The pleasant discovery of a series of posts by Professor Jonathan McIntosh on the site of the Libertarian Christian Institute (LCI) has occasioned my republishing today part of Chapter 10 of Christ, Capital & Liberty: A Polemic (CCL). As that chapter originated as a post written about ten years ago, I’ve edited it, airbrushing references to the polemic. (Those interested in the latter should consult the book. I’ve modified the chapter in other ways.)
With erudition and nuance, Dr. McIntosh locates Thomas Aquinas on the political spectrum as a proto-liberal (my term, not McIntosh’s).
These anti-libertarian sentiments [of Thomas’s, just enumerated by McIntosh] notwithstanding, there are yet many other respects in which Aquinas’s political thought is not only consistent with libertarianism, but arguably provide the latter with an ideal and even necessary, moral and metaphysical framework.
McIntosh’s aim is
to sketch at least the outlines of a distinctly Thomistic, natural law libertarianism, one that coherently combines Aquinas’s account of law’s place within the social and moral dimension of human nature, with libertarianism’s more considered and consistent ethic of law’s inherently coercive nature.
McIntosh is a kindred spirit whose work I’m happy to advertise. (Visit his blogs The Natural Law Libertarian and The Flame Imperishable.) His
admiration for Thomas is great, but does not inhibit his criticism. Aquinas’s thought on the subject of liberty is, as I shall show in my own way, a mixed bag, but one whose contents every lover of liberty and reason is better off for having explored.
McIntosh’s series is entitled “The Libertarian Aquinas: Aquinas and Libertarianism,” and here are links to Part I, Part II, and Part III. (At least another installment is on the way.) I welcome any criticism of my effort he may see fit to give.
I’m taking this opportunity to thank again LCI’s Chief Executive Officer Doug Stuart for interviewing me about Christ, Capital & Liberty in late 2019 and making our discussion available on their site since last March.
Note: The “Austrians” referred to in today’s post are writers who subscribe to the Austrian School of Economics (ASE), whose “dean” was Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995). “Anarcho-Catholics” are Roman Catholics who find a “profound philosophical commonality” between the ASE and Catholic teaching (but not “Catholic Social Teaching”). I would include among them James A. Sadowsky, S.J. (1923-2012), Joseph Sobran (1946-2010), Thomas E. Woods, and Gerard N. Casey, although none of them uses (or used) that term to describe his political philosophy. I have defended that compatibility; as a dispensationalist, however, I no longer use the descriptor for myself.