Russ Hittinger:
Thank all of you for coming this evening. I’m Russ Hittinger, the executive director of the Institute for Human Ecology. Yeah, our brand is pretty much under understanding what it means for human beings to flourish from an interdisciplinary standpoint. I need to thank at the beginning the Center for the Constitution and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, so-called CIT, which is housed in Catholic U’s School of Law. This is the third year that they have co-sponsored this lecture with generous financial support. I also need to thank at the very beginning my co-director, Stephen Higgins who is the managing director of IHE.
Russ Hittinger:
So I serve as co-director with Stephen, but I have to point out in this introduction, the two founders of the program of Catholic political thought, Joseph Capizzi, founding executive director of IHE, simply speaking, but was also a founder of this particular program. And he is now the first lay dean of the School of Theology in the history of this university. And Bradley Lewis, who will handle the session after I leave, who is now the dean of the Pontifical School of Philosophy and he will introduce our speaker. But it’s a sobering moment for me because of the three people who kind of constituted this thing, program in Catholic political thought, I came last, but two of them now have become pontifical deans. What will become of me? Well anyway, we invite you all to join us for a reception after this lecture. And without further ado, I’m going to turn things over to Brad Lewis.
Bradley Lewis:
Well good evening, everyone. It’s a real pleasure to welcome you to the third Annual Catholic Political Thought Lecture. This lecture is the signature event of Catholic University’s program in Catholic Political Thought, which as Russ just said is an initiative that’s housed in the Institute for Human Ecology, and which is designed to aggregate resources and to develop new resources here at Catholic University, especially with respect to graduate education and research in the church’s invaluable tradition of reflection on political things. Our inaugural lecturer now leads the Institute for Human Ecology, Dr. Russell Hittinger. Our second lecturer, which was last year, was the world’s foremost thinker about the church’s just war tradition, Gregory Reichberg. So this year it is a real honor for us to host Professor Émilie Tardivel-Schick. Professor Tardivel is a scholar of moral and political philosophy of phenomenology and economic and social ethics, and she holds degrees from Sciences Po in Parism as well as the Institut Catholique. And she received her doctorate from the Sorbonne where she studied with a great Jean-Luc Marion.
Bradley Lewis:
She’s the author of three books, La Liberté au Principe, a study of the thought of Jan Patoéka, published by Vrin in 2011, Tout pouvoir vient de Dieu, and Paradoxe Chrétien, published by Ad Solem in 2015, and most recently just in 2023, Morale et droit. She serves as deputy editor-in-chief of the French Language edition of the Journal Communio, and has become really in the last decade or so one of the foremost Catholic intellectuals in France. And she’s also become in the last two years really a great friend of the Institute for Human Ecology and Catholic university. She participated in the first lecture at the seminar when Russ Hittinger gave his lecture and we’ve all been in touch with her since then. She continues to hold the chair for Business and the Common Good at the Institut Catholique de Paris, and has just been appointed professor of Moral Philosophy and Religious Anthropology in the Catholic Theology faculty at the University of Strasbourg, where she now lives with her family. Professor Tardivel-Schick’s lecture this evening is entitled Hope and Salvation: From Christian Eschatology to Political Ethics.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Thank you so much, Professor Lewis for your very kind presentation. First of all, I’d like to thank Professor Hittinger and Professor Lewis and all the team of the Institute for Human Ecology and all the sponsors for their invitation and for the perfect organization of my coming to Washington D.C. That’s really great joy and a great honor to be here at the Catholic University of America in order to give the Catholic Political Thought lecture. You have a very living Catholic community in Washington D.C. That’s a great chance and that’s really for me a model today. So thank you for sharing all that with me, and I hope that I could bring back to France a part of your inspiration and of your energy.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
I must also confess that I’m very impressed. Two years ago I was here, it was recalled by Professor Lewis, in order to respond to Professor Hittinger’s lecture. So my situation was a little bit easier as today, I was not on the stage. And now I’m on the stage and I know that I cannot do as well as Professor Hittinger, but I will do my best. And I apologize for my French accent and my difficulties in the English language, and I hope that you will easily follow and enjoy my lecture, which is entitled Hope and Salvation: From Christian Eschatology to Political Ethics.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Hunted by the will to control our entire existence from birth death, we could at the same time give into despair in the face of the uncertainty in which we find ourselves as a result of the symptoms of nihilism running through our times, from ecological catastrophe to terrorist cancer, the return of war to Europe and the explosion of violence in the Middle East. In his essay on hope, published in the aftermath of the Second World War, the philosopher Josef Pieper says, I quote, “The uncertainty of human existence cannot be totally removed. But it can be overcome by hope and only by hope.” Hope does not do away with uncertainty but enables us to overcome it, to avoid being overwhelmed by the anguish that uncertainty provokes because it enables us to answer to it in a positive way. Our ability to face up to the uncertainty of our existence depends on our hope, insofar as hope is the only answer that corresponds to man’s actual existential situation.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
