Hierarchy, Consent, and the “Western Tradition”

Abstract

SAMUEL BEER DESERVES OUR RESPECT and gratitude for his many distinguished studies on modern British and American history. But his venture into medieval thought, Rule of the Wise and Holy: Hierarchy in the Thomistic System,' calls for a Critical Response. Medievalists find their work amply rewarding on the whole; but they share one common frustration. No one pays the slightest attention to anything they write-except other medievalists. Yet everyone feels competent to pass judgment on medieval achievements, or to decry the lack of them.2 Professor Beer begins with a simple assertion that the Americans of 1776 turned their backs on the whole preceding tradition of Western thought when they opted for a system of government by consent, For more than 2000 years nearly all leading minds had rejected popular government. Classical philosophy had taught the rule of the wise, Christian theology the rule of the holy. Medieval thinkers had combined the two (p. 391). The subsequent argument is based on an analysis of the thought of Thomas Aquinas, which is taken to be characteristic of medieval thought in general. Beer points out that Aquinas viewed the whole universe as a vast hierarchy of being. Such a hierarchical order was evidently based on inequality. Transferred to the political sphere, this way of thinking implied that political obligation was based on the inherent superiority of a ruler-his holiness or wisdom. There are two lines of objection to this whole argument. In the first place it presents a very one-sided picture of Aquinas's thought. In the second place (and this is much more important) it assumes that the ideas of Aquinas were characteristic of all medieval political theory. The first objection need not detain us overlong, though Aquinas

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