Socialism as promoted by Robert Owen, Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, François-Marie-Charles Fourier, and others, sought to abolish traditional concepts of private property, marriage and family, and religion. In their place would be new institutions that might go by the same name and even have the same outward form as the old institutions (Saint-Simon, for instance, called his system, “the New Christianity”), but the substance would be completely different.
De Lamennais
One of the worst of the new systems was Neo-Catholicism as promoted by Hugues-Félicité-Robert de Lamennais. It should be noted de Lamennais did not develop Neo-Catholicism. Instead, he radically altered the work of others when he became the movement’s acknowledged leader.
De Lamennais, unquestionably a genius, based his system of Christian socialism on a far more rigorous intellectual foundation than virtually all the others. His “theory of certitude” contained errors of such subtlety that many otherwise orthodox Catholics accept them even today, despite continued efforts by the Catholic Church to eradicate the errors.
Joachim of Flora
Similar to the spirituality of the Medieval Fraticelli based in part on the condemned writings of Blessed Joachim of Flora (cir. 1132-1202) and the nominalism of the sect’s philosopher, William of Ockham (cir. 1287- cir. 1349), de Lamennais’s theory of certitude was a kind of sensus communis — a focus on the common good to the exclusion of individual good. It appealed to the universal testimony of the human race by faith instead of examining empirical evidence or making a logical argument to discern or evaluate religious truth. Interestingly, despite the fact dissenters used his work extensively, and his writings were condemned, Joachim is considered a “beatus” (one step away from canonization or recognition as a saint) because he submitted all his writings to the judgment of the Church.
A further problem was de Lamennais assumed the abstractions he created in his own mind were more real than what could be demonstrated empirically or proven logically. Something was true because he believed it; he did not believe it because it was shown to be true.
De Lamennais therefore dismissed individual reason. He claimed truths such as knowledge of the existence of God and of the natural law reside only in the general reason as the result of direct revelation from God. According to de Lamennais, this requires a central religious authority to interpret truth and communicate it to believers, who accept it on faith.
John Henry Newman
John Henry Newman, unaware the Fathers of the First Vatican Council explicitly repudiated an exaggerated interpretation of papal infallibility, presented his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870) as a clarification of the definition. The Grammar had its origin in Newman’s efforts during the late 1850s and early 1860s to argue a middle way between those like de Lamennais, who based everything on faith even when it contradicted reason, and those such as Newman’s friend William Froude, who rejected faith and believed theological conclusions reached by human reason were uncertain.
To de Lamennais, the theory of certitude meant the pope, as the head of the Catholic Church, is vested with infallibility in matters of faith, morals, reason, and their application in the social sciences. As far as de Lamennais was concerned, the Will of God as interpreted by the pope is the source of all truth. This contradicts the traditional Catholic position, that God’s Nature is reflected in His special creation, man, and discerned by human reason, with which faith is necessarily consistent. Knowledge of right and wrong is not limited to the pope, nor confined to Catholics who accept papal authority.
Thomas Aquinas
In Thomist philosophy God is a perfect Being and therefore His Nature is self-realized in His Intellect. All God is, is consistent with God’s reason without any possible contradiction. As they are in perfect union, the action of God’s Intellect and Will are combined in a single, unified act. For God, to think is to act. God’s Will is therefore fully consistent with His Nature. In Catholic belief, human nature reflects God’s Nature, thus, anything that purports to be God’s Will cannot contradict human nature.
In de Lamennais’s thought, however, truth cannot be known by the operation of individual reason on the evidence of the senses guided by faith. Truth is known only by accepting on faith the authority of humanity as interpreted by the pope. As with the Averroist ideas of Siger of Brabant in the thirteenth century and those of William of Ockham in the fourteenth century, de Lamennais’s theory of certitude meant the truths of faith and the truths of reason could contradict one another — truth need no longer conform to reality.
John Maynard Keynes
Contradicting de Lamennais’s own principle of individual sovereignty, the theory of certitude was a restatement of Plato’s error that ideas exist independently of the human mind. It led inevitably to the socialist idea that either God grants rights to the collective or the collective self-generates rights, and those in control of the collective then grant rights to actual human beings as expedient or necessary.
In traditional thought, God is absolute truth and therefore exists independently of the human mind. Human ideas and understanding of truth, however, do not exist independently of the minds that create them.
In the realm of economics, the idea truth and reality could be in opposition and contradict one another led to the theories of John Maynard Keynes. Fundamental premises in Keynes’s work, such as the fixed belief no production can take place unless the means to produce has been withheld (“saved”) out of previous production, are inherently contradictory, e.g., if no production can take place unless there has been production out of which savings have been accumulated . . . where did the original production come from?
And that — the astounding contradiction on which the modern global economy is built — will be covered in the next posting on this subject.
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