So what is our actual existential situation? It is obviously a situation of uncertainty, but this situation is more fundamental than the one linked to the contingencies that determine our existence from the outside. Uncertainty arising from the contingencies of our times is itself the product of an uncertainty that is part of the inner constitution of our existence. This constitution is characterized not only by temporality, which is a very sign of our finitude, but is also defined by the eternity towards which our desire turns. Since it can only be fulfilled in an infinite good, a good outside of which there is nothing left to desire. Our existence is essentially on the road toward the end of our desire, towards good that transcends our finitude, and for which there is no guarantee that we will ever come into possession. Our actual existential situation is a state of uncertainty rooted in our status viatoris, namely our status as travelers, pilgrims. We are thus journeying without any definitive guarantee toward the ultimate infinite good of our finite existence.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Hope is the only answer that is in keeping with our status as pilgrims because it steers us resolutely towards our ultimate and infinite good without anticipating its fulfillment or non-fulfillment. It does not therefore conceal the irreducible uncertainty of our existence while giving us the ability to face up to this uncertainty and those that result from it today. A resolute orientation toward our ultimate and infinite good does not mean that we are disinterested in the world, but rather that we are responsible for it. In this reflection, we shall see that this conception of hope refers to the Christian virtue of hope, whose proper object is salvation, the ultimate and infinite good of our finite existence, and that this object constitutes from the point of view of political action, a moral norm, to use Ratzinger’s terms. After examining the foundations of Christian hope, we will analyze the causes and consequences of its revocation in modern times, and conclude with the discussion of its implications for political ethics.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
So my first part, salvation the object of the Christian virtue of hope, and the first point on hope as a resolution for salvation. In the Christian tradition, hope is considered as a virtus theologica, which is translated as theological virtue. Hope is thus understood in the context of the notion of virtue, which Greek philosophy defines as a free and consistent disposition of the will to seek the good. Far from being a simple psychological state, the result of being naturally optimistic, hope, on the contrary, fundamentally engages our will in its capacity to freely and consistently decide in favor of the good, namely to resolve itself for the good. Like all virtues, hope is a resolution for the good which Plato describes as what preserves and benefits, [foreign language 00:12:42]. Hope then puts us in touch with what preserves and benefits or saves and is advantageous, resolutely directing our will towards good, which is at the same time a good that conforms to our nature, a good in which our nature is not abolished. But on the contrary, accomplished. Hope is a resolution that brings our nature to fulfillment by relating it to the good.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
However, it should be pointed out that hope is a theological virtue. This clarification has two major implications. The first concerns the object of the virtue of hope. As Thomas Aquinas writes, “The very idea of theological virtue is one that has God for its object.” In Aristotle, as in Plato, the object of the virtue of wisdom is certainly a divine good. But this divine good is out of proportion to the Christian God who saves man by becoming man himself. From virtue to theological virtue, there is a wall gap separating salvation that proceeds from a superior intellect or prime mover and the salvation that comes from a savior, with Messiah and Lord.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
The second implication concerns the exercise of the virtue two of hope, which St. Thomas indicates does not flow from our merits but from grace alone. If hope brings our nature to fulfillment, the ability to exercise this virtue nevertheless exceeds the powers of our nature and thus requires grace, namely the very help of the object of this virtue. We now need to understand the specificity of the theological virtue of hope in relation to the other two theological virtues, faith and charity. Thomas Aquinas proposes first distinction stating that unlike charity which makes us aim at God for its own sake, faith and hope make us aim at God for the goods he provides. From this perspective, hope is distinguished by its object, which is eternal beatitude, namely the good that God procures for us by granting us access to His kingdom.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
