









































D I A N O I A

The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College
ISSUE XII | Spring 2025

XII



διάνοιαDIANOIA
The UndergradUaTe PhilosoPhy JoUrnal of BosTon College

Spring 2025
ISSUE XII



Editor-in-Chief: Elliott Jones
Senior Managing Editor: Aniella Zaslavsky
Managing Editors: Xavier Lafaire, George Renaudin, Gabriel Margolies, Qitai Zhu
General Editors: Peini Feng,  Amelia Johnson-Pellegri, Claire Swanby, Christopher Casale, Elizabeth 
Crossley, Jordan Tan, Lucy Farran, Effie Hatzopoulos, Joanna Chen, John Molinari
Graphic Designer: Madeline Townsend
External Reviewer: Joshua S. Track
Faculty Advisor: Ronald Tacelli, S.J.

Front Cover Featuring:
Toorop, Jan. Lavoro (Il Taglialegna). 1905. Obtained via Wikimedia Commons.

Back Cover Featuring:
Millet, Frank. A Cosey Corner. 1884. Obtained via The Met Museum. https://www.metmuseum.org/
art/collection/search/11583.

The materials herein represent the personal opinions of the individual authors and do not necessarily 
represent the views of Dianoia or Boston College.

If you have questions regarding the Journal, would like to submit your work for review, or if you’d 
be interested in joining next year’s staff, please contact the Journal at dianoia@bc.edu.

Dianoia
The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College 
Spring 2025 Issue XII
Boston College
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
https://www.dianoiabc.org
https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/mcas/departments/philosophy/undergraduate/dianoia.html



 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

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 4 Acknowledgements  

 5  A Letter From the Editor
  Elliott Jones, Boston College 

 7  To Live Free or To Make Excuses: In Defense of 
Sartre’s (Revised) Concept of Radical Freedom 

Paloma Figueroa, McGill University

 34  Of Experience and Being: Apropos of This and 
That - An Analysis from Daoism to Heidegger                                                             
Shea Divoll, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

 60  Perfect Society or Voluntary Association?: Locke, 
Maritain, and the Autonomy of Church and State 
Sean Scully, Catholic University of America 

 79  “There is No Such Finis Ultimus”: Liberal 
Anthropology and Church-State Relations Considered

           Michael Ellison, Catholic University of America

 94 Contributors 



4

The Editorial Staff of Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal 
of Boston College would like to extend our sincerest thanks to the 
following individuals for their assistance in making this issue of 

Dianoia possible:

Sean Haefner, Philosophy Department
Gabriel Feldstein, BC Libraries

We would also like to thank Dr. Ronald Tacelli, S.J., of the Boston 
College Philosophy Department, for his invaluable assistance as our 

advisor and editor of this issue's faculty interview.

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5Issue XII ◊ Spring 2025

 

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Dear Reader,       April 7, 2025

 It is my great pleasure to present to you Issue XII of Dianoia: 
the Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College. This year 
we received over 80 submissions from colleges and universities across 
North America. Dianoia returned from the summer interim with a pas-
sionate editorial board of undergraduate philosophers. Prioritizing mar-
keting and outreach, we launched a LinkedIn page, hoping to connect 
with past and future accepted authors for years to come. In addition, we 
gratefully accepted the expertise of our graphic designer who launched 
a new logo for the journal.
 This year, we were able to publish four papers that we felt were 
representative of the best undergraduate philosophical scholarship. We 
are grateful to welcome our accepted authors at our Annual Symposium 
allowing them to present their research to Boston College’s students and 
faculty.
 For a short preview of the contents of this journal, we offer 
an introduction to the philosophy and relevance of Jean-Paul Sartre’s 
existentialism, a historical comparative study of Daoist influences on 
Heidegger’s Being and Time, and two pieces on political philosophy. 
One tests the compatibility of John Locke’s and Jacques Maritain’s vi-
sion for church-state relations. The second offers a Thomistic critique 
of classical liberalism from Hobbes and John Locke to the modern lib-
eralism of John Rawls. The two former papers contribute to the history 
of philosophy while the latter two raise pertinent questions for contem-
porary church-state relations in a period of skepticism over the liberal 
tradition. We hope that these papers inspire thoughtful reflection, form 
new understandings, and most of all spark questions.
 The editorial board chose Jan Toorop’s The Woodworker (Il Ta-
glialena) and Frank Millet’s A Cosey Corner for the cover art of this 
year’s issue. The former is an impressionist painting of an axe-wielding 
woodworker, the latter is of a woman reading by the window light next 
to a burning hearth. We understand this depiction of work and leisure to 
be emblematic of the birth of philosophy. It is only a culture founded on 
leisure that the liberal arts can thrive as Aristotle hints at in the opening 
paragraphs of his Metaphysics.
 Lastly, I offer thanks to our faculty advisor, Fr. Ronald Tacelli, 
S.J., and our graduate advisor, Sean Haefner. In addition, I want to thank 
our Senior Managing Editor, Aniella Zaslavsky for her lasting commit-
ment to the journal for the past three years. Aniella’s diligence, patience, 



