The Responsibilities of Individuals and Citizens

The human person is a unity of body and soul. As pertains the soul, its intellect and will, truth and love are its ends. Unfortunately, the difficult search for these ends and their ultimate integration has been complicated by false modern moves toward rationalism and sensualism. Both accept, either explicitly or implicitly, the Nietzchean first principle that God is dead and in so doing evince the veracity of Pascal's observation that when men discount God they either think themselves to be gods or search for pleasure in the transitory passions. And indeed, rationalism and sensualism assume that man is his own supreme good; that the ultimate goal of the intellect and will is man's continued existence.

Apart from the radical societal visions which these modus operandi advance, both rationalism and sensualism conceive the exercise of freedom moral per se. Freedom, however, while a prerequisite for moral action is not, of itself, moral action. For freedom is neither naturalism, which reduces freedom to the exercise of any natural inclination, nor self-sufficiency, which reduces morally binding truth to man's determinism. On the contrary, these ideas of freedom are little more than a sublime slavery in which the mind and the passions enslave "men without chests."

Man's existential emancipation, by contrast, is contingent upon the intellect's obedience to the truth about God which, in turn, make possible the ordering of the will according to the end of man's nature.¹ Truth sets man free (John 8:32). Freedom frees man to love. But the proper interrelation between truth and freedom, and freedom and love, requires recourse to the conscience. That is, for man to realize his end he must act according to his conscience.

And yet, just as acting in freedom does not necessarily render an act moral or good, neither does acting according to one's conscience necessarily render an act moral or good. Rather, a beneficent act according to one's conscience implies a conscience willing to apply the findings of an intellect disposed to the truth to a particular situation. Should this deference on a part of the conscience be lacking, the truth about man is falsified since "at the same time there is a complete falsification of the truth about who God is."²

Admittedly, recourse to the individual conscience involves a subjective consideration of objective norms. But this is not a subjectivity which renders objectivity unknowable for man is disposed to the truth as an object is ordained toward its end. Literally "with knowledge" the conscience aids the practical reason of man regarding the judgment of what praxis is to be preferred in acting. In essence, the conscience informs man to do good and avoid evil, to do this and avoid that.³ In other words, the conscience testifies that there are truths impervious to change; truths which find expression in what Russell Kirk has called in other contexts, "the permanent things." Indeed, absent such permanence there is no compelling counter to the claims of either a selfish individualism or a naive collectivism.

Religion, however, counters both individualism and collectivism in its witness to the seminal permanent thing, the truth about man: that man is the subordinate in an eternal relationship with God. This truth and the recognition that it is owed to God's initiation serve as the provenance for the Hebrew Scriptures as it does the New Testament. It also imbues the "self-evident" principles which served to forge the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States even as John Adams cautioned that without man's allegiance to this truth the ennobling pursuit of happiness would soon become a destructive pursuit of pleasure.

Nor was John Adams' view an aberration. Across the Atlantic, for example, Adams' contemporary Edmund Burke noted "that religion is the basis of civil society and the source of all good and of all comfort."⁴ Burke understood that religion is the source of good and comfort for it confronts man with the truth about himself. And also, that religion is the basis of civil society for religion respects man even to the point of allowing him to reject its truths.

Religion accomplishes its dual role of witnessing to the truth and proclaiming toleration by means of its integral role in binding freedom to truth through the formation of the individual conscience. Once informed, the conscience reconciles truth and prudence, and thereafter judges the way of love. Here, in its obligation, lies the source of the conscience's rights. To be sure, an informed conscience is inviolate because it relentlessly orders the will toward truth in a responsible love which conquers both rationalism and sensualism.

That it is incumbent on the individual to love responsibly is evident in the religious dictum toward service if not also in the fact that man is a social animal who needs others to obtain his own end.⁵ However, far from being social in the sense of Enlightenment thought--as firstly social and thereby an individual--man's individuality precedes the society as he is a being perfect in his orientation toward truth and love. It is in his orientation toward truth and love, however, that man realizes his imperfection insofar as he needs others in order to obtain truth and love. Hence, as an order of individuals, society exists so that individuals might live well through the pursuit of their end.

Cognizant of society's purpose, the state, as the primary ordering element in society, must allow each citizen to realize his own individuality provided another's realization is not unjustly inhibited as can be the case when individual freedom becomes divorced from corporate considerations. Still, it bears remembering F. A. Hayek's observation that "[r]ules of just conduct can ... never confer on a person as such a claim to particular things; they can bring about only opportunities for the acquiring of such claims."⁶ Accordingly, far from the cessation of individual wants, the principle value of social order is allowing individuals access to the liberty of expansion and realization.