But since access to God’s kingdom is a future good, hope is also distinguished by the temporality proper to its object. This other distinction not found as such in Thomas Aquinas but developed by Josef Pieper describes hope as the virtue of the not yet. Hope is therefore the resolution originating in grace that brings our nature to fulfillment by relating it to the not yet of the kingdom of God, in which the salvation to come of the world resides.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Second point, union with Christ, the condition of hope. This conception of hope as a virtue of the not yet might suggest that Christian hope is simply about salvation to come. However, in the letter to the Romans, 8:24, St. Paul does not speak in the future tense but in the past, when he declares that, “For in hope we were saved.” The object of hope is not only a salvation to come but also an above all salvation already come, or more precisely, salvation is to come for us only in so far as it has already come in Christ. Commenting on these words, St Augustine writes, I quote, “Just as he, St. Paul, did not say he we are going to be saved but henceforth, we have already been saved, yet not in reality but in hope. After all,” he says, “for we have been saved in hope.” For our hope is in Christ because in Him there has already been accomplished what we hope for us, something promised us.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
The object of hope then is a promise already accomplished in Christ where our eyes, like Simeon’s, see the salvation that God prepared inside of all the nations. If hope is a resolution for the salvation to come of the world, this resolution rests on the reception of the already come salvation in Christ. Christ is not only the actual fulfillment of hope, of entire reason and ascended into heaven, He’s also its actual foundation, to use two of Pieper’s expressions. It is faith in Christ that makes hope an anchor of the soul, sure and firm, in the words of the letter to the Hebrews 6:19. But faith does not guarantee the actuality of the object of hope. For we cannot know whether we will be saved. The actual foundation of hope, faith only guarantees the possibility of salvation, but it is nonetheless the condition of possibility for hope, insofar as to Thomas Aquinas emphases, we can only hope if the object of our hope is proposed to us as possible and this possibility of salvation is opened up by faith whereby we come to know that we are able to obtain eternal life if we follow Christ.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Christ is the actual fulfillment, the actual foundation and the actual way of hope. This is why union with Christ is decisive for hope, for the very possibility of hope. It is the condition of hope. We can only hope if we are united with Christ, this union is the work not only of faith, but also of charity. For the mere knowledge of Christ is not sufficient for this union to enable us to exercise virtue that is a matter of resolution, namely a matter of the will. Indeed this union is overall the work of charity. If we follow St. Augustine’s assertion that, I quote, “One does not enter into truth except through love.” It is only through love or charity… The Latin words is caritas, but here the two terms are the same meaning. It is only through love or charity that we come to know Christ, uniting us to Him in will as He himself is united to the Father in will. “Not my will, but Yours be done,” says Jesus in His prayer on the Mount of Olives. If faith is a condition of possibility for hope, charity is its condition of actuality.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Second part, the modern times between despair and presumption. And first point, despair as anticipation of non-salvation. Following Thomas Aquinas, we can distinguish two forms of opposition to the Christian virtue of hope, despair and presumption. As Pieper remarks, I quote, “Against all reality, they transform the not yet of hope into either the not or the already of fulfillment.” Despair and presumption are therefore not specific to the modern times, but they are no less characteristic of it. Let’s start with despair. Like hope, despair is not a simple psychological state which would be the opposite of being naturally optimistic, but a resolution that denies the very object of hope. Pieper says, “It is a denial of redemption.” Despair is therefore a perverse anticipation of the non-fulfillment of hope and its paradox, man voluntarily renounces the object of his desire. Despair is self-contradictory, explains Pieper, self-divisive. In despair, man actually denies his own desire which is as indestructible as himself.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Despair has its origins in acedia, that worldly sorrow which St. Paul says produces death. Whereas godly sorrow produces a salutary repentance without regret. Thomas Aquinas directly links acedia or sloth with despair. I quote, “On the other hand, the fact that a man deems an arduous good impossible to obtain, either by himself or by another, is due to his being over downcast. Because when the state of mind dominates his affections, it seems to him that he will never be able to rise to any good. And since sloth is a sadness that casts down the spirit, in this way, despair is born of sloth.” This assertion is echoed by Kierkegaard. Acedia is what Kierkegaard in his book on despair, Sickness Unto Death, has called the despair of weakness, which he considers a preliminary stage of despair proper and which consists in the fact that an individual is unwilling in his despair to be himself. The individual is no longer willing to resolve himself for the good towards which his desire naturally tends. This denial, this voluntary renunciation of salvation is one of the defining acts of the modern times, particularly in political philosophy.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
