The Only Answer to Modernity’s Impiety, John Attarian (from Modern Age 44:1, Winter 2002)

Actual sin is disobedience, or rebellion. And even those who are not guilty of sins against faith may nonetheless rebel against tradition, natural law, or human authority. But should we characterize modernity as being "all about rebellion: against God, against restraint, against the limits of the human condition, and even against reality itself"

Dr. Fleming on Dante's De Monarchia:

Dante de monarchia
Dante’s De Monarchia is not a work of political theory in the strictest sense but is more what we might term a work of moral theology directed towards political understanding. It shares the general aim of all his later major works, which is to show men the way out of misery and toward happiness. Two great instruments toward happiness, the Empire and the Church, had both fallen short of divine their missions. Thus his political message can only be understood in an ethical and spiritual co–ntext.

For Dante, the unity of the universe, as designed by its Creator, is a given. Man, by contrast, has a dual nature, ministered to by these two institutions, the one secular and the other spiritual. In this work, concentrating on the secular—as in the Commedia he will focus on the spiritual—he lays out a vision of universal Empire that brings peace to world. Since the end of life, in the Aristotelian/Thomistic sense, is contemplation of the good/divine, and this requires peace, only universal Empire can provide the peace that is necessary for study, prayer, and contemplation. Thus Dante’s approach to the distinct purposes of Church and Empire most be kept separate from modern anti-Christian argument—one quite alien to Dante’s mind and purpose–for the separation of Church and state. Dante is obviously thinking much of the time of Boniface VIII’s ambitious and, he would say, quite wrong-headed plan (e.g., in Unam sanctam) to make the Church supreme in the secular as well as in the spiritual realm—a notion quite alien from the spirit of Gregory I or even of Gregory VII.

And this:

Following Aristotle in the Ethics, Dante argues that man’s distinctive character is his intellect, whose function is to understand, to know. Let me summarize the argument: Peace is prerequisite for the happiness that requires contemplation (4); While there may be various agents who would promote peace, when there are multiple organs for fulfilling a function/purpose, one takes precedence and rules the others. Thus the paterfamilias rules the household.(5) Partial orders in the human race are subsumed by the greater and more inclusive power (6). Please observe that he leaves out the Eastern, more legitimate Empire from consideration. By 1300, after the devastating effects of Turkish advances and Western Crusades, the “Greeks”—as our ancestors were now calling them—could be dismissed as a failure. Empire is to kingdoms what God is to man. (7) Because of man’s nature, a supreme judge is needed. (10) The beest order in the world depends on the workings of justice, (11) and the human race is best ordered when it is most free (12) [“potissime liberum”], but the exercise of free will requires judgment (iudicium) as an arbiter between apprehension (that is understanding that something exists and can be sought) and desire. Man is most free when he is existing for his own sake rather than for another’s (say, a master’s or lord’s), thus he is most free under the Empire, because the Emperor, if he is truly emperor, rules for our sake, while other the rulers of other forms of government are crooked and self-seeking, working for the good of the king, the aristocracy, or the lower classes. Dante cites Aristotle to show that under bad governments, the good man is a bad citizen while under a good government, the good man=good citizen. Why a single universal empire? Because, that which is best is unity, just as God is a unity. (15) Concord is best. Note that as a Trinitarian, Dante must conceive of the godhead as a collaboration of three partners, and if we really understand the political reality of Thomas’s and Dante’s time, we shall not fall into the trap of imagining that Dante is an advocate for a unitary—as opposed to federative/feudal–state. The excellence of unity is shown by the fact that Christ was born when the world ready, that is, unifed under the great Augustus. (Dante would not have known, but Augustus’ Empire was a federation of autonomous city-states.) The world has gone to Hell, he says, since Roman unity was shattered.

Did the Roman Empire understand itself to be more of a federation than a unitary state under the leadership of a central authority? Or is this just how things played out in fact? (How did the Byzantine Empire understand itself and its authority?) There can be a just reaction against the unjust usurpation of power or wrong claims to authority; how much of modernity was correct in its reaction against royal absolutism and the supposed divine right of kings? And how much of it was wrong in its understanding of the origin of authority and how it is transmitted? (As well as the relationship between justice and the assigning of rulership?)