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Google AI: Critique of Catholic Social Teaching's "Failed Synthesis": Fortin's most famous practical critique targeted Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. Fortin argued that the Church tried to defend the working class by adopting Locke's language of private property as an "inviolable and sacred right." Fortin asserted this was a catastrophic conceptual blunder. By unthinkingly blending an Aristotelian-Thomistic world of virtue with Locke's non-teleological, nominalist view of property, the Church inadvertently imported modern individualism into its theology.

John Locke's nominalism serves as the metaphysical foundation for the modern rights-based political theory that Father Ernest Fortin famously critiqued. While Locke developed his nominalism in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding and his political theory in the Two Treatises of Government, Fortin’s critique exposes the deep tension between Locke’s non-teleological metaphysics and the pre-modern, teleological natural law tradition. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
The relationship between Locke’s nominalism and Fortin's critique spans across three major pillars:
1. Locke’s Metaphysics: Nominalism vs. Real Essence
In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke rejects the Aristotelian and Scholastic concept of universal "substantial forms" existing in nature. He argues that: [1, 2]
  • All existing things are particulars: Nature only produces individual objects. [1, 2]
  • Real vs. Nominal Essence: Locke argues that things have a "real essence" (their unknowable, sub-sensible atomic structure), but humans group things into species using "nominal essences" (abstract, mind-dependent ideas and definitions constructed based on common observed traits). [1, 2]
  • Nature has no fixed boundaries: Universals and species are human constructs, meaning classification is a product of human language and utility rather than an objective, God-given hierarchy built into nature. [1, 2]
2. The Political Consequence: From Duties to Rights
Because nominalism denies that human beings have an intrinsic, teleological "nature" or ultimate purpose fixed by God, modern political philosophers had to reinvent the basis of morality. [1, 2]
  • For Locke, since there is no natural cosmic hierarchy or common teleological end, society is not naturally political. [1, 2, 3]
  • Instead, he posits a "state of nature" where individuals possess radical self-ownership and subjective, natural rights (like property and self-preservation) prior to any community. [1, 2]
  • Political society becomes a conventional contract constructed by individual wills to secure these rights, rather than a natural vehicle for human virtue. [1, 2]
3. Fortin’s Critique: The Anti-Teleological Trap
Following the intellectual lineage of Leo Strauss, Ernest Fortin critiqued Locke for replacing an objective moral order grounded in human perfection with a subjective order grounded in raw appetite and individual rights. [1]
Fortin’s specific criticisms center on several key issues:
  • The Incommensurability of Law and Rights: In essays like “The New Rights Theory and the Natural Law,” Fortin argues that pre-modern natural law (Aquinas) and modern natural rights (Locke) are fundamentally incompatible. Natural law dictates what is objectively right and imposes duties toward the common good. Lockean rights, by contrast, prioritize individual freedom and ownership, making the common good secondary.
  • The "Atheistic" Implications of the State of Nature: Fortin famously remarked that the Lockean concept of a state of nature has implications that are "profoundly atheistic." It presumes human beings are born isolated and untethered to a divinely ordered moral purpose, relying solely on human artifice to generate political legitimacy.
  • Critique of Catholic Social Teaching's "Failed Synthesis": Fortin's most famous practical critique targeted Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. Fortin argued that the Church tried to defend the working class by adopting Locke's language of private property as an "inviolable and sacred right." Fortin asserted this was a catastrophic conceptual blunder. By unthinkingly blending an Aristotelian-Thomistic world of virtue with Locke's non-teleological, nominalist view of property, the Church inadvertently imported modern individualism into its theology. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
Ultimately, Fortin’s critique warns that you cannot easily separate Locke’s politics from his nominalist metaphysics. If nature has no inherent meaning or goal, then morality dissolves into subjective self-interest, leaving no robust philosophical framework to demand sacrifices for the common good. [1]

Would you like to explore how Locke's nominalism directly compares to Thomas Aquinas's realism, or should we dive deeper into Fortin's specific analysis of papal encyclicals like Rerum Novarum?

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