In Leviathan, Hobbes posits the nonexistence of the object proper to hope. I quote Hobbes, “For there is no such finis ultimus, utmost aim, nor summum bonum, greatest good, as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers.” Deprived of an utmost aim or greatest good, man’s desire has no other end than itself, no other goal than its perseverance in itself. So that Hobbes redefines felicity as, I quote, “Continual progress of the desire from one object to another. The attaining of the former being still but the way of the latter.” Instead of the fulfillment of an ultimate and infinite good at the end of a difficult road, the rough road to salvation in [inaudible 00:24:40] word. Felicity now appears in this radically non-eschatological perspective of the indefinite journey of a desire that has become its own good, its own end.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
My second point or the second part, presumption as anticipation of salvation. The second form of opposition to the Christian virtue of hope is presumption. Unlike despair, which transforms the not yet of hope into a not, presumption changes it into an already. Presumption that perversely anticipates the fulfillment of the object proper to hope, but it is no more an excess than despair is a lack of optimism. Presumption is also a resolution opposed to hope. So difference being that this resolution is not conceived as a denial. Presumption is a falsa similitude, a fraudulent imitation. It fraudulently imitates hope by making people believe that its object can be achieved with absolute certainty. Unlike despair, presumption does not deny salvation but considers that there is a way to ensure its actuality. Whereas hope rests on the possibility of salvation opened up by faith, presumption posits its actuality, concealing the irreducible uncertainty of our existence linked to the irreducible uncertainty of our salvation.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
But there is more. Presumption takes two forms. “A thing is possible to man in two ways,” writes Thomas Aquinas. “First by his own power, second by the power of God alone.” With regard to either hope, there may be presumption owing to lack of moderation. The first form consists in imagining that we are capable of earning our salvation by our personal wealth alone. Theology calls this presumption Pelagian. The second form, on the contrary, is to consider that earning our salvation does not depend at all on our personal worth, on the intrinsic force of our nature, but solely on divine power, on grace. This other presumption is more difficult to qualify with reference to an ancient doctrine, but it is particularly present in modern times, notably in Calvinism and Jansenism. Although Pelagian presumption and the other kind of presumption are not too specifically modern forms of presumption, they are nevertheless characteristic of modernity and its theological controversies. And on these controversies I could refer to Henri de Lubac, Augustinianism and the Modern Theology.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
As for the presence of the Pelagian presumption in modern times we may refer to the Jesuit theologians of the 17th century, in particular Suarez whose concept of pure nature prefigures the thesis contained in Marx’s formula, “Mankind inevitably sets itself only such task as it is able to solve.” The link between Suarez and Marx is a little bit provocative, but Suarez and Marx state an Aristotelian thesis, the appetite of nature follows the power of nature. What seems to be without any presumption here is in fact the cause of the Pelagian presumption. By considering that mankind has no natural desire for salvation, which is a supernatural good, we transforms salvation, which mankind nevertheless desires in an immutable way into a purely natural good. In other words, the supernatural good of salvation is naturalized. Christian eschatology is secularized and the way is paved for what is, in the words of Jurgen Moltmann, “A philosophical revolutionary millenarianism,” which set itself to build at last that realm of freedom and human dignity. Hope thus becomes a resolution for salvation accomplished by temporal means in time itself, by historical means in history itself, or by political means in politics itself.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
My third and last part, the politics of group and ethical question. With the first point, the setting asunder of eschatology and politics. Warding off despair and presumption, the two modern temptations, requires us to place the virtue of hope at the heart of our Christian existence. This is a perspective of reformed theologian, Jurgen Moltmann in Theology of Hope. This work is in particular in debate with The Principle of Hope by Marxist philosopher, Ernst Bloch. Although Moltmann never mentions Thomas Aquinas in his book, he nevertheless quotes a good deal from Pieper’s essay which offers a re-reading of the question on hope in the Summa Theologiae. Moltmann reminds us that despair and presumption are two forms of the sin against hope because they both cancel the wayfaring character of hope. But Moltmann’s original thesis, a thesis that is home in its very radicality, that this cancellation of the wayfaring character of hope also eliminates any properly Christian existence. In so far as he writes, I quote, “From first to last and not merely in the epilogue, Christianity is eschatology, is hope, forward-looking and forward moving.”
