joshuabgood wrote: ↑Tue Apr 05, 2022 7:43 am
The underlying question is, are the means of the state, violence and coercion, worthy (or as a whole salvific for society) when used to promote something virtuous? Which gets to the "salvific" question I asked earlier. Do we believe that violence and coercion are useful in providing salvific good to a society? (Where salvific means they improve, make better, make more whole (that is holy), purify, sustain, preserve...etc.)
In short, yes. In another thread I presented the example of God liberating the Israelites from their tyrannical oppressors by drowning those oppressors in the Red Sea, an example that is treated in the New Testament as a symbol of our own salvation. Here I will provide another example.
First of all, what is coercion? As a start, I will use the following broad definition, which is open to correction or specification if others have objections. A person is coerced when force is applied to them against their will (
contra voluntatem tuam). In some manner you are incentivized to do what you would not have otherwise preferred or desired to do. Taxes and fines are examples of coercion. Ecclesial excommunication is an example of coercion. A nurse putting a mentally ill patient into restraints is an example of coercion, as is a police officer putting a drunk, violent person in handcuffs. An abbot assigning one of his monks to complete an undesired physical task is an example of coercion. The repeal of Jim Crow laws was an example of coercion.
Coercion is an ordinary aspect of social life (life in a society, where
society is defined in an Aristotelian sense). Often it is quiet and unrecognized - it is so ordinary that we just assume its presence. One of the things that the postmodernists got right was to expose and bring clarity to some examples of the presence of social coercion (the thing they got wrong was to always view it in a negative sense, as “horrible and oppressive”). We are all participants in various social networks or webs of coercion, power, and applied discipline, whether we wish to be or not and whether we are aware of this or not. Of course, not all of this coercion is justly applied, in fact, much of it is not.
Let us consider the above with an example of a specific society in mind - the society of the family. One of the goals here is the development of virtue in the children. There is much to be said about virtue, but a virtuous person intrinsically possesses a kind of freedom or liberty. One of my goals as a father, one of the ends of being a father, is to develop virtue in my children precisely so that they possess the liberty or freedom necessary to participate in society at large, and to partake of the goods that result from this participation. Such a development requires coercion, including physical coercion. I will take this as somewhat self-evident given the context in which I am writing. In fact, those who say that this development does not require coercion often, in their efforts to allow their children “freedom” (a type of negative freedom), end up applying some of the worst kinds of psychological coercion.
What can be said about the justice of a father’s use of coercion? First of all, it is almost self-evident that not all types of coercion are just. I’m sure everyone knows of fathers who are tyrants and abuse their children using the excuse that they have power over them. The end towards which coercion is applied matters. Coercion or power applied for private gain (my own self-interest or comfort) is the definition of tyranny. And it is possible to use coercion to direct children towards ends that are not good (think of examples of parents applying extreme discipline and making great sacrifices to get their children to become good at certain sports, for example). Second, the justice of coercion depends upon the role that one has in a society. For example, if I were to try to discipline my neighbor’s children in the same way that I discipline mine, that would be unjust. That is not my role. Thirdly, coercion must always be applied out of love for the one being coerced. Coercion must always be ordered to the attainment of their true good.
More could be said, but this is lengthy enough. The point is that in a specific society, the society of the family, coercion can be applied in a just manner, towards a virtuous end, and indeed, for a Christian family, towards a salvific end. We can argue about how much this generalizes to other societies, but to that objection I would briefly advise reading some of the postmodernists to get a sense of how coercion just
is, whether we like it or not, and observe how attempts to avoid all coercion or all uses of power often end up worse off than before.