"Brian Tierney has established himself over the course of forty-five years of writing and teaching as one of the world's leading authorities on the history of medieval canon law and political thought. In a series of foundational works, he has offered important new interpretations of the origins of Western constitutionalism, tracing many concepts believed to be modem or early modem innovations to the work oftwelfth-century canon lawyers.' He has spent the past fifteen years exploring the origins of the Western notion of natural rights.2 In his new work, The Idea of Natural Rights,3 Tierney draws on a decade-and-ahalf of research as well as a deep knowledge of Western constitutional history to present a radical reconceptualization of the history of natural rights thought in Western civilization.
Natural rights historians and scholars have expressed numerous opinions concerning the origins of the Western rights tradition. In the Anglo-American world, scholars have commonly viewed the seventeenthcentury as a radical departure from an older tradition that hademphasized the existence of an objectively just order in which individual rights were impossible. 4 On the Continent, by contrast, scholarshave tended to view the fourteenth century as decisive for the formation of individual rights: it was then that William of Ockham, the brilliant English logician, succeeded in dissolving the thirteenth-century synthesis of Thomas Aquinas in an acid bath of nominalistic analysis, reducing Thomas's conception of ordered justice to the competing interests and claims of individuals.5 Both schools of thought tend to view the creation of natural-rights theories as an aberrant development, either harmful to society, or, at best, of dubious benefit.6
Tierney challenges this scholarly consensus in several fundamental ways. His central contention is that theories of natural rights did not emerge as an aberrational feature of Western political and legal thought at some late date, but rather comprised an integral part of Western intellectual life from the birth of universities and the revival of legal studies in the twelfth century.7 He is concerned as well with tracing the lines of transmission and development by which twelfth century legal texts came to shape the philosophical reasoning of the seventeenth century.8
The book is divided into three large parts: "Origins," "Ockham and the Franciscans," and "From Gerson to Grotius."9 In the first part of his book, Tierney begins by examining the important role canon law played in the shaping of rights discourse, and by demonstrating that thirteenth-century scholastic philosophers-near contemporaries of Thomas Aquinas-were quite capable of posing rights-based questions that would stimulate and challenge their successors for generations. 10 In the second part of his book, Tierney then considers the impact the Franciscan poverty controversy had on the development of rights thought." This controversy, Tierney demonstrates, was one of the most important early sources of rights-based discourse. 12 The third part addresses the problems of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries: the Great Schism and the conciliar theories to which it gave rise, the great debates that erupted in the sixteenth century over the rights of the native peoples of the Americas, and the rights-based synthesis forged by Hugo Grotius in the early seventeenth century.13
This Review will consider some of Tierney's main arguments about the development of rights, assessing the deep originality of his contributions to each of these periods. It must be stressed that Tierney's book is a vast treasure house of information about rights, and one cannot hope to do justice to the complexity of his thesis in the course of this Review.14 It will, however, be evident that Tierney's book will become the starting point for all future efforts to address the origins of the Western natural rights tradition."
I read the first 70 or so pages of Tierney's book and I learned a lot of new and interesting things. I was going to start with Gary Amos or David Kopel but since both cite him extensively I thought we would get it straight from the horses mouth. Or at least a good review of the book to lay out the arguments in a simple way to prepare us to dig into Tierney himself. Then hopefully we can hash through some of the primary sources he uses that can be found on the internet. All of which I hope gives us a better understanding of some of the lesser known/unknown Christian intellectual roots of our founding.
10 comments:
The important thing to learn is how much the English civil wars [1600s] and the American colonists [1700s] took for granted as political or theological truth when they fired up their revolutions.
The real question here is only what Christian thought provided and what was "new" with the Enlightenment.
What Brian Tierney is saying is that revolution against tyranny and the idea of "liberty" was already in motion within Christianity, canon law, etc. Canon law---the ecclesiastical courts---took care of a lot of the day-to-day life, sex, marriage, children, property, etc. First you gotta explain what "canon law" covered. It's complicated, there are no shortcuts.