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
However appealing this perspective may be, it poses two major problems. Ratzinger identifies them very well in eschatology. The first is a tendency to emasculate hope. By reducing Christianity to hope, Moltmann steers it in a realist direction against the formalism and actualism of Rudolf Bultmann. Christian existence presupposes the event of an encounter that does not project it out of the world but rather commits it to changing the present world in the light of the world to come. I quote Moltmann, “Hope’s statements of promise however must stand in contradiction to the reality which can at present be experienced.” From this perspective, the proper object of hope, salvation surreptitiously disappears in favor of a political commitment to justice which becomes autonomous from the virtues that make hope both possible and actual, namely faith and charity. In other words, Moltmann says it tends to Christian eschatology into a political utopia.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
We might ask however whether this criticism is really justified. In a comment aimed at Bloch’s utopianism, Moltmann points out that, I quote, “The question whether all statements about the future are grounded in the person and history of Jesus Christ provides it with a touchstone by which to distinguish the spirit of eschatology from that of utopia.” But does Moltmann himself manage to maintain this touchstone, from the moment when the person and history of Jesus Christ are appreciated independently of a social magisterium, teaching that there is no direct relationship between eschatology and politics? The second problem with Moltmann’s perspective is that this lack of mediation implies a tendency to falsify politics. Ratzinger writes that, I quote, “The mystery of God is invoked in order to justify political irrationalism, turning politics into a pseudo mystery.” Against this tendency to presumption, Ratzinger concludes that the setting asunder of eschatology and politics is one of the fundamental tasks of Christian theology.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Second part of my third part, salvation an ethical norm for political action. This conclusion which is also ours, mine, in the wake of Ratzinger, could itself be subject to criticism. To what extent does the setting asunder of eschatology and politics not reduce the kingdom of God to practical insignificance, and thus Christian existence to political inaction? Ratzinger counters this criticism with a luminous response, which I also endorse, “The kingdom of God is not a political norm of political activity, but it is a moral norm of that activity.” The point then is not to construct a Christian political eschatology, but to move from Christian eschatology to political ethics. I quote Ratzinger, “The message of the kingdom of God is significant for political life, not by way of eschatology but by way of political ethics.” In other words, the setting asunder of eschatology and politics must not reduce Christian existence to political inaction. But must instead positive direction and ethical limits to Christian political action in terms of both ends and means.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
From this perspective, the question of Christian politics is necessarily an ethical question, namely a question of moral theology and not a question of political theology, if the latter can be a discipline of theology and not simply a field of modern and contemporary studies and controversies. As Ratzinger makes clear, I quote, “The issue of politics that will be genuinely responsible in Christian terms belongs to moral theology not eschatology.” However, this does not mean that the question of Christian politics is not at all a matter of hope. Hope remains central to Christian politics but it must be understood and implemented both as virtue and in relation to the other virtues, theological and cardinal. Hope must therefore be held together with faith and charity which are its conditions, and justice must also be held together with hope, which is one of its conditions.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
To put it another way, the question of Christian politics is the question of the exercise of the cardinal virtues and the theological conditions of their exercise. This thesis is in line with one of the great teachings of ancient and medieval Christianity. It is an illusion to believe that the cardinal virtues can do without the theological virtues, that citizens can exercise justice sustainably and correctly without hope, faith and charity. St. Augustine’s reflection on the decadence of the Roman Republic makes this point perfectly clear. Love of their country makes it difficult to impose the exercise of justice on Roman citizens. Yet whatever Roman citizens do not have the strength to do out of love for their country, God asks them to do out of love for Him. A citizen exercising the theological virtues is thus led to do for the love of God, while the love of his country requires him to do for it. As Etienne Gilson so aptly puts it, I quote, “Grace presupposes nature. But politics, like the nature to which it belongs, needs to be redeemed first by grace.”
