We
closed the previous posting on this subject with the statement that while
American type liberalism and European and English type liberalism are all
“liberalism,” there is a fundamental difference between the American version
and the other two. In brief, where
European liberalism puts sovereignty into the abstraction of the collective,
and English liberalism puts sovereignty into the abstraction of an élite (ultimately the same thing, for an
élite of some sort always ends up in
control of the collective), American liberalism puts sovereignty solely and
exclusively into the human person.
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| Plato |
While
this sounds to most people like a difference that makes no difference, the distinction
is profound. By putting sovereignty into
an abstraction, whether a private sector plutocracy (capitalism) or a public
sector bureaucracy (socialism), a Platonic ideal is established as the model
toward which to strive. Depending on the
power of whoever wishes to force his vision of the perfect society (or anything
else) on to others, the institutions of the social order may bear little or no
resemblance to human nature and thus have little or no capacity to assist
actual human persons in meeting their wants and needs or — especially — in
acquiring and developing virtue, i.e.,
becoming more fully human.
Specifically,
in European and English liberalism knowledge and opinion of any absolutes is
delivered to people by an élite that
thereby controls access to the common good by limiting the possession and
exercise of natural rights. In American
liberalism, on the other hand (consistent with Aristotelian-Thomism), knowledge
and opinion regarding absolutes derive from human nature, and the common good
is open to all through organizing with others and the exercise of natural
rights. Instead of having the duty of conforming
society and individuals to an ideal that may or may not have any connection to
reality, people are charged with the duty of organizing and conforming their
personal behavior and their institutions to the principles they discern that
govern human nature.
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| Aristotle |
Thus,
as John Henry Newman pointed out so many times in his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870), human beings go from
the particular to the general, that is, from the concrete observations about
human nature to the ideal or conceptualization of the abstraction of humanity
or the institutions of the common good.
This is nothing more than what Aristotle had said some 2,500 years
before Newman, but it was and remains a key point — enough so that Newman would
take twenty years by his own admission to write a nearly 150,000-word “essay” taking
that as his starting point. As he said,
By our apprehension of propositions I mean our imposition of
a sense on the terms of which they are composed. Now what do the terms of a proposition,
the subject and predicate, stand for? Sometimes they stand for certain ideas
existing in our own minds, and for nothing outside of them; sometimes for
things simply external to us, brought home to us through the experiences and
informations we have of them. All things in the exterior world are unit and
individual, and are nothing else; but the mind not only contemplates those unit
realities, as they exist, but has the gift, by an act of creation, of bringing
before it abstractions and generalizations, which have no existence, no
counterpart, out of it. (Newman, Grammar of Assent, Chapter I, § 2.)
That
is, things external to the human person have an objective, “concrete”
existence. Abstractions and
generalizations — ideals — on the other hand, have no existence apart from the
human mind.
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| John Henry Newman |
Newman
himself may not have realized the full implications of his Aristotelian “grammar
of assent.” Still, the fact remains that
he completely rejected European liberalism, and partly rejected English
liberalism as an Anglican — and completely (if not wholly consistently) when he
became a Catholic — both of which are based on the Platonic concept that there is
an ideal form of everything. In an
extremely brief ultra-oversimplification, then, Newman’s “grammar of assent”
was nothing more than realizing that human beings have three ways of accepting
or assenting to truth:
·
Knowledge
of what one understands and can prove,
·
Belief
in what one does not understand but which is subject to proof, and
·
Belief
in what one does not understand, and which is not subject to proof.
 |
| Mortimer Jerome Adler |
Strictly
speaking, these last two are generally categorized as opinion rather than knowledge. In the modern age, however, as Mortimer
Jerome Adler (1902-2001) explained in his book Ten Philosophical Mistakes (1985), there is massive confusion
between knowledge, which is always
true, and opinion, which may be true.
Adler
therefore divided the three ways of giving assent to truth the same way as
Newman, but explained them differently:
·
Knowledge,
or that about which we can be certain beyond any shadow of a doubt; that which
is manifestly true (Mortimer J. Adler, Ten
Philosophical Mistakes. New York:
Macmillan Publishing Company, 1985, 84),
·
Knowledgeable
opinion (or opinionated knowledge) — not Adler’s terms — or that about which we
are persuaded beyond any reasonable doubt (ibid.),
and
·
Mere
opinion, or anything about which we have doubt. (ibid.)
Having
said this, we are immediately faced with a problem. Adler was referring to “scientific” truth and
the matter of everyday life. Newman’s
concern, however, was religious faith . . . and faith is defined as applying to
that which is not manifestly true.
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| First edition of Newman's Apologia |
This
does not, of course, change the fact that knowledge and opinion are two
different things and must not be confused.
That is why, for example, Newman titled Part III of his Apologia Pro Vita Sua “History of My
Religious Opinions.” He did not mean
that he considered religious beliefs less true or more true than other truth,
but that the process of assenting to or accepting religious truth is different
from that required for other truth.
This
puts an entirely different aspect on the question that Newman addressed and
takes it out of the realm of the “scientific” that deals with everyday temporal
affairs. Adler, too, addressed this
issue. After noting that what he had
just said does not for various reasons apply to “fields such as philology, the
comparative study of religion, or the fine arts,” he pointed out that,
Reference to religious belief or faith has also been
omitted. It claims to be knowledge and would
lose all its efficacy if it were reduced to mere opinion. But the grounds on which it makes such a
claim are so utterly different from the criteria we have employed to divide
genuine knowledge from mere opinion that it is impossible in the brief scope of
this discussion to put religious faith or belief into the picture we now have
before us. (Ibid., 105-106.)
Another
factor inserts itself into the equation.
Possibly unique among popular religious thinkers of the nineteenth
century, Newman seemed to take no notice of the world outside religion. It was only with difficulty that he was in
any degree cognizant of affairs beyond the church to which he belonged, whether
Anglican or Catholic. For Newman, the
world outside religious society was simply there, something to be taken for
granted unless it infringed on the area of faith.
 |
| Fulton J. Sheen |
Thus,
European and English liberals (socialists and capitalists, respectively) began
with the material world and developed their opinions of God to conform to their
ideals of man, putting an abstraction of humanity at the center, creating what
Fulton Sheen would later term “Religion Without God.” In sharp contrast, Newman began with the
spiritual world and developed his opinion of man to conform to the ultimate
reality or knowledge of God. As one
commentator noted,
[A]lthough he took full advantage of technological innovation
and was to commit himself to helping its victims as well as to rectifying the
philosophical superficialities it engendered, Newman’s ideas had not begun in
contemplation of the scientific revolution taking place around him. (Louis McRedmond, Thrown Among Strangers:
John Henry Newman in Ireland.
Dublin, Éire: Veritas Publications, 1990, 30.)
Thus,
Newman took from the world what was given, accepted that which was of immediate
utility to religion, and ignored or rejected that which was contradictory or
not useful. His thought “belonged to
another era only in the sense that Newman drew his lessons from eternal
verities which he judged true for every age and he illustrated them from a
fourth-century debate if that happened to make the point most effectively.” (Ibid.,
38.)
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