John Médaille | University of Dallas (original) (raw)
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I don't think that I need to recount, at least for anybody in this audience, how, at the end of t... more I don't think that I need to recount, at least for anybody in this audience, how, at the end of the 19 th century and the beginning of the 20 th , two English thinkers, Hillarie Belloc and G. K. Chesterton, pondering the economic tragedy that was 18 th and 19 th centuries in England, called for a restoration of property, a restoration to the common man and the ordinary English citizen. And they raised this challenge to the dominant Liberal culture just at the moment when that culture was at the zenith of its power. That is to say, they raised their challenge at the very moment when it seemed least likely to succeed. But what I think is less well understood was that Distributism was part and parcel of a much wider challenge to the Liberal world order, a challenge that originated in many different sectors of society, all at the same time. Indeed, the 20 th century was largely a working out of some of these challenges, many of which failed especially in the political and economic orders, challenges such as communism, fascism, and Nazism, and failed precisely because they were not really challenges at all. But in their place, other challengers have succeeded, and succeeded in areas as different as physics, religion, economics, and politics. And among winning challengers we can count distributism, even if not under that name. For the name itself is a problem. More about this problem of the name a little later.
Is shareholding real ownership?
Distributism would be of little practical use if it could not provide useful answers to practical... more Distributism would be of little practical use if it could not provide useful answers to practical problems of the type we face practically everyday. I believe distributism does indeed provide a useful set of tools to analyze these problems and to devise useful solutions. But the
But instead of certainty, we have a scripture of praise, poetry, and prayer, of psalm, history, a... more But instead of certainty, we have a scripture of praise, poetry, and prayer, of psalm, history, and sermon. It is in the language of metaphor, the language of “contradiction,” that the infinite God who is always beyond our grasp must appear to our finite minds. It is the task of hermeneutics to see not contradiction, but paradox, a paradox that underlies the very structure of both being and of faith
An address to the Texas State Convention of the American Solidarity Party.
The one thing that modern science should be able to do is to explain to us how things happen. The... more The one thing that modern science should be able to do is to explain to us how things happen. The one thing it cannot do is tell us that things happen by chance. Things may well happen by chance, but then there is no chance of a scientific explanation. "Chance" is the methodology of Darwinian account of evolution, which can only mean that it doesn't actually account for anything. A convinced Darwinist might respond, "It is not just chance, but chance mutations measured against their survival value; it is the struggle for survival which makes chance mutations work." But this merely introduces a factor which Darwinists make no attempt to explain, namely, the will of the organism to live. That organisms have such a will is self-evident, but can such a will really be the result of chance mutations? After all, we never speak of the rock's struggle for survival, but if rocks and plants are just different configurations of matter, where does such a will come from? Here we see the biological form of Heidegger's great question, "Why should things want to be rather than not be?" This self-evident "will to live" introduces an insurmountable problem for the Darwinist, for such a will must be present at the very beginning of life for the theory to work at all. Without it, no species has any reason to adapt, or any individual any reason to survive. But this "will" must precede evolution, and hence cannot be explained by it. It might have been plausible, in the naïve days of the 19th century, to speak of the ascent of higher forms of life from lower forms, of a movement from the simple to the complex. But that is no longer possible for the simple reason that we cannot find a "simple" form of life. The smallest one-celled animal is irreducibly and unimaginably complex. The single-cell already contains an information storage and retrieval system which cannot, as yet, be duplicated by human means. And it also contains a construction system of astounding complexity, able to translate information into acids and complex structures, and the cell itself is a collection of complex and cooperating structures. The scale of information is astounding; an amoeba dubia has 670 billion base-pairs (bits) in its genetic material; the human, by