Social Justice and Progressive Tyranny

We left off with Pieper's claim that "Whoever rejects truth, whether natural or supernatural, is really 'wicked' and beyond conversion." 

Now, just because one doesn't reject truth, it doesn't mean one possesses it. Rather, we are philosophers, AKA lovers of wisdom, not owners; it's a dynamic and open relationship. 

Pieper says that for Aquinas, reason is

nothing other than "regard for openness to reality," and "acceptance of reality." And "truth" is to him nothing other than the unveiling and revelation of reality, of both natural and supernatural reality.

So, you could say that prior to truth is our openness to it: unlike other animals, we are open to being itself. Or not, in which case Genesis 3 All Over Again. 

Reason "perfected in the cognition of truth" is therefore the receptivity of the human spirit, to which the revelation of reality, both natural and supernatural reality, has given substance. 

Truth of Being = Revelation + Receptivity. Or, one could just say Intelligibility + Intelligence, respectively. The intelligibility of being is a kind of ceaseless revelation, while our intellection is openness to it. And prudence is grounded in conformity between the two:

The pre-eminence of prudence means that realization of the good presupposes knowledge of reality. He alone can do good who knows what things are like and what their situation is. 

Now, I suppose everyone believes, or at least convinces himself, that he's in touch with reality. But in our day, common conceptions of reality are so radically different that it forces us to conclude that one side is dwelling in unreality. Which accounts for the hostility, because not getting your way is one thing, but not getting your reality -- and being forced to acknowledge unreality -- is a bit more alarming.  

If you want to do good, good intentions aren't enough; rather,

Realization of the good presupposes that our actions are appropriate to the real situation, that is to the concrete realities which form the "environment" of a concrete human action; and that we therefore take this concrete reality seriously, with clear-eyed objectivity. 

Hmm. What if what we need to know in order to achieve some specific outcome is literally unknowable? If so, then presuming to know the unknowable is not going to end well. As it so happens, I'm also rereading the Hayek's Koon Klassic Law, Legislation and Liberty, in particular, the volume on The Mirage of Social Justice. 

You probably just read my mind, because if social justice is a mirage -- literally a kind of collective delusion -- then we might just have identified the essential disconnect between right and left, and left and reality. And you would be hard-pressed to find a progressive who doesn't enthusiastically believe in "social justice," even if they can never precisely define what it means.

It's a big subject, so one is tempted to say just read the book. Let's see if I can extract some of the most juicy insultainment. 

As Petey often says, let's begin with what we can't know, with "the impossibility for anyone of knowing all the particular facts" of a complex spontaneous order (Hayek). It's why we have rules: because the of our ineradicable ignorance of the future:

Rules are a device for coping with our constitutional ignorance. There would be no need for rules among omniscient people who were in agreement on the relative importance of all the different ends.

Which is why it is so repugnant to our reason to change the outcome of a rule-based system, for example, vis-a-vis student loan forgiveness, college racial discrimination against Asians, or climate scammers tweaking their models in order to arrive at the preferred results.

Speaking of affirmative action, diversity, inclusiveness, and all the other progressive buzz words,

The idea that government can determine the opportunities for all, and especially that it can ensure that they are the same for all, is therefore in conflict with the whole rationale of a free society.

When people say "social justice" they really mean "government coercion." Certainly they (at least secular types) do not mean that "society" will bring about the desired outcome, rather, a tyrannical entity that has the power to change the outcomes of a complex system.

But this much is obvious. Let's dig a little deeper to see where Hayek converges with Pieper on the subject of prudence. For Hayek, belief in "social justice" is not only imprudent, it is downright primitive: it is 

a direct consequence of that anthropomorphism or personification by which naive thinking tries to account for all self-ordering processes. It is a sign of the immaturity of our minds that we have not yet outgrown these primitive concepts and still demand from an impersonal process which brings about a greater satisfaction of human desires than any deliberate human organization could achieve, that it conform to the moral precepts men have evolved for the guidance of their individual actions.

So, we still must have rules, including rules of morality that inform our actions. But 

the demand for 'social justice' is addressed not to the individual but to society -- yet society, in the strict sense in which it must be distinguished from the apparatus of government, is incapable of acting for a specific purpose.... 

It is because of belief in the mirage of social justice "that people have placed in the hands of government powers" 

to satisfy the claims of the ever-increasing number of special interests who have learnt to employ the open sesame of 'social justice'. 

Or, in the words of the Aphorist, 

Social justice is the term for claiming anything to which we do not have a right.

But in reality,

No social class has exploited the others more brazenly than the one that today calls itself "the State."