Perspective Chapter: The Primacy of Freedom over Equality as a Condition for Peace from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Pope John Paul II

Abstract

The author answers the question of which of the two values - freedom or equality – is more fundamental to peace in human relations. Four projects of public order are analyzed. First, J.J. Rousseau’s postulate that the fundamental condition for a peacefully functioning society is to guarantee equality among its members is discussed. Then, Karl Raimund Popper’s opposing idea that the fundamental principle of peaceful public life is the protection of freedom is presented. Then, A. de Tocqueville’s idea that religion plays a key role in a peaceful society, since its presence in the public sphere guarantees effective protection of citizens’ freedom and serves peace, is evoked. It also analyzes John Paul II’s observation that the Christian vision of man is in harmony with the ethos of a peaceful society whose fundamental value is freedom. It turns out that freedom is a more fundamental value than equality for peaceful relations between people. Moreover, the effectiveness of the defense of human freedom and the building of peace depends directly on the active presence of Christians in the public square. This activity should be manifested in the implementation of various educational and social projects by Christians.

1. Introduction

Article One of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in Paris on December 10, 1948, at the Third Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, reads as follows: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”¹The Declaration was intended by its authors to impose moral and political obligations on individual states, to induce them to comply with its provisions and to provide a lasting basis for international peace. Thus, the first article of the Declaration establishes the main moral-political criterion by which public orders should be judged, including in terms of their potential to promote or threaten international peace. The point is that, according to the Declaration’s authors, any state order that protects the freedom of its citizens and ensures their equality is peacefully creative. By contrast, state regimes that do not provide these guarantees should be considered a serious threat to world peace, and action should be taken to change them accordingly.

It is interesting to note that freedom is listed first, before equality, in the aforementioned article. One could conclude that the authors of the Declaration considered freedom to be the most important value for human beings, certainly more important than equality. This means, then, that, from the perspective of concern for world peace, these social regimes should be fostered and developed that do not so much provide people with equality, guaranteeing the protection of freedom.

In these reflections, an attempt will be made to support that the conviction of the authors of the Declaration to place freedom before equality is as correct as possible. This research will further attempt to clearly define what and why a concretely defined vision of humanity requires the true protection of human freedom and, therefore, the pursuit of peace. Four outstanding thinkers have been chosen as intellectual guides in this research: Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Karl Raimund Popper, Alexis Clérel, comte de Tocqueville, and John Paul II. They have not been randomly (nonchronologically) listed in this order by chance. Their thinking appears to be complementary. Issues not taken up by the first author are subsequently taken up (or addressed) by others. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that the concept of public order, formulated by John Paul II, can be considered the most appropriate development of a project whose moral-political foundation is Article One of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

2. J.J. Rousseau: equality as a condition for peace

J.J. Rousseau, in his seminal, political, and social work, on The Social Contract, states “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer.”²

The above statement indicates the problem that Rousseau intends to solve. He will not concern himself with the actual process of the formation of societies. Rousseau will limit himself to the search for the principles on which any unjust social order is based. In this way, Rousseau will identify the main sources of social unrest. Injustice is to be understood here as any form of social bondage, and its existence presents a constant danger for the outbreak of struggles between people seeking freedom. The Social Contract is therefore a philosophical and juridical work, not a historical one. Rousseau considers the theses it contains to be normative, not hypothetical.³ This means, on the one hand, that according to its author, The Social Contract clearly identifies the source of social injustice and, on the other hand, defines the principles upon which a just and thus peace-promoting social system should be based.

Central to Rousseau’s entire conception is the assertion that the source of social injustice, and the real threat of the outbreak of unrest, lies in the political organization of society, not in the ontic human condition. The problem to be solved in creating a social order conducive to peaceful relations among human beings is to design political institutions that respect the freedom inherent in human beings.

