SecretAgentMan's Dossier

Heinrich Rommen's Right!

There is no way out. The state as a moral entity, political authority without regard to its historical form equipped with the indubitable right to demand moral obedience, and not simply shrewd external conformity, the rights of man, all these problems of political philosophy can find a satisfactory solution only from the standpoint of theism. If the rights of man and the duties of authority, and the duties of man and the rights of authority, do not ultimately originate in a transcendent God who is perfect Intellect, infinite Goodness, omnipotent Will, gracious and just Providence, then there is no escape from anarchy or from tyranny. So invincible is this argument that from time immemorial philosophers have deduced a proof of the existence of God from the nature of man as a political and legal being, from the existence of the state and of the law.

-- Heinrich Rommen, The State in Catholic Thought