Over the next few weeks, Freedom & Virtue Review will be presenting excerpts from the latest book by Ismael Hernandez, Rethinking Charity: Restoring Dignity to Poverty Relief (Acton Institute, 2024). A few of this remarkable book’s endorsements include Andreas Widmer of Catholic University of America—“a must-read for anyone serious about the real solutions to poverty that respect the dignity and potential of every human being”; Micah Watson of Calvin University—“judicious, convictional, readable, and hopeful”; Anne Bradley of the Fund for American Studies—"a persuasive and must-read book that compels us to put the human person at the center of our efforts”; and Samuel Gregg of the American Institute for Economic Research—“bringing together good philosophy, sound economic theory, and the insights of years of experience.” The excerpts are reproduced here without footnotes.
See the previous post, Excerpt from Chapter 2: Sound Thinking about Poverty Alleviation.
Excerpt from Chapter 3: Religion and Reason
The great Christian tradition of natural law can assist us in moving in the direction of respecting the full scope of human existence. It is a law written in our hearts and guiding us in acting rightly. It is that broader order of Divine Providence that legal philosopher Russell Hittinger calls “the first grace of God.” It is a law that was sewn into the fabric of human existence in advance of the coming of Christ (in adventum Christi ). Natural law is properly applied to the case of human beings because we have reason and free will. It is our nature as humans to direct ourselves toward our proper ends, which we discover by reasoning about what is best for us and for others to achieve the end to which our nature inclines. Both the giver or helper and the recipient of magnanimity and support are harmed by actions missing the mark of the full scope of our humanity when we let instinct reign over reason.
Are we headed toward a contradiction? After all, this book is in part informed by the belief that every person is an individual with his or her own needs, discernible only in close and meaningful encounters with a few people at a time. If it is only in close encounters with small bands of people that we can find what others truly need, isn’t instinct preferable? Could it be that just a sincere and dedicated desire to help suffices, without further discernment of needs?
The avoidance of contradiction comes in the understanding of every individual as a person. What is needed is anthropology that transcends extremes. In other words, the enemy is reductionism. Reductionism appears at both extremes of the question of what it means to be human: the atomistic and the communistic. The reductionism we see in individualistic social philosophy reduces the person to biological aspects of the self, constrained by the animal needs of the species. Individuals are seen as isolated or self-contained beings, a view leading to amoral approaches to meeting needs, with an emphasis on wants instead of duties and utility instead of ultimate purpose. This simplistic reductionism is associated with Thomas Hobbes and eliminates morality from human life by seeing individuals as prisoners of impersonal forces in nature outside their control. Nothing is up to us, but the isolated individual reigns, nonetheless. Atomism offers a type of naturalistic immanentism that sees the individual as merely an epiphenomenon of nature itself.
If we cannot reason toward moral norms, we cannot be directed toward human flourishing by acquiring and developing virtue, as we cannot acquire a knowledge of the proper ends of man to be actualized by free acts of choosing what is truly good. All that lies before us is passion. The Scottish Enlightenment thinker David Hume is probably the one who best articulated a disconnect between reason and free will, leaving the passions at the helm, when he stated, “Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions and may never pretend to any other than to serve and obey them.” We will see how every reductionist theory impedes the rational discernment of moral norms and principles of human action that can assist us in discovering how to help people beyond the mere satisfaction of biological needs. In the case of Hume, our reason only has instrumental or utilitarian power to help us get what our appetites desire.
Is this applicable to the care of the poor? Yes. Emotions are predominant in many actions we undertake on behalf of the poor. How many people speak of helping others—but not in their own neighborhood? Emotionally, we retreat from the scenario of suffering humanity. We do not want the poor to come too close; closeness is scary, threatening. We want the facile institutionalization of care that comforts our consciences and avoids the smells. Often, we place a Christmas tree in the back of our churches and there are names and items written on hanging pieces of paper. Bureaucracies are created, labeled “ministries,” and commissioned to grab the shiny bike we brought on Sunday and bring it to a poor child who remains a stranger, a member of a family we never met or want to meet. A sincere and necessary desire to help remains, but the passions win.
What does loving our neighbor require? What is it supposed to look like? Is the message of service an interruption in our daily lives, or is it integral to it? If it is integral to our lives, we will go beyond what happens at church and look deeply at our very lives, at home and in the marketplace. Emotive reductionism sees charity as our obligation in one corner of our lives, on Sundays, volunteering in ministry, going on a mission trip, donating to some campaign our church initiated. Christian giving of this kind is atomistic in the sense that it segregates us into isolated compartments of social existence. Yet, living a life of service must transcend and imbue all our lives and the intersecting circles of exchange that inform it.
Such an integrated view of service and love will help us discover which activities are not consistent with authentic flourishing, as we develop habits of being within all those circles. Reflecting on how we love at home will assist us in detecting when the practices of our ministries are not fully consistent with authentic compassion. When we reflect on how we act in the marketplace, we also discover that the best engagement there is personal, relational, and focused on being productive. Have you thought about how it was possible for the members of the church in Jerusalem to bring anything and place it at the feet of the apostles? Were they good at making profit or careless about it? (Acts 2:44; 4:42–47) Have you noticed that the Samaritan was able to pay for the stranger’s care in abundance? Having the economic capacity to assist others must motivate us to engage in productive activity in an economic system that encourages enterprise (Luke 10:25–37). It should stress our subsidiary role as we collaborate with those within poor communities who also want to put their economic subjectivity in motion.