According to Rousseau, the greatest threat to human freedom, and thus to social peace, is inequality among human beings. The main source of inequality is private property. It is also the fundamental source of strife among men.⁴ This follows from the fact that the principle of relating people to each other is to compare them to each other. Also, as the primary object of comparison among men is wealth, it differentiates them among themselves, making relations among individuals unequal and hostile for it is natural in every society that some people own more and others have less private property.⁵

However, the criticism of private property should not be understood as Rousseau advocating the introduction of collective property in society or even a communist type of property. Rousseau seems to have in mind the general idea of the development of any society. This development goes from a complete community to more and more individualized forms. In a complete community, all its members are completely equal. In individualized forms, individuals are increasingly different from each other. Therefore, the most important implication of this critique is that it is necessary to design political institutions that treat all citizens with absolute equality. Only in this way will it be possible to ensure both the natural freedom of each individual and peaceful relations between people.⁶

The desired political institutions, according to Rousseau, must be based on the collective will of all citizens and the social contract. By the former, the French thinker intends the common position of the people living in a given society with regard to all the problems and difficulties it faces;⁷ by the latter, he means the simultaneous abandonment by all individuals of the pursuit of their personal goals and the absolute submission of all decisions to the collective will and the political body that embodies it.⁸ Only such a social order remains in harmony with the natural (ideal) state of human life and guarantees peaceful relations between people. In this state, no individual exists as a separate element of the community but remains in full and friendly communion with other men, and all men remain equal to each other and enjoy real, not imaginary, freedom.⁹ The former consists in doing what is consistent with reason; the latter appears to be mere arbitrariness.¹⁰ According to Rousseau, thanks to the conclusion of a social contract with other people, and the submission of all citizens to the collective will, equal rights, true freedom, and social peace are guaranteed to each individual.¹¹

Rousseau places the political body that embodies the collective will, as the guardian of equality, freedom, and peace. Only this political body, according to the French philosopher, is entitled to protect them. In extreme cases, this protection can even adopt the form of coercion. This applies to citizens who do not submit to the collective will and thus violate the previously concluded agreement. According to Rousseau, such an attitude is tantamount to questioning the equality of all citizens, a rejection of true freedom, and a lack of peaceful attitude toward other people. In such a case, the political body is entitled to apply coercion to certain citizens. This is about the right to force citizens to respect each other’s equality and to remain in peaceful relations with each other.¹²

Based on the social views of Rousseau, outlined above, it can be noted that the conception of social life in which the active subject is not an individual but the whole community becomes clear. Consequently, this means that the French thinker – as if contrary to his intentions – actually deprives man of his freedom. During the French Revolution and the history of the socialist movement, the flaws in Rousseau’s concepts became apparent. As is well known, in the first case, the decisions of the collective will of the people were treated as a justification for terror, which, after all, should be considered the most radical possible violation of human freedom and the extreme deprivation of peaceful relations between people; while in the second case, the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat also stands in clear contradiction to human freedom and the desire for peaceful regulation of relations between people. I am far from blaming Rousseau for the horrors of the French Revolution or the consequences of the dictatorship of the proletariat. However, it is difficult not to see that, in both cases, what is somehow hidden in the French philosopher’s conception is very clearly revealed: the absolute power of a political body to decide the actual fate of certain people or certain communities, including the complete deprivation of their freedom or even their existence due to the violation of the broadly understood interests of a certain community.¹³

Rousseau’s social vision should therefore be described as a totalitarian project in which there is absolutely no room for any opposition to the will of the whole (in political practice, this should be understood as the will of the majority) of the citizens and the specific political body that embodies it. In a society built according to the recommendations of the French author, there is also no place for arbitrary decisions made by individuals or human communities smaller than a larger-than-life community of which they are a part, which amounts to questioning human autonomy (freedom) and individuality and threatens to cause outbreaks of social unrest.¹⁴

Where is the error that led Rousseau, contrary to his original intentions, to design a social order in which there is ultimately no place for either human freedom or peaceful human relations? When we speak of the mistakes made by the French thinker, we usually refer to his erroneous assumption that the source of injustice and social unrest is the institutional organization of public life or the perception of man as an inherently good being, i.e., incapable of harming others. It must be admitted that these are indeed mistaken assumptions, which are not without influence on this or that formulation of Rousseau’s concept.¹⁵ It appears however, that he also made a mistake that is not clear: on the level of institutional arrangements, he puts equality before freedom. The point is that Rousseau seems to have put forward the following thesis: the only effective means of protecting the freedom of citizens and ensuring peaceful relations between people is to guarantee them an equal influence on the shaping of the public order in which they live. In fact, the French thinker noted that as the greatest threat to freedom and peace is inequality between people, guaranteeing freedom and peace to citizens requires that people first be equal. Meanwhile, I think that, by equating citizens with each other, an even greater threat to their freedom and peace is created. Rousseau did not seem to realize this when he developed the concept of public order.

