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Yves R. Simon and the Problem of Authority in NeoThomism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
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References
1 Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 28 Oct. 1813.
2 More recent major work on the Angelic Doctor's legal theory include Finnis’, John Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; the collection of essays in Goyette, John, Latkovic, Mark, and Meyer's, Richard St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition: Contemporary Perspectives (Washington DC: Catholic University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Lisska's, Anthony J. Aquinas's Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; and Rziha's, John Perfecting Human Actions; St. Thomas Aquinas and Human Participation in Eternal Law (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009)Google Scholar.
3 Kerr, Fergus in After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002CrossRefGoogle Scholar) proudly writes that he has “paid no attention to what Thomas Aquinas says that is now totally unacceptable”, 207. The first words that John Finnis writes in his Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory are “There are some serious flaws in Aquinas's thoughts about human society,” 1. Perhaps the most honest work that refutes the liberal reading of Aquinas as a liberal is Drury, Shadia B.. Aquinas and Modernity The Lost Promise of Natural Law (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008)Google Scholar. In one of the few works specifically written on the broad scope of Aquinas's thought, The Political Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963)Google Scholar Thomas Gilby O.P. also got caught up in the fervor of presenting Aquinas as a Whig and defending him, writing “His thought bears some points of resemblance to that of Catholic Liberalism during the first three decades of the Risorgimento: freedom‐loving, yet with no more liking for mob‐rule than for despotism,” 297. Avery Cardinal Dulles more mildly suggests that the “contemporary Thomist must not be enslaved to the letter of the Master.” “John Paul II and the Renewal of Thomism” Nova et vetera 3 no. 3 (2005) 443–458, 456.” 456Google Scholar.
4 There are numerous references to this Whig Thomism through much of American Catholic political thought. The source of term is Michael Novak's 1992 work This Hemisphere of Liberty: A Philosophy of the Americas (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute) in which Novak, draws his argument from a supposed passage from Aquinas contained in Lord Acton's writings as well as Hayek's, F.A. The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a rebuttal of Novak, see Kenneth Craycraft Jr.'s “Was Aquinas a Whig? St. Thomas on Regime.” Faith and Reason (1994) in which Craycraft points out that Novak's reading of Acton is based on a passage from Aquinas at best paraphrased if not completely fabricated by Lord Acton.
5 The attempt by the neoconservative Catholics to distance American liberalism from its more violent and slightly more anti‐Catholic manifestations in Europe is not made by Simon, one of their principal teachers.
6 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1962).
7 (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1940).
8 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1951).
9 This is one of the key points of Rourke's, Thomas R. A Conscience as Large as the World: Yves R. Simon Versus The Catholic Neoconservatives (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997)Google Scholar.
10 Translated by James A. Corbett and George J. Mcmorrow (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1942).
11 (Milwaukee: Tower, 1942).
12 Translated by Robert Royal (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009).
13 Translated by Willard H. Trask (New York: Henry Holt, 1947).
14 A very helpful and honest analysis of the effect of World War II and the Vichy regime on Martiain and especially Simon's view of political Thomism can be found in Hellman's, John “World War II and the Anti‐Democratic Impulse in Catholicism”. Journal of Church and State. 33 no. 3 (1991):453–471CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hellman's title is especially revealing: “Anti‐Democratic” is a term that supposes that democracy is a value prior to Catholicism to which the Church must conform, not vice versa.
15 For a discussion of the anger at Thomism and conservative Thomists, especially Fr. Garrigou Lagrange, see John Hellman's “The Road to Vichy: Yves R. Simon's Lonely Fight Against Fascism.” Crisis May 1988.
16 In The Ethiopian Campaign and French Political Thought Simon notes that supporters of Italian Fascism in France included “the majority of the people on the right, the nationalist and conservative parties, the most important segment of the capitalist bourgeoisie…”, 9.
17 Simon, The Ethiopian Campaign, 1.
18 Charles Williams, who is not a rightist, presents an honest overview of Pétain and Vichy in Pétain: How the Hero of France became a Convicted Traitor and Changed the Course of History. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)Google Scholar. Print.
19 Simon admits as much himself when he writes that “among the early supporters of the Vichy government” there may have been “some mistaken patriots,” The Road to Vichy, 5.
20 There is an entire book dedicated to the mass murders by “resistance”, member: Lottman's, Herbert R. The Purge: The Purification of French Collaborators After World War II (New York: William and Morrow, 1986Google Scholar).
