Perhaps the most libertarian of all the scholastics, particularly in his later works, was the Jesuit FatherJuan de Mariana. Mariana was born in the city of Talavera de la Reina, near Toledo. He appears to have been the illegitimate son of a canon of Talavera, and when he was sixteen, joined the Society of Jesus, which had just been created. At the age of twenty-four, he was summoned to Rome to teach theology, then transferred to the school the Jesuits ran in Sicily, and from there to the University of Paris. In 1574, he returned to Spain, living and studying in Toledo until his death at the age of eighty-seven. Although Father Mariana wrote many books, the first one with a libertarian content wasDe rege et regis institutione (On the king and the royal institution), published in 1598, in which he set forth his famous defense of tyrannicide. **According to Mariana, any individual citizen can justly assassinate a king who imposes taxes without the consent of the people, seizes the property of individuals and squanders it, or prevents a meeting of a democratic parliament.**3 The doctrines contained in this book were apparently used to justify the assassination of the French tyrant kings Henry III and Henry IV, and the book was burned in Paris by the executioner as a result of a decree issued by the Parliament of Paris on July 4, 1610.4In Spain, although the authorities were not enthusiastic about it, the book was respected. In fact, all Mariana did was to take an idea-that natural law is morally superior to the might of the state-to its logical conclusion. This idea had previously been developed in detail by the great founder of international law, the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria(1485-1546),who began the Spanish scholastic tradition of denouncing the conquest and particularly the enslavement of the Indians by the Spaniards in the New World. But perhaps Mariana’s most important book was the work published in 1605 with the titleDe monetae mutatione(On the alteration of money).5 In this book, Mariana began to question whether the king was the owner of the private property of his vassals or citizens and reached the clear conclusion that he was not. The author then applied his distinction between a king and a tyrant and concluded that “the tyrant is he who tramples everything underfoot and believes everything to belong to him; the king restricts or limits his covetousness within the terms of reason and justice.” From this, Mariana deduced that the king cannot demand tax without the consent of the people, since taxes are simply an appropriation of part of the subjects’ wealth.
History texts will tell you that the state and religious authorities colluded against individuals in order to consolidate power through sheer coercion. There is a grain of truth to this statement, but it ignores the fine natural law tradition which attacked the “divine right” of the king, and eliminated all justification for the state, taxes, and inflation. Liberals hate religion because they hate natural law, all forms of it. They need reality to be purely subjective, reason to be illusory, in order to justify their absurd positions.
Indeed they did. I’m afraid that Mariana’s idea, even if sincere, was publicized only to justify the overthrow of the French monarchy (which created the very first truly socialist state in Europe), and relegated to oblivion shortly afterward (which could explain why I hear of this guy only now). Many people have used libertarian ideas to gain power, with the Marxists advocating ultimate anarchy just to get a grip of the state serving as foremost examples.
The sad truth might well be that libertarians have no ally whatsoever, but at all times find themselves opposing anyone else, and often even one-another (I’m referring to minarchists vs. anarchists, natural-lawers vs. utilitarians, etc.). The sooner we get used to this idea, the better it shall be.
Have you heard of Turgot, Say, Bastiat, or the Physiocrats?
My point is simple: it’s one thing to disagree with religion and find something illogical, irrational, or wrong with it, but it’s an entirely different thing to hate religion, and all people who consider themselves religious. Do religious authorities abuse power? Of course, but we must not forget that religion (not all elements) stood in the face of tyranny.
The only reason I bring this is up, is because whenever there is a thread or a blog post where anyone even mentions religion, it turns into a major thread where one group calls all religious people barbarian statist’s. Natural law is the epitome of liberalism (in the classical sense).
I didn’t say Bastiat was religious, I just asked him if he’s ever heard of the pre-Austrian Austrians (for lack of a better word).
To say that religion (specifically Catholicism) had nothing to do with natural law (Aquinas, the Salamanca School), or that it did not influence subsequent forms of natural law, is just absurd. I don’t get what you mean by “revealed” religion.
