We Can't Get to Integralism, But Who Cares?

Integralists should care. Transition issues threaten their ideal.

Book reviews of All the Kingdoms of the World have begun to appear. So far, people are quite positive. And some have good criticisms. I want to address one criticism in this post.

Two reviewers reject my Transition Argument against integralism. The argument: we do not know how to reach integralism without violating Catholic moral teaching. The reviewers deny that this is a problem. Integralism may seem like an unreachable goal, but integralists can create new strategies. I focus on Vermeule’s transition plan (beginning here). But other transition plans might work. So why think refuting Vermeule tells us anything about the truth of integralism?

Here’s John Macias in La Thomistica:

The transition objection certainly demonstrates that integralism faces significant practical challenges in the near future, but integralists would likely agree.

And here’s Gideon Lazar in The American Postliberal:

This would just mean integralists have to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new plan. As Vallier himself notes, many integralists disagree with Vermeule’s strategy. This is really an in-house integralist debate. Overall, I found this objection very weak. However, I did appreciate his very comprehensive engagement with Vermeule’s articles on integration from within. I will leave it to Vermeule himself to analyze whether Vallier’s synthesis of his thought is an accurate representation.

In this post, I discuss parts of the Transition argument I fear the reviewers miss. I also add an argument not in the book, further strengthening the Transition Argument.

1. Vermeule’s Plan Adopts Constrains on Any Serious Plan

Vermeule’s plan includes features that are necessary for the transition. First, integralists must get the Catholic Church's leaders to support integralism. That is a tall order indeed. Integralists must also co-opt a modern state that is democratic, pluralistic, and complex. Third, the Church and the state must integrate when the Church is less powerful than the state. Any transition plan must meet these conditions.

I can think of one exception: localism. Integralists could practice their politics locally instead of capturing a state. But problems remain. First, you still must convince the Church. Second, you still need Church-state integration. Third, you must still partly convert a state so that it will protect the integralist polity.

Fourth, you must deal with a new problem: easy freedom of exit. Central to integralism is the claim that you cannot leave the Church or its secular arm. But suppose Catholics can leave an integralist regime for a milder Catholic regime. The milder regime would not have civil punishments for canonical crimes. (Cool!)

Remember: integralism is not church dogma. Non-integralist but wholly Catholic regimes are a genuine possibility. They are also much more common in church history. Can’t people move from Integristan to Poland?

This is one reason why Vermeule avoids localism as a pass-through to integralism. Modern states will stick around, but liberals within the state will decline owing to internal contradictions. Capturing a liberal state is much too hard.

Vermeule is one of the world’s premier theorists of the modern state. If any integralist can devise a reasonable plan, it is him. And he has identified the necessary contours of any transition plan. Localist integralism must face powerful states that may eradicate them. Or, like Mt. Athos in Orthodoxy, they are small and unobtrusive. But in such regimes, freedom of exit is a constant problem. It will pressure local regimes to become less punitive and less integralist.

Vermeule’s plan will fail, so most transition plans will probably fail, too.

2. Integralism as an Ideal

I draw on the Catholic distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory in all my critiques. This is their thesis/hypothesis distinction. The thesis is the ideal regime. The hypothesis addresses societies that face barriers to the ideal. Thesis theorizing explores integralism as an ideal. Hypothesis theorizing considers real-world limits and transitional questions.

Thesis theorizing has several functions. One function is indisputable: the ideal defines the best regime in a fallen world. That’s what it means to be an ideal. The integralist ideal, though, has certain requirements.

First, the ideal cannot violate natural law in its essential operations. After all, the ideal regime has direct access to grace through the Catholic Church. The ideal also suits human nature in order to advance the common good and human flourishing.

At a macro level, integralism must be a kind of social order. Integralist regimes must rebuff external and internal threats. And it must do so owing to its unique stabilizing properties. Integralist regimes must contain dynamics that course-correct to maintain their existence.

I reject these claims about the ideal in chapters 5 and 6. Integralism cannot do its job: being a just ideal.

3. Ideal Action Guidance

But here’s something else many political philosophers think ideals should do. Ideals should be action-guiding. Weak action guidance means the ideal tells us how to improve local circumstances. Strong action guidance means the ideal tells us how to move towards it. Part of the Transition Argument is that integralism does not tell us how to approach it. Or rather, it does not tell us how to approach it without violating Catholic moral teaching. So integralism lacks strong action guidance.

Now to weak action guidance. An attractive ideal should tell us where other societies go wrong and how to fix them. If integralism is light-years away, it will fail to help us fix local problems. Or rather, we won't need it to do so.

We can see this if we consider Russell Hittinger’s work on Catholic moral teaching. Hittinger claims that Catholic moral teaching adopts four principles. These are the common good, human dignity, solidarity, and subsidiarity. These principles are substantive. They guide action for improving local circumstances. (They also help justify integralism, according to integralists.) So, why not dispense with the ideal and only use Hittinger's principles?

In short, we don't need to consult the ideal to improve local circumstances.

Let’s go further. If integralism tempts us to violate our principles, integralism is worse than no ideal! Indeed, as Jerry Gaus argues, that's a general feature of political ideals. We face trade-offs in approximating the best regime. We can go for local improvements that fall short of the ideal. Perhaps we get stuck there because the adjacent alternatives are worse. Or we can go for the ideal, realizing we're giving up local improvements. Gaus calls this The Choice. Integralism does not provide weak action guidance. It may not help. It may even make things worse.

To strengthen the point, recall that Catholicism has several basic moral principles. That means different institution arrangements might realize these principles to different degrees. Some will respect human dignity less but promote the common good more, and vice versa.

The Transition Argument has several lines of argument. Altogether, it strips away one attraction of a political ideal: action-guidance. That isn't the only attraction of the integralist ideal. The Stability and Justice Arguments take care of the rest.

I believe the Transition Argument devastates the case for integralism to conservative Catholics. Conservatism is often marked by the rejection of ideal theorizing. Conservatives understand that pursuing ideals often make society worse. So, the Transition Argument should make integralism less appealing to its prime audience. Of course, it may still appeal to a kind of romantic Catholic. But again, that's where the Stability and Justice Arguments kick in.

4. Beautiful from Afar but Ugly Face to Face

I would also add another piece to the Transition Argument I didn’t work out in the book. If it is quite far away, we may become confused by the attraction or even the rationale for an ideal. And that’s because we don’t know how the ideal will function even under favorable conditions. Why do integralists think that their ideal will be a just and stable order? Why do they think it will work as they hope? If the ideal is far away, integralists have less reason to believe integralism will succeed. And since integralism is very far away, it may look good from afar but hideous face-to-face.