The Postliberal Mind: Classical World & Christendom

Like Kirk, it is time to give a comprehensive account of postliberalism's roots.

John Kish helps form the next generation of Catholic students to become fully alive in the classical liberal arts tradition as a teacher at St. Benedict’s Classical Academy in Boston and a member of the St. Thomas More Teaching Fellowship. He received his bachelor's degree in philosophy from The Catholic University of America.

In 1953, American political philosopher Russell Kirk revived Anglo-American conservatism with the publication of his masterwork, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot. The book, which outlined the intellectual history of conservative men-of-letters, challenged the widespread prejudice of the time that the United States had no right-wing intellectual tradition; that the field of political thought was simply a battle between America’s true representatives, the liberals, progressively advancing the ideals of autonomy and equality against the Christian reactionaries who opposed them.

The Conservative Mind quickly became a classic among members of the post-war conservative movement. In it, Kirk provides ambitious readers with a free university course in right-wing political philosophy. He outlines six key principles of conservative thought, and introduces us to prominent intellectuals in English and American history that fit the bill. Even today, it remains the primary textbook for centers like the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and other institutions dedicated to providing formation to the young and thoughtful conservative. 

The purpose of this essay is to imitate Kirk’s example, and provide a similar intellectual survey for the rising movement of American postliberalism. The distinction between Kirk’s conservatism and postliberalism is a very important one, but a comparison of principles would deserve an essay on its own.

For now, we will simply say that postliberal thinkers are concerned with reconciling the ideals of law and liberty: they contribute in some way or another to a tradition of thought which sees the purpose of politics as upholding both the primacy of the political common good (law) and the dignity of the human person (liberty).

While The Conservative Mind began its study with the Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke, and ended with the American poet T.S. Eliot, The Postliberal Mind’s tradition is more expansive: it starts from the classical world’s greatest cities — Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem — and ends with the contemporary debates that define postliberalism today. The Postliberal Mind is also broader: our interest is not simply in England’s influence on American thought but also the wider tradition of European conservatism.

Some have claimed postliberalism is unable to properly attach itself to the classical tradition, or that it has no intellectual roots. It is time to put those accusations to rest and state clearly that postliberalism is rooted in the classical and conservative traditions.

An important thing to keep in mind is that these figures would not have necessarily understood themselves as postliberals. The point of this survey is not to impose a modern label onto past ages, but rather to provide the willing student with a tradition of solid political thinkers to study, grow in, and be formed by — all for a better understanding of what it means to be a conservative and a postliberal.

The Classical Roots of Western Civilization

Drawing inspiration from Russell Kirk’s later work, The Roots of American Order, the young student of postliberalism is best served by beginning his study with the three great cities of the classical world: Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem. 

Athens: Homer, Thucydides, Herodotus, Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle

Athens represents not only the liberty-loving tradition of popular democracy, but more fundamentally the study of politics and virtue itself: here is the birthplace of political philosophy.

No classical education can begin without the masterpieces of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Next comes Greek history through the writings of Thucydides (History of the Peloponnesian War), Herodotus (The Histories of Herodotus), and Xenophon (Cyropaedia, Hellenia, Polity of the Lacedaemonians, Oeconomicus). 

All of this, however, is preparation for the philosophical works of Plato and Aristotle. Alfred North Whitehead famously said that “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” Regardless of whether or not you agree, there is no denying that Western political thought begins in, and cannot be understood apart from, Plato’s Republic, Gorgias, and Laws.

Nor can it be understood apart from the works of Plato’s most famous student, Aristotle. A serious student of postliberalism must be dedicated to understanding these two men in their complete works, with a special emphasis on Aristotle’s Organon, Ethics, Politics, and Metaphysics.

Rome: Virgil, Livy, Sallust, Suetonius, Tacitus, Plutarch, and Cicero

Following Greece, the city of Rome represents the empire of law, civic virtue, and political authority that would come to dominate the classical world by the time of Christ.

Rome’s national poet is not Homer, but Virgil: the epic poem Aeneid continues the tale of the Iliad and weaves it into a masterpiece about pietas, divine providence, and the national destiny of Rome. After the great poet come the great historians: Livy’s Roman History covers the rise of the Roman kingdom and republic, Sallust’s Jugurthine War, and Cataline’s War detail the decline of moral virtue in the late republic, while both Suetonius (The Twelve Caesars) and Tacitus (The Annals) depict the virtuous and vicious masters of the Roman Empire. 

Alongside the historians are Rome’s moralists, Plutarch and Cicero. Plutarch is best known for his Lives, a series of 23 Greek and Roman biographies paired together to show how the pair’s common virtues and vices affected their destiny. Marcus Tullius Cicero, the greatest orator of the Romans, should be read closely in his many rhetorical and political works, with special emphasis on his owen Republic and Laws.

Jerusalem: The Old Testament and The New Testament

There is little introduction needed for the words of Holy Scripture: whether one is an Christian or an atheist, a conservative or progressive, a person simply must read the Bible. Why? It is the most complex, intellectually and spiritually dense collection of books that our civilization has ever received. Two thousand years of commentary by the Fathers of the Church, the spiritual masters, and countless literary traditions have not been enough to exhaust the fountain of wisdom which is the Word of God.

The Bible should not be read like the other books in this survey — it must be meditated upon and turned into a living prayer. The masters of the Christian tradition recommend daily reading for 15 to 30 minutes in the manner of lectio divina: a meditative approach where a small passage of scripture is repeatedly read, slowly and with great care, in order to receive new wisdom and grow in our relationship with God.