I’m sorry if I can’t find where in one of bastiat’s books he says this, but I do also think that bastiat was religious since he lauds the religious morality of the americans who lived in the freest state (according to him) and he attempts to parallel the ethics of the market (thrift, honesty) with the ethics of religion. Another clue is that in the above quote by juan, bastiat uses the word “sacrilegious” to describe state-church alliance.
As regards the OP I think that any ideology including religion can be used for both liberty and statism. For instance, in “A debate on the salt and iron mines” of han china (i think that is the correct title?) those who are in favor of deregulation of the iron mines are actually using socialist (I’m using it anachronistically) rhetoric (merchants are bad, by nationalizing the mines the gov. acts like a merchant, so nationalization is bad) to argue for it. My own opinion is that religion qua the state did more damage in the west than good. But atheism too is looking like the nouveux fashion of tyranny in our latter times (what with the USSR and socialistic-european countries being less religious than the US) so one can say I have a wary attitude to both in proportion as they get closer to the state.
I didn’t say Bastiat was not religious. He strikes me as a deist of sorts. As a matter of fact he says that the social order is part of a divine design. But his arguments for freedom are not based on supernatural and ‘revealed’ dogma.
Well, it had to do with ‘natural law’, not with natural law. When I say natural law, I’m referring to libertarian natural law, so to speak. On the other hand, this is catholic ‘natural law’
Aquinas : “much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death.”
No. That one quote does not invalidate an entire movement. There was progression, over time, where libertarianism was deduced from premises put forth by religious institutions (and others). The Jesuits and the Salamanca school are as libertarian as you get, as well as extremely religious.
Either way, my point is simple: When Marxists attack religion, they’re really attacking natural law.
I like the way this is going, so the battle between marxism and austrianism (or libertarianism to be more exact) is really the battle between the philosophy of aquinas-aristotle and that of hegel or marx?
Natural law, if it’s fully realized and embraced, will mean the death of etatism. It would mean that a person doesn’t have to be well-versed in economics and political philosophy to see the evil’s of the state. Inflation and taxes will be on the same moral footing as rape and murder. There’s a reason why religion (especially Catholicism) became the target of so many intellectual movements during the 17th, 18th, and 19th century. If it was really so in bed with the state, it would have remained prominent.
Indeed, without a religious foundation, natural law is a laughably weak position. There is a reason why natural law remains primarily a Christian political philosophy; if man was not made in the image of God, if man were nothing but a rational ape then there is absolutely no reason for believing in the dignity of the individual that is necessary for the dogmas of natural law to be fully comprehended. If God is dead, then there is no objective moral obligation holding back the king from executing citizens as he sees fit.
An opposite argument can be made just as easily. Natural rights are only meaningful, if they can not be broken without that being an act of evil. Jet some religions speak of God as a being that transcends good and evil, a being that can murder a human being without that being an act of evil.
Thus natural law is actually only ever meaningful when it is placed above God, in the sense that even God must conform to it or be rightfully condemned. Thus what makes natural rights a strong proposition is not that they come from God, but that they are divorced from God in the sense that they are much more than merely his whim (wheter it is that they come from Him or not).
There is a reason why natural law remains primarily a Christian political philosophy (rather than a Jewish or a Muslim one) and it is because the New Testament nowhere has God, father or son, break any natural rights, thus it can be thought of them as something that is truly absolute to the point that even He must conform to them.
This is what was truly revolutionary about Christianity. It for the first time allowed for a God that is bound, we could say shackled, by ethics. Before that time the omnipotent God that went around pissing down on the dignity of human life was an obstacle to absolute morality.
Absolutely no religion speaks of God as a being that can “transcend good and evil”; rather God is a being that defines good, and evil. Furthermore, you are completely overlooking the fact that the relationship between man, and his fellow man is of a completely different nature than that of man, and his Creator. In fact, man owes his Creator everything due to the fact that he cannot exist if it were not for God’s act of creation. Ergo, this entire argument fails to realize that God is the very Creator of natural law, and that because of this fact he is “above” it. In addition, the obligations entailed by natural law cannot exist in an ontological void, the “ought” must be grounded in an “is”.
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No, in Christianity, God is goodness in itself. He is not “shackled” by any moral precepts.