How does Plato attempt to prove in Republic that justice, regardless of all reward, is more profitable than injustice?

 

Justice is at the heart of Republic. Interpretations of aspects of the dialogue have sometimes missed this crucial fact that the entire enterprise is geared to proving this very point: that justice is always, objectively and incontrovertibly, better than injustice. It is, in one sense, the human version of the Good. The primary aim of the dialogue is to prove that justice is in an agent’s self-interest because justice is intrinsically good. Before we can analyse how Plato makes his proof, we must focus closely on what ‘justice’ means in Republic. We cannot assess the means, methods, analogies and arguments by which a proof is made, before we look in detail at the constituent parts of the proof themselves. In this vein, we will first assess what Plato means by justice, how he arrives at this meaning, and what he does with it once he is there. Thereafter, we can examine how he tries to prove that it is more profitable than injustice, and in what senses this is true.

           

Plato is very specific over the meaning of justice (dikaiosune), and takes great trouble over presenting a coherent picture of what his version of justice ‘is like’. One might go so far as to say that this is the unifying end of Republic. He does not offer a new ‘definition’ by way of excluding things that ‘justice’ is not, but rather imbues the word with a new ‘character’ and defined attributes: What is true about the concept ‘justice’ refers to? This reflects his conception of knowledge, also a fundamental building-block of his argument in Republic, as built up by degrees of understanding, rather than our post-Cartesian ‘exclusion of doubt’. For Plato, the meaning of ‘justice’ is quite specific: the existence of a well-ordered soul, governed by reason. This state will unquestionably bring about “the right way to live”. ‘Platonic justice’ might be usefully thought of by the modern scholar as ‘mental health’, as indeed even the language we use to describe corrupt mental health, like ‘unbalanced’ or ‘cracking up’, gives a good sense of what Plato means by ‘injustice of the soul’. We cannot push the metaphor to the point of translation, but it is testament to the power of Plato’s insight into the human condition that the modern analogy fits.

 

It is worth looking at how Plato presents the challenge to Socrates, although some scholars have argued that Book 1 of Republic actually causes more problems than it fixes. This seems unlikely, as Book 1 has a literary and philosophical function in presenting through the characters several archetypes of what Socrates later terms “commonplace” justice. This covers helping friends and harming enemies, paying what you owe, submitting to the will of the stronger and obeying the law. The arguments are deliberately weak to allow Socrates to issue later a damning rebuttal of these ‘soft’ versions of justice, which have led Polemarchus to conclude “justice is not a very serious thing”. Nothing could be further from Plato’s view, and he uses this statement as a call to arms against moral scepticism, and as a launch-point for a re-evaluation of the entire concept of justice. The inadequacy of the act-centred conception of ‘justice’ which the early speakers discuss is torn down by Socrates, and replaced with a totally different agent-centred theory. It is this justice which Plato then shows to be more profitable.

 

The ‘Socratic method’, of which Plato is the most famous written exponent, challenges accepted ideas, principles and morality. In Republic, Plato uses Socrates himself as the mouthpiece (somewhat ironically) of an entirely different procedure: the building of his own moral and epistemological theories. To have ‘the great questioner’, who previously knew nothing for certain but his own ignorance, formulate an argument which is to stand as a theory of knowledge, justice and morality, is a radical philosophical and literary undertaking. Thracymachus makes the point explicitly to Socrates: “I even told the others here some time ago that you wouldn’t be prepared to express opinions, and would feign ignorance and do anything rather than answer a question put to you.” Socrates’ acceptance of the challenge is a moment of dramatic tension, and signals the gravity of his undertaking. He will attempt to establish moral truths, whilst radically redefining what those truths are.

 

Plato’s treatment of justice is concerned with the agent, not with other people or acts which might involve them. The versions of ‘common-sense’ justice outlined in book 1 depended on relations with other people, and might be termed ‘external’ or ‘expansive’, since they deal with relations with others. Platonic justice does not ask ‘what is the right way to act justly?’ but instead, ‘what does it mean to live well, to be a good person?’ this agent-centred conception of justice is of tremendous importance to Plato’s argument, as he seeks not only to prove that the ‘just’ soul is better than the ‘unjust’, but that the act-centred concept of justice itself is fatally flawed. Plato defines the soul as an internal state of the person, rather than in relation to other people. Actions are therefore ‘just’ if they foster a just condition in the soul, and ‘unjust’ if they do not. This distinction remains important to Plato’s proof throughout. The onus is on the agent themselves as the following passage makes clear:

 

Virtue has no master. Depending on whether a person accords it honour or dishonour, each will possess it to a greater or lesser degree. The responsibility lies with the chooser. The God has none.

 

However, Socrates must deal with the difficult question of when moral intuition or “commonplace” justice conflicts with the actions of a Platonically just person. For example, ‘ordinary justice’ dictates that it is wrong to kill a stranger. Yet one could construct a situation (however unlikely) whereby the rational choice of the just person would be to do just that. Who is right? Socrates initially tries to argue that by virtue of a Platonically-just person acting, there actions are, by definition, just. However, returning to the example, it appears that Socrates’ method of justification is self-fulfilling. There is no question of objective standards of justice if they are simply the actions of a just person, and Socrates is seeking to define justice objectively, just as he does Knowledge and Good. This impasse leads Socrates to “look elsewhere” for justice, and construct one of the most famous analogies in philosophical history.