The primary role of the state, then, is to protect and promote the living well of its citizens, which is the realization of themselves as individual persons. This "requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection."⁷ It also requires that inalienable rights be safeguarded and equality before the law ensured.

The rationale for state action to accomplish these ends was well summarized by G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown: "men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil."⁸ Indeed, since as a citizen one always acts in relation to other citizens, one can remain a citizen on "a sort of level of good" only by acting responsibly. It therefore follows that the state should concern itself with an individual's citizenship in relation to the common good; It should ask the question: Is an individual being a responsible citizen?

The state's role in governing the individual once again brings to the fore the question of freedom. Earlier it was noted that the state is the servant of the individual and the means which engenders society. It is now clear that "the state itself creates the ethos of society, embodies it, imparts it to its citizens, and sanctions its observance with rewards and punishments."⁹ Consequently, in a social context, freedom is more properly the dynamic of respecting rightful authority in order to be free in a good way. Or, to speak theologically, to love.

Troubling as it may be to the modern mind, freedom's submission to right authority in the pursuit of love does not obliterate autonomy but rather focuses it toward an expression which is socially responsible. There are, nevertheless, a multitude of problems inherent in exercising love. Not least among these is how one ought to love in an atmosphere where more enlightened consciences must interact with lesser developed consciences, where what is normative may not always be pragmatic. However, whatever the resolution in a particular instance may be it would seem that love, as the way of acting towards others, must bear the same responsibility as freedom. Like freedom then, love must be subjected to the authority of truth.

But a love considerate of the authority of truth is not enough. For even the individual who has submitted his will to the truth must recognize "the right of those who deny this truth to exist, and to contradict him, and to speak their own mind, not because they are free from truth but because they seek the truth in their own way, and because he respects in them human nature and human dignity and those very resources and living springs of intellect and of conscious which make them potentially capable of attaining the truth he loves, if someday they happen to see it."¹⁰ Thus, so, too, an individual must be tolerant.

It is in the demand of the conscience for love and tolerance that the individual possesses a dignity the state and even the society does not. For the state, once having ordered society, is eclipsed by society in its primacy since individual interaction is more than the mere creation of the state. Further, unlike the state, the individual has an end which transcends the temporal and material and thus his identification as a citizen or as a citizen among other citizens. Finally, transcending society, every individual is a person who enjoys a relationship with God which demands the realization of himself as a person and a steward (Mt. 25:14ff. & Lk. 19:11ff.).

Therefore, it is at best a secondary concern of conscience which considers what the state accomplishes or how well the state is serving one's neighbor. Rather, conscience more properly considers one's own action toward one's neighbor and, as a consequent, the inhibiting action of the state. For unless the state responsibly limits its action it may inappropriately inhibit individual action as it does directly when it usurps the role most properly left to each individual or group of individuals: clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, curing the sick, etc. and as it does indirectly by promulgating policies which increase the cost of individual action. Fortunately, some inappropriate state action is self accusing; an over controlled economy will stall and a besieged family unit will disintegrate. Unfortunately, however, the vindication of the conscience in such instances comes at great cost.

To the extent that the state has inhibited individual action it has confused its role. The purpose of the state is not to be the great leveler in human affairs. That is the purpose of death. Instead, the purpose of the state is to preserve order in society in such a way that each individual can enjoy the liberty necessary for development in the hope of being welcomed home by the words: "well done my good and faithful servant" (Mt. 25:21, 23).

Reinhold Niebuhr sagaciously wrote that since "[w]e can neither renounce this earthly home of ours nor yet claim that its victories and defeats give the final meaning to our existence" man must conscientiously work toward his end.¹¹ Here the conscience enables the citizen as it does the individual person. And yet, although the conscience may inform the citizen to act or refrain from acting, as an individual that consideration may lend the opposite result. In such cases justice demands only responsible citizens. Love, however, invites responsible individuals.

Peter A. Laird (third place winner) is a seminarian at the St. Paul Seminary at the University of St. Thomas, where he is pursuing a Master of Theology Degree and a Master of Divinity Degree. Mr. Laird holds degrees from the College of St. Thomas, St. John's College in Annapolis and the University of Wisconsin Law School.