6

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

and prudence have greatly contributed to the publication and lasting 
influence of this journal. For our graduating editors: Aniella, Amelia, 
and George, I wish you wonder-filled questions in your 
philosophical pursuits. Finally, I am grateful to those consistent mem-
bers of the editorial board who devoted their time and knowledge to 
this institutional endeavor. Next fall Dianoia will publish an online 
transcript of our interview with Political Science Professor and Kant 
scholar Susan Meld Shell. We hope you enjoy this issue and continue 
to offer your support for Issue XIII next spring.

Sincerely,

Elliott Jones
Editor-in-Chief
Dianoia



7Issue XII ◊ Spring 2025

To Live Free or To Make Excuses

TO LIVE FREE OR TO MAKE EXCUSES
IN DEFENSE OF SARTRE’S (REVISED)  

CONCEPT OF RADICAL FREEDOM

PALOMA FIGUEROA



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

 Is the slave as free as his master? The prisoner as free as his 
captor? Before even attempting to answer these questions, one cannot 
help but imagine how easy it would be to challenge anybody who dared 
affirm such propositions: not only given the semantic absurdity of trying 
to equate the freedom of the slave with that of his master when the 
master-slave relationship is defined by the negation of one individual’s 
freedom by another, but more importantly given the undeniable reality of 
the physical constraints imposed upon slaves by their masters by virtue 
of the latter’s dominant status and power. Still, Jean-Paul Sartre was one 
who affirmed that “the slave in chains is as free as his master,”1 a claim 
which, along with his overarching concept of freedom, has earned him 
quite a few objections and caricatures – including the comic above.2 
Here, the same Sartre who unshakably states to Simone de Beauvoir 
that freedom cannot be taken from us except by ourselves ends up in 
shackles against the wall of a dungeon, as Beauvoir guides him through 
a thought experiment to test through how many restrictions of freedom 
Sartre still considers himself “totalement libre.”3

1  Sartre, Jean-Paul. L’être et le néant: Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique. 
Paris: Gallimard, 1943.

2  Existential Comics: a philosophy comic about the inevitable anguish of 
living a brief life in an absurd world. Also jokes. “Sartrean Freedom.” (n.d.) 

3  Sartre, L’être et le néant, 741. Quoted in FØLLESDAL, Dagfinn, and 
Henri SARLET. “LA LIBERTÉ CHEZ SARTRE.” Revue Internationale de 
Philosophie 35, no. 135 (1981): 41–59.



9Issue XII ◊ Spring 2025

To Live Free or To Make Excuses

 Though this comic is caricatural, there is always some truth 
behind caricature––and indeed it is true that Sartre’s initial concept of 
freedom elaborated in Being and Nothingness (1943) was, even from 
an existentialist perspective, radical. Existentialism is a philosophy 
centered around human freedom and responsibility within a universe 
considered devoid of inherent meaning. According to existentialists like 
Sartre, we are ‘thrown’ into this universe at birth, left alone to construct 
our own existence through our choices and actions, without any higher 
being or predetermined essence to turn to––hence the fundamental 
existentialist idea that “existence precedes essence.”4 Beyond this 
shared idea, what makes Sartre stand out from other existentialists is 
his conception of freedom as limitless and unconditional. To him, every 
human agent, regardless of their personal circumstances, is always free 
to choose their course of life in accordance with their freely set projects. 
Obstacles to one’s freedom only arise in light of those projects, not as 
material constraints. It follows that, by reorienting one’s project, one 
can eliminate those obstacles. Therefore, there is no such thing, from 
Sartre’s perspective, as an in-itself limit to my freedom; in fact, to 
consider myself limited in that regard would be to act inauthentically, in 
“bad faith”, wherein I self-deceptively interpret my given circumstances 
as being outside of my control, and thus consider myself unable to freely 
choose otherwise. Hence why the caricatured Sartre in the comic above 
holds on for dear life to his interpretation of himself as free despite his 
circumstances––even as a prisoner in shackles. To consider his freedom 
lost would be to surrender to bad faith, thus becoming more of an object 
than a conscious human being. 