 

Socrates’ use of the city-soul analogy forms the backbone of his method of addressing the question of justice, hoping that “By comparing the two, we might make justice light up like fire from the rubbing of firesticks”. It is worth considering the origins and appropriateness of the analogy itself, as it is so crucial to our understanding of Plato’s argument. Why does he use it? The analogy does provide a good metaphor for Plato’s view of the human psyche, and the absolute primacy of unity in the city reflects the crucial need for ‘psychic harmony’ in the soul. The Principle of Specialisation which underwrites the civic unity is also easily transferred onto the psyche, and emphasises its absolute necessity to the rest of the argument. As Socrates puts it, “each one of us is born somewhat different from the others, one more apt for one task, one for another”. This kind of statement becomes very useful later on, as Socrates argues that each part of the soul must be derived in the same way, as is evidence from the appearance of conflicting motivations within people. The story of Leonitus and the corpses is particularly useful in this case, and is combined with the wider city-soul analogy to great effect.

 

To what extent the analogy is appropriate to the proof of justice being profitable is more debatable. The people in the city are not ‘unique and separate’, but ‘different and integrated’. Socrates stresses the point yet further, when he shows the radical steps which are required for true integration – such as the abolishment of the family, to the point where “when one hurts his finger, all will feel it”. The city is a useful explanation of the level of integration that Plato believes the part of the soul must achieve in order to be ‘just’. In this way, perhaps we are supposed to be shocked at the degree of authoritarian control the guardians must exercise over the other two classes, for it is to the same degree that reason must hold over the baser instincts. The analogy here is doing its job, by fleshing-out a concept with which we are unfamiliar (the just soul) in terms with which we are (the city). This principle is fundamental to Plato’s method, and he returns time and time again to the city analogy as he develops the more complex aspects of his moral theories.

 

 

Some scholars have argued that the analogy actually raises more problems than it solves, and actually serves to obscure Plato’s argument on justice and morality by bringing in an array of civic concepts which actually have little to do with his other arguments. This is most clearly seen in the four types of rule corresponding to the four types of unjust character. Just because we have accepted that justice in a city might be like justice in an individual, it does not follow that types of city will correspond exactly to types of individual. Socrates himself says “there are of necessity as many ways of life for men as there are types of cities”, but this does not prove that one type of civic injustice reflects one type of personal injustice exactly. Indeed, it appears that perhaps the example should run the other way, as Socrates declares, “without shaping souls it is impossible to change society”. The same reasoning runs behind Plato’s focus on the Guardians of the city, at the expense o the other two classes. The point relies on the city-soul analogy: to be personally just is not the product of a just environment; rather, personal justice produces a just environment. In addition, there is an intrinsic problem that the Guardians who are just do not run the civic society in their own self-interest, which appears to be a contradiction of Plato’s main argument that justice is in the just man’s self-interest. However, if we take the metaphor of the city as standing for an individual’s soul (as Plato intends us to), then we cannot take each of the guardian’s as individuals. They cannot work in their own self-interests, since they do not fully possess a ‘self’, but are part of an analogy of a single entity.

 

There is not space here for anything but a brief outline of Plato’s epistemological arguments in Republic, but they are highly relevant to his case for the primacy of justice over injustice. ‘Knowledge’ for Plato relates to truth, is utterly infallible, and does not require qualification. ‘Belief’ covers truths and untruths, is malleable, and must be qualified. The objects of knowledge are not to be found in experience (the philosopher knows this), and the only true Beauty lies in something’s perfect Form (which is not to be found in experience). Knowledge takes Forms as objects, and is thus can provide the basis for an objective standard of justice. Just actions derive their beneficial qualities from the Form of the Good (objective), and Plato emphasises the need for the Good to be as close as possible to the agent to ensure moral justice. This is expressed in the city analogy by the Guardians (who are just and love knowledge) having absolute power over the other classes, even to the point that it is acceptable for them to lie, and, in a sense, control what is ‘true’ for the lesser beings. This is not a justification for state propaganda and censorship, but more a safeguard for the unity of the city.

 

Plato takes great care over defining and proving exactly how justice is ‘more profitable’ than injustice, by analyzing the nature of Good. This analysis is fundamental to his proof, as he attempts to show how justice is Good both in itself and for its consequences, just as health is: It is both a means and an end simultaneously. These two senses of Good, intrinsic and consequential, give an overarching structure to Plato’s argument. Glaucon’s example of Gyges’ ring (the case for the superiority of injustice) opens the way for Socrates to prove first that justice (in Plato’s sense of the word) is Good “itself by itself”. Thereafter, Socrates attempts to prove that the consequences of having a just soul are Good and can only be good. Socrates seeks to prove that it is not worth being unjust even if, like Gyges, you know you can get away with it. The Good (which he later comes to define) is to be found by way of the just soul.