3. Karl Raimund Popper: freedom as the basis of social peace

To understand why equality should not take precedence over freedom, it is worth considering the thought of the Austrian philosopher Karl R. Popper. In his intellectual autobiography, Unended Quest, he says “For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society. It took some time before I recognized this as no more than a beautiful dream; that freedom is more important than equality; that the attempt to realize equality endangers freedom; and that, if freedom is lost, there will not even be equality among the unfree.”¹⁶

Karl Raimund Popper’s thought is part of the currentpolitical and social reflection that emerged in Western Europe and the United States after the Second World War. Thinkers belonging to this current (besides Popper, the most important are F.A. von Hayek and I. Berlin) attempt to show the true roots of totalitarianism and sketch models of a social order in which human freedom is the highest value.¹⁷

The main issue that Popper deals with in his most important work on socio-political problems, The Open Society and Its Enemies, is the question of the proper organization of public order. A properly organized society is what Popper calls an “open society.” By “open society,” the Austrian philosopher means a social system in which the individual has the right to make completely free decisions about his or her life, all citizens have equal opportunities for social advancement, and the organization of public institutions promotes competition among citizens. Competition should not be understood as a hostile rivalry. Popper has in mind a kind of competition between people for worthy goals, with the complete exclusion of the use of force or violence. The tool of human interaction in such an understanding of competition is not persuasion or appeal, but argumentation and rational justification of the validity of one’s views. An “open society” therefore allows a diversity of views among its citizens. The principle of internal development and improvement of existing political and social institutions in the “open society” is the cooperation of citizens, exchange of opinions of citizens on specific issues, and joint search for optimal solutions to given problems. Approaching the truth in terms of social life consists, in turn, of 1) rejecting solutions that do not work at a given moment and do not seem to correspond to the objective state of affairs; 2) designing and implementing innovative ideas in their place; 3) citizens jointly evaluating new solutions and rejecting those that are unacceptable at a given moment and must be replaced by new designs (in this way, the entire process begins to repeat itself).¹⁸

The opposite and, in a sense, the only alternative to the “open society,” according to Popper, is the “closed society.”¹⁹ It is characterized by the restriction of the freedom of citizens, the curatorship of the state over them, the omnipresence of legal regulations restricting the freedom of action of citizens, censorship, the insistence on the adoption by all citizens of a single worldview doctrine considered true by the authorities, the tendency toward a totalitarian form of government. According to the Austrian thinker, examples of “closed society” projects are primarily the political and social concepts of Plato, G.W.F. Hegel, and Karl Marx. In these projects, there is a conviction of the possibility of realizing a single, desirable model of political-social order. The political institutions within such an order uphold a single moral doctrine that is considered binding.²⁰

Although Karl Raimund Popper does not explicitly mention Rousseau’s concept as an example of a “closed society,” it seems that it too can be considered a typical model of a “closed society.”²¹ This is because it reveals very clearly the main characteristics of this type of society: the lack of respect for individual freedom and the pernicious tendency to build an ideological (totalitarian) society, guided by a single worldview that is considered the most appropriate.²²

All projects of the “closed society” seek to realize the vision of holistic good. According to their authors, it can be achieved only through the realization of a certain model of social order, which appears to be ideal.²³ According to Popper, such a thesis is based on the mistaken belief that socio-historical reality is determined by “iron laws of destiny” that can be known and according to which the social order should be shaped.²⁴ The belief that such laws exist is mistaken because the future appears to be open-ended.²⁵ Thus, there are no laws that determine (i.e., somehow summarily conclude) human history.²⁶

According to Popper, the openness of history is indicated by the observation that the course of human history depends primarily on the development of science and the future states of consciousness of individual human beings. Neither, in turn, can be reasonably predicted. Therefore, the future development of human history cannot be accurately determined. This means that the future is completely open, i.e., it is a matter of many different coincidences, accidents, and more or less rationally justified decisions of certain people, and in the long run, nothing can be precisely determined. Therefore, it is not possible to predict future human ideas rationally and unambiguously about what a good human society should look like in the future and what specific solutions to specific problems should look like.²⁷