comparison, has 2.9 billion. But this is just the beginning of the complexity, since not only is each cell complex in itself, but lives in a complex set of relationships with other cells and other species. There are simply no "simple" life forms with which we may locate a simple "beginning." Indeed, the distance between "nothing" and amoeba is far greater than the distance between amoeba and man. This is to say, evolution is mostly complete by the time it starts. The heroic efforts to explain all this within the "black-box" of chance mutations seems more like an act of faith than a conclusion of science. If the Darwinists cannot provide us with a scientific answer, should we turn to the theory of "Intelligent Design"? For the one thing that everybody can agree on is that the design is very intelligent indeed. But does it really do us any good, for our understanding of God's universe, to replace the black box of chance with one marked "miracles"? The whole point of having a rational God-a god who is also logos-is that His universe is not only intelligent but intelligible; man, made in the image and likeness of this logos-God, is always able to understand more and more of God's work. Indeed, coming to an understanding of this is man's work; our task is not merely to put the right label on the black box, but to open the box and see what's inside. What is needed is a theory not of intelligent design, but intelligible design. We already know that, as final cause, God did it; the trick is to see how he does it.But if we cannot turn to Darwin to open the black box, and if Intelligent Design merely re-labels the box, where are we to turn for a scientific explanation? This is the question that Thomas Nagel explores in Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. It is important to realize that Prof. Nagel is a philosopher with impeccably atheist credentials. But while he has no belief in God, he has a belief in fairness: Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair.(p. 10) The essential difficulty that Nagel poses to the Darwinist is the problem of mind: consciousness, cognition, and values. If the Darwinist account of nature is correct, these things must be reducible to
First published as in Dutch as De triomf van de liberale staat in the anthology Essays Over Het M... more First published as in Dutch as De triomf van de liberale staat in the anthology Essays Over Het Midden (Groningen, The Netherlands: Uitgeverij de Blauwe Tijger, 2013)
A defense of Euthyphro against Socrates.
Ethika Politika, 2016
In a "featured" article, The Remnant newspaper has proclaimed that "Satan has made his move. He h... more In a "featured" article, The Remnant newspaper has proclaimed that "Satan has made his move. He has the See of Peter," and Bergoglio is "his tool." And to make the point abundantly clear, we are told that the Pope is a "Diabolical Narcissist Peronist-Fascist"; he has committed a "massive crime against humanity," one that places him above such evil doers that end up "personally responsible for the most loss of human souls to eternal damnation, above Luther, above [M]ohammed, above Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), above Paul VI Montini." And of course there can only be one response to such evil: Pope Francis must be "deposed and anathematized for being a heretic." And who is to carry out this sentence? It must be "those bishops remaining who still hold the Catholic faith" called together in an "Imperfect Ecumenical Council.
Contraries and Complements The political and economic debates of the last two centuries have, for... more Contraries and Complements The political and economic debates of the last two centuries have, for the most part, come down to a contest between "capitalism" and "socialism," with the former identified with "free markets" and the latter with "state planning." As such, they are treated as "contraries," that is, things that cannot exist together because one term negates the other. But there are grounds to doubt whether this is actually the case. Indeed, when we look at any actual economy, we never see either capitalism or socialism standing alone, but always "side-by-side." This should lead us to suspect that they are not contraries at all, but rather complements, things which might appear to be opposites, but which are actually necessary for a complete description of something. For example, one cannot give a complete description of "humanity" without including a description of "man" and "woman."
The Dallas Morning News 4/23/24, 2024
The current situation in Ukraine "rhymes" (as Mark Twain would put it) with the situation in Euro... more The current situation in Ukraine "rhymes" (as Mark Twain would put it) with the situation in Europe just before World War II. Chamberlain believed that appeasement would bring "peace for our time," and that everyone could now get a "nice, quiet sleep." Churchill had his doubts. One of them was proved to be correct.