 

The consequences of justice are less easily fitted into Plato’s vision of the just soul. The just person is morally healthy, has psychic harmony, and is governed by reason. There is no appeal to the justness or profit of their actions in this case. This is entirely deliberate on Plato’s part, since the arguments in Book 1 demonstrate that an act-centred conception of justice is inadequate to answer the question. Indeed, it might almost be said the Plato doesn’t so much ‘prove that justice is more profitable than injustice’, but rather gives justice a more appropriate meaning. Plato does not conceive of an external body of ‘just actions’ to which we should try to subscribe (just as the analogy of the city is entirely focused on what goes on inside it), but rather that a just agent will act in a necessarily just manner in any given situation. He avoids the obvious problem (again prevalent in the city image in the form of the Guardians) that his version permits arbitrary decisions without moral reference, by showing the proximity to the Good which the truly just person must develop. The question of ‘happiness attained’ is less relevant for this understanding, and Socrates almost dismisses it when he says, “we must leave it to nature to provide each group with its share of happiness”. Contrarily, for the just man, happiness is not a bonus, but an inevitable consequence of his just state.

 

 

The ‘Good life’, which is the goal of existence in Plato’s work, requires goodness, which requires knowledge, which requires understanding, which requires philosophy. Philosophers, through their examination of life and knowledge, value justice in itself, and then will benefit from its consequences. Pleasure is not the aim of life, and in a sense the question of justice or injustice judged by consequences imposes a false teleology onto a question of ‘the right way to live’. The activities and attitudes of a man with a just soul will, for Plato, inevitably produce a profitable life – for a profitable life, by definition, is the life of a just man. This apparently circular proof relies on our acceptance of Plato’s view of the ‘just man’. The entire result lies within the state of the agent, and to what extent his reason is able to maintain harmony over his constituent psychic parts, just as the internal unity of the city depends on the Guardians ability to maintain it. It therefore appears by Plato’s reasoning that only one who is a philosopher can attain the necessary justness of soul to live in such a state, and this, he stresses, must be constantly worked on and developed. Unjust people, irrespective of their actions, are dominated by desires that cannot produce a truly unified soul. A city without guardians is a city in chaos, as Plato’s pseudo-historical examples of the degeneration of cities are intended to show. Therefore, his city analogy may have a ‘realistic’ political point to make about how it is more important to impart reason (from philosophers, who are just) onto unjust people, than it is to let people ‘choose for themselves’. The disordered state of their souls means that their actions are perennially unjust, (Socrates even speaks of the “civil war of the soul”) and only the authoritarian state of the city can make them just.

 

It is then rather unclear whether Plato has re-defined the terms of Thracymachus’ challenge to the extent that he is no longer answering the same question. Thracymahcus implores him to show “…what effect for good or ill each exerts on the person who has it [justice], simply by itself”. A definition of justice was implicit in the question, but the formulation of a radically new theory of justice itself was not anticipated. Justice, in the form Plato presents it, is unquestionably more profitable than injustice, but the assumptions about the construction of the soul and the appropriateness of the city-soul metaphor must be accepted first. Indeed, Socrates almost says this himself:

The point is that everyone thinks the rewards of injustice outweigh those of justice – and they’re right, according to the proponent of this view.

Those who subscribe to “this view” of justice need to be radically re-educated, aggressively if we take the city-soul analogy as evidence, to regard justice as intrinsically valuable. Only then can justice be said to be more profitable than injustice.

 

 

Figgis insightfully stated, “We can never understand St. Augustine if we think of him as a system maker”. There are logical inconsistencies in his work, changes of emphasis which remain unexplained, and an underlying assumption – especially in some of his later work – that what happens in this world is tarnished by Original Sin to such an extent that it is almost futile. However, if we understand Augustine as a man of passionate faith, who sought to reconcile his Christian devotion with the daily challenges of the world around him, rather than a ‘political theorist’ in the Classical mould, we may extract and synthesise a ‘political picture’ of his thinking, which, like an impressionist painting, may teach us something in spite of its internal conflicts and potential obscurity.

In pursuit of this end, Augustine left us with a penetrating assessment of his own character, in the form of his Confessions. This work is widely recognized as one of the most brilliant explorations of sin, epiphany and redemption ever written, and lays bare Augustine’s profound and passionate personal faith. The implications of this must be held in suspension during a consideration of his political thought, since it is difficult to understand the primacy of human sin in his political (or implicitly political) work, without reference to his extreme personal convictions. Confessions presents a man who literally aches with the memory of his sinful youth:

“You were silent then, and I went on my way, farther and farther from you, proud in my distress and restless in fatigue, sowing more and more seeds whose only crop was grief.”

This may appear as something of a detour from the question of the role of peace in Augustine’s political thought, but the discursive rhetoric of his writing cannot be understood without a brief consideration of the character behind it. This enterprise is less necessary of a self-conscious political and social ‘theorist’ like Hegel or Weber, but there is so much of Augustine himself in his works, that the sense is sometimes obscured without reference to his character and circumstances.

