Nature of International Authority

[Vouthon]

Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio (1793–1862) was a Jesuit priest, celebrated theologian and political philosopher of the nineteenth century.

He coined the terms “Social Justice”, “solidarity” and “subsidiarity” that have since been widely employed in a wide variety of magisterial documents; incorporated into EU treaty law, official UN declarations and which also feature in the discourse of politicians up till this day across the world. To this end, he cofounded the journal *Civiltà Cattolica * in 1850 and wrote for it for twelve years. Taparelli was particularly concerned with the problems arising from the industrial revolution. He was a proponent of reviving the philosophical school of Thomism, and his social teachings directly influenced Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum novarum (On the Condition of the Working Classes). For this reason and not without justification he is often remembered as the “Father of Catholic Social Teaching”.

Taparelli had indisputably great foresight, and he identified natural tendencies towards the unification of nations, which he believed would ultimately coalesce into a saggio cosmopolitanismo or Universal Society of Nations, a supranational association of all hitherto sovereign states. As a Jesuit, he had faith that this is the (as he saw it) expressed will of God that should therefore irresistibly come to pass, based upon natural law and order. See:

file:///C:/Users/Sean/Downloads/491-1915-1-PB.pdf

Luigi Taparelli
D’Azeglio, S.J.
(1793–1862) and the
Development of
Scholastic Natural Law
Thought As a
Science of Society
and Politics
​

Luigi Taparelli, S.J. promoted the revival of scholasticism at the Collegio Romano in the 1820s, where the future Leo XIII was among his students. With his Theoretical Treatise on Natural Right Based on Fact, 1840–1843, he elaborated a natural-law approach to politics that became a hallmark of Catholic social doctrine… Among other things, Taparelli elaborated the concepts of social justice and subsidiarity.

…

This is the significance of the law of correction against the tyranny of an abusive parent or corrupt official: the more perfect and global the society, the greater the potential liberty of all the associates in the pursuit of their proper ends, and of their universal end, against tyrannical abuses at all levels, with the possibility for the peaceful resolution of conflicts made possible through appropriate judicial mechanisms.

Such liberty would be a product of precisely the progress of both the moral and material conditions of a society that was ordered justly, maximizing individual freedom to associate at all levels. Following the principles of sociality—or solidarity, and hypotactics— or subsidiarity, the liberty and perfection of individuals is proportionally enhanced, in Taparelli’s view, with the integration into ever larger human communities, indeed up to the eventual global society of peoples, the democratic ethnarchy, (ST, 714; CE, 120, II) which he foresaw as the fulfillment of the immutable laws of nature.

The perfecting of the extension of social communications introduces little by little a wise cosmopolitism habituating one to consider all of the nations as families in the universal society, without, however, losing the special love of one’s own.26

Universal solidarity would express itself in a saggio cosmopolitanismo, that is, without losing sight of the autonomous purposes and active principles of associations at all levels of global society. Though his vision of the future international order differed significantly from what he criticized as the overly abstract ratiocinations of others, Taparelli had no less a fervent faith in the ability of a just, universal order to resolve conflict and to advance the satisfaction of all but the ultimately transcendent longings of humanity

This is the underlying theoretical foundation of the “global political authority” often called for by modern popes of the 20th and 21st centuries, such as Pius XII:

papalencyclicals.net/Pius12/P12XMAS.HTM

**Democracy and a Lasting Peace

1944 Christmas Message of His Holiness Pope Pius XII

NATURE AND CONDITIONS OF AN EFFECTIVE PEACE SETTLEMENT UNITY OF MANKIND AND SOCIETY OF PEOPLES

1. But how far will the representatives and pioneers of democracy be inspired in their deliberations by the conviction that the absolute order of beings and purposes, of which We have repeatedly spoken, comprises also, as a moral necessity and the crowning of social development, the unity of mankind and of the family of peoples?

1. On the recognition of this principle hangs the future of the peace. No world reform, no peace guarantee can abstract from it without being weakened and without being untrue to itself.