 As the comic suggests, Sartre’s radical freedom has been 
subject to many objections––some of which convinced Sartre to revise 
his thesis. Perhaps most notably, his fellow existentialist thinker and 
lifelong partner, Beauvoir, insisted against Sartre that people are not all 
equally free, due to social inequalities and sedimentation––a concept 
that we will explore in detail in section II for its centrality to Beauvoir’s 
existentialist theory and to her philosophical disagreement with Sartre. 
Though the latter revised his theory in light of Beauvoir’s insights, 
even this less hyperbolic concept of freedom has been directly and 
indirectly challenged since, namely by contemporary cognitive science. 
Indeed, countless recent findings reveal that the human brain appears 
to be determined by various internal processes and external influences, 

4  Gallagher, S., Fuchs, T., Zahavi, D., & Aho, K. Existentialism (Stanford 
Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.



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upending not just Sartrean freedom, but the very existentialist foundation 
of free will and lack of pre-given essence. These findings leave Sartreans 
with a rather angoissant existential problem: faced with such serious 
objections to human freedom, let alone to “radical” freedom, can the 
latter concept still hold any value, or should we discard it along with our 
very conception of ourselves as free agents? Further, what contributions, 
if any, can the canonical version of existentialism5 make to current 
thinking and how can it evolve going forward, faced with the scientific 
advances since these foundational existentialist works were published?  

 In this paper, I argue that there is a way to hold on to our 
felt freedom as human agents while acknowledging the neurological 
and social factors that may limit us psychologically and sometimes 
physically. I argue that, in fact, we should hold onto our belief in the 
possibility we have to transcend those limits imposed on us, rather than 
considering ourselves determined and powerless, lest we fall into the 
“bad faith” Sartre warned of. This, as we will see, is one of the valuable 
contributions that existentialism can still make today. With this in mind, I 
will start by explaining Sartre’s initial form of existentialism–the concept 
of “radical” freedom––based on passages from Being and Nothingness 
and Existentialism is a Humanism. I will then consider a variety of 
objections to Sartre’s thesis, first at the sociological level with excerpts 
from Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity and The Second Sex, then at the 
neurological level with excerpts from Robert Sapolsky’s Determined: 
A Science of Life Without Free Will and a recent paper by Neil Levy. To 
the sociological objections I will respond with Sartre’s revised theory of 
freedom inspired by Beauvoir’s philosophy and described by Jonathan 
Webber in Rethinking Existentialism. As for the objections from 
neuroscience, I will respond by arguing that it is of pragmatic importance 
that we see ourselves as free agents even if the cognitive sciences do not 
regard us as such. Finally, I will end with Webber’s argument in favor of 
conserving existentialist philosophy for the significant contributions that 
it can bring to various fields beyond individual existence in today’s world. 

5  As Jonathan Webber calls it in Rethinking Existentialism; more on this idea 
in section III.



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To Live Free or To Make Excuses

§ I: "NO MATTER THE CIRCUMSTANCE, WE ARE ALWAYS 
FREE": SARTRE'S INITIAL CONCEPT OF FREEDOM6

 Though Sartre did revise his version of existentialism later in his 
philosophical career, the main ideas for which he is remembered––and 
caricatured––stem from his initial concept of human freedom. In this 
section, I will attempt to summarize the key elements of this foundational 
radical theory which I aim to defend later in this paper.