There is one crucial reason for the greatness of enterprise, especially as a solution to poverty. That reason lies in what George Gilder calls the main virtue of enterprise, the virtue of surprise. He says, “Entrepreneurship is the launching of surprises. The process of wealth creation is offensive to levelers and planners because it yields mountains of new wealth in ways that could not possibly be planned. But unpredictability is fundamental to free human enterprise.” Human agency is about expectations, visions, risk, unpredictability, opportunity, insight, the angst of expectation, and creativity. Philosopher Michael Novak put it like this:
What is the virtue of enterprise? Like any other virtue, it is a habit or disposition—in this case, a disposition of both the intellect and the will. It is a disposition, first, to notice, to gain insight into, to discover something that others unseeingly pass by. It is a disposition, second, to take risks . . . and to begin making happen what the agent sees as at least a possibility.
In contrast, the dependency induced by interventionism tends to be safe, stale, predictable, boredom-inducing, and ends up becoming self-focused instead of thriving in authentic community. I will never forget the day I was sitting at my ministry desk seeing the same lines of people coming for the crumbs I had for them. It dawned on me that the younger families in line consisted of the children of the families that for a long time had come for food. I was a poverty manager, helping people remain fed but still in the atrophied anomie of dependency. If we inject the element of surprise into the systems we create to attend to the needs of the poor, people will prosper. But it seems more appealing to discuss income inequality and structures and systems. Not that such discussion ought to be avoided, but we must first see the poor in a new light and see human beings as capable of applying intelligence and effort in the natural state of nature and recreate it in view of satisfying their needs and the needs of others. Human beings were made to interact and exchange, and they are situated in spontaneous orders we call markets.
Promoting Enterprise
This is why societies that protect elements such as property rights and facilitate enterprise elevate the living standards of the poor. As economists Victor Claar and Robin Klay explain in Economics in Christian Perspective, “Societies built on a foundation of political democracy, free markets, and strong moral and cultural institutions respect the freedom of human agency and provide an especially fertile environment for human flourishing under God’s care.” In a world of limited resources, a world of scarcity, the unleashing of the full scope of the capacities of the poor is what matters most. Because all resources are scarce, the world of invention is crucial, and that impregnates society with dynamism. As Father Robert Sirico puts it, if you want to help the poor, start a business, engage in free market activity. “There will always be a need for charity,” he writes. “But the one thing that is absolutely proven to raise people out of poverty isn’t charity or foreign aid; it’s the free market, and especially business that calls on the capacity of the poor to create wealth, instead of only addressing their needs.”
Obviating the capacities of the poor incentivizes a static existence and the need to hoard in search of security. This type of risk aversion promotes activism more than activity. That is, politics triumphs over a moral vision of the person as an engine of economic prosperity. There isn’t a conspiracy of forces at the root of one’s poverty that must be fixed by intervention. Human systems will always need to be revised, because our imperfection often translates into the frameworks we create. However, in America, there is enough space for human agency to prevent the victim-victimizer outlook from creating the narrative that some culprits have a hold on the destiny of the poor. We must defend the free market, engage it, and assist those trying to do the same in poor communities. Instead of stewards of their safety hammock, let’s become supporters of their enterprising spirit. We must recapture our subjectivity, our individuality amid loving communities, from the clutches of collectivism.
As the suppression of enterprise takes a hold, attention shifts toward equalizing via confiscatory policy instead of human activity in a dynamic environment of risk and possibilities. Yes, there are structures and institutions that must at times be challenged. What is often challenged, however, is any policy questioning the preeminence of interventionism. We fight “the power” in the cause of expanding the power of the state, in the name of justice and compassion. Established structures often impede the dynamism embedded in the market economy. It is not uncommon to see a three-headed monster embracing the activism that stifles market dynamism: the bureaucracies of the state, big corporations that benefit from big government, and big charities that receive a good slice of the loot.
As Father Sirico states, it is often difficult to make a case for the morality of the market and for the dynamism and surprise of risk, considering the seemingly obvious good we often accomplish through our interventions. The task seems heretical to those invested in the present system. However, the poor themselves often respond positively to the challenge, even though their quest for subjectivity is quenched by our interventionism of despair, giving comfort to a politics of despair. Interventionism uses the despair those in charity work perceive and amplifies the message, telling people to stay put and fight against the very dynamism that can become their greatest resource. Do not blame the poor for their poverty. Blame these systems of despair.
The poor, again, are the first to agree with these words from economist Anne Bradley: “If I work harder, become more innovative, and earn a greater income through hard work and discipline, I benefit without harming anyone.” A call to responsibility is more often than not perceived as an affront to the poor, as if we are saying the poor are irresponsible. It is in reality an affirmation of the voice of the poor and a determination to protect or create dynamic systems where the poor have a space for personal engagement. That call might involve removing legal impediments to enterprise, easing onerous regulations, or investing in their enterprising ideas. Whatever the practical application is, the commitment must be to create dynamic environments for dynamic beings.