I am a big to small guy or general to particular. I we have done a good job at laying out the general gist here. This book review with get into more of the particulars. Then, if possible, since only part of the book is on the internet Tierney's book gets into the things in great detail.
As far as the Canon Law itself, I am not sure how much of it is even translated in English. It looks like Huccio is the man that really crystalized things.
I thought it interesting that Brits, and by extension America and the rest of the "Anglo" world see rights as a 17th Century thing. "Continentals" look back to the 14th Century.
Britain became an island,politically, unto itself and I think we see that in American history as well. It is almost like there was nothing before the Protestant Revolution. Which people forget the Anglicans were involved in too.
"The real question here is only what Christian thought provided and what was "new" with the Enlightenment"
One we have been asking for a while around here. After reading Tierney is puts Strauss's whole argument in context. He is saying that we need to get back to the classical understanding of natural right as being right relationships and order not the supposed modern version of subjective or could one say selfish rights.
I think Christianity with the golden rule splits the difference and cloaks self expression in a sense of respsonsibility to the community as well. Pluralism is you will.
I think Pinky is on to something in that some one is out there trying to destroy liberalism. I think they use the modern version to create caous in society to discredit the classical version as to return us to collectivism.
After reading about the Centuries long battle between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Popes I have a guy feeling that state overcame church a long time ago in a subtle way that we do not see and has been attempting to consolidate power in both Europe and abroad for centuries now.
European Union is very similar to the Hapsburg Empire. Brussels was the capital of both I think.
Since the dissolution of the Roman Imperial Empire in the mid- to late medieval period, there's always been a parallel development of state authority and Papal authority (especially in the northern Germanic lands) and there's always been tension between them.
I began reading Kopel but stopped at Manegold, who seems to be credited (Kopel and elsewhere) with introducing contract theory and a sense of the rights of the people (populi).
As with anything when you start looking at the nuts and bolts of an idea it becomes more complicated and provenance becomes less clear.
In the feudal system circa 10th-11th century, German Kings did pledge to the people (populi), but the people were the nobility, the vassalage, who in turn were beholding to the new king due to land grants (with attendant rights and privileges). It seems that 1) Manegold may have appropriated language from these early Germanic oaths, 2) if so, some of the ideas contained in his writing had an earlier, non-Christian-specific origin, and 3) the rights of the vast majority of the people (peasants, tradesmen, merchants) were not on the table – the contest was between the King and the Pope as to who exercised monarchical authority over the people.
The Papal state developed their own laws and military concurrent with the state "secular" authorities development of laws and military. And the state "secular" authorities (Kings, nobility) were often embracing pagan religious ideas interspersed with Christian ideas and a hybrid of traditional and Roman Imperial law.
There's no doubt that the Germanic state and Papal state were competing to expand their ruling authority over the people and that Manegold was a polemicist for the Papacy and not so much writing as an independent scholar/philosopher, although he appears to have been influenced by Aristotle, Platonism, Cicero and the Stoics along with Christian thinking (this sounds so 18th century founding except that the American founders were separating power from monarchical control and giving it to the people – and at least extending the franchise to include a much larger swath of “the people”). It should be noted that there was also tension between the monastic (more traditional Christian) and cathedral (more emphasis on classical humanist learning) institutions of higher education. Some authors discount that Manegold was against use of the pagan philosophers as much as he was cautionary in how their work was used.
The medieval period between the 10th century and into the new modern Europe of the 18th century, including the Rennaisance(s) and the Enlightenment, was something of a sausage making era. Where increasingly available classical and changing Christian ideologies were wrapped in the skin of contemporary culture at any given time.
I should mention that the reason I stopped reading Kopel at Manegold is that I got distracted looking into Manegold. I'll finish reading Kopel as I can.
Good stuff Jrb. I would say read Kopel before Tierney. Tierney makes more sense that way. I chose to start with Tierney because Kopel sites him a lot.