As the history of humankind is open-ended, it is not possible to determine the future history with precision. This means that the future of humankind is unpredictable. Consequently, it is not possible to determine how to build a social order in which peace would prevail permanently. According to the Austrian thinker, the “skeleton” of a peaceful social order is determined by the idea of an “open society” rather than a “closed society.” Thus, the peaceful search for ever-better solutions to specific social problems is possible only in an “open society.” In addition, an “open society” is conducive to peacefully meeting the needs of a given community, which are constantly changing over time. In contrast, this is impossible in the case of a “closed society.” All orders built according to the idea of a “closed society” attempt to realize a preconceived, specific vision of an ideal public order. In this way, citizens are deprived of the opportunity to gradually improve and develop specific solutions to a specific situation.²⁸

The “open society,” despite its undoubted advantages over the “closed society,” is not, however, without its shortcomings.²⁹ According to Popper, the most important of these appears to be the possibility of being subject to various kinds of moral-political imperfections. This should be understood in such a way that the specific institutional solutions adopted within the framework of the “open society” are to some extent a result of the moral-intellectual level of the society as a whole and, in particular, of the specific individuals who hold political power at a given time. Thus, the higher this level, the greater the guarantee of a more peaceful functioning of a given society. Of course, the opposite is also true – the lower this level, the more vulnerable a given society is to the outbreak of social unrest. The disadvantage of the “open society” understood in this way is structural as it is directly inscribed in the functioning of the whole system and cannot be avoided. This does not mean, however, that the “open society” should be rejected for this reason and considered an inappropriate model of social order that best serves the cause of peace.³⁰ According to the Austrian philosopher, the postulate that follows from the recognition of this flaw is quite different: “What we need and what we want is to moralize politics, and not to politicize morals.”³¹

Returning here to the concept of Rousseau, it can be noted that, in his case – from the point of view of Popper’s thought – we are dealing with the politicization of morality. The French philosopher sketches a vision of public order that has the task of realizing a particular moral idea, misunderstood as the general good. It is the belief in the primacy of the equality of all human beings over their right to decide freely about their lives.

It is difficult to disagree with Popper’s justification of the primacy of freedom over equality and the related idea of the superiority of the “open society” over the “closed society.” The Austrian thinker also rightly points out that the former should not be regarded as a completely finished construction. Rather, “open society” is only a guideline for building a social order that serves the cause of peace in order to protect human freedom. Popper’s postulate for the moralization of politics also seems to be correct. Paradoxically, however, the greatest weakness of the idea of the “open society” lies in such a postulate. By placing human freedom above all other values, Popper deprived the concrete human being of any guidance as to how morally decent he is to realize his goals and on what concrete moral principles the public life of the “open society” is to be based. In other words, while the Austrian philosopher made the all-too-common postulate of “moralizing politics,” he failed to show on what moral values the “open society” should be based. Thus, Popper’s idea is, in sum, an attempt to outline a morally neutral space of social life in which adherents of different world views would find their place. But the existence of such a morally neutral space is impossible. It is necessary to identify very precisely the specific moral values on which the “open society” must be based.³²

4. Alexis Clérel, comte de Tocqueville: the religious foundation of peaceful liberty

To find their previously articulated values, it is worth referring to the reflections of de Tocqueville. This French philosopher, who lived a century before Popper, proposed a solution that, on the one hand, is in harmony with the idea of an “open society” and, on the other hand, points out that the protection of human freedom, oriented toward the peaceful coexistence of people, requires the presence of strictly defined values in the public sphere.³³

In his major work, Democracy in America, de Tocqueville analyses the mechanisms of the American public order of the time, which seems to him to be a perfect example of a democratic system. The French philosopher notes that it is noticeable what kind of social system disappears with the advent of democracy. This system is broadly defined as the aristocratic rule. What is less clear, however, is what democracy can bring in the future. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze what can be expected from democracy, i.e., what opportunities it offer humanity and what dangers it generate.³⁴