 

Putting St. Augustine in Context

Augustine’s political thought has been described as “a meeting place of two worlds”, with reference to the two main intellectual traditions available to him. Indeed, some have gone so far as to recognise his work as the point at which Classical and Judaeo-Christian thought were amalgamated and made pregnant with the seeds of ideas which would flourish during the Renaissance. Irrespective of this, the two intellectual traditions were not as separate as some historians have supposed, and the intellectual legacy with which Augustine had to work was rather more complex than ‘Classical thought versus Judaeo-Christian thought’.

 

On a superficial level, Augustine appears to have started his career with a broadly ‘Classical’ conception of political thought, which was concerned with the right ordering and government of society in a way that was most conducive to virtue, and hence to human happiness. This neo-Platonic view of the world rested strongly on a belief in the cosmic order, and the cultivation of human virtue via justice. Over time, and certainly by 411, Augustine adopted a stance more integrated with the Judaeo-Christian political tradition, which we might term the ‘politics of salvation’, whereby only God’s saving grace could establish the proper social order; human reason was (and had been shown to be) incapable of doing so, and the human Christian agent could only be a peregrinus in a sinful world. Markus has identified a third period of Augustinian thought, which marked a reconciliation between these two strands, as Augustine looked at ways in which mortal men could (and should) participate politically to mitigate the effects of sin, however imperfectly.

The genesis of Augustine’s political thought is crucial to our understanding of the importance of ‘peace’. In fact, his conception of political thought was heavily conditioned by the work of earlier Christian thinkers such as St. Ambrose and Tertullian. These men had already begun the long and painful process of reconciliation between the two political traditions. Perhaps the most significant of these was St. Ambrose’s De Officiis (a self-conscious reference to the revered Ciceronean work), in which he followed Cicero’s conclusion that “the foundation of justice is faith (fides)”. This was a deliberate are careful use of Roman political vocabulary, reformulated in a Christian context with a Christian meaning. Augustine picked up the Ciceronean notion (crucially re-contextualised by St. Ambrose) that Christian faith underpinned justice, and placed the idea that “the just man lives by faith alone” at the very centre of his political thought. Augustine’s understanding and explanation of ‘peace’ throughout De Citivate Dei rests on the nature of the two traditions of political thought. As the title of Chaper IV puts it, “Philosophers, who have supposed the Supreme Good (i.e. the nautral and good end of mankind) lies in themselves”, was fundamentally at odds with the Christian assumption that “eternal life is the Supreme Good”. The attack on Classical thought is direct: “With wondrous vanity, these philosophers have wished to be happy here and now, and to achieve blessedness by their own efforts.” For Christians, according to Augustine, this is outright blasphemy, which will inevitably be punished since “the Lord knoweth the thoughts of men” (1 Cor. 3,20.). The only hope is through faith, as, “We are saved by hope.” (Rom. 8,24f.)

 

                The emphasis on the sinfulness of the “earthly city” has led many to question why Augustine should be concerned with any form of “earthly peace”, when the true and only salvation of mankind lay outside the realm of the here and now. This tension is implicit in Augustine’s own phrase from De Civitate Dei, “what difference does it make under what rule a man lives who is soon to die?”  Augustine’s pessimistic realism, writing of “this hell on earth”, seems to have reached almost the point of nihilism. Here, again, it is instructive to remember that consistency in political theory was not in the forefront of Augustine’s mind, and the comment should perhaps be taken as an outburst of frustration at the sinful condition of man, akin to those which appear in his Confessions. In any case, the question of why Augustine wrote his greatest ‘political’ work, De Civitate Dei, has long interested historians. Figgis saw it as a straightforward livre de circonstance, in response to the challenges presented by the Church’s association with the fallen Roman Empire after 410. Markus took a more nuanced approach, and showed how elements in Augustine’s thinking had moved down a more Judaeo-Christian line of reasoning before 410, especially after his intensive reading of St. Paul in the 390s. This argument led Markus to the conclusion that Augustine’s reflection on human history had already led him to deny the Empire (and, indeed, and political or social institution in the saeculum) any role whatsoever in the salvation of man. In this sense, since Augustine was a political agent himself and at the mercy of political expedients, the fall of Rome in 410 was a catalyst rather than a root cause of his re-appraisal of the state of man in De Civitate Dei. Therefore, when Augustine set out his purpose as, “to say something against those who attribute to our religion the disasters greatly sustained by the Roman commonwealth”, he had already developed the intellectual position from which he would make his argument, and had broken from the Tertullian idea of an alliance of Empire and Church.

 

The meaning of ‘peace’

 

To the modern scholar, the word ‘peace’, outside of an Augustinian context, may be defined broadly as the ‘freedom from conflict’, whether that ‘conflict’ is internal or external, moral or military. In Augustinian thought, ‘peace’ is a more pliable concept, which is used at times more narrowly and at times more broadly. It is such an important term in Augustinian thought, that he devotes an entire chapter of De Civitate Dei to it, notwithstanding the numerous references to it in other chapters. Augustine introduces it thus:

“We may say of peace, then, what we have already said of eternal life: that it is our Final Good.”