The Catholic social science review, 2009
International Journal of Social Economics, Mar 13, 2009
Purpose – Henry George was acclaimed by the general public and disdained by the professional econ... more Purpose – Henry George was acclaimed by the general public and disdained by the professional economists, largely for the same reasons. For the general public, progress, and poverty seemed to go to the heart of the matter, treating economics as a question of justice. But for the professionals, George was often regarded as a dangerous radical, even though he reasoned within the tradition of Smith, Ricardo, and Mill. However, he conducted his studies at the precise moment of the marginalist revolution, just as the profession was undergoing a transition from political economy to economics. For the former, economic science was embedded in particular political and cultural systems, while the latter aspired to be a pure science with its own mathematics. While some of the marginalists, such as Walras and Marshall, could maintain a commitment to justice, many others found the whole question superfluous. The purpose of this paper is to argue, however, that without some notion of justice, and especially justice in p...
Journal of Business Ethics Education, 2013
Distributism would be of little practical use if it could not provide useful answers to practical... more Distributism would be of little practical use if it could not provide useful answers to practical problems of the type we face practically everyday. I believe distributism does indeed provide a useful set of tools to analyze these problems and to devise useful solutions. But the
A review of Patrick Deneen's book, Regime Change.
Choice Reviews Online, 2011
I don't think that I need to recount, at least for anybody in this audience, how, at the end of t... more I don't think that I need to recount, at least for anybody in this audience, how, at the end of the 19 th century and the beginning of the 20 th , two English thinkers, Hillarie Belloc and G. K. Chesterton, pondering the economic tragedy that was 18 th and 19 th centuries in England, called for a restoration of property, a restoration to the common man and the ordinary English citizen. And they raised this challenge to the dominant Liberal culture just at the moment when that culture was at the zenith of its power. That is to say, they raised their challenge at the very moment when it seemed least likely to succeed. But what I think is less well understood was that Distributism was part and parcel of a much wider challenge to the Liberal world order, a challenge that originated in many different sectors of society, all at the same time. Indeed, the 20 th century was largely a working out of some of these challenges, many of which failed especially in the political and economic orders, challenges such as communism, fascism, and Nazism, and failed precisely because they were not really challenges at all. But in their place, other challengers have succeeded, and succeeded in areas as different as physics, religion, economics, and politics. And among winning challengers we can count distributism, even if not under that name. For the name itself is a problem. More about this problem of the name a little later.
Is shareholding real ownership?
Distributism would be of little practical use if it could not provide useful answers to practical... more Distributism would be of little practical use if it could not provide useful answers to practical problems of the type we face practically everyday. I believe distributism does indeed provide a useful set of tools to analyze these problems and to devise useful solutions. But the
But instead of certainty, we have a scripture of praise, poetry, and prayer, of psalm, history, a... more But instead of certainty, we have a scripture of praise, poetry, and prayer, of psalm, history, and sermon. It is in the language of metaphor, the language of “contradiction,” that the infinite God who is always beyond our grasp must appear to our finite minds. It is the task of hermeneutics to see not contradiction, but paradox, a paradox that underlies the very structure of both being and of faith
An address to the Texas State Convention of the American Solidarity Party.