FORMATION OF A COMMON MEANS TO MAINTAIN PEACE

…An essential point in any future international arrangement would be the formation of an organ for the maintenance of peace, of an organ invested by common consent with supreme power to whose office it would also pertain to smother in its germinal state any threat of isolated or collective aggression.
**

 

[1Lord1Faith]

What is the biggest obstacle to this vision?

 

[Vouthon]

What is the biggest obstacle to this vision?

Sin.

 

[Vouthon]

Here are a set of paragraphs from Fr. Taparelli’s rather wordy treatise on this issue. He describes the reasons why he regards International Authority as desirable, necessary and inevitable; before proceeding to speculate somewhat on the nature of the envisioned Authority:

books.google.co.uk/books?id=IESe7m8Obe4C&pg=PA301&dq=nations+nature+universal+society+catholic&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VLBCU_3SK-mM7QaM-YD4Cg&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

**The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations

By John Eppstein

Taparelli D’Azeglio. ‘Essai Théorique de Droit Naturel,’ Book VI, Chap. V. Article 11. Form of International Societies: their end, their duties and their rights:**

1. After having established the origin of international societies we must now study their forms and their laws. First we see a grouping of intelligent beings who work together in pursuit of their common good…

The international ethnarchic society must therefore posses an authority. It must be governed and guided in all that is necessary to its existence, its perfection and the attainment of its end. How could there exist a Law of Nations, that is to say a body of laws binding upon all nations, if there were not a real authority capable of laying down those laws?..

Nature of International Authority:

1. Assuming the free consent of the nations, the international society naturally takes the form of a polyarchy…The international authority will ordinarily and naturally be polyarchic; even when it appears to be administered by one man, it belongs in reality to all the associated peoples.

1. But in whom then is this international authority to reside? To answer that question let us restate the foundation upon which all International Law is based. The nations are independent societies, their association is in itself a perfectly voluntary association. Thus authority resides, as of right, in the common accord of the associated nations and it is for the members of the association to determine under what form this authority is to be exercised.

**Since the decline of the German Empire and of the quasi-theocratic power of the Popes, the international authority has, among European peoples, revealed itself in the agreements between the different sovereigns, expressed in treaties, alliances, congresses, confederations, etc. But as we have observed (in the origin of human society) the polyarchy of brothers, equal in rights, emancipated from the father’s control, giving to their common authority certain forms, in order that it may be more effective and more lasting, so we see modern nations, now that they are freed from the guardianship of the Holy Roman Empire and the protection of the Popes, feeling more and more in need of an international authority which is regular, perfectly determined in all its aspects, an authority which is strong, which is respected by all, and which can ensure the rights of the weak shall no longer be at the mercy of the strong. **

Herein lies the interests of the majority. But **when interest itself is at one one with the requirements of justice, it becomes all powerful and infallibly determines the forms which accord most harmoniously with the needs of human societies. And so, I believe, we shall gradually see arising in the world a kind of universal federal tribunal which will replace alliances, congresses and treaties, just as these have temporarily replaced today the supreme authority of the Emperor and the patriarchical government of the Popes. I do not see how this stage can fail to come, though it be reached but slowly, for the life of nations can be reckoned in centuries as the life of men is counted in years. **Special confederations between small States seem to be a prelude to the organization of the international authority, just as, in the Middle Ages, the evolution of the Commune led, little by little, to a complete state of civil equality and the unity of the political authority.

1. But let us leave to the passage of time, the art of politics and the march of events - blind instruments of Divine Providence - the gradual development of the political forms of international society, so as to achieve the welfare of the nations, in the same as the civic forms of the State must insensibly intend to the attainment of happiness for the families and individuals that compose it.

We can now conclude from all that has been said, that the peoples form among themselves a society of equals; that in consequence of the authority necessary to direct them resides in common accord, or at least in the majority of the nations associated; that in their common interest they cannot refuse to acknowledge that authority without, at the same time, snapping the social relations which unite them together; and that this authority must have the power and the strength to maintain order within the international association…