Integralism and the Common Good
By Jerry Salyer|January 16th, 2023|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Christianity, Civil Society, Civilization, Community, Politics
Just as in the case of the head of a household, the heads of localities and nations must direct their minds first and foremost toward the common good of some specific, limited group of people.
Integralism and the Common Good, Volume One: Family, City, and State, edited by Edmund Waldstein & Peter Kwasniewski (356 pages, Angelico Press, 2022)
Whatever the limitations of the integralist movement, it does operate at a profounder level than that of the mainstream “conservative” culture. The best of the conservative establishment let on as if all will be right with the world if only the Republicans recapture the Senate, or if Trump regains office, while the worst are busy trying to virtue-signal their way into chic leftist circles. By contrast, Father Edmund Walstein pretty much puts his finger directly upon the problem of the modern West: “The natural world is seen by much of post-Cartesian modernity as a kind of machine with parts acted on by blind force, rather than an order of things directed from within by impressions of the divine wisdom.”
As is made clear by several other contributors to Integralism and the Common Good Volume One: Family, City, and State, the ideology (or cult) of the machine is what really underlies the attack on the family, with abortion being but the most dramatic front. If we are honest, we will recognize that the abortion mentality is tied up in phenomena which all too many conservatives uncritically celebrate – consumerism, commercialism, finance capitalism. That is, the GOP and the “pro-choice” lobby have one assumption in common: Creation is a pile of meaningless stuff to be used as necessary in a never-ending effort to sate our individual appetites.
Certainly the rise of “woke capitalism” highlights a need to rethink our attitude toward the free market. In his contributions regarding commerce and usury, Thomas Storck reflects upon the notion that ‘in the United States a remarkable amount of attention is given to the accumulation and consumption of commodities.” For Storck, it is surreal that this should be so
in a nation made up largely of people with some degree of Christian heritage and commitment, and which often likes to think of itself as one of the most religious nations on the earth. Any Christian critique of American culture which fails to comment on this ‘accumulation and consumption of commodities’ and concentrates simply on (say) sexual misdeeds serves only to discredit any claims that might be made for the religion of Jesus Christ.
In other words, unless they are part of a broader conception of human nature, an authoritative conception, prohibitions against fornication or homosexuality are mere taboos, residual vestiges of a morality no longer taken seriously as whole. While our country should have something which might be called a “free market,” we surely do not want our country to be a free market. If it is just for the public order to make policies favoring the family, it is just to make policies favoring the family-owned business.
For his part, Peter Kwasniewski explains how supposedly opposed egoism and altruism are rooted in the same characteristically modern error – a radical misconception of the nature of man and of love. Once again we are up against the theory of the atomized individual, as
the liberal democratic state and the collectivist or communist state are giant social embodiments of the seemingly inescapable antimony of egoism and altruism. One system reduces human motivation to self-interest or selfishness, thereby hindering interpersonal communion, which requires the gift of self; the other system undermines human happiness by ignoring the dignity of the person as such, allowing the individual to be sacrificed for an alien “social good.”
Contra the dogmatic free marketers, the human self is fulfilled not through individual self-actualization, but through the common good. Contra the socialists, this common good is not achieved through a nanny state, nor is it limited to mechanical efficiency, physical health, and material well-being; it encompasses cultural, moral, and religious dimensions. For “any creature, insofar as it is a part of a larger whole, is naturally inclined (and should it be a free agent, morally obliged) to love the good of the whole – both the intrinsic common good which is the order of the universe, and the extrinsic common good which is God – more than its good as a part.” Indeed, a creature’s “good as a part” is necessarily bound up with the good of the whole.
In his eminently practical examination of America’s civil religion, Joshua Kenz argues that there is no absolute moral obligation to vote, and his case is one that anyone can follow, integralist or not: “There is only an obligation to use all reasonable moral means to stop an evil, and sometimes there are no such means.” In other words, if you honestly find all the candidates in an election intolerable, you do not in fact have an obligation to cast your ballot for “the lesser evil.” As Kenz rightly observes, the notion that people must “do something, anything,” to resist evil is a mischievous one; the worst legislation in history got rolling through the idea “that you should set aside your conscience because you ‘have to do something.’” All I would add to Mr. Kenz’s argument is that the fixation with pressuring people into voting is itself an admission of a catastrophic flaw in American democracy. In a real republic, the burden of proof would not lie with the estranged citizen who declares “none of the above,” but with a self-satisfied political establishment which has for years demonstrated its lack of interest in improving the menu. So far as I can tell, the establishment’s underlying message is that those American citizens who are radically dissatisfied with it can all just move to North Korea.
Even where the integralist position seems to me to fall short – e.g., in the case of the question of patriotism– it still appears more serious than its mainstream counterparts. For in some quarters and even now, the National Review brand lingers on, as “respectable” Republican commentators let on as if there is no significant downside to mass immigration, and collaborate with the left by portraying opponents of open borders as Nazi orcs. By contrast, Father Waldstein acknowledges the importance of social bonds needed “to hold a particular society together.”
At the same time I cannot help but think that the integralists would do well to give more consideration to the significance of different kinds of roots, as well as to the myriad psychic dangers posed to man by an age of hypermobility and disembodiment. As James Kalb has observed, the catechism might provide common ground for discussions of the immigration question (emphasis added): “Authority is exercised legitimately only when it seeks the common good of the group concerned and if it employs morally licit means to attain it.” (CCC 1903)
Just as in the case of the head of a household, the heads of localities and nations must direct their minds first and foremost toward the common good of some specific, limited group of people, and the prohibition against morally illicit means is a far cry from the delusional injunction to “think globally, act locally.” Granted, nationalism is defective. Let us remember, however, that part of its flaw lies in its attempt to utterly level and displace those regional, provincial, and local connections that have been so fundamental to the human experience. If nationalism is an error, globalism is a further step in the wrong direction.