The one thing that modern science should be able to do is to explain to us how things happen. The... more The one thing that modern science should be able to do is to explain to us how things happen. The one thing it cannot do is tell us that things happen by chance. Things may well happen by chance, but then there is no chance of a scientific explanation. "Chance" is the methodology of Darwinian account of evolution, which can only mean that it doesn't actually account for anything. A convinced Darwinist might respond, "It is not just chance, but chance mutations measured against their survival value; it is the struggle for survival which makes chance mutations work." But this merely introduces a factor which Darwinists make no attempt to explain, namely, the will of the organism to live. That organisms have such a will is self-evident, but can such a will really be the result of chance mutations? After all, we never speak of the rock's struggle for survival, but if rocks and plants are just different configurations of matter, where does such a will come from? Here we see the biological form of Heidegger's great question, "Why should things want to be rather than not be?" This self-evident "will to live" introduces an insurmountable problem for the Darwinist, for such a will must be present at the very beginning of life for the theory to work at all. Without it, no species has any reason to adapt, or any individual any reason to survive. But this "will" must precede evolution, and hence cannot be explained by it. It might have been plausible, in the naïve days of the 19th century, to speak of the ascent of higher forms of life from lower forms, of a movement from the simple to the complex. But that is no longer possible for the simple reason that we cannot find a "simple" form of life. The smallest one-celled animal is irreducibly and unimaginably complex. The single-cell already contains an information storage and retrieval system which cannot, as yet, be duplicated by human means. And it also contains a construction system of astounding complexity, able to translate information into acids and complex structures, and the cell itself is a collection of complex and cooperating structures. The scale of information is astounding; an amoeba dubia has 670 billion base-pairs (bits) in its genetic material; the human, by comparison, has 2.9 billion. But this is just the beginning of the complexity, since not only is each cell complex in itself, but lives in a complex set of relationships with other cells and other species. There are simply no "simple" life forms with which we may locate a simple "beginning." Indeed, the distance between "nothing" and amoeba is far greater than the distance between amoeba and man. This is to say, evolution is mostly complete by the time it starts. The heroic efforts to explain all this within the "black-box" of chance mutations seems more like an act of faith than a conclusion of science. If the Darwinists cannot provide us with a scientific answer, should we turn to the theory of "Intelligent Design"? For the one thing that everybody can agree on is that the design is very intelligent indeed. But does it really do us any good, for our understanding of God's universe, to replace the black box of chance with one marked "miracles"? The whole point of having a rational God-a god who is also logos-is that His universe is not only intelligent but intelligible; man, made in the image and likeness of this logos-God, is always able to understand more and more of God's work. Indeed, coming to an understanding of this is man's work; our task is not merely to put the right label on the black box, but to open the box and see what's inside. What is needed is a theory not of intelligent design, but intelligible design. We already know that, as final cause, God did it; the trick is to see how he does it.But if we cannot turn to Darwin to open the black box, and if Intelligent Design merely re-labels the box, where are we to turn for a scientific explanation? This is the question that Thomas Nagel explores in Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. It is important to realize that Prof. Nagel is a philosopher with impeccably atheist credentials. But while he has no belief in God, he has a belief in fairness: Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair.(p. 10) The essential difficulty that Nagel poses to the Darwinist is the problem of mind: consciousness, cognition, and values. If the Darwinist account of nature is correct, these things must be reducible to
First published as in Dutch as De triomf van de liberale staat in the anthology Essays Over Het M... more First published as in Dutch as De triomf van de liberale staat in the anthology Essays Over Het Midden (Groningen, The Netherlands: Uitgeverij de Blauwe Tijger, 2013)
A defense of Euthyphro against Socrates.
Ethika Politika, 2016
In a "featured" article, The Remnant newspaper has proclaimed that "Satan has made his move. He h... more In a "featured" article, The Remnant newspaper has proclaimed that "Satan has made his move. He has the See of Peter," and Bergoglio is "his tool." And to make the point abundantly clear, we are told that the Pope is a "Diabolical Narcissist Peronist-Fascist"; he has committed a "massive crime against humanity," one that places him above such evil doers that end up "personally responsible for the most loss of human souls to eternal damnation, above Luther, above [M]ohammed, above Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), above Paul VI Montini." And of course there can only be one response to such evil: Pope Francis must be "deposed and anathematized for being a heretic." And who is to carry out this sentence? It must be "those bishops remaining who still hold the Catholic faith" called together in an "Imperfect Ecumenical Council.