 In his essay Existentialism is a Humanism published in 1946, 
based on a lecture he gave the previous year during a conference, 
Sartre states that there is one idea that unites all existentialists, whether 
Christian or atheist7–– namely, that “existence precedes essence.”8 From 
the perspective of atheist existentialism, which Sartre adheres to, this 
is the idea that there is no such thing as a shared human nature because 
“there is no God to conceive it.” As such, human beings exist “before 
they can be defined by any concept.” Objects, in contrast, are defined by 
the concept for which they were produced. The paper cutter, for example, 
is crafted in a specific way for a predetermined use: the “essence” of the 
paper cutter, or “the recipes and qualities which allow for its production 
and definition”, precedes its existence insofar as the role of the paper 
cutter is determined, and the paper cutter cannot be defined beyond 
that role.9 Contrary to the paper cutter, Sartre argues, human beings 
are essentially nothing: “man exists first, meets himself, arises in the 
world,”10 and defines himself only thereafter, during the course of his 
existence. In other words, man is a blank slate at birth, undefinable 
because there was no God to define and craft him, and through the years 

6 I will be quoting parts of the comic above in the heading of each of the 
three sections of this paper, but to be clear, these are not Sartre’s own 
words; the same precision applies to the following headings.

7  It must be noted that Sartre’s strict duality between Christians on the one 
hand and atheists on the other excludes religious atheists of other faiths 
than Christianity. Among 20th century existentialists of Jewish faith, for 
example, we can think of Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, namely. In 
this passage, Sartre only mentions Karl Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel – both 
Christian – as figures of the non-atheist existentialist school of thought 
that he opposes. Yet while considering the opposition between religious 
existentialism and atheist existentialism, Sartre omits the fact that Christians 
have not been the only ones to make contributions to the former.

8  Sartre, Jean-Paul. L’existentialisme est un humanisme (Gallimard, 1996), 
26. 

9  Sartre, 27.
10 Sartre, 29.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

he defines himself through his actions. “Man is nothing more than what 
he makes of himself. Such is the first principle of existentialism.”11

 How does man “make” himself? This is where Sartre’s concept 
of the project comes in. To him, man is first and foremost “a project 
which lives itself subjectively”, given that nothing precedes this project, 
and that the latter arises out of one’s subjectivity, the foundation of 
human existence. As such, we will firstly be what we will have projected 
ourselves to be through our freely chosen fundamental project.12 To have 
this freedom of choice is not just to have the ability to choose between 
the different possibilities that appear to me; it’s the ability to choose our 
basic orientation in the world, which itself creates the possibilities and 
obstacles to which we are confronted. 

 Therefore, for Sartre, obstacles are to a certain extent determined 
by ourselves. As he explains in Being and Nothingness, the mountain 
only appears as “not climbable” to the climber standing at its foot, in 
light of his projected climbing––a secondary project which finds its 
meaning in terms of his fundamental project, which might be to become 
a world-renowned alpinist. In contrast, the mountain appears simply as 
beautiful or impressive to the traveler passing by, “whose free project 
is a pure esthetic ordering of the landscape;”13 it does not appear to 
him as climbable or unclimbable, since he doesn’t have the project of 
climbing it. In this sense, our obstacles only appear as obstacles in light 
of our project, not as a material reality. We have the freedom to remove 
obstacles from our way by choosing to change our project: if the climber 
decided to change his fundamental project of becoming an alpinist to 
pursue another career, then the mountain would not appear to him as an 
obstacle anymore. 

 We may live our entire lives with a single fundamental project, 
but it is always subject to change. Indeed, to Sartre, we are always freely 
choosing our project or orientation, therefore we cannot use it as an 
excuse for any wrongdoing; in short, “we are alone, without excuses.” To 
be human is to be “condemned to be free”–– condemned to choose our 
own course of life without a guiding essence, God, or a set of objective 
values that could legitimize our conduct,14 and condemned to bear the 

11  Sartre, 30.
12  Sartre, 30.
13   Excerpt from Being and Nothingness in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul 

Sartre. Edited by Robert Denoon Cumming. (New York: Vintage Books, 
2003), 269.

14  Sartre, 39.



13Issue XII ◊ Spring 2025

To Live Free or To Make Excuses

responsibility for each of our decisions and actions. There is no form 
of determinism that could alleviate the weight of total responsibility 
constantly resting on our shoulders; “man is freedom,” whether we like 
it or not. 