The author of Democracy in America notes that democracy is not so much a fully formed and ready-made system as a public order, which can take on different institutional expressions, depending on the historical, geographical, economic, political, or cultural conditions of the society that creates it. The fundamental values of this order are freedom and equality, the former being the more fundamental. The point is that without freedom there can be no democracy. While equality is also a formal condition for the existence of democracy, it is somehow secondary to freedom. When de Tocqueville speaks of the subordination of equality to freedom, he has in mind equality of opportunity, not the actual equality of citizens (equality in this case would mean a certain equality). Freedom is more fundamental to the democratic system. The reason being, that in democracy, citizens are always free to realize the possibilities available to them in the current situation. In other words, democracy is a public order in which citizens are completely free to decide how to realize opportunities before them. The freedom to choose how to realize opportunities here applies both to citizens taken as specific individuals and to citizens grouped in smaller or larger groups that make up the community as a whole.³⁵ Because the freedom of citizens is understood in this way, the democratic order can take on different institutional expressions in the case of a given society. This expression depends directly on the choices made by its members at any given time.

According to de Tocqueville, the direct dependence of the institutional form of a given democratic order on the actual choices made by its citizens is, paradoxically, the greatest weakness of democracy. Although nothing is imposed on the citizens and they themselves freely make certain choices, which is a great advantage of democracy (understood here in the spirit of Popper’s idea of an “open society”), at the same time, the actual choices made by the citizens can be de-structural for the entire system. Understood in this way, the weakness of the democratic order is a consequence of the internal tensions and contradictions inherent within it. It is therefore necessary to understand the mechanisms that govern it.³⁶

The French thinker notes that the democratic way, in which public order functions, is primarily conducive to the spread of false attitudes in society. These are mediocrity, intellectual and spiritual mediocrity, selfishness, passivity, and involuntary submission to the majority of individual citizens. The spread of such attitudes results – first – from the fact that people value equality more than freedom.³⁷ This is because the benefits of bringing equality to society are felt almost immediately, while the harms only become apparent over time. In the case of freedom, the opposite is somewhat true. The freedom given to citizens to make certain choices creates some anxiety and uncertainty about the rightness of those choices and creates space for citizens to compete quite freely with each other. The benefits, (including the prospect of unfettered personal intellectual and spiritual development) of such a way of operating public order, are gradually and very slowly revealed, while the harms (including this fear and uncertainty) are felt almost immediately.³⁸ Second, the mechanisms of the democratic order lead to a gradual atomization of society. This also leads to an increase in the anonymity of citizens, as the ties that bind them become weaker. These bonds are weakened by the pluralism of values, attitudes, and beliefs among which citizens are completely free to choose.³⁹ Third, the way democracy works means that the desire for material well-being, which is inherent in human nature and is not fundamentally a bad thing, slowly turns citizens away from big ideas and makes them more and more concerned only with temporal matters. Thus, instead of spending their time in intellectually and spiritually creative ways, citizens pay more and more attention to visible, immediate, and calculable goals.⁴⁰ Also, fourth, the principles of democracy imply that the majority of citizens, who make up the broad public opinion, exert an ever-increasing pressure on the individual. This pressure forms in the individual citizen the conviction that the truth is always on the side of the majority. In this way, public opinion, formed by the majority of citizens, provides the individual with ready-made models of attitudes and beliefs, relieving him of the trouble of taking an independent stand on certain problems.⁴¹

According to de Tocqueville, the mechanisms of the democratic order described above can lead to its total destruction. Therefore, it must be somehow protected from this danger.⁴² The French philosopher notes that there are certain institutional arrangements inherent in the democratic order that protect it from self-destruction. Among the most important of these are freedom of the press, freedom of custom, freedom of association, the principle of civil disobedience, the right of citizens to take an active part in public life, or the grounding of law in the prevailing morality of a given society. These solutions seem necessary, but they are not sufficient. For there is still the danger of an inappropriate formation of the ethos of a given society, the outbreak of social unrest, and the spread of attitudes dangerous to the democratic order.⁴³