Contraries and Complements The political and economic debates of the last two centuries have, for... more Contraries and Complements The political and economic debates of the last two centuries have, for the most part, come down to a contest between "capitalism" and "socialism," with the former identified with "free markets" and the latter with "state planning." As such, they are treated as "contraries," that is, things that cannot exist together because one term negates the other. But there are grounds to doubt whether this is actually the case. Indeed, when we look at any actual economy, we never see either capitalism or socialism standing alone, but always "side-by-side." This should lead us to suspect that they are not contraries at all, but rather complements, things which might appear to be opposites, but which are actually necessary for a complete description of something. For example, one cannot give a complete description of "humanity" without including a description of "man" and "woman."
The Dallas Morning News 4/23/24, 2024
The current situation in Ukraine "rhymes" (as Mark Twain would put it) with the situation in Euro... more The current situation in Ukraine "rhymes" (as Mark Twain would put it) with the situation in Europe just before World War II. Chamberlain believed that appeasement would bring "peace for our time," and that everyone could now get a "nice, quiet sleep." Churchill had his doubts. One of them was proved to be correct.
The Catholic social science review, 2009
International Journal of Social Economics, Mar 13, 2009
Purpose – Henry George was acclaimed by the general public and disdained by the professional econ... more Purpose – Henry George was acclaimed by the general public and disdained by the professional economists, largely for the same reasons. For the general public, progress, and poverty seemed to go to the heart of the matter, treating economics as a question of justice. But for the professionals, George was often regarded as a dangerous radical, even though he reasoned within the tradition of Smith, Ricardo, and Mill. However, he conducted his studies at the precise moment of the marginalist revolution, just as the profession was undergoing a transition from political economy to economics. For the former, economic science was embedded in particular political and cultural systems, while the latter aspired to be a pure science with its own mathematics. While some of the marginalists, such as Walras and Marshall, could maintain a commitment to justice, many others found the whole question superfluous. The purpose of this paper is to argue, however, that without some notion of justice, and especially justice in p...
Journal of Business Ethics Education, 2013
Distributism would be of little practical use if it could not provide useful answers to practical... more Distributism would be of little practical use if it could not provide useful answers to practical problems of the type we face practically everyday. I believe distributism does indeed provide a useful set of tools to analyze these problems and to devise useful solutions. But the
A review of Patrick Deneen's book, Regime Change.
Choice Reviews Online, 2011
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is ... more The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."1
Sometimes, the way the forward is by going backwards.
What happened to Augustine? His repudiation of his prior thought on the Freedom of the Will.
Was land in the OT "space" or "place"?
Is capitalism anywhere close to what it claims to be?
Spinoza reads the Bible to reach undoubted truths, but doesn't find many.
Christians are often frustrated by the secularism of the modern world, a world which has relegate... more Christians are often frustrated by the secularism of the modern world, a world which has relegated the transcendent dimensions of human life to the realm of private opinion, while at the same time establishing the State and the Market as the absolutes which rule our lives, and which permit no rivals. The "separation of Church and State" has led to the absolutizing of the State and marginalizing of the Church. Some have responded to this situation by calling for its reversal, by making the state subordinate to the Church. They look back fondly at an age where princes would tremble at the frown of a pope, and even an emperor would dress in sackcloth and wait barefoot in the snow outside the pope's palace, pleading for his forgiveness. This is the vision of the so-called "integralists," and while it might be a somewhat idealized view of the past, it is not without some real basis in our history. What the integralists want is summarized by Father Edmund Waldstein, a leader of this movement, in three sentences: Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that, rejecting the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holds that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man's temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end, the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power.1 This is clear enough, but exactly how it should be implemented in a constitutional republic is not so clear, and Fr. Waldstein is reluctant to get down to cases, contenting himself with general principles. So, should there be a "Supreme Council" of bishops holding veto power in the manner of the Islamic Republic of Iran, where a Council of Ayatollahs can intervene wherever it wills? Most integralists are reluctant to say. But not all. Adrian Vermeule, for example is very specific about what integralism means in the American circumstance: it means a strong executive, able to rule by decree.2 In Vermeule's view,