 Any attempt to flee our total freedom and consequent 
responsibility, to treat perceived obstacles as material constraints that 
limit my freedom, is what Sartre calls “bad faith” (mauvaise foi)––a 
central element of his existentialism. To choose inaction rather than 
confronting the field of possibilities opened by my freedom, out of the 
anguish provoked by the thought that I am free to do anything at any 
moment, is a form of bad faith. To use events of my past as an excuse 
for my present wrongdoings15 is a form of bad faith insofar as those past 
events in themselves did not determine me to act in any certain way 
in the present. In other words, fleeing into psychological determinism 
to escape taking responsibility for my actions when the reality is that 
nothing is determined and that only I am responsible for my own actions 
is a form of bad faith. 

 The opposite of bad faith is authenticity, which Sartre presents 
as our moral imperative.16 As Neil Levy writes, to act authentically is to 
face the lack of external meaning and value in the world by embracing 
our “free choice of values,” knowing that “nothing justifies this choice 
except that we have made it.”17 When we face this choice, we live 
authentically. Conversely, when we flee this choice by accepting a 
seemingly constraining situation as our only option, or by adhering to an 
“overarching metaphysical system that we take to confer justification on 
our lives,”18 then we are living inauthentically, in bad faith. 

15  Like saying “I cheated on you because my parents cheated on each 
other when I was younger, so I see infidelity as a normal part of romantic 
relationships.” More on this in section III.

16  Sartre’s concept of authenticity was heavily influenced by Martin 
Heidegger, particularly his ideas about Dasein’s “being-in-the-world” 
and the importance of confronting one’s own existence and choices 
‘authentically’ within an inauthentic world. For more on Heidegger’s 
understanding of ‘authenticity,’ see Heidegger, Martin. (1927). Being and 
time. Translated by J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson. New York, NY: Harper & 
Row, 1962.

17   Levy, Neil. “Choices Without Choosers: Toward a Neuropsychologically 
Plausible Existentialism.” Essay. In Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, Morals, 
and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience, 111–25. (Oxford University Press, 
2018), 113.

18  Levy, 112-113.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

 No internal or external constraint can justify my denial of my 
freedom of choice––even the slave or prisoner is free to choose his own 
interpretation of his condition. As such, from a Sartrean perspective, 
even in situations of oppression our human capacity of meaning-
making remains, so that such oppressive processes that aim to turn 
individuals into freedomless things cannot do so as long as that person 
has a consciousness. This is why, even tied up against the wall of his 
dungeon, the comic’s Sartre insists that he remains “free to interpret” his 
condition.19

 In short, Sartre’s initial concept of human freedom can be 
described as “radical” insofar as it leaves absolutely no room for any 
form of determinism, or “excuse” in Sartrean terms. No matter our 
socio-economic background, our psychological baggage, our physical 
constraints, or any circumstance that we may take to determine or limit 
us, Sartre urges us to take back control over those perceived constraints 
which we may take to structure our existence. It is in that sense that 
Sartre calls his doctrine one of “optimism”, one that motivates action20 
by placing the human agent as the source and foundation of all values 
and meaning21––hence the idea that existentialism is a “humanism.”

§ II: “REALLY, NO MATTER WHAT?”: OBJECTIONS TO 
SARTRE’S RADICAL FREEDOM

 The problem is that in practice, Sartre’s concept of freedom 
does not hold as strongly as it may appear convincing on paper. In fact, 
many would say that it does not hold at all. From the publication of 
Being and Nothingness up until today, Sartre’s initial existentialism has 
been subject to a number of objections so strong that some of them led 
him to revise his own theory a few years later, while other more recent 
objections have put into question whether existentialism as a philosophy, 
even away from an ideal of “radical” freedom, can still hold. In this 
second section we will explore those different objections, starting with 
those made to Sartre’s radical freedom, then moving on to those made to 
the broader concept of freedom. 

19  Though Camus reaches this conclusion in a different way, we could draw a 
parallel with his Sisyphus, who can and must choose to be happy rather than 
live in despair, as the only possible rebellion against his condition. 

20  Sartre, 77.
21  Levy, 113.



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To Live Free or To Make Excuses

§ 1: OBJECTIONS FROM A LESS “RADICAL” 
EXISTENTIALISM  

 Though Sartre is often regarded as a symbolic figure of 
existentialist philosophy, it is important to note that his version of 
existentialism was only one among several. Indeed, the enduring influence 
that Sartre has had on existentialism by virtue of his particularly radical 
ideas on freedom sometimes overshadows the fact that there were other 
existentialists at his time who contributed to the movement’s evolution, 
namely by putting forward objections to Sartre’s radicality, specifically 
to his overreliance on the concept of bad faith.22 One of them is Beauvoir, 
who had a significant influence both on Sartre’s philosophical career and 
personal life.