According to de Tocqueville, religion plays a key role in saving democracy from self-destruction.⁴⁴ Only it guarantees the ethos of a given society at an appropriate level. The French thinker does not have a specific form of religion in mind here, but any form of religion, that is, the belief in the existence of a widely understood entity transcending temporal reality. Religion understood in this way protects against violations by citizens of key moral principles that are fundamental to the proper functioning of democracy. These include honesty in relations with other people, respect for them, a peaceful attitude toward people, opposition to selfish attitudes, an awareness of certain obligations to other people, and an appropriate distance from the pursuit of worldly happiness.⁴⁵

De Tocqueville’s observations on the dangers of the democratic functioning of the public order are very pertinent. In fact, two opposing tendencies are structurally inscribed in this order: the anarchization of society and the totalization of public space by a single dominant vision of reality. Both threaten the destruction of the system.⁴⁶ Similarly, the French thinker rightly points out that stopping these destructive tendencies is made possible only by an adequate moral level of society. This means that strictly defined values and beliefs must be present in the ethos of a given community.⁴⁷

If we place de Tocqueville’s analyses against the background of the thoughts of the two philosophers mentioned earlier (Rousseau and. Popper), we can say that they appear much profound, more penetrating and, above all, more accurate. De Tocqueville, analyzing the mechanisms of democracy, precisely pointed out the dangers for democracy itself, which Rousseau obviously failed to notice. First, there is the occupation of the public space by a single vision of reality that is considered correct and desirable by the majority. On the other hand, in contrast to the Austrian thinker, de Tocqueville rightly underscored that if democracy (“open society”) is to function well, including serving to build peaceful relations between people, and if we want to save it at all, social space cannot be morally neutral. Leaving this space empty risks destroying democracy itself, something Popper failed to recognize.

The author of Democracy in America also rightly observed that religion plays a key role in the formation of an ethos of democratic order that serves peace. But can we agree with the French philosopher that all forms of faith play an equal role? In other words, is each form of religion equally capable of creating and sustaining in a democratic society the appropriate ethos necessary for the duration and proper functioning of a public order that protects human freedom and serves the cause of peace? To answer these questions, it is worth referring to the social reflection of John Paul II.

5. John Paul II: the Christian vision of man in the service of Freedom and Peace

John Paul II dedicated three social encyclicals to the organization of public order: Laborem Exercens, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, and Centesimus Annus. The first of these documents discusses issues related to human work; the second discusses problems related to the economic, political, and cultural development of human societies; the third presents a vision of a peacefully organized social order based on two foundations: freedom and justice. In all three encyclicals, the Pope refers to the Church’s past tradition and tries to re-read it in the light of the current social situation. In the case of what is of particular interest here: John Paul II severely criticizes the organization and mechanisms of the peaceful functioning of the democratic social order. This is because he points out its weaknesses and, at the same time, proposes appropriate steps to be taken to save it in the first place and then to allow its further peaceful development.⁴⁸

According to John Paul II, a profound reflection on the question of human work is the key to understanding all questions related to the problem of the peaceful organization of social life.⁴⁹ The reflection shows that “work is a fundamental dimension of humankind’s existence on earth.”⁵⁰ This means that, through work, people become more human and develop self-realization in the world.⁵¹ The human being thus appears as the sole subject and direct cause of working.⁵² This last observation is of great significance. It indicates that the criterion for identifying a peacefully organized social order is the treatment of the individual human being by public authorities. In any social order aimed at building peaceful human relations, people must be treated as real subjects of social life, capable of their own free initiative. If, on the other hand, an individual is treated as a small cog in a large mechanism, moved from top to down by some political body, then a given social order will not serve the cause of peace.⁵³ In other words, in a peacefully organized society, the freedom to which each person is entitled is protected first and foremost, and in a society in which human freedom is constantly threatened, the outbreak of unrest is inevitable.⁵⁴

John Paul II, by putting the matter in this way, as presented above, seems on the one hand to support Popper’s project of the “open society” and on the other hand to indicate that the path proposed by Rousseau is completely wrong. In the first case, the individual person is seen as the subject of public life, while, in the second case, this subject is society, and in particular a particular political body representing it. It would seem, therefore, that by making the individual person the subject of social life, the Pope is acknowledging the crucial place of freedom and its priority over equality in the vision of a peacefully organized public system, of which he considers democracy to be a good model for today.⁵⁵

