We are all aware of the Emersonian dictum that we should be true to ourselves. In this short space, I will argue that the most fundamental dilemma in American society is a deep seated tendency to collapse a distinction central to Aristotle’s thought, that between the ‘good man’ and ‘good citizen’. To the extent that we are motivated by the values and goals set down by the larger society, we are defining ourselves in terms of the standards of the ‘good citizen’. On the other hand, if we live more rather than less on the basis of a set of moral and spiritual values which transcend the dominant opinions of society and which help us realize our deepest ends as human beings simply, we are defining ourselves in terms of the ‘good man’. Most of the greatest thinkers and prophets in Western civilization make balancing the two poles of this tension an integral component in living a good life. It is in assuming they are onto something that I argue that the American conflation between our roles as members of political-economic society and our very selves is the source of many of our basic problems, and in particular the difficulty Americans and the Catholic university have in living on the basis of a robust understanding of the deep good.

What I take to be the fundamental American dilemma has its origins in the particular and very intentional way the founders of modern politics defined the good life. This definition was to a great extent meant to alleviate the causes of religious conflict in Europe prior to the founding of the United States. Whereas pre-modern European civilization used institutional arrangements to support explicit moral and spiritual ends, the founders of modern political economy observed that when force was used to buttress belief claims about the highest ends of human life, violent conflict ensued. Their solution was to make such claims a private matter and redefine the public understanding of morality in primarily economic and political terms, i.e. in terms of material well being and security. While some have argued that the American foundation is morally questionable because it does not actively support the deepest ends of the person, the radical freedom underlying American civilization constitutes a tremendous improvement in the spiritual development of humanity. Our dilemma does not lie in the fact that our system does not institutionally promote the highest ends of human life. It lies in the mistaken assumption by too many American intellectuals that negative freedom is the highest good. While freedom from coercion is central to the well functioning of the good citizen, the absence of coercion is neither ultimate or sufficient for one to be a good person simply. Part and parcel of the internalization by our intellectuals of the utilitarian morality at the heart of modern political thought is the unconscious conflation of public discussion of the spiritual and moral ends of human life and the use of force to attain these ends. The conflation of persuasion and force by our thinking class leads many to be resistant to any public discussion of the moral and spiritual dimension of human life. One practical effect of this is that the Catholic University, made up of many of these same individuals, cannot fulfill its true purpose.

The university was set up in part as a response to Socrates’ dictum that we not assume that the values of the larger society are in fact the true ends of human life. The Catholic university today more than ever needs to find within itself the resources to resist the overwhelming inclination at the core of American civilization to collapse the tension between the opinions of the surrounding culture concerning what is just and good, on the one hand, and the highest ends of human life, on the other. We in Catholic universities have a moral imperative to get clear on the fact that the utilitarian values of our political foundation are not able to get us to our deepest ends as human beings. When we acknowledge this anew, we need to strive to creatively and constructively articulate what those ends might be as well as the various means to them. By recultivating a sense of tension between the highest ends of the human person and the popular opinions concerning the same prevailing in American culture, the thinking class in our culture as well as the Catholic university can again coherently contribute deep goodness to both the individual and society.