True Morality vs Absolute Morality

One is tempted to see Simon’s stance as prophetic, but that would be wrong: he was a philosopher and his business in the book was to apply reason to the fast-moving political events in such a way as to clarify their moral dimensions and to put public opinion to the question.

He acted as a man of reason attempting to cool passions and as a patriot attempting to remind his fellow citizens of their nation’s just interests.  Such a task corresponds “fully to the philosopher’s vocation.”  How does Simon carry out this effort? 

Simon was, of course, a Thomist, one of the greatest of the last century, but more in the line of Maritain than Gilson, that is, he was not a historian, but a philosopher fully engaged with the philosophical concerns of his own time but operating from a perspective thoroughly informed by Thomas’s thought. 

Moreover, The Ethiopian Campaign is a pamphlet concerning current events meant to be read by a wide audience.  Notions like the common good (15, 41, 56, 60) and the natural law (25-26, 41, 75, 76) are mentioned, but Simon’s Thomism is by and large lightly worn. 

There are passages in the book where he clearly has specific Thomistic discussions in mind (see, e.g., pp. 25, 46 and 64, which are based respectively on discussions in Summa theologiae 1a2ae, q. 94, a. 4 and q. 64, a. 2), but he does not cite them since his purpose is to address the important principles to the political situation rather than to undertake any sort of exegesis or proof-texting: the argument alone is what matters.

One can see three particular examples of this approach in the book. The first is a splendid discussion of the nature of idealism in politics in the fourth chapter of the book, called “But is this War Just?” 

The Italian intervention in Ethiopia looked on its face to be a clear violation of existing treaties and therefore a plain injustice. But Simon pauses before making such a judgment: “[t]rue morality, in our opinion, does not entail such rigidity, and its concrete decisions do not allow themselves to be discovered at so little cost” (24). Whatever Italy’s prima facie treaty obligations, Simon urges one to give the “facts on the ground,” as we now say, their due. 

Morality’s realistic dimension demands a certain openness, which is not simply laxity: “[s]uch an attitude is in no way to be confused with empiricism or opportunism; the true men of action are simultaneously very careful about doctrine, principles, constant rules, and very careful to maintain in their minds that open space where, in the concrete, decisions that are highly detailed arise” (ibid.). 

One is here reminded of Leo Strauss’s criticisms of natural law as too restrictive of the necessary latitude of the statesman (Natural Right and History, pp. 163-64).  While Simon does not go nearly so far as Montesquieu, much less Machiavelli (on pp. 66-67 he expressly rejects consequentialism), his Thomistic political thought is far from an otherworldly moralism. 

Some of the French rightists who signed the original manifesto appealed against an “absolute morality” that they took to be at odds with a defense of “civilization.”  Simon rejected the dichotomy, based as it was on a straw man, that is on an idealism remote from life: moral principles must be applied concretely with all the complications and variability apprehended by prudence.

Thus, the moral rule, oriented toward the absolute of the final end, is at the same time always relative to the highly variable complex of the action that it is supposed to regulate. Under these conditions, the notion of an absolute morality appears to be an ambiguity without real use: true morality scoffs at the concept of absolute morality. (26)

The fact that Italy broke a treaty does not in itself settle the issue since breaking treaties is sometimes justifiable.  In the end the issue was not between realism and idealism, but between moral seriousness about the legal issue and rank “indifference” to it.

Weighing Humanitarian Intervention

A second example of Simon’s own moral seriousness is provided in the seventh chapter, which treats the internal situation of Ethiopia. The Italian intervention was a late move in the “great game” of colonization by a player that had been largely left out. 

While the desire for natural resources was probably less central to Mussolini than the need for an apparent political triumph to offset domestic discontent with Italy’s severe economic troubles, a case was made that intervention in Ethiopia would benefit the Ethiopians themselves, who were cruelly caricatured as little more than anarchic savages. 

Simon does not reject such considerations (although he did forcefully reject the caricature) out of hand, acknowledging that colonial rule is not in itself always unjust. In weighing up the various factors necessary to make a judgment Simon is in fact suggesting considerations about what we now call “humanitarian intervention.” 

He poses questions that are still the beginning of practical wisdom on such matters: Is the internal disorder one that can be mitigated by an intervention in a way that does not violate a norm of proportionality? What are the chances of success? Will the intervention require violence and how much? Will the introduction of European culture also introduce things that could exacerbate some of the evils it is meant to address? 

On the decisive issue Simon states his main principle thus:

When we take the trouble to stop and think about these things, wars of colonization considered as a beneficent intervention lose a large part of their allure.  For a violent military intervention by a foreign power to be justified by a country’s internal situation, it is not enough, let us note, that it be undertaken to bring about an amelioration of that internal situation.  It must also be the case that the proposed amelioration is substantial enough so that it greatly exceeds the immense evils implicit in war. (46)

So while Simon concedes the possibility of a just intervention, even a violent one, he also notes the high bar of justification and concludes that in most cases such intervention should be both collective and peaceful (ibid.).