In fact, Augustine goes so far as to argue that “the name of the City [of God] itself...means ‘Vision of Peace’”.  This predominantly theological explanation of Christian peace, which Augustine subsequently refines to “peace in life eternal” or, “life in eternal peace”, initially appears to have little place in the ‘Earthly City’, mired as it is in the effects of inescapable human sin. How, then, is Augustine later able to speak of “the sweetness of peace, which all [mortal] men love”? The answer lies in a neo-Platonic understanding of Augustine’s concept of the ‘peace of Babylon’. While Augustine admits that “the peace of the unjust is not worthy to be called peace at all”, he also contends “that which is perverse [the peace of Babylon], however, must of necessity be in, or derived from, or associated with, and to that extent at peace with, some part of the order of things.” This (rather ineloquent) statement is a neo-Platonic expression of the theory of Forms, since the “peace of the unjust” on earth is a perversion of “peace in life eternal”, but, in order to be ‘a perversion’, it must have some kind of relation to it in first instance. This line of reasoning also allows Augustine to attack, but explain, the philosophers who thought they could find true peace in the earthly world, since their “pride is a perverted imitation of God”, which “loves its own unjust peace”.

Are we to let Augustine away with such a malleable conception of ‘peace’, or are we better to see a duality of ‘peaces’ depending on whether they tend to the earthly or heavenly City? It is worth understanding Augustine’s mature conception of divine providence at this stage, which is fundamental to understanding how he felt he was able to talk of one ‘peace’ in both cities, and how it was true that “no vice is entirely contrary to nature”.  The two types of divine providence reflect the two types of order in the world. Providentia naturalis provides God’s ‘natural order’, whilst providential voluntaria provides order expressed in human choices and enacted in human action and its consequences. This distinction represented Augustine’s final repudiation of the Classical notion of a ‘cosmic order’, and had tremendous earthly political implications as God’s providence covered both the ‘natural order’ of a father’s rule over his household, and the (sinful) ‘human-willed’ order of a state or an individual over other humans. From here we can see how Augustine’s conception of the purpose of government as being the “control of the wicked within the bonds of a certain earthly peace” developed. This Augustinian innovation, sometimes termed the ‘politics of imperfection’ in contrast with the perfectibility of man and polis assumed in Classical philosophy, rests on the idea that a perfect man (if he were to exist) would have lost his autonomy before God. The only exception to this was Christ Himself, who was borne out of God to die for mankind’s sins as an act of mercy.

How are we to reconcile the need to pursue ‘peace’ on earth, the rejection of the Classical cosmic order, and the notion that “the peace of all things lies in the tranquillity of order”? This can partly be achieved by Augustine’s conception of a duality of ‘order’ in the world, based on the two kinds of divine providence discussed earlier, but this does not explain why peace on earth is desirable in itself. Augustine writes that “the earthly city...desires an earthly peace, and it establishes an ordered concord of civic obedience and rule in order to secure a kind of co-operation of men’s wills for the sake of attaining things which belong to this mortal life.” The italicised words carry an implicit suggestion that there are some things which are of value in themselves in the earthly world. Augustine goes on, “the Heavenly City...must of necessity make use of this [earthly] peace also”, which, using the same reasoning by which Augustine established that the very perversion of earthly peace implies a direct connection to heavenly peace, suggests that there is a direct connection between the earthly and heavenly cities. This is not merely the Heavenly City “as a captive and a pilgrim”, which Augustine declares it at one point, but the idea that the Heavenly City “directs earthly peace towards heavenly peace”. This assertion implies that aspects of the City of God are actually present in the City of Man, and the two are not as distinct and separate as their eschatological definitions would imply.

 

There is a tension between the earthly peace and heavenly peace within individuals themselves. The following passage is from Chapter XIX of De Civitate Dei:

“Every mortal who makes right use of these [mortal] goods suited to the peace of mortal men shall receive ampler and better goods, namely, the peace of immortality and the glory and honour appropriate to it, in an enternal life.”

This passage appears to suggest that human actions on earth (“who makes right use of these goods”) will result in “the peace of immortality”, which is to be found in the Heavenly City. This appears to contradict the idea that everything within the saeculum is sinful, and cannot fit with the statement that “In the earthly city, then, the whole use of temporal things is directed towards the enjoyment of earthly peace”. Either everything is directed towards the earthly peace (and hence not the heavenly) or not everything is. In addition, “the infirmity of the human mind”, which Augustine assumes throughout his discussion, would not appear to tally with the human capacity to “make right use of these goods”, since the human mind is necessarily ‘infirm’.