Also because Kopel's main thrust is resistance theory too and we need a break from that.
I think the thing that surprised me is that the Magna Carta and its adherents opposed both King and Pope. Later schoolmen also put in the right to resist the Pope.
I did not expect to see that. Because, as you picked up and stated months ago about Bellarmine, a lot of this stuff was just to undermine monarches the Popes did not like.
But there were some good Popes in their as well.
The good thing is that the rule of law was rediscovered. The justice variety. It was only a mater of time before more liberal forms of government sprung up.
Are you reading Manegold or about him? I would love the read the political theory stuff but I do not think it is translated like the metaphysical stuff on from Dallas theological.
I also went back and read some commentaries on Juris Corpus. Fascinating stuff.
I hope to understand the Greek metaphysics one day enough to give a qualified opinion of what is applicable to Christian thought and what is not.
I think Aquinas was wrong on some things theologically Locke too. They did not account for the Tibetan nomad. Manegold gets into this some with his discussions on Geography and I think his was denying what became the New World in that it would deny God's justice because they could not hear the gospel.
I do not think they needed too according to Romans 1 and 2. But that is for another setting. More germane here is the evolution on natural law according to those verses.
"There's no doubt that the Germanic state and Papal state were competing to expand their ruling authority over the people and that Manegold was a polemicist for the Papacy and not so much writing as an independent scholar/philosopher, although he appears to have been influenced by Aristotle, Platonism, Cicero and the Stoics along with Christian thinking (this sounds so 18th century founding except that the American founders were separating power from monarchical control and giving it to the people – and at least extending the franchise to include a much larger swath of “the people”)."
That seems to be the evolution that it extends practically to more people. In theory, natural rights are for everyone by nature but practice is another thing. We sees this in Locke and Jefferson too. In the former by not wanting to extend religious freedom to atheists and the latter with the whole slavery thing.
Tierney goes through this whole evolution and from the review it seems that these ideas found their maturity in the Late Scholastics on the Catholic side in their teachings on what to do the the Native Americans and in Sidney and Hooker on the Protestant side.
Or Locke depending if he is a Protestant of Enlightenment figure. Jury is still out on that one. If he did believe in God given intuitive reason that complemented revelation and was talking about discursive reason when refering subjecting revelation to it then I put him in the former, at least in Political Theology.
Exc, fellas. I'd add that the early days of "rights" [German, Magna Carta] are indeed political, that's to say, wrested from the powers-that-be. This is precisely where the Americans deviate from both ancient and modern ideas of power or even social contract.
Rights are "human" rights, God-given, "natural" rights. Politics is, philosophically speaking, artificial.
You guys also touch on a historical reality---after a failed shot leading up to the investiture controversies, the church never really got a decent hold on political power. As a rule, church never really controlled state except in the occasional and short-lived exception.
Mostly it was the other way around, the state hijacking the church to tighten its grip on power on both the polity and the society. The Divine Right of Kings was the king's argument, not the church's.
On the whole, at its best, the church served as a check on the state's power, operating in the overlapping area we call "civil society." My objection to modern trends in government is that the state is once claiming society for its own, pushing the church to the "private" sphere, which is to say, out of the picture.
There are people that would dispute that account Tom but I am open to it and there was a time in my life I would have not been.
I surely think, in a Protestant influenced nation we get all the bad and not much of the good.
It seems the state had did have to upper hand back in the time of the Investiture Crisis.
But I think if one wanted to he could have most certainly set himself up as God on earth and claimed absolutism even over the Kings. I think there were Popes who did that but it does not seem these guys did.
I think it is a lost history.
But I think if one wanted to he could have most certainly set himself up as God on earth and claimed absolutism even over the Kings. I think there were Popes who did that but it does not seem these guys did.
Oh, there were Popes who tried that and Aquinas thought it was proper.
Didn't work, though. Even popes have to play by the rules. But kings don't.
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