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Creativity as a Problem for Moral Theology: John Locke's 99 Percent Challenge to the Catholic Doctrine of Property

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Daniel R. Finn
Daniel R. Finn*
Affiliation:
St. John's University
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Abstract

According to the classic Catholic doctrine of property, owners who have more than they need are obliged to share their surplus with others who have less than they need. From the patristic era to the work of John Paul II, this obligation has been understood to arise most fundamentally from the character of the objects owned: the material world is a gift from the Creator, intended to meet the needs of all humanity. Three centuries ago, John Locke argued that 99 percent of the value of modern wealth is attributable not to natural resources but to human labor and invention, implicitly restricting the classic obligations of property owners to a mere 1 percent of wealth. Catholic moral theology has yet to integrate Locke's insight about human creativity and economic productivity into an adequate doctrine of property. This article surveys the problem and provides an outline of a constructive response.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , Spring 2000 , pp. 44 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 2000

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References

1 This paper was presented at a conference on “Creativity, Values, and the Catholic Imagination” at the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University, October 1998. An earlier form of this essay was presented at a conference on “The Legacy of Monsignor John A. Ryan” at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota, in September 1995. Thanks go to conference participants for their useful comments. I am especially grateful for helpful suggestions from an anonymous Horizons referee.

2 Augustine, Sermon 50 1.2, Patrologia Latina (PL) 38:326. See Avila, Charles, Ownership: Early Christian Teaching (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1983), 115.Google Scholar

3 Ambrose, , De Nabuthe 1, PL 14:731.Google Scholar See Phan, Peter C., Social Thought, The Message of the Fathers, 20 (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1984), 168.Google Scholar

4 Clement of Alexandria, , Paidagogos 3.7, Patrologia Graeca 8:609.Google Scholar See Avila, , Ownership, 42.Google Scholar

5 Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae, II–II, q. 66, a. 1.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., II-II q. 66, a. 2.

7 Ibid., I-II, q. 94, a. 5.

8 Ibid., II-II, q. 66, a. 7.

9 Ibid., II-II, q. 66, a. 5.

10 Ibid.

11 See, e.g., John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, par. 31.

12 See Tierney, Brian, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law and the Church, 1150-1625 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), chap. 2.Google Scholar

13 E.g., in Rawls', JohnA Theory of Justice, the notion of rights arises out of a hypothetical social contract (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).Google Scholar Robert Nozick begins the preface of his book on political philosophy with the simple words, “Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights)” (Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia [New York: Basic Books, 1974], ix).Google Scholar Nozick, we should note, rejects the idea of economic rights altogether.

14 See, e.g., Paul, John II'sAddress to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, par. 3, p. 43, 04 25, 1997Google Scholar(Origins 27/3 [06 5, 1997]: 42–44).Google Scholar

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17 Locke, , sec. 27, in Laslett, , Two Treatises, 328–29.Google Scholar

18 The “social mortgage” on property to which twentieth century popes refer is far less compelling if the original giftedness of human life itself is omitted from the analysis of property. See, e.g., John Paul II, Solicitudo Rei Socialis, par. 42.

19 Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 5, par. 43.

20 Nozick, , Anarchy, 178–82.Google Scholar

21 Nozick himself refers to a five percent estimate, (Anarchy, 177).

22 This classic formulation is by Ryan, John A., Distributive Justice: The Right and Wrong of our Present Distribution of Wealth (New York: Macmillan, 1916), 314.Google Scholar

23 Centesimus Annus, par. 31. See also John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, par. 105.

24 Centesimus Annus, par. 43.

25 Address to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, 3, p. 43, April 25,1997.

26 Centesimus Annus, par. 34.

27 John Paul II observes that “the State could not directly ensure the right to work for all its citizens unless it controlled every aspect of economic life and restricted the free initiative of individuals,” something he opposes. Still, “the State has a duty to sustain business activities by creating conditions which will ensure job opportunities” (Centesimus Annus, par. 48).

28 Centesimus Annus, par. 31.

29 Hollenbach, David S J., “Christian Social Ethics After the Cold War,” Theological Studies 53/1 (03 1992): 85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 See, e.g., Centesimus Annus, par. 41, and U.S. Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy, par. 28, [Origins 16/24 [11 27, 1986]:415).Google Scholar

31 Centesimus Annus, par. 38. See also Hollenbach, Christian Social Ethics.

32 Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, par. 9.

33 Ryan, , Distributive Justice, 246–48.Google Scholar

34 U.S. Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for All, par. 185.

35 There are, of course, risks in this view because it could uncritically endorse, for example, the destruction of the biosphere if not limited by other theological principles. See, e.g., Nash, James A., Loving Nature: Ecological Integrity and Christian Responsibility (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991), 74ff.Google Scholar

36 The principle of “the priority of labor over capital” is articulated extensively in Laborem Exercens, sec. 12.

37 See, e.g., John Paul II, Solicitudo Rei Socialis, par. 42.

38 See, e.g., Gaudium et Spes, 26.

39 Tierney, , The Idea of Natural Bights, 70ff.Google Scholar

40 Centisimus Annus, chap. 4.

41 For a brief review of arguments about resource depletion, see Finn, Daniel, Just Trading: On the Ethics and Economics of International Trade (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 149–60.Google Scholar

42 See “The Value of the World's Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital,” Nature 387 (05 15, 1997): 253–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 See Toman's, Michael comments in “Audacious Bid to Value the Planet Whips Up a Storm,” Nature 395 (10 1, 1998): 430.Google Scholar

44 Even this is something of an overstatement of the libertarian notion of obligation. Nozick, for example, does not describe the prohibition against harm to others as an obligation to those others. He sees it as a requirement of “the law of nature” (see Nozick, Anarchy, chap. 2).

45 As Susan Moller Okin has argued, the endorsement of universal self-interest and the denigration of altruism that occurs in the novels of Ayn Rand is only possible with a convenient forgetfulness of home life. In particular, the rearing of children places obligations on parents that many libertarians have trouble accounting for. See her Justice, Gender and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989), 88.Google Scholar

46 For a recent reconstrual of property in relational terms including insights from Aquinas, Locke, and Alfred North Whitehead see Sturm, Douglas, Solidarity and Suffering: Toward a Politics of Relationality (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1988), chap. 5.Google Scholar