One of the great American Catholic thinkers…article in City Journal.
An excerpt.
“In the fall of 1970, when I was a college sophomore, the first article assigned in one of my courses was titled “What Is Theology’s Standpoint?” The author argued that a “standpoint” was “a set of experiences, images, presuppositions, expectations, and operations (of inquiring and deciding),” by which human beings made sense of themselves and their relationship to the world. Late-twentieth-century theology, he continued, should operate from an “open standpoint,” engaging the human experience in full. Reading that article was my first encounter with the mind and spirit of Michael Novak. More than four decades later, it strikes me that the gist of the article nicely captures the range of Novak’s achievement, as well as suggesting its distinctive intellectual and cultural location.
“Back then, in theological circles, a fad existed for titling articles and books “Toward a Theology of” this, that, or the other thing (a fad once neatly parodied by my Toronto colleague Margaret O’Rourke Boyle, in “Toward a Theology of Garbage”). Indeed, the “toward” bug infected Novak on one occasion, when he christened an extended essay “Toward a Theology of the Corporation.” But that was, I’m sure, a literary venial sin. For Novak’s entire intellectual enterprise has never needed that faux rhetorical booster “toward.” As he showed me in his 1968 Theology Today essay on theology’s “standpoint,” authentic Catholic intellectual life, and especially Catholic theology, is always “toward”: Catholic intellectual life consciously engages the fullness of human experience, which Catholic thinkers “read” through the prism of revelation and reason, both of which, they maintain, cast the light of truth on human affairs. This conviction—that reflection on the things of the City of God can illuminate the paradoxes, tragedies, conundrums, and possibilities of the City of Man—stands at the center of Michael Novak’s thought.
“And that is why, in more than a half-century of scholarship, journalism, and public service, Novak has applied his philosophical and theological skills to virtually every consequential aspect of the human condition. He has not followed a preset itinerary but has deliberately charted previously unexplored territories and terrain. That choice—to break out of conventional patterns of thought and become one’s own intellectual GPS—has not always made for an easy life.
“Some did not appreciate having their disciplines and practices examined through lenses ground by theological reason; in fact, some of those whose turf Novak surveyed regard the very notion of “theological reason” as oxymoronic. Explorers make mistakes, and Novak would be the first to admit that what once seemed an interesting track to follow eventually turned into a blind alley, or that the account he gave of this or that form of human activity was incomplete. One of the most impressive aspects of Novak’s intellectual personality has been his openness to criticism and his willingness to say, when necessary, “you were right and I was wrong”—a confession that comes harder to intellectuals than to most.
“Like others who, in the standard political categories, made the pilgrimage from left to right, Novak has been pilloried as a traitor to his class. The truth is that he had the courage to face facts and hold fast to his deepest convictions about human dignity and human freedom, rather than adjust those convictions to the shifting fashions of political correctness. Like virtually everyone who enters the public arena with ideas that challenge the regnant wisdom, Novak must have wished, from time to time, for a better class of enemies. Unlike some of those enemies, he has maintained a commitment to charity, candor, and respect.
“It has not been easy being an intellectual trailblazer, this past half-century; perhaps it never is. Still, it’s worth noting en passant how nasty intellectual exchange—or what passes for it—often is, these days. Late in his life, which was built around debate and controversy, almost always conducted with robust good humor, G. K. Chesterton regretted that his friend Hilaire Belloc’s controversies were always so “sundering.” That had something to do with Belloc’s bulldog demeanor. But in our own time, controversy over ideas has become inexorably “sundering” because of the secular-messianic streak that dominates late-modern and postmodern intellectual life, especially at the sometimes-bloody crossroads where ideas meet public policy. Those who challenge the shibboleths of the politically correct academy aren’t merely mistaken; they are wicked and must be shunned. That this cast of mind has seriously eroded American public life has become all too clear in, for example, recent Supreme Court dictathat dismiss those who defend traditional moral norms from postmodern Gnosticism as irrational bigots. Similar shunning dynamics, rooted in the same belief that history’s ratchet only works in one direction, have too often made intra-Catholic controversy an unpleasant arena in recent decades.
“But enough about the difficulties that Michael Novak has faced over a half-century of intellectual exploration. What about his singular achievement?
“It is not within my competence to make judgments about Novak’s account of economic life; others are better equipped to determine what he got right and what has been left incomplete in his philosophical and theological analysis of markets, free enterprise, the system of democratic capitalism, and the vocation of business. But however those judgments wind up, it’s clear that Novak, with singular dedication and real effect in the evolution of Catholic social doctrine, introduced a new temper to Catholic thinking about economic life. We can describe that new temper as an empirical sensibility that never descends into empiricism.
“Novak’s account of economics begins, not with abstractions, but with keen observations of what is, which, in turn, lead to a disciplined reflection on how what is ought to be understood, casting light on moral truths and responsibilities in the process. Or, as his friend Rocco Buttiglione, the Italian social thinker, has put it, Novak’s seminal thinking about economic life raised an important question, little explored previously in Catholic social thought—or indeed in any other religiously informed social thought: Might “laws” exist in economic life analogous to the moral laws that a disciplined reflection on human moral action can discern? Is there, in other words, a deep structure to economic life that helps explain why some economies “work,” whether those economies are lodged in medieval Benedictine monasteries or in modern business enterprises? And does that deep structure reflect truths about the human person and human relationships that we can recognize by a careful, empirically informed reasoning that is attentive to the truths about the human condition that we learn from biblical religion?”
David H Lukenbill Website 