Edelstein on the Catholic roots of the "preservationist" concept of in/unalienable rights

Stanford University

     "In a superb, erudite piece of intellectual excavation, Edelstein argues persuasively that already in the late Middle Ages, Catholic theologians had established that humans possessed inalienable rights, and that these rights do not depend on belonging to a particular state.  In the sixteenth century, driven by the passions of religious warfare and the spectacle of Spanish conquests in the Americas, another series of writers added that, if necessary, rights could be defended by force, from beyond the boundaries of the state in question.  So already by 1572, a conception of human rights broadly similar to what exists today had taken shape. . . .
"Although the preservationist regime of rights had come into existence by the late sixteenth century, it did not immediately become dominant in the Western world.  To the contrary, many of the most sophisticated and influential writers of the day, [namely Hobbes and Locke,] associating it with the horrors of Reformation-era religious warfare, sought either to refute it or to establish the right to resist oppression on other, less volatile grounds. . . .
"When American and French revolutionaries declared that men (but not women) possessed inalienable, universal rights, they were [thus] not building on Hobbes and Locke.  They were reactivating a very different concept of rights that had arisen on the European continent two centuries earlier."

     David A. Bell, summarizing Dan Edelstein, On the spirit of rights (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 2019), in "The many lives of liberalism," The New York review of books 66, no. 1 (January 17, 2019):  26 (24-27).

Nature, not culture

"Christ died also for 'barbarians,' but he did not become man as a barbarian, nor did he live among them, or choose his disciples among them.  The relapse of civilised nations into barbarism is moreover not possible unless they first abandon Christianity."

     Theodor Haecker, Journal in the night.  I was put onto this by R. R. Reno.  "The public square," First things no. 298 (December 2019):  68.

"The theological devolution of modern universalism into Unitarianism"

Baker Publishing Group

"The theological devolution of modern universalism into Unitarianism was not an accident. Once human reasoning had deconstructed the divine mysteries of election and eschaton, it applied its tender mercies to the Trinity and Incarnation as well. ­Unitarian-universalist rationalism spread like a virus, infecting the sinus, the lungs, the circulatory system, and then the whole body of Christian theology. No election, no hell, no atonement, no divine Son, no divine Spirit, and no Trinity—all that remained was moral uplift and human solidarity, or, as one wit put it, the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, and the Neighborhood of Boston. As one saying went, the universalists thought God was too good to damn them, while the unitarians thought they were too good to be damned. Here was an early version of the religion of humanity: deity and humanity reconstructed on a model of total divine-human and human-human solidarity, minus the mystery of the Incarnation. . . .
"Contemporary universalist theologians do not simply replace traditional eschatology with salvation for all, while retaining the rest of the tradition. To revise eschatology, one must revise the other Christian ­doctrines too."

     Michael McClymond, "Opiate of the theologians," First things no. 298 (December 2019):  30, 31.  Between these two passages comes an attack on the "Unitarian-universalism" of Richard Rohr.

"if love were to be so perfect that the difficulty vanished altogether—it would be more meritorious still."

"the difficulty which is found in loving an enemy does not constitute the reason for meriting, except insofar as perfect charity is demonstrated by it, which overcomes the difficulty. Thus, if there would be such a perfect charity as to take away all difficulty, to this extent it would be more meritorious."

"Non . . . difficultas quae est in dilectione inimici, facit ad rationem meriti, nisi in quantum per hoc demonstratur perfectio caritatis, quae hanc difficultatem vincit; unde si esset tam perfecta caritas quae totam difficultatem tolleret, adhuc esset magis meritorium."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, Quaest. disp. de caritate 8.ad 17 (=de virtutibus in communi 2.8.ad 17), trans. Kendzierski.  Trans. Pieper (Leisure:  the basis of culture II ((San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 2009 [1952]), 34):  "It is not the difficulty of loving one’s enemy that matters when the essence of the merit of doing so is concerned, excepting in so far as the perfection of love wipes out the difficulty. And therefore, if love were to be so perfect that the difficulty vanished altogether—it would be more meritorious still."  Latin from Corpus Thomisticum.  I was reminded of this by SPU University Scholar John Goodhew.

"hate the vice and love the man"

"Wherefore the man who lives according to God, and not according to man, ought to be a lover of good, and therefore a hater of evil.  And since no one is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is evil by vice, he who lives according to God ought to cherish towards evil men a perfect hatred [(malum oderit)], so that he shall neither hate the man because of his vice, nor love the vice because of the man, but hate the vice and love the man [(ut nec propter uitium oderit hominem nec amet uitium propter hominem, sed oderit uitium, amet hominem)].  For the vice being cursed, all that ought to be loved, and nothing that ought to be hated, will remain."

"quapropter homo, qui secundum deum, non secundum hominem uiuit, oportet ut sit amator boni; unde fit consequens ut malum oderit. et quoniam nemo natura, sed quisquis malus est, uitio malus est: perfectum odium debet malis, qui secundum deum uiuit, ut nec propter uitium oderit hominem nec amet uitium propter hominem, sed oderit uitium, amet hominem. sanato enim uitio totum quod amare, nihil autem quod debeat odisse remanebit."

     St. Augustine, City of God XIV.6, trans. Dods.  Latin from CAG via Past Masters.

"To us, everything is permitted"

 "We reject the old systems of morality and 'humanity' invented by the bourgeoisie to oppress and exploit the 'lower classes.'  Our morality has no precedent, and our humanity is absolute because it rests on a new ideal.  Our aim is to destroy all forms of oppression and violence.  To us, everything is permitted, for we are the first to raise the sword not to oppress races and reduce them to slavery, but to liberate humanity from its shackles . . . Blood?  Let blood flow like water!  Let blood stain forever the black pirate’s flag flown by the bourgeoisie, and let our flag be blood-red forever!  For only through the death of the old world can we liberate ourselves forever from the return of those jackals!"

     "an editorial . . . in the first [(August 1919)] issue of Krasnyi mech (The Red sword), the newspaper of the Kyiv Cheka."  Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Karel Bartošek, and Jean-Louis Margolin, The black book of communism:  crimes, terror, repression, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 1999), 102.  I was put onto this by Rémi Brague, Moderately modern, trans. Paul Seaton (South Bend, IN:  St. Augustine’s Press, 2019), 233.

"What good do these perverse confessions do that never result in absolution? They can only inoculate us with a paralyzing poison."

"à quoi ces confessions perverses qui ne débouchent jamais sur une absolution?  Elles ne peuvent que nos inoculer un poison paralysant."

     Rémi Brague, Moderately modern, trans. Paul Seaton (South Bend, IN:  St. Augustine's Press, 2019), 254.  I.e. keep us from "becom[ing] the past of our future":  "respect for the past in no way inhibits preparing for the future.  On the contrary, it is what permits there to be a future.  Why so?  Because we must know that we have been the future of our past, in order to become the past of our future [(Il faut savoir que nous avons été l'avenir de notre passé pour pouvoir être le passé de notre avenir)]" (252).  I have taken the French not from Modérément moderne, but from a different version of this chapter posted online.  Apparently there is more on these "perverse confessions . . . that [can] never result in absolution" in Curing mad truths:  medieval wisdom for the modern age.