By making man the subject of social life, John Paul II also seems to invite representatives of different ideological traditions to work together toward the achievement of a common goal. This is to work for the good of the concrete person and for the peaceful organization of human relations. According to the Pope, only if a broad consensus is formed among all the groups that make up a given community around this goal can they succeed in building a peacefully functioning public order.⁵⁶ In this way, the reflection of John Paul II seems very close to the reflections of de Tocqueville. Both underscore that the public sphere in a peacefully functioning democracy cannot be morally empty but must have a well-defined content. It is shaped above all by obligations such as honesty toward others, respect for their inherent human dignity, openness to those in need (especially the weak and the poor), or an appropriate distance from material goods.⁵⁷

According to John Paul II, if this space remains morally empty or is filled with inappropriate content, the peaceful functioning of democracy will be constantly threatened.⁵⁸ This follows from the fact that the mechanisms of functioning of democracy alone⁵⁹ will gradually lead to increasing spiritual underdevelopment of society.⁶⁰ This means that it is impossible to build a peacefully functioning social order unless it is based on a properly ordered and well-defined hierarchy of goods and values.⁶¹ According to the Pope, the key role in the formation of this hierarchy in the consciousness of society is played by religion,⁶²” and in particular by Christianity.⁶³

In this way, John Paul II added the reflections of de Tocqueville. The French thinker posited that every form of religion serves equally to maintain the ethos necessary for the peaceful functioning of the democratic order in society. Rousseau did not, however, privilege Christianity in this regard. The Pope, on the other hand, while not denying the importance of various forms of religion, clearly indicates that the Christian vision of reality coincides with the moral ideas underlying the order which guarantees human freedom and serves the cause of peace.⁶⁴

As repeatedly emphasized, throughout this chapter, the ideological foundation of this order is the belief that individuals are by nature free beings. Inseparable from this conviction is the idea of human beings as a subject who is by nature capable of doing both good and evil indiscriminately. According to John Paul II, these two truths are not only deeply rooted in the Christian vision of humanity but also allow for a proper understanding of the human situation in the world and point in the direction where attempts to build human communities should be directed.⁶⁵ The point is that any social system that ignores these truths is doomed to failure. The disregard of human freedom and the disregard of man’s ability to do both good and evil, sooner or later, leads to the decomposition of a given order and destroys social peace. This decomposition and the destruction of peace are thus more or less a direct consequence of the attempt to build a social system whose ideological foundations are incompatible with the ontic condition of man.⁶⁶

The above observations have, according to John Paul II, three extremely important consequences. The first is that the purpose of any criticism of malfunctioning democratic social orders (and not only theirs) should be not so much to point out some institutional solutions that should be introduced so that the given system begins to function better, but rather to find the erroneous ideological foundations behind certain solutions. Second, any attempt to repair a malfunctioning democracy should begin, first and foremost, by properly shaping the ethos of a given society. This can be achieved by helping parents to raise their children properly and by implementing certain socio-educational projects (e.g., in schools and foundations).⁶⁷ Thirdly, the greater the influence of Christian revelation on the moral attitudes of society, the more properly the democratic order will function in it and the more it will serve the cause of peace.⁶⁸

The last of these consequences is particularly interesting. In its light, the obligation that the Pope imposes on Christians today becomes extremely clear. According to the Pope, it is not the task of Christians to support specific institutional solutions in public life. However, given the deep connection between the Christian vision of reality and the moral ideas underlying democracy, it can be said, according to John Paul II, that the future of democracy and its further peaceful development depend directly on Christianity. The Pope emphasizes that, without the participation of Christians in the construction of the proper ethos of the societies in question, the continued existence of democratic regimes is in jeopardy. Thus, world peace is threatened. The passivity of Christians in this regard threatens the very destruction of democratic orders and consequently the proper protection of human freedom and social peace. The point is that no other religion (e.g., Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism) has the ideological potential to serve the cause of democratizing societies and building world peace as well as Christianity.⁶⁹