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Let’s conclude. Is it permissible to hope? This Kantian-inspired question posed by the state of the world today requires us first to know what hope is. I have recalled that hope is one of the three virtues, along with faith and charity, which have God at their object. And we have specified that its proper object is not God for His own sake, but for the future good we expect from Him. This good is not only our salvation to come, but also the salvation to come of the world for which we pray and act. At the same time, salvation to come for us presupposes salvation already come in Christ. Contrary to Kant’s view then, salvation to come is not simply idea created by reason itself and whose object lies outside our horizon. Salvation to come entered into our horizon with Christ who really came to fulfill, found and embody the word of hope. It is therefore permissible to hope for the salvation to come of the world, but only on condition that we remain united to Christ by faith and charity, which make hope both possible and actual.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
We have shown, however, that one of the constitutive acts of modernity was to break with the object of Christian hope. The history of philosophy bears witness to this. When Hobbes declared the greatest good to be non-existent, he found in modern political philosophy on a kind of radical immanence of existence which denied the eschaton, to quote the historian of political ideas, Eric Voegelin. In this radically non-eschatological perspective, human action is no longer seen as resolutely oriented or orientable towards a greatest good that defines itself at an end beyond existence. Since human existence is deprived of the infinite transcendence towards which its desire naturally tends, it is no longer allowed to hope so that it falls either into despair by anticipating the non-fulfillment of what it expects from God, or into presumption by inversely anticipating the fulfillment of what it expects from God in the form of a political fulfillment presupposing a secularization of Christian hope.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Warding off the twin temptations of the modern times, despair and presumption, requires us not only to return to the foundations of Christian hope, but also to reflect on its political consequences. If Jurgen Moltmann is right to say that we must draw from Christian hope, I quote the new thought and action that are consequently necessary in our dealings with the things and conditions of this world, we must not however deduce these consequences directly without ethical mediation. As Ratzinger points out, I quote, “The realization of God’s kingdom is not itself a political process. To misconceive it as such is to falsify both politics and theology.” We therefore need to pay attention to the necessary ethical mediation between eschatology and politics by showing how the Christian virtue of hope with exercise is made possible by faith and charity itself makes possible the exercise of the political virtues, foremost among which is justice, the virtue par excellence of the common good. Thank you for your attention.
Bradley Lewis:
Time for some questions?
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Yes.
Bradley Lewis:
So we have some time for questions, and you should look for our crack IHE staff with microphones.
Speaker 4:
Merci beaucoup, Émilie.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
[French 00:43:25].
Speaker 4:
Lovely. I have a question. You quoted Ratzinger about what the political use of hope is and it was not to give a political norm but a moral norm. And then you said, “So the kingdom of God,” this was a paraphrasing, I believe, said, “… is to offer a positive direction or ethical limits for politics.” And I was wondering if you could say something a little bit more concrete about what the norm is that Christian hope offers to politics. I mean there’s a negative norm I suppose you could say, or a negative limit, which is politics is not meant to realize the kingdom of God, let us not be utopian. But that’s not a positive direction. So maybe that’s the ethical limits or don’t go that far. So there’s a certain kind of anti-utopianism. But if the direction of hope, if it’s directly oriented towards a supernatural good, what can it offer politics which is not oriented to that good other than, “This is my territory, don’t aim for salvation”? I’m not sure if this is being clear. But if you could just say something more about what is the moral direction that hope offers? I mean you mentioned that it does enable other virtues, which perhaps that’s what it does. But if you could say something more.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Okay. Thank you for your question. That’s a huge question. Great question. In fact, I have just talked about the question of principles, so I have not say something very concrete. But you can deduce some ethical limits or, in other words, a way to think Christian politics with guidelines. And I like to sum these guidelines in saying that in Christian politics you have to posit what to fight against, what prevent communion in a society. Okay? So in the point of view of Ratzinger, the sacralization of politics is something that prevents communion in a society. And this reflection is rooted on the Church Fathers, the early Christianity. So the sacralization of politics. You have to fight against sacralization of politics as a way to make politics a pseudo mystery, sacralization of politics. Also, you have to fight against moral corruption, racial exclusion, and also economic hoarding. So I will summarize these four guidelines for Christian politics. I don’t know if I responded to your question, but we have to keep in mind I think these four guidelines and to fight against what prevents communion in society.
Speaker 5:
Thank you very much. It’s lovely to see you. I haven’t seen you since you responded to Russ two years ago. But welcome back. Just to follow up, it’s maybe just a follow on to the previous question, but maybe if you could respond to what is the difference between a political norm and a moral norm? What is that difference? What is that line between them? And I ask it because I think of the understanding that the law is a teacher, and so if it’s a teacher of, I assume, how to live, where’s the membrane or the wall there? How do we draw that distinction?