Augustine attempts to reconcile these apparently contradictory views by bringing in a third meaning of ‘peace’, namely, “that peace which mortal man has with the immortal God”. In its fullest sense, this peace is built, like the Heavenly City, on “love of God and contempt of self”, but in sinful man this is by definition impossible in the saeculum. Perhaps this understanding depends on the notion that between the two cities, “a harmony is preserved...with respect to the things which belong to this condition (i.e. the earthly and sinful).” The precise nature of this “harmony” only becomes clear at the end of time, when the corpus permixtam is finally divided into the saved and the condemned, and until that point it is ‘held in preparation’ by Christians. This would fit in with Augustine’s central mantra that “the just man lives by faith alone”, faithful of the coming of “the eternal and perfect peace”. Happiness, according to Augustine, exists “rather by future hope than in present reality.” The Christian concept of ‘faith’ (fides) is at the centre of Augustine’s political thought, just as it was for Ambrose, and it would be for centuries to come. It is the basis of justice and peace since what kind of justice “takes a man away from the true God”? “Justice” has by implication been replaced by divine grace, as Augustine makes explicit: “Justice is found where one supreme God rules and obedient city according to his grace”. Thus, on earth, there is no true peace:

“The peace which we have here, whether shared with other men or peculiar to ourselves, is only a source of solace for our wretchedness rather than the joy of blessedness”

Therefore, the only ‘peace’ which cities on earth can hope for is a transient peace based on the fear of violence. Even the faithful Christian will have to object himself to the libido dominandi of tyrants, since “By Me kings reign, and tyrants possess the land”. (Prov. 8,15.) The Lord’s justice is invisible on earth, and may be expressed though the sins of man via the providential voluntaria, and this “hidden justice” man cannot see or interpret in the earthly world.

How do Giles and John differ over property and dominion?

 

Giles of Rome and John of Paris shared a rich intellectual heritage, from which they both drew widely. In terms of influences, their combined scholarly output appears as a montage of Biblical scholarship, Christian theology (particularly St. Thomas and St. Augustine), canon law, Roman law, Parisian scholasticism, Aristotelian reasoning and Christian historiography. Yet their conclusions were very different, only united in their radicalism. The different uses to which their common intellectual inheritance was put is indicative of its self-contradictory nature. Their disagreement over property and dominion was part of a wider debate which centred on the fundamental relationship between the temporal and spiritual powers, particularized at this time in the argument over ‘sovereignty’ (Tierney) between Pope Boniface VIII and the French king Philip IV.

Giles of Rome has often been presented as performing the same role for Boniface VIII as Cardinal Humbert had for Gregory VII. The vindication and publication of absolute papal rights over both the temporal and spiritual spheres was certainly not a new phenomenon. However, aspects of Giles’ argument were novel, as was the vehemence with which he presented it. Giles started, as Humbert had, from the (to him) self-evident premise that the spiritual being had an intrinsic and immutable superiority over the material being. As he put it, “Temporal things are appointed towards spiritual ends and must obey spiritual ends and serve them”.  This view was also present in Aquinas -“the secular power is subject to the spiritual power as the body is to the soul” – but Giles brought in an Aristotelian notion of the appointment of temporal things to a specific end (teleosis). A third aspect of Giles’ intellectual inheritance was also present in this conception, stemming from Augustinian thought, as the ‘end’ in question was divine not temporal. Such was the nature of much of Giles’ (and John’s) work; the careful reconciliation of a wide range of intellectual sources into a coherent world-view appropriate to their age and political situation.

The argument for the genesis of absolute papal power, the unquestionable and unerring papal plenitudo potestatis, was obvious to Giles. (Some scholars have suggested that the strength of this conviction explains his repetitious style; he was making arguments for that which need not even be argued.) His argument for papal plenitudo potestatis ran: Jesus had commissioned Saint Peter to ‘Feed my flock’ and to act as vicarus Christi during Jesus’ earthly absence. The Papal office had been established to continue this divinely-commissioned task, and when a newly-elected pope conferred the powers of papal office (most notably the power of binding and loosing) onto his human self (for no one else on earth had the power to confer them), he became the “spiritual man” (1 Cor. 2:15) who “judgeth all things; and he himself is judged of no man.” Therefore the pope was necessarily lord (dominus) of all temporalities as well as all spiritualities. Indeed, for Giles, all political auctoritas (whether temporal or spiritual) was derived from the Supreme Pontiff. His dominium was truly the entire world. Moreover, the pope had the exclusive right to intervene in any human interaction in the temporal world ratione peccati.

There were, however, a number of well-established problems with this view, and Giles’ conception of property and dominion was partly intended to rebuke those who attacked the papacy’s regular forays into international secular politics. Giles showed how Christ had allowed the early church to own property and have wealth, as they were important means to the ultimate Christian end of salvation. Indeed, the ‘ordering’ of the world (in a strongly neo-Platonic sense) remained subservient to this end throughout Giles’ work: “the whole corporeal nature is ordered towards the spiritual”. As we would expect on this basis, revealed Divine wisdom was for Giles necessarily more universal than that wisdom based on reason (i.e. philosophy in the Aristotelian sense). Thus, Giles was able to maintain Augustine’s eschatological pre-eminence without denying all value to earthly order and government: “temporal goods are not good except insofar as they are ordered towards spiritual ends”.