The fulfillment by Christians of this papal commitment seems necessary because of a rather paradoxical structural characteristic of the democratic order and its effects, which can already be observed quite well today. A democratic state cannot guarantee, in itself, the ethical foundation upon which it rests. Perhaps, expressing this differently for clarity’s sake, the democratic order can only exist because the freedom it guarantees to its citizens is largely regulated from within by the citizens themselves, guided by certain moral principles. At the same time, conversely, a democratic state cannot enforce compliance with certain moral rules and prohibitions by means of authoritarian coercion. Were the state to do so, it would be tantamount to making totalitarian claims that are completely contrary to the spirit of democracy. It is this paradoxical feature of the democratic order that is largely responsible for the gradual weakening of democratic societies. This is because democratic societies increasingly reject or deny the moral principles that form the ideological foundation of democracy. The process of this disappearance began around the time of the enlightenment. At that time, societies that were building democracy through the secularization of public life were cut off from the spiritual layers that animate the proper ethos of democracy and which the democratic state cannot (because it cannot) reproduce with the instruments at its disposal.⁷⁰ Thus, with the passage of time, the link between the actual ethos of a given society and the Christian vision of reality gradually weakened. In turn, the fragility of this connection, as based on John Paul II’s reflections, means that the future of democracy and its peaceful development in a given society are at risk. Therefore, to re-establish this link, as it were, Christians should actively participate in shaping the ethos of the societies in which they currently live.⁷¹

The essence of the Pope’s idea of democratic public order outlined above is the assertion that this order, to function peacefully, requires an appropriate ethos that is close to Christian revelation and, in principle, one might even say grows out of it. Thus, the space of public life cannot be morally empty (as Popper desired), nor can it be filled with morally inadequate content (as Rousseau, among others, proposed). In both cases, the peaceful functioning of democracy in each society is threatened. Therefore, John Paul II obliges Christians to actively participate in the construction of an appropriate ethos in democratic societies. After all, Christianity seems to be uniquely predestined to create and constantly renew this ethos in given societies (something that de Tocqueville failed to observe).

6. Conclusion

The initial hypothesis advanced the observation that the authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in its first article, expressed the conviction that freedom takes precedence over equality, and as the research revealed during the analysis, they were quite right. This means that a peacefully established public order should, first and foremost, protect the inherent freedom of all people and only secondarily ensure equality, regardless of how it is understood. Any attempt to reverse this order, as was the case, for example, with Rousseau’s project, in the near or distant future, threatens the loss of personal freedom for a significant part of the members of the order in question and endangers social peace. Therefore, we must agree with Popper, who claims that the basis of a peacefully organized society is respect for the freedom of all its members. Consequently, democracy should be considered as the general model of a peacefully organized public order today. However, the Austrian thinker erroneously postulated that this respect is tantamount to leaving the space of public life in a democracy morally empty. In a democratic order, in which citizens have no general moral guidelines on which to base their specific choices, certain processes occur that threaten the destruction of the system and the outbreak of social unrest. De Tocqueville, recognizing this danger, indicated that democracy needs the religious consciousness of its citizens to function peacefully. Thus, only in a religious society is it possible to maintain an appropriate ethos that guarantees the peaceful functioning and development of democracy. John Paul II, expanding upon the reflections of de Tocqueville, noted that the ethos of democracy not only coincides with the Christian vision of reality but also even grows directly out of it. On this basis, the Pope imposed certain obligations on modern Christians, pointing out that the future and further peaceful development of democracy directly depend on their fulfillment.

In the light of these considerations, it can be said that

1. A condition for peace is that people respect each other’s freedom. This means that in order to guarantee peace, it is necessary to secure a “space” for people to exercise their own freedom sufficiently so as not to violate the freedom of others.

2. The future of democracy, and therefore the effectiveness of the protection of human freedom and social peace, depends directly on the active presence of Christians in the public life of the communities concerned.

3. Christians, through their educational and social activities which promote Christian values in particular societies, will contribute to the renewal of the ethos of faith in these societies which guarantees the peaceful functioning and development of democracy.

4. Of course, it should not be forgotten that this is not the most important task that Christians have to carry out, nor should the danger of their peculiar appropriation of public life be underestimated. Nevertheless, in the light of the above analyses, any attempt to exclude the Christian vision of man from the moral space of modern democracy must be considered completely flawed as this threatens its complete destruction and destroys the chance of preserving peaceful relations between human beings.