21 Simon, The March to Liberation, 1.
22 Simon, March, 40.
23 He further writes, “Whatever the success of the forces of blindness and treason, the French of 1939 and 1940 showed that they were sufficiently aware of the meaning of that war to die bravely whenever their leaders allowed them to fight.” The March to Liberation, 2.
24 He writes, “Among the French intellectuals of the last years of the Third Republic there were undoubtedly a certain number of traitors.” The March, 4.
25 In The Road to Vichy, Simon does dedicate some passages to critiquing Frenchmen who were, in fact, Nazi sympathizers.
26 Simon, Ethiopian Campaign, 9. “no journalist denounced more vehemently than Charles Maurras the threat Italy posed on our border in the Alps and our Mediterranean coasts.”
27 Samuel Osgood. French Royalism Under the Third and Fourth Republics. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960) 157.
28 “Those old patriots profoundly detested Germany. But did they detest any less profoundly democratic and social France, republican and egalitarian France, the France of revolutionary syndicalism and the France of the Popular Front?” Simon, March 44.
29 Ibid., 10.
30 In The Road to Vichy, Simon says that the liberty is one of God's names, 14.
31 Simon, March 33.
32 Ibid. 33‐34.
33 Simon, Nature and Functions, 45.
34 Ibid., 45.
35 Simon, General Theory, 94.
36 Ibid., 96.
37 Simon, March 35.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid., 37.
40 Ibid., 15.
41 Ibid., 16.
42 “In the midst of all these good arguments, perfectly irrefutable in the atmosphere of polite discussion, a handful of Frenchmen, soon rallied by general De Gaulle, declared that they would not ratify the enslavement of France and that why would settle the ‘realist’ capitulators after the victory. This is the kind of virtue which history recompenses.” Simon, March, 18‐19. Simon gives further evidence that he views General De Gaulle as being at being the heir of the torch of liberty when he repeatedly notes that General De Gaulle's army was called the Valmy named after village on the main road between Paris and Verdun on which the French revolutionary army stopped the invaders of the ancient regime.
43 Simon, General Theory, 102.
44 Simon, March, 54.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid., 79.
47 Ibid., 59.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid., 60.
51 Ibid., 61.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid., 62.
54 Ibid., 91.
55 Ibid.
56 Simon, General Theory, 91.
57 Ibid.
58 Simon, March, 12.
59 Weber, Evger Action Française: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth Century France. (Stanford: Standford University Press, 1962), 54Google Scholar.
60 Simon, March, 86‐87.
61 Ibid., 30.
62 Simon, General Theory, 137.
63 Ibid., 137.
64 Ibid., 124.
65 Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government, 93.
66 Simon, Philosophy, 93.
67 Simon, General Theory, 93.
68 Ibid., 93.
69 Simon, Philosophy, 93.
70 Ibid., 13.
71 Ibid., 14.
72 Ibid., 16.
73 Simon, General Theory, 71.
74 Ibid., 16.
75 Ibid., 14.
76 Ibid., 15.
77 Ibid., 15.
78 Ibid., 13.
79 Simon, Nature and Functions, 13.
80 Ibid., 44.
81 Simon, General Theory 92.
82 Ibid., 111.
83 Ibid., 127.
84 Ibid., 127.
85 Ibid., 116.
86 Ibid., 124.
87 Ibid., 136.
88 Ibid., 133.
89 Ibid., 147.
90 Ibid., 147.
91 Ibid., 145.
92 Ibid., 72.
93 Ibid., 57.
94 Ibid., 51‐52.
95 17.
96 Ibid., 29.
97 Simon, General Theory, 50.
98 Simon, Nature and Function, 33.
99 Simon, General Theory, 79.
100 Simon, Nature and Functions, 46.
101 Ibid., 47.
102 John Hittinger writes, “Simon, like Maritain, sought to work out the implications of the renewal of Leo XIII, especially in recognizing the importance of liberty and justice as animating ideals of political order.” “The Achievement of Yves R. Simon,” Crisis January 1996.
103 (29).
104 SCG 3, ch. 81.
105 DR 1 ch. 1.
106 ST I‐I, q. 108, a 2.
107 ST I‐I, q. 96, a. 4.
108 ST I‐II, q. 93, a. 4.
109 ST I‐II, q. 92 a. 1.
110 DR 2, ch. 2.
111 CS, 2.44. a. 4.
112 Ibid.
113 Ibid.
114 DR 2, ch. 3.
115 ST II‐II, q. 11, a. 3.
116 ST II‐II, q. 10, a. 11.