As an important corollary to the justification of papal ‘intrusion’ (Giles would not have seen it as such) into secular politics, Giles argued that all property on earth was (ultimately) within the dominium of the pope, and that he was therefore their ultimate owner while on earth. Giles’ logic was formidably simple in coming to this conclusion. All souls were governed by the Pope (as current holder of the Petrine commission and vicarus Christi); bodies were necessarily subject to souls (Aquinas held this view); temporal goods existed to serve the body; therefore, all temporalities could trace a path (in terms of dominium) back up to the pope, just by virtue of his (unquestionable and humanly irrevocable) spiritual superiority. Natural property rights, as Aquinas had conceived of them, simply did not enter into the equation. Giles’ justification of this was Augustinian in character, if rather different in detail: natural law was the state of man before the Fall, but was in a sense ‘recovered’ by the coming of Christ. Therefore, a man’s natural right to property was utterly dependent upon his being “a spiritual son of the church”, and thus dominium was dependent upon grace. The taking of the sacraments kept a man in a state of grace, and thus kept him a dominus. This was particularly significant to excommunication, since if a man was denied the sacraments by the church, he would technically have surrendered his property rights. Furthermore, since Giles expressed a view that the pope himself was ‘in a sense’ (quodam modo) the church itself (by virtue of his position at the apex), he was the sum of all human property rights of himself.

The explosive implication of this logic in juristic terms was that any secular dispute could be referred to canon law, given that canon law was the law of the church, and the pope was the earthly head of the church (and, in a sense, was the church in juristic terms). If the Pope was truly concerned with the health of all men’s souls, and had the universal temporal and spiritual authority to rule over their temporalities, then why would he risk allowing any secular power structures, courts or interference? Giles answers this charge along Augustinian lines, namely, that temporal rulers and courts did not exist because of any defect in the pope’s spiritual power (which was by definition perfect since it came directly from God), but because it was inconsistent with the dignity and excellence of papal power itself to concern itself with the mundane aspects of the regulation of daily life. However, the pope reserved the right to exercise temporal jurisdiction (by virtue of his plenitudo potestatis) in special circumstances ratione peccati. Giles put this papal prerogative in no uncertain terms:

“The spiritual power can concern itself with all temporal things, since the just or unjust possession of such things are matters which bear upon the infirmity or health of souls.”

This argument, however, went a stage further. The pope, whose earthly role was the maintenance of “healthy souls”, had an implicit duty to intervene when a secular ruler was acting in a manner which threatened the health of any of the pope’s flock, who happened to be subject to the less meaningful secular laws of the ruler.

                Implicit within all Giles’ work is the abject lack of distinction between the concepts of iurisdictio and dominium. The papal right to “judgeth all men” in temporal and spiritual affairs implied, or, rather, was (in essence), the same as holding dominium over all their property. When men spoke of their ‘property’, they were simply speaking of their use of what really belonged to the pope, and ultimately to God. (This was a very Franciscan conception of property, which John of Paris would refute vehemently.) Indeed, if a man was not baptized, he did not even have a right to this use. His birth as a man was the result of the copulation of his parents as ‘secondary agents’, and his existence could only be explained in terms of his potential baptism. This absolutist hierocracy, whereby men only attain status by virtue of their relationship with the head of the just party (i.e. the pope) was a central tenet of Giles’ work, and the ultimate expression of plentido potestatis.

 

John of Paris drew a very different set of conclusions from the same stands of intellectual thought to which Giles of Rome had access. In order to understand fully John’s objection to Giles’ position on property and dominium, a brief excursus is required into John’s reading of Thomist metaphysics. Fundamental differences over the nature of man as a political animal underpinned Giles and John’s disagreement over how spiritual and temporal powers fitted together, and their understanding of natural law and its impact on human property rights. The most fundamental piece of property a man may own is his own being (whether conceived of as separate body and soul as Giles did, or composite body-soul as John did). We shall now turn to man’s ‘ownership’ of himself.

                Coleman has argued that the origins of John’s work were in a late thirteenth-century dispute between the Franciscans and Dominicans over the right of religious orders, in their imitation of the vita apostolica, to own property. Underwriting this debate was a metaphysical argument over how ‘man’ could be both an individual and a species simultaneously. Dominicans claimed that the body and soul were not separate, but intrinsically connected. They maintained that the soul of each man was immattered in a particular body, on the basis that sensational experience provokes thoughts and feelings (of the soul). The ‘world of things’ is a distinguishing feature of human existence only when it is actualized as human existence. Therefore, human acquisition is natural (and thus of God’s will) since it is not only a means to the survival of the body-soul composite (an irrefutable part of Thomist ‘nature’), but the very means to who people are individually – whilst remaining, in essence, one species. Indeed, the soul requires the actualization by objects (it cannot ‘be’ of itself), and (in strongly Aristotelian terms) man’s use actualizes matter through human labour and acquisition. In terms of property and dominium, there can therefore be no separation of the use (usus) and ownership (dominium) of property.

                This fundamental distinction which John had developed from Dominican theologians[1] and canonists working from the 1270s implied another fundamental rejection of Giles’ work, namely, the refusal on Giles’ part to recognize the distinction between iurisdictio and dominium (ownership). For John, each man is dominus of that which he acquires through “his own skill, labour and diligence, and individuals, as individuals, have right and power over it and valid lordship”. This idea had been espoused by the secular theologian Godefroid of Fontaines, but John justified it in terms of a Thomist interpretation of man’s natural condition. John took it to the extreme, when he claimed that “neither prince nor pope has lordship or administration of such properties”. This view was potentially at least as radical when applied to the French king, which lends credibility to Coleman’s argument that the majority of De Potestate was written during the 1290s in response to the work of Franciscan theologians, rather than a work primarily on behalf of the French king. One cannot imagine Philip IV taking the justification for his deposition lightly, in spite of John’s argument for papal deposition.

