Family First: The Principles of Patriarchy

My plan to write a book on Substack

Dr Johnson observed that ‘men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.’ The West is at the dead end of its long, misguided experiment in liberalism — the idea that each man ought to be looked upon not as a member of a family but primarily as an individual. We need reminding that the family comes first.

So now that I’ve nearly finished my lesson recordings for my marriage coaching program, I’m considering writing a book — here on Substack — aimed at recovering and presenting afresh the rich tradition of writing on the family rather than the individual as the fundamental unit of society.

No succinct outline of this material is available. Yet ‘not to know what has been transacted in former times,’ he says, recalling Cicero, ‘is to continue always a child.’

The goal would be to keep it as concise as possible. I’d like to get your thoughts on this brief outline of it as 8 essays of 5,000 words each:

1

Autonomy is the core value of liberalism, and it became philosophically dominant in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, reaching its fullest articulation in the Revolution of 1789. But it has its roots, too, in the Reformation. This was liberalism in religious form: the rebellion of autonomy against the authority of the Church. Moreover, the formation of the merchant class from the eleventh to fourteenth century laid the foundations of unfettered capitalism as economic liberalism.

2

From the outset, an intellectual rich tradition opposed this. The French counter-revolutionaries comprise the main branch. Beginning with Louis de Bonald, they comprise Le Play, Keller and La Tour du Pin. Bonald opposed individualism, affirming the primacy of society over the individual. He also said authority was indivisible but had to be dispersed throughout society to decentralise it. He saw divorce as particularly corrosive to the family and therefore society. Strong paternal authority had to be reestablished. The rural family had to be protected from the forced division of property threatening dissolution. Corporations, in his view, are beneficial agencies of social control, and true political representation should be reconstituted through social professions.

3

Frédéric Le Play, too, stressed the importance of strong social hierarchies, the importance of the family as the elemental unit of society, and the freedom of testation. Individualism was the main scourge of society. And the Decalogue, he said, was a means of moral regeneration.

4

And Émile Keller was opposed to not only political liberalism but also economic liberalism. Social reform required economic reform. Justice required that the workers reconstitute a corporative patrimony to secure social liberty. Keller also argued for a regime that allowed some participation by all the citizens to allow political liberty to blossom.

5

With all the above points La Tour du Pin agreed. But he stressed that the Catholic Church, with the New Law, grace, and its social teaching, superseded the Decalogue as the preeminent moral force for the regeneration of society. He saw society as organic and recognised that unless it was based on the truth about the nature of man no social program could work. Following the Church’s teaching, he saw man’s nature as corrupted by original sin. Because of this, the absolutist State, run by fallen men, was likely to abuse power.

The Fall, as Pascal, said is prior to politics and enters into any political arrangement. Yet the individual, too, is inclined to abuse freedom. Thus authority must be (1) decentralised and (2) intermediate bodies must pervade society as buffers against both abuses of power from above and abuses of freedom from below. Only thus can fallen human nature be managed.

When they see themselves as part of a group, La Tour du Pin said, men are more conscious of duties than rights. This aids in the recognition of the limits to liberty. Similarly, the State must see itself as one authority among many within society. If it absorbs and destroys them, it will probably go down the path of absolutism to totalitarianism. The State must stay within its proper sphere. In particular, it has to actively protect the Church.

6

In addition to this main branch of French counter-revolutionaries, the proponents of Catholic social teaching in Italy form another branch of the tradition affirming the family as the fundamental social unit. Foremost among these are Taparelli, Leo XIII and Pius XI. And alongside this Italian movement is a Calvinist movement, led by Kuypar and Dooyeweerd in the Netherlands.

7

In England and America, this tradition of social conservatism with its hostility to industrialisation branched into Chesterton and Belloc (the English Catholics) and the American Southern Protestants. Herbert Agar brought the two branches together, and Allan Carlson is the main living representative of this tradition.

8

Although they didn’t have a political program, unlike the other thinkers mentioned, some  other prominent conservative intellectuals lamented the West’s loss of its spiritual roots. They fear that, thus deracinated, it risked being cast adrift in materialism, consumerism and demagoguery. T. S. Eliot, Christopher Dawson and Voegelin are unjustly neglected thinkers here.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments.