Beckwith on the Role of Government

In Francis J. Beckwith’s new book, Politics for Christians: Statecraft as Soulcraft (IVP: 2010), he defends what he calls a “perfectionist view of liberty and the human person.”  He refers to it as perfectionism “since its defenders maintain that human beings share the same nature by which we can know what sort of goods, institutions, habits, and actions help the human being fulfill his proper end or perfection.” Beckwith succinctly sums up the role of government in this passage:

Because human beings are diverse in their abilities, talents, and gifts, a free society with a perfectionist understanding would be one in which a full array of rights would be in place so that a wide variety of citizens would be able to lead flourishing lives and thus contribute to the common good.  So, for example, freedom of expression, religious liberty, freedom of association, ownership of private property and personal privacy are liberties that are necessary so that citizens may be able to make informed judgments in light of their own talents, abilities, interests, and beliefs.  However, these liberties are not ends in themselves.  For instance, unless friendship and knowledge are goods, the freedoms of association and expression are pointless.  Moreover, certain types of nonliberal associations — for example, families, churches, civic groups — play an important role in the moral and social formation of the nation’s citizens.  Families, for example, are nondemocratic institutions (i.e., children don’t vote for their dad and mom) that provide a pride-of-place for the protection and moral formation of children, the sanctity of the marital bond, and private community in which we all first learn how to treat and care for others.  Thus, the perfectionist maintains, paradoxically, that liberal democracy functions best when nonliberal institutions are afford certain liberties to flourish so that they may do their part in advancing the common good.  Thus, the community has an interest in ensuring that these good and important culture-shaping institutions are not undermined by other practices.  For this reason… the community may rightly exclude from social legitimacy many apparently private practices, such as polygamy, unregulated distribution and consumption of pornography, wife-swapping, homosexual “marriage,” child-marriage, honor killings, racist policies, or consensual adult incest.

So far, it’s proving to be a great book!  I’ll post a full review once I’m done reading it.

Tags: Beckwith, Government, Perfectionism, Society