day.56. Politics, Philosophy and the CommonGood, pp. 236-37.

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Macintyre, Aquinas, Politics