 As Sonia Kruks explains in “Simone de Beauvoir and the 
Limits to Freedom,” Beauvoir never challenged Sartre’s conception 
of freedom head-on. In fact, she based her own works on the central 
premises of Being and Nothingness––that it is wrong to abdicate one’s 
freedom to a higher principle or power, and that all values emerge from 
our fundamental project–– yet they led her to some “most un-Sartrean 
conclusions,”23 namely concerning the question of oppression. Indeed, 
the fundamental disagreement between the philosophies of Sartre and 
Beauvoir is summarized in a passage from the latter’s autobiography, La 
force de l’âge (1960), where she recalls the following discussion with 
Sartre back in 1940: while Beauvoir argued that “not every situation is 
equal: what transcendence is possible for a woman locked up in a harem?”, 

22  When I say other existentialists, I am mainly referring to Simone de 
Beauvoir and Franz Fanon, two other frontrunners of mid-20th century 
existentialism. In a more comprehensive paper, I would have included a 
discussion of both of their rich philosophies but given that the focus of 
this paper is on Sartre’s concept of freedom, I will only discuss Beauvoir’s 
ideas given that they directly influenced Sartre to revise his own. As for 
Fanon, he also interacted with Sartre in response to the latter’s essay about 
the Négritude movement, “Black Orpheus” (1948). Beyond that, Fanon 
made significant contributions to existentialism––namely by bringing in 
the perspective of a racialized person’s struggle with limitations imposed 
on their freedom–– and should not be placed in the shadow of Sartre and 
Beauvoir. By not including him in this paper, I do not wish to contribute 
to giving Fanon that secondary status, but for our present purposes, a 
discussion of his ideas would make this paper unnecessarily longer than it 
already is. 

23  Kruks, Sonia. “Simone de Beauvoir and the Limits to Freedom.” Social 
Text, no. 17 (1987), 111.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

Sartre maintained that “even such a cloistered existence could be lived 
in several different ways.”24 In a way, this fundamental disagreement is 
summarized in the comic above: what united them philosophically was 
their commitment to human freedom, but what distinguished them was 
the added “no matter what.”

 Beauvoir argued that there are situations of oppression in 
which the radical freedom that Sartre describes is denied and ceases 
to be possible. This is because freedoms are “not autonomous but 
interdependent.”25 In other words, my freedom depends on the Other’s 
will: if the Other chooses to deny my freedom and objectify me, then 
I become the Other’s object if I submit. “It is this interdependence [of 
freedoms] which explains why oppression is possible” and additionally 
“why it is hateful,”26 as any attack on the value of human freedom is 
hateful from an existentialist perspective. In fact, as an existentialist, 
Beauvoir’s conclusion is not that oppression entirely negates the 
freedom of the oppressed. As she explains in The Second Sex, dominant 
social groups try to make the one they subjugate into the Other, denying 
them their transcendence as they reduce them to the status of object, 
yet to fully become an object one has to submit to this objectification: 
“if the Other is not to regain the status of being the One, he must be 
submissive enough to accept this alien point of view.”27 Thus, as long as 
the individual does not submit to this “othering,” they do not lose their 
fundamental freedom entirely. 

 Still, to acknowledge that freedom can be limited, Beauvoir 
draws a distinction between formal freedom and genuine freedom. On 
the one hand, human beings have an ontological freedom that allows us 
to set our projects and modify them. Yet a freedom that does not actually 
allow us to fulfill our goals is merely “formal”. As such, while a victim 
of oppression has the formal freedom to revolt against their condition, 
they have “genuine” or “moral” freedom only insofar as their project 
of revolt succeeds in emancipation, which, if achieved, would allow 
them to freely pursue their projects in the world. With this distinction, 
Beauvoir responds to the criticism made against existentialism that “the 
precept ‘to will freedom’ is only a hollow formula and offers no concrete 

24  Kruks, 111. Quoting from Beauvoir, La force de l’âge, Volume II, 
Gallimard (1947), p. 498.

25  Kruks, 112. Paraphrasing Beauvoir, Pyrrhus et Cinéas.
26  Kruks,112. Paraphrasing Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity. 
27  Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated and Edited by H. M. 