                John, as was the case with Giles, did not conceive of property without its Christian context. Indeed, it was only through John’s theological discussion of the nature of the church and papacy that he tackled ownership and property at all. John agreed that the pope possessed iurisdictio in matters of doctrine (in a sense the spiritual dominium), but did not possess iurisdictio by virtue of his papal status amongst temporalities. His arguments for this came predominantly from the Scriptures, although twelfth and thirteenth century canonists were also extremely significant.  Stemming from his Thomist conception of the unity of the human species, John contended that, just as in the temporal realm, the origin of the pope’s personal power (rather than the divinely-sanctioned power of his papal office) had its true locus in the congregatio fidelium. Nothing could have been further from Giles’ hierocratic presentation of absolute papal monarchy. For John, the pope was simply an administrator (procurator; dispensator) of possessions which the members of the elect owned in common. Even his personal (as opposed to that of his divinely-sanctioned office)  iurisdictio in spiritual matters actually derived from human delegation during the process of election. (John argued that during conclaves cardinals acted as representatives of the congregatio fidelium.) Interestingly, John had in one sense merely applied the principles which canonists had developed for thinking about the workings of the lesser parts of the church onto the whole entity itself. To put it another way, John claimed that as a bishop administers his diocese, so the pope administers the church. He is nothing but the steward of the universal church’s property:

“The pope is no more universal lord of all ecclesiastical property than are lesser prelate lords of the property of their chapters. The pope is in fact manager and steward of ecclesiastical property...he has no power therefore over this property, except such as the common necessity and welfare of the church requires.”

                John was careful to point out that as vicarus Christi, the pope did not have dominium over mankind, ratione peccati or otherwise. Christ was not a temporal lord (to think so was Herod’s fallacy), but a Lord in heaven. John writes, “Something can be attributed to Christ as God which was not in his power as a man.” Christ reigns over men’s souls by faith (ratione fidei), and did not communicate this power in the Petrine commission. Indeed, John was clear; “All the Apostles received the same power as Peter, as may be seen in Matthew 18.” The pope cannot claim to rule over temporalities as an extension of Christ or Peter’s power. Indeed, this is the king’s purpose, whose power also comes directly from God Himself. Since (by Aristotelian and subsequent Thomist reasoning), nothing can have more than one purpose, the pope is effectively attempting to usurp the king’s purpose by claiming dominium over temporalities. As John put it:

“It is inappropriate that one person alone should be entrusted with such diverse duties as the priestly function and the royal lordship.”

The Gospels had divided sacerdotal and temporal rules, in contrast to the Jewish faith which had explicitly combined them. John strengthened his argument by using the authority of the Church fathers. He quoted St. Bernard’s gloss of Luke 12:13-15:

“It cannot be shown that any of the Apostles [including Peter] ever sat as judge of men or as an adjudicator of boundaries or as a distributor or lands. I read that the Apostles had to stand as men under accusation; I do not read that they sat as accusers.”

Thus John set out, in explicit terms which used both the Scriptures and their official church interpretation, incontrovertible evidence first that the Pope (as the human executor of his divine office) was Peter’s heir (not Christ’s), and that he had no right to judge secular men in temporal matters.

                John pursued these natural limitations on papal power to their radical conclusions, demonstrating a facility to synthesise new arguments on proprietary rights where previous canonist scholars had focused more on pedantic detail. He went as far as to claim of the pope:

“As a man, he does not have communication or contact with those who are in the church; those who have given property to the church did not intend to transfer proprietary right and lordship to Christ with as God, because everything is already his, or as man, because he now has no use for such authority.”

The pope therefore did not even have the claim to appropriate even ecclesiastical property, since he is only steward, not dominus.  John, again, takes this argument to its most radical conclusion: “if the pope deprives anyone arbitrarily, not in good faith, what he does is illegal”. This view could not be further from Giles’ claim that the Pope has universal dominium and has a divinely-sanctioned duty to intervene in matters of property when the souls of the flock are at risk. Should the pope “betray his trust in taking the property of churches for reasons other than the common good, which as chief bishop is his especial charge, he can be deposed.” Scholars have pointed out that by the same logic, a king could be deposed for failing to attend to the temporal good of his subjects, and John is in agreement with this. The deposition of popes was not a Johnian innovation, and he relied heavily on the Si Papa treatise from the canonist Decretum in support of his stance.

 

                John and Giles reworked different strands of their intellectual heritage to promote very different ends. The main difference, perhaps the prism through which we should see their conceptions of property and dominion, was their respective emphases on the importance of natural law. Giles took a view from Augustine, whereas John looked to St. Thomas, although neither accepted all the conclusions of their predecessors. For John, the divine inspiration of natural law within men meant that, when considered together as a community, they constituted a locus of power that their lords (whether spiritual or temporal) could not match.

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[1] Watt argues that up to one third of De Potestate is plagiarised from other writers. This is of little relevance since the argument remains consistent throughout.