Christians are often frustrated by the secularism of the modern world, a world which has relegate... more Christians are often frustrated by the secularism of the modern world, a world which has relegated the transcendent dimensions of human life to the realm of private opinion, while at the same time establishing the State and the Market as the absolutes which rule our lives, and which permit no rivals. The "separation of Church and State" has led to the absolutizing of the State and marginalizing of the Church. Some have responded to this situation by calling for its reversal, by making the state subordinate to the Church. They look back fondly at an age where princes would tremble at the frown of a pope, and even an emperor would dress in sackcloth and wait barefoot in the snow outside the pope's palace, pleading for his forgiveness. This is the vision of the so-called "integralists," and while it might be a somewhat idealized view of the past, it is not without some real basis in our history. What the integralists want is summarized by Father Edmund Waldstein, a leader of this movement, in three sentences: Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that, rejecting the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holds that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man's temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end, the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power.1 This is clear enough, but exactly how it should be implemented in a constitutional republic is not so clear, and Fr. Waldstein is reluctant to get down to cases, contenting himself with general principles. So, should there be a "Supreme Council" of bishops holding veto power in the manner of the Islamic Republic of Iran, where a Council of Ayatollahs can intervene wherever it wills? Most integralists are reluctant to say. But not all. Adrian Vermeule, for example is very specific about what integralism means in the American circumstance: it means a strong executive, able to rule by decree.2 In Vermeule's view,
Christians are often frustrated by the secularism of the modern world, a world which has relegate... more Christians are often frustrated by the secularism of the modern world, a world which has relegated the transcendent dimensions of human life to the realm of private opinion, while at the same time establishing the State and the Market as the absolutes which rule our lives, and which permit no rivals. The "separation of Church and State" has led to the absolutizing of the State and marginalizing of the Church. Some have responded to this situation by calling for its reversal, by making the state subordinate to the Church. They look back fondly at an age where princes would tremble at the frown of a pope, and even an emperor would dress in sackcloth and wait barefoot in the snow outside the pope's palace, pleading for his forgiveness. This is the vision of the so-called "integralists," and while it might be a somewhat idealized view of the past, it is not without some real basis in our history. What the integralists want is summarized by Father Edmund Waldstein, a leader of this movement, in three sentences: Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that, rejecting the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holds that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man's temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end, the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power.1 This is clear enough, but exactly how it should be implemented in a constitutional republic is not so clear, and Fr. Waldstein is reluctant to get down to cases, contenting himself with general principles. So, should there be a "Supreme Council" of bishops holding veto power in the manner of the Islamic Republic of Iran, where a Council of Ayatollahs can intervene wherever it wills? Most integralists are reluctant to say. But not all. Adrian Vermeule, for example is very specific about what integralism means in the American circumstance: it means a strong executive, able to rule by decree.2 In Vermeule's view,
Economics has been denigrated to a merely technical discipline lacking any metaphysical dignity; ... more Economics has been denigrated to a merely technical discipline lacking any metaphysical dignity; it has become mere money-grubbing. But on the contrary, it has been the key to the secularization of all the otherwise admirable features of liberalism, and is the key to reconnecting the spiritual and temporal realms.
Submitted for you comment and critique. And who among us is without his own view of St. Paul? Fi... more Submitted for you comment and critique. And who among us is without his own view of St. Paul?
Fire away!
Now the controversies begin in earnest. Especially this one: Can we ascribe "faith" the Christ Je... more Now the controversies begin in earnest. Especially this one: Can we ascribe "faith" the Christ Jesus?
The Second Chapter is open for comment and critique.
The first chapter of "The Sins of the Father: Freedom, Will, and the Social Transmission of Sin"
Theology: Mythos or Logos A Dialogue on Faith, Reason, and History, 2020
“Any reader of this book will find their epistemological foundations shaken but their thinking en... more “Any reader of this book will find their epistemological foundations shaken but their thinking enriched as Médaille and Storck delve ever more deeply into how we know and how we believe.”