There is no single, all-encompassing “model” of political science—as even some of the more intellectually honest proponents of so-called quantitative or behavioral political science grudgingly admit from time to time. To completely quantify human behavior at the expense of the ends and purposes of human freedom is to risk flattening and homogenizing the human world. To completely sever liberty from truth and virtue is to leave liberty without any guiding star or compass. To pursue these ends is to declare nihilism—or at least moral confusion—a “scientific” imperative. Indeed, when the moral dimensions of human or political experience are ignored and placed by fiat outside the categories of science or reason, they inevitably tend to transmute into a form of limitless moralism, even moral fanaticism. As the contributors to this volume insist, moral phenomena are part of reality that will not go away. As such, they must be subject to reasonable analysis in a spirit that eschews both nihilism and fanaticism.

In light of these considerations, there is still much to be said for the “traditional” view that politics is a moral science or a science dealing with moral agents, as Bertrand de Jouvenel put it in his masterwork Sovereignty: An Inquiry Into the Political Good (1957). In Aristotle’s inimitable phrase, human beings are obliged to put “reasons and actions in common”: The question of the “common good” does not simply disappear because “science” deems it to be irrelevant or questions its predictive value. To be sure, the question of the common good should not be understood as an abstract Platonic Idea that can be dogmatically imposed from the top down, ending all future political deliberations once and for all. Rather, the pursuit of the common good always entails a constant effort to approximate a political and social order where justice, freedom, and decency are respected. At the same time, the pursuit of the common good necessarily demands a rejection of every form of perfectionism or political utopianism. It is what the contributors to this thoughtful volume call an exercise in “moral realism” (pp. 10, 316).

The contributors to Toward the Common Good attempt to show the relevance of the Catholic tradition to the resuscitation of a morally serious political science. Theirs is not an exercise in fideism or pietism (the contributors see rational reflection as an integral part of the Catholic tradition), nor is it a critique of contemporary political science tout court. They are “methodological pluralists” who acknowledge that different approaches to the inquiries of political science can enrich our knowledge of the human person and contribute to a more variegated science of society. What they take aim at is not “the importance of behavior” but the “obsession with behaviorism” (p. 4). They acknowledge “the importance of facts to the attainment of wisdom” (p. 4), even as they reject narrow empiricism. They wish to meld political theorizing with what one may call true empiricism.

In an instructive introductory essay, editor Robert F. Gorman conveys a brief outline of what he perceives as the genuine “catholicity” of Catholic social and philosophical thought. This tradition rejects radical skepticism, solipsism, and rationalism while affirming “the rational capacity and reality of the human mind and its ability to discover and know truth within the limits of human experience” (p. 4). It affirms the free and relational person while rejecting “autonomous individualism,” endorses freedom for excellence while repudiating unlimited or indifferent choice, and supports community while rejecting communism or even communitarianism. It highlights prudential moral judgment (as opposed to abstract universalism) while rejecting cultural and moral relativism. Above all, such thought is antitotalitarian and resists the deification of state power.

In decisive respects, Catholic political reflection builds upon classical or Aristotelian political science even as it rejects a slavish return to the “ancients.” Two of the essays in the volume, both dealing with the role of political theory in Catholic self-understanding, are insistent on this point. Steven J. Brust and Robert P. Hunt write respectfully about the students of Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, yet refuse to identify Catholic political science with an uncritical return to classical wisdom. They rightly argue that the Catholic defense of the free but relational person is neither ancient nor modern. Nor does the Catholic tradition affirm the “regime” as the principal determinant of every aspect of life.

On this latter point, however, there appears to be some misunderstanding. A political order that respects decentralization and subsidiarity (the principle, so precious to Catholic social thought, that whatever can be done by communities of lower order ought not to be usurped by central authority) is precisely a political order that limits itself. Politics thus has an existential primacy even in a political order that limits explicitly political authority. An affirmation of the primacy of politics is in no way an endorsement of the polis as an enduring model of human governance or as a total way of life. Some of the contributors to the volume are, for this reason, too quick to affirm the primacy of “social” over political life. But they are right to insist that Catholic political theory involves more than the baptism of Plato and Aristotle. The dialectical return to ancient wisdom also entails a critique of ancient wisdom, even if the Christian political theorist’s critique of this wisdom is, in the end, far less fundamental than his rejection of radical modernity, of the modern project in its full-blown form. There is a reason why not so long ago we used to speak of “classical and Christian education” as if they largely partook of the same sources and spirit.

A fine essay by Ryan J. Barilleaux on “Political Science and the Study of American Politics” emphasizes the affinities between the Catholic political tradition and the older mode of political analysis that James W. Ceaser suggestively calls “traditional political science.” Barilleaux stresses the connections between materialism, scientism, and obscurantism (pp. 68–69) and pleas for the recovery of moral and political common sense. Like the students of Strauss and Voegelin, he argues that value-free political science incoherently genuflects before values that it does not and cannot openly acknowledge. He calls for forthright discussion of questions of ethics and behavior among political actors—and a respectful openness to “ultimate questions” (pp. 73–74). Social science’s rediscovery of virtue is a reminder of the inescapability of the natural law—of the things that “we cannot not know.” In this spirit, he points out one of the central paradoxes of our time: Never have there been so many appeals to natural justice even as the idea of natural law remains deeply suspect in advanced intellectual circles. The Catholic tradition can help clarify and overcome this evident “contradiction” in contemporary theory and practice.

An equally fine essay by John A. Corso subjects the field of public administration to searching analysis. Against the field’s preoccupation with organization, management, and efficiency, Corso shows how the Catholic emphases on subsidiarity and solidarity can restore public administration to a balanced and humane concern for the public good. He also suggests, quite convincingly in my view, that the church has a “subsidiarity problem” (p. 92) of its own. Its public policy pronouncements often value solidarity over subsidiarity and thus reinforce the statism that the Catholic social and political tradition self-consciously sets out to resist (the American bishops, for example, had little to say about subsidiarity when they pressed for comprehensive national health-care reform). More modesty and less unthinking identification of “social justice” with centralized government action would no doubt help in that regard.

The weakest essays in the volume, by Anthony R. Brunello and Andrew Essig, respectively, deal with comparative politics and international relations theory. This is no doubt because the authors take their bearings more from recent papal encyclicals than from the breadth and depth of Catholic political reflection. These encyclicals too often tend to be trendy, Third Worldist, lacking in anti-utopian rigor. Should “moral realism” really privilege “soft power” when thinking about the complexities of international relations (p. 136)? Is universal peace, a permanent end to war, a realistic human possibility in a world marked by original sin? Is “liberation theology”—with its naïveté about “Marxist social analysis” and its indulgence toward totalitarian regimes such as Fidel Castro’s Cuba—really a boon for the poor (pp. 116–17)? Neither essay adequately distinguishes between the Christian spirit and modern humanitarianism, the spirit of compassion—and historical optimism—devoid of any transcendental reference point. Has the church itself conceded too much to secular humanitarianism? That is a question that popes such as Leo XIII and Benedict XVI asked, with good reason, with some consternation. We have reason to wonder if Pope Francis, apparently more willing to accommodate current modernity, will be as preoccupied with this theme as some of his immediate predecessors.

These are small caveats, however, about a book that enlarges the vision of political science by bringing it into respectful dialogue with a tradition of political and social inquiry that is older and in important respects more venerable than academic political science itself. A morally serious political science should not be afraid to open itself to all of the resources of faith and reason, as long as they do not contradict reason itself. Let the dialogue begin. In my view, authentic pluralism strengthens the profession and prevents it from becoming sterile and ossified.