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ABSTRACT
Value pluralism is the view that values are many. Monotheism is the view that God is one. If God is one, and if God is the ultimate source of values, then all values would be ultimately unified. However, that is precisely what value pluralism denies. Monotheism sees the world as a unity, while value pluralism sees the world as a plurality. This paper aims to reconcile value pluralism with monotheism through the concept of complexio oppositorum, as posited by Carl Schmitt in Roman Catholicism and Political Form. This paper will illustrate the operation of the complexio oppositorum through a historical vignette that is drawn from the earliest days of church history. The historical vignette will comprise three characters – martyr, hermit, monk – each of whom embodies a different set of values, but all of whom have been absorbed into the complexio oppositorum that is the Catholic Church.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Schmitt, “The Visibility of the Church,” 51–2.
2 My account of the theory of value pluralism is more fully set out in Neoh, Law, Love and Freedom, ch 6. This section is based on that chapter.
3 Taylor, “Leading a Life,” 183.
4 Kekes, The Morality of Pluralism, 11.
5 Gray, Isaiah Berlin, 81.
6 Kekes, The Morality of Pluralism, 12.
7 Ibid., 11.
8 Ibid., 57.
9 Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 168.
10 Kekes, Morality of Pluralism, 99, 101.
11 Berlin, “The Pursuit of the Ideal,” 10.
12 Gray, Isaiah Berlin, 17–18.
13 Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, 84.
14 Walzer, Thick and Thin, 8.
15 Michael, The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind, 19, 55.
16 Kekes, Moral Tradition and Individuality, 5.
17 Hampshire, Justice is Conflict, 42.
18 Ibid., 51.
19 Ibid., 42.
20 Hardy, “Taking Pluralism Seriously,” 282, 290.
21 Galston, “Must Value Pluralism and Religious Belief Collide?” 259.
22 Ibid.
23 Cover, “Nomos and Narrative,” 4.
24 Galston, “Must Value Pluralism and Religious Belief Collide?” 260.
25 Jinkins, “Pluralism and Religious Faith,” 276.
26 Ibid., 273.
27 Ibid., 276.
28 Orr, “Berlinian Pluralism and Abrahamic Monotheism,” 441, 451.
29 Ibid., 451.
30 Ibid., 452.
31 Ibid.
32 Crowder, “Value Pluralism and Monotheism,” 818, 830.
33 Ibid., 831.
34 Panikkar, “The Myth of Pluralism,” 197, 199.
35 Galston, “Must Value Pluralism and Religious Belief Collide?” 255
36 Schmitt, Roman Catholicism and Political Form, 7.
37 Ibid.
38 Schmitt, Roman Catholicism and Political Form, 8.
39 Ibid, 9–11.
40 Marder, “Carl Schmitt's 'Cosmopolitan Restaurant',” 29.
41 Ibid., 30.
42 Ibid., 30.
43 Lilla, “The Enemy of Liberalism”.
44 Schmitt, “The Visibility of the Church,” 51–2.
45 Ulmen, “Introduction,” xi-xii.
46 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 85.
47 Schmitt, “The Visibility of the Church,” 52.
48 Ibid., 53
49 Ibid.
50 Gospel of Matthew 5:48.
51 The historical vignette in this section is taken from a fuller account that I have provided in Neoh, Law, Love and Freedom, ch 4.
52 See Brown, The Cult of the Saints.
53 Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, 185.
54 As quoted in Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism, 85.
55 Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, 193.
56 Augustine, “Praeceptum,” §7.1.
57 Ibid., §4.6.
58 Ibid., §4.8–9.
59 Ibid., §4.5.
60 Lawless, Augustine of Hippo and His Monastic Rule, 22.
61 Augustine, “Praeceptum,” §1.2.
62 Ibid., §5.2.
63 Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, 80.
64 Agamben, The Highest Poverty, xi.
65 Ibid.
66 Agamben, The Highest Poverty, 26.
67 Ibid., 9.
68 Siedentop, Inventing the Individual, 93, 99.
69 Abbruzzese, “Monastic Asceticism and Everyday Life,” 9.
70 Siedentop, Inventing the Individual, 96.
71 Ibid., 98.
72 McCabe, God Matters, 228–9.
73 See Neoh, “Jurisprudence of Love in Paul's Letter to the Romans,” 7. See also Neoh, “Law Imprisons, Love Liberates,” 221.
74 Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, 113.
75 Ibid.
76 Schmitt, “The Visibility of the Church,” 57.
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Notes on contributors
Joshua Neoh
Joshua Neoh is an Associate Professor of Law at the Australian National University (ANU). He completed his LLB at the ANU, LLM at Yale, and PhD at Cambridge. His main area of research is in jurisprudence, with a special interest in the intersection of legal theory and political theology. He is the author of Law, Love and Freedom: From the Sacred to the Secular (Cambridge University Press, 2019).