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Such a difficult question. But Christianism is not a political program and the church is not a syndicate, is not international community… No, not international community. That’s an international organization, but internationale we say in French. So I think when Ratzinger says salvation must not be a political norm, but a moral norm is to make that point very clear. You can not confuse Christianism with a political program. And also you can say that you have to reflect on politics or on all political programs with moral guidelines, moral norms. And I think that’s really what is the frontier between political norm and a moral norm, okay, in Ratzinger’s view.
Speaker 6:
Thank you very much. I wonder, your description of the highest good… I guess a simple way to put the question that I would like to ask is whether that highest good is identified in an exclusive way with the eschatological, so that is there a sense is which politics also is defined in a temporal earthly way by a highest good? I’m thinking Aquinas and the commentary on the politics, he defines the political common good as the highest good to the highest degree and would seem to imply by that God frames also the political common good. So if that’s the case, is the desacralizing of the political order, does that mean that God is not a political?
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Good question.
Speaker 6:
Good.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Oh, good. That’s also a great question. I think that the state has to pursue a common good, but a temporal common good. The state cannot pursue the highest good, salvation. And to say to the citizens how to attain this highest good, the salvation, that’s the role of the church. So in fact you have to distinguish two common goods. The political common good, justice. What is justice? Great question. Justice is a common good, which is salvation. That’s a both individual and common good salvation. And the question is how do you think the relation between the state and the church, between the two common goods? And I think Ratzinger and I remain liberal, the European sense of liberalism, liberal, because we are in a situation in the Western world when the states are not Christian states. So the main question, main point for the church is religious freedom I think, and the comprehension of religious freedom are the common good, the highest common good of the states.
Speaker 7:
So thank you for your talk. In Aristotle’s politics, of course when he goes through the different regimes, he talks about the form and the matter. It seems like this might be a helpful way also of talking about how the virtue of hope and the way that you’re applying it to the moral life might be a way of seeing how… Would you agree with this, that the moral effect of the virtue of hope is on the matter of the citizen body that allows them to be more virtuous in a way that say non-Christians are not able to be? And therefore, if it affects the matter of the citizen body, as opposed to say the form or the government leaders, then that makes the society capable of being better? Or is it that it’s just that the people, the citizens in the society are better off by having the virtue of hope? So does that make sense? Does the fact that the citizens have Christian hope make the society better because the matter is oriented towards eschatology, or is it that the citizens themselves, despite the political order, are better off by having that hope?
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
I have two answers, but not with Aristotle, with Etienne Gilson and Montesquieu. In an article in 1934, that was after the demonstration against parliamentarism in France, Gilson says the Democrats say that we have no more democracies. But Democrats always cut the branch, branch?
Speaker 8:
Branch.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Branch where they are sit. And this branch is virtue. It’s virtue. And that is my third answer, for having a democracy, you must have virtuous citizens. That’s a condition. And so the problem is how to exercise virtue? The question is is virtue of justice, as in Aristotle, can be exercised by itself? And the Christian response is no. And the history shows that it is impossible, that the demonstration of Augustine in the city of God. So the problem is a varied problem. You can be just, but just sustainably and correctly. You have to exercise this virtue from another virtue. And the love of country is not sufficient. And the conclusion is not we need Christian democracies or Christian states, but you need Christian citizens in all states to have a state, to have a society, to have a democracy. I don’t know if I answer your question, but that’s my way to respond.
Speaker 9:
Hello. Thank you so much for your lecture. There were two concepts I came here that I expecting to hear discussed that I don’t believe you mentioned once. Those are progress and technology. Pieper at the same time he is writing his essay in Theology of Hope writes a book The End of Time: A Meditation and Philosophy of History, which begins with the reopening of the problem of history with the atomic bomb. Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict in Spe Salvi deals with this notion of progress as a kind of secularized eschatology. So I wondered what you might say about the contrast between hope and progress or an expectation of technological progress as a source of a kind of salvific power for human society, and how that relates to the despair in modern society.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
So technology is a fact. Today we have to do with that. But the problem is how to do with that. So I think the question is the ethical limits of the technology today. And it’s very difficult because the situation has been very well described by Heidegger, Gestell, all what is possible will become effective, actual, without limit. And the states will be the vector of this actualization without limit, ethical limit. So I think in Pieper’s and in Ratzinger, you have a reflection on the limit, ethical limit of technologies and the use of technologies. The technologies are neutral in itself, but the use can be very wrong. So that will be my point.