Parshley. (London: Vintage Books, 1989), 9-10.



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To Live Free or To Make Excuses

content for action.”28 Beyond this “hollow” freedom––the one implied 
in Sartre’s claim that “the slave in chains is as free as his master”––the 
reality is that the power to make meaning in the world and freely choose 
between a range of options is not given to everyone equally: in some 
extreme cases of oppression, there may be only two options to choose 
from, one of them involving a high risk of death, which would be the 
ultimate negation of one’s freedom. Beauvoir may agree with Sartre that 
the slave is as free as his master on the formal level, but the slave’s 
genuine freedom is limited by a situation in which only submission or 
revolt is possible. 

 In this way, Beauvoir adds nuance to Sartre’s theory of freedom 
with her concrete discussion of oppression, largely based on her analysis 
of the historical oppression of women by men. As Kruks explains, 
Beauvoir’s thesis is that woman is locked into “immanence”29––
the negation of Sartre’s “transcendence”––by the situation that man 
imposes upon her, a situation which she is not necessarily responsible 
for. Indeed, although we could say that some women are acting in “bad 
faith” when they submit to their objectification, bad faith is not always 
the explanation: in Sartrean terms, women are always responsible for 
themselves no matter what, while in Beauvoirian terms, “for many there 
is no ‘moral fault’ because there is simply no possibility of choice.”30 
This disagreement over personal responsibility highlights another aspect 
of Sartre’s initial theory that Beauvoir disagreed with: emphasis on bad 
faith as the only valid explanation for people feeling constrained by 
circumstances which they experience. 

 In chapter 7 of Rethinking Existentialism, Sartre scholar 
Jonathan Webber argues that it is in their respective interpretations of the 
inferiority complex, a phenomenon identified in Freud’s psychoanalysis, 

28  Beauvoir, Simone de. The Ethics of Ambiguity. Translated by Bernard 
Frechtman. (New York, NY: Philosophical Library, 2015), 84. 

29  Defined by Beauvoir as the falling back of the for-itself’s consciousness 
into the in-itself (Kruks, 121).

30  Kruks, “Simone de Beauvoir and the Limits to Freedom,” 114. Quoting 
from The Second Sex. 



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that we can clearly see how this disagreement plays out.31 As Webber 
explains, the idea of an inferiority complex is central to Beauvoir’s 
theory on the construction of gender through socialization: the idea 
that men are superior to women is instilled in young boys and girls 
by both male and female adults offering them different opportunities, 
encouraging them to do different activities, praising them for different 
actions, which results in so many women feeling a sense of inferiority 
to men. On the other hand, Sartre interprets the inferiority complex as a 
“project that some individuals freely choose,” an inferiority project.32 In 
his view, social values can structure one’s existence “only through being 
internalized into the projects one has freely chosen and can abandon”. In 
other words, as a woman I don’t need to accept being categorized as part 
of an “inferior group”, for I have “absolute freedom” to adopt projects 
that “attempt to disprove or [...] ignore” this categorization. However, 
to Sartre, most people are “committed to the project of bad faith”, 
identifying themselves with a fixed set of characteristics as if these 
formed part of an essence that determined their behavior.33 It follows, to 
him, that the only reason why we might feel inferior and limited is due 
to bad faith.

 Beauvoir, on the other hand, finds an alternative explanation for 
people feeling constrained by their life circumstances: sedimentation, 

31  In chapter 5, Webber gives a more extensive account of both Sartre’s and 
Beauvoir’s articulations and interpretations of the inferiority complex, 
among other concepts taken from psychoanalysis. In fact, Webber 
argues that “existentialism is not fundamentally antagonistic to Freudian 
psychoanalysis, as is often claimed, but rather aims to provide better 
articulations and explanations of the phenomena that Freud identified than 
Freud himself achieved” (76). Webber’s analysis reveals how, despite his 
hostility to Freud, Sartre actually preserved some Freudian insights, such 
as the inferiority complex, in his own existentialism, with the intention of 
better explaining them according to his own theory of mind. For more on 
the relationship between existentialism and psychoanalysis, see chapter 5 of 
Rethinking Existentialism. 

