Good, Rich, or Secure? Spanish Scholasticism and Law’s Development of Virtue

 ‘¿Bueno, rico o seguro?’. La escolástica española y el desarrollo de la virtud por la ley

Elisabeth Rain Kincaid

Nashotah House Theological Seminary, EE.UU.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15366/bp2021.26.006

Bajo Palabra. II Época. Nº26. Pgs: 123-140

In  this  paper,  Dr. Kincaid  argues  that  the  work of  Francisco de Vitoria (1483-1546), Domingo de Soto (1494-1560),  and  Francisco Suárez (1548-1617) presents a sustained tradition arguing that the proper end of civil law is formation in true virtue of the citizens, making citizens capable of achieving natural happiness. Although this  development  in  virtue  may prepare citizens to obtain the supernatural  happiness  made  possible  ultimately by  God’s  grace,  it  still contains  its own integrity and moral importance.

The last few decades have seen a revival of interest in the connection between virtue and law in both popular and philosophical discussions. These contemporary virtue-oriented  legal  theories  all  share  the  conviction  that  the  proper  end  of  law  is not  simply  to  be  a  sword  coercively  restraining  evil  doers  or  even  a  shield  protecting individual rights, but rather a social instrument promoting the common good. The common good is pursued not by coercive policies but rather by the individuals developing  stable  dispositions  which  will  consistently  guide  their  actions  towards excellence and thus towards the common good. For example, Lawrence Solum describes how a virtue-based theory of legislation contributes constructively by “setting the goal – providing opportunities for rational and social activities that express the human excellences.”(1)

Kathleen Kaveny argues for the substitution of a view of law as “pedagogue” in place of law as “policeman.” (2) The idea of law as virtue is not the exclusive purview of any one theological or philosophical school, but rather appears in different forms in a vast array of approaches, including “Aristotelian, Humian, Stoic and Confucian.” (3) For many Christians, the Aristotelian tradition, especially as developed by Thomas Aquinas, has proven particularly appealing. Many Christian virtue ethicists interpret the Thomistic view of law’s development of virtue as compatible with crucial traditions of liberal democracy such “as the ideas of society as a fair system of social cooperation in which citizens see each other as free and equal, and the idea of reasonable pluralism, which holds that in any free society, citizens acting in good faith will affirm a wide range of comprehensive religious, ethical, and philosophical views.” (4)

 However, a movement of Catholic theologians  and  philosophers  have  recently  begun  to  challenge  this  approach  as  a surrender  to  modernity,  which  compromises  traditional  Catholic  teachings  on  the proper relationship between the church and the state, and fails to recognize the state’s proper subservience to secular power. (5)

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1 Solum, Lawrence, “Virtue as the end of law: an aretaic theory of legislation”, Jurisprudence,

Vol. 9, No. 1, 2018, pp. 6 – 18, 13.

2 Kaveny,  Kathleen, Law’s Virtues, Washington D.C., Georgetown University Press, 2012, p. 17.

3 Solum, “Virtue as the End of Law”, op. cit., p. 7.

4 Schwartzman,  Micah,  &  Jocelyn  Wilson,  “The  Unreasonableness  of  Catholic  Integralism”, University  of  San Diego Law Review, Vol. 56, 2019, pp. 1039 – 1067, p. 1043. See also Kaveny, Law’s Virtues, op. cit.; Porter, Jean, Ministers of the Law: A Natural Law Theory of Legal Authority, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2010; George, Robert, Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993; Maritain, Jacques, Man and the State, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1951.

 5  See specifically Thomas Pink, “In Defense of Catholic Integralism,” Public Discourse, https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/08/39362/. See also the resources on contemporary Catholic integralism gathered at https://thejosias.com/.

For the full journal article, please visit Bajo Palabra. II Época. Nº26 at this link.