Bradley Lewis:
Who were you pointing to? Okay. [inaudible 00:59:30].
Speaker 10:
So thank you for your talk and I have a question about the historical claim that you made of the genealogy of modernity is going back to Suarez and that kind of classic de Lubacian narrative. The question that raises in my mind a potential objection is that there’s more going on in modernity than simply the loss of Christian hope, the immanentization of the eschaton, etc. There’s also a loss of nature as a normative standard for human action. And that is something I wonder if you can really get out of Suarez’s theory of pure nature according to which our nature its desire doesn’t extend beyond natural virtue. So I’m just perhaps pushing back a bit on that claim that would lay the genealogical blame for modernity at the feet of Suarez. So just curious to hear your thoughts.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Yes, yes. Thank you for your question. Yes, I was a little bit provocative with my genealogy on Suarez to Marx. But the fact is many thinkers say that there is a lack of nature in the modernity. But it’s not a lack of nature, that’s another concept of nature. And the nature is no more ordered to the common good. That’s the problem. The problem is the final cause, and the reduction of all causes to efficiency. And the reduction of all causes to efficiency is in Suarez. Is in Suarez. So it was very well shown by Vincent Garro in causa sine ratio. And when you read the De Legibus of Suarez, Suarez gave a redefinition of the law. And he points out only the promulgation, the efficient cause of the law, not the common good, not the final cause. With Suarez, the ratio legis is no more the common good, the bonum commune. I think, and it is linked also to the concept of a pure nature. So I don’t want to find a book emissary. That’s not my perspective. But, this perspective of Suarez is perspective which he shared in this time. But I think we have to put more the light on this lack of eschaton in modern philosophy, modern philosophy of nature, modern political philosophy.
Bradley Lewis:
Okay, let’s have one more [inaudible 01:02:58].
Speaker 11:
I think maybe one way to get at this question about what the content of Christian moral norms for politics would be that a few different questions have circled around would be to put it in this way, Ratzinger, especially in about the last third of his life, would again and again refer to the insights of the great religious traditions of mankind as providing norms that today’s modern society and politics are ignoring. They’re just very basic things that the pagans knew, that every decent religious culture know about children are good, that you should have people with you when you die. There’s all sorts of things that our politics is ignoring, and that a big part of Christian moral norms for politics today surely is just to hold out these basic facts about what a human life is that are shared among different religions that the West keeps forgetting. What do you think in today’s context, Christian moral norms for politics add to those basic human insights? What do those Christian moral norms, how do they go beyond simply trying to remind us of what a human is, if they do at all?
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
I do not know if Christian perspective on moral goes beyond the ancient moral. But in fact, and the question is not addressed in this sense in the Church Fathers, the question is we Christians, we do exercise this moral. You have theorized. Okay? And Christianity is to make coherence between your thought and your action. And that’s a criticism against the Greeks and the Romans in Church Fathers. And that’s also my point with the virtues. So hope, faith and charity gives the force to exercise cardinal virtues. They do not add something more as justice, but they make justice possible. And I think that’s my-
Bradley Lewis:
One more after this [inaudible 01:05:27].
Speaker 12:
Thank you, professor for your wonderful talk. I wonder if in Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict might provide us a distinction that might help us to understand, it’s come up in several questions, just the distinction between the political and the moral, and the relation between the two. The distinction that Pope Benedict makes between the great hope that we have in the resurrection, the object of the theological virtue of hope, and all the little hopes that we have that fill everyday life. Of the goods that fill, just all the temporal goods, the hopes that we have for the temporal goods that fill life.
Speaker 12:
And so how he understands the relation between those two, that the great hope has a kind of orientation of the whole of human life to the resurrection, but also orders our little hopes too, not only towards the great hope, but even among themselves. And that’s not a political program, politics certainly would be taken up in that, but an overall moral theological human program which has political implications. So just maybe your understanding of in Spe Salvi how Pope Benedict relates those two, our little hopes to the great hope, and vice versa, and the implications for that, for understanding a right politics.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
I will answer in the line of what I have just responded, that the highest hope is a mover, a motivation to fulfill the temporal hopes. And in fact, you can have these temporal hopes without… With highest hope, I think. That’s the ground.
Bradley Lewis:
Okay.
Émilie Tardivel-Schick:
Thank you.