Beginners should focus on starting with the four Gospels of the New Testament: those written by Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. As your familiarity with scripture grows, begin slowly reading the works of the Old Testament: the Pentateuch, the Historical Books, the Books of Wisdom, and the Prophetic Books.

As one reads these side by side with the Gospels, the countless connections between the events of the Old Testament and their fulfillment in the New take shape. And as you read the Acts of the Apostles, the letters of St. Paul, and the other Christian letters (St. James, St. Peter, St. John, St. Jude, and Revelation), you will see how the Holy Spirit moved the apostles after the life of Christ to bring about the foundation of a new age.

Political Thought in the Age of Christendom

The Roman Empire, and the world, was forever changed by the historical reality of Christ and the Church he founded. In many ways, the story of the West is really the story of the Church: how it developed, raised Europe to unsurpassed heights, and struggles against countless errors and enemies. This age is the sacred center of the Western tradition. 

To understand Christendom, one must begin with the Fathers of the early Church. The contributions of the early Fathers is a study all by itself, so the time-strapped student should stick with a few key figures: firstly, St. John Chrysostom, an archbishop of Constantinople who articulated an early Christian understanding of economic justice. After Chrysostom are the four original Doctors of the Church: St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Jerome, St. Augustine of Hippo, and Pope St. Gregory the Great. 

Among the Great Doctors, St. Augustine is the most influential for articulating the Church’s relationship to political life. Alongside his other masterpieces, which include the Confessions and On the Trinity, The City of God Against the Pagans stands as a cornerstone of Western theological and political thought, especially considering the relationship between Church and state.

St. Augustine’s legacy, and how to interpret him as a political philosopher, remains controversial; he is cited by both classical liberals and traditionalists. For Augustine’s stature as a Doctor of the Church, and for his profound insights into moral and political theology, The City of God is a crown jewel of the postliberal student’s bookshelf.

Alongside St. Augustine, official Catholic teaching on the relationship between Church and State began with Pope Gelasius I’s letter Famuli vestrae pietatis, known better by its opening words, Duo Sunt. In Duo Sunt, Gelasius articulated the distinction between the temporal power of earthly rulers (regalis potestas) and the spiritual authority of the Church (auctoritas sacrata pontificum).

While earthly potestas and spiritual auctoritas are independent from each other in their own respective areas, power ultimately relies upon authority for the justification of its existence. Power without authority is tyranny; power exists to serve authority. If we follow this reasoning, all authority and power are ultimately derived from the Divine Authority of God as Creator and Sustainer of the Universe (see John 19:11, “You would have no power (potestatem) over me, if it had not been given to you from above.”).

Following this papal letter and the insights of St. Augustine, a tradition began to flourish in the Church that dealt with the difficult questions of how to reconcile the apparently competing claims of the Pope and the Church against rulers of the age like the King of France or the Holy Roman Emperor.

If Duo Sunt was taken seriously, would that make the Pope a kind of “super-emperor” that has political rule over the whole world? As good as that question is, a real attempt to answer it would require a book, not an article. For now, we’ll content ourselves by pointing out some important figures who contributed to the discussion and their key works. 

First in importance are the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor. The writings of St. Thomas are in many ways the crowning achievement of the Catholic intellectual tradition. A person could profitably spend the rest of their lives alone reading Aquinas’s estimated eight million words written on theology and philosophy.

The interested reader is best served by beginning with St. Thomas’s Summa Theologiae. In the Summa, St. Thomas gives a philosophical explanation for all of theology, from the relationship of faith and reason to the role that the sacraments play in bringing us closer to God.

Ideally, one should take the time to slowly study the entire work — but for those who want to quickly see how he understands politics, Questions 90-108 of the Prima Secundae (the first part of the second section in the Summa) cover his discussion about the nature of law.

After the Summa, St. Thomas Aquinas’s most complete explanation of politics comes from his treatise De Regno: On Kingship to the King of Cyprus. In De Regno, St. Thomas deals with how a good king should act, with the goal of leading his subjects to virtue and their ultimate destiny in Heaven. Contained in this work is Aquinas’s important insights into the common good as the ultimate purpose of government. For those that read Aristotle closely, St. Thomas also wrote commentaries on the Ethics and the Politics. 

At the beginning of the fourteenth century, almost twenty-five years after St. Thomas’s untimely death, Pope Boniface VIII picked up the questions of Church and State with the public decree Unam Sanctam. Boniface appealed to scripture and the two swords doctrine of Duo Sunt to argue that “Therefore, both [kinds of rule] are in the power of the Church, namely, the spiritual sword and the material [earthly, political]. But indeed, the latter is to be exercised on behalf of the Church; and truly, the former is to be exercised by the Church. The former is of the priest; the latter is by the hand of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest.”

Since all authority ultimately comes from God, the authorities that deal with the leadership of souls toward their ultimate destiny in Heaven (the Church) is higher than the authorities that lead those souls during their time on earth (political rulers). Boniface VIII’s argument may have been sound in logic and consistent with Catholic doctrine, but they were far from easily accepted by the secular rulers of Europe.

The political tradition of Christendom, developed over hundreds of years in the exchange of cultures between Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem, created the conditions for a unified and relatively peaceful Europe in the later Middle Ages. Human sinfulness would always create opportunities for conflict and corruption; but the accountability of rulers to the Church and to God greatly tempered the natural inclination to disorder. It was only by the shattering of this order, broken and divided in the bloody conflicts of the Protestant Separation, that Europe would be brought into the modern age, which will be explored in the next Postliberal Mind essay.

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