32  Webber, Rethinking Existentialism, 86.
33  Webber, 114-115.



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a concept derived from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology.34 As Webber 
argues, Beauvoir’s reliance on sedimentation rather than bad faith makes 
her theory of existentialism “preferable” to Sartre’s “for a reason that 
seems to explain why Sartre went on to adopt Beauvoir’s conception 
of sedimentation and revise his existentialism accordingly.”35 Indeed, 
Sartre’s initial reliance on bad faith makes him unable to go beyond 
the individual to explain why members of certain social groups often 
have certain characteristics in common, such as an inferiority complex 
relative to another group. If he tried to use bad faith to explain the 
origins of those characteristics, he would have to explain why this bad 
faith is a common feature of people’s outlook within one social group––
but how?36 It cannot be the result of a fixed essence, since existence 
precedes essence; nor can it be the result of some prior project of bad 
faith, because again we would need to ask why it was freely adopted by 
each individual within the group. Thus not only is this centrality of bad 
faith unfounded, it also suggests a sociologically inaccurate account of 
the origins of shared cultural values.37

 A more accurate account, as Webber argues, could be built 
upon Beauvoir’s idea of sedimentation. The argument for sedimentation 
goes as follows: in childhood, each individual experiences specific 
“opportunities, encouragements and discouragements” based on the 
values of their surrounding culture, experiences that will direct the 
individual towards projects that incorporate those values.38 Those 

34  Merleau-Ponty coined the term ‘sedimentation’ in his book 
Phénoménologie de la perception (1945), where he writes that “the 
sedimentation of our mental operations [...] allows us to count on our 
acquired concepts and judgments, just as we count upon the things that 
are there and that are given as a whole, without our having to repeat their 
synthesis at each moment.” According to him, “building up the layers of 
meaning through which subjects engage with the world and each other, 
rests on a ‘double moment of sedimentation and spontaneity.’” (Pepper, 
Ken. “The Phenomenology of Sensorimotor Understanding.” In Bishop, J., 
Martin, A. (eds) Contemporary Sensorimotor Theory. Studies in Applied 
Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 15. Springer, 2014. 
Quoting from Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by 
Donald A. Landes. London: Routledge, 2012, 131-132.) 

35  Webber, 116.
36  Webber, 116.
37  The insufficiency of bad faith when it comes to explaining the origins 

of shared values is explored in more detail by Webber in chapter 7 of 
Rethinking Existentialism, with a critical analysis of Sartre’s attempt to 
ground cultural characteristics common to Jewish people in his essay Anti-
Semite and Jew (1948). 

38  Meanwhile, “childhood plays no special role in the formation of the 
individual” in Sartre’s initial existentialism, according to Webber.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

projects and the values within them then become “sedimented,” or 
internalized within the individual’s psyche at an age where they adopt 
projects based on influence. Once they become mature enough to adopt 
projects on the basis of critical reflection, they will be influenced by 
those sedimented values. Thereafter, new projects that contradict these 
values can be adopted in theory, but only after considerable time and 
“pursuit of these projects” can they become sufficiently sedimented to 
counteract the older ones. Thus, it is with sedimentation that Beauvoir 
can explain how “woman” has been constructed as the Other––“the 
second sex”––through a long history of male domination, conditioning 
female individuals to be passive and dependent, and rigid gender roles 
that reinforce those values.39 Meanwhile, Sartre’s initial existentialism 
cannot account for the empirical social fact of women’s secondary 
status. To avoid this problem without abandoning existentialism 
altogether, Webber argues, Sartre needed to replace his overreliance on 
bad faith with Beauvoir’s idea of sedimentation––which, as we will see, 
he eventually did.

 As explained above, Beauvoir’s idea of sedimentation has the 
potential to save existentialism from objections made to Sartre’s radical 
freedom. Indeed, “social forces are extremely powerful”40 and cannot 
be overlooked by a strictly individualistic account of responsibility. 
At this point, it is important to insist that Beauvoir’s analysis does not 
conclude that sedimentation and oppression negate freedom: she offers a 
more nuanced, realistic account of freedom than Sartre, but with no less 
emphasis on the moral value of embracing one’s freedom––for example, 
through participation in collective revolt against a shared condition.41 

§ 2: OBJECTIONS FROM NEUROSCIENCE  

 So far, we have posited human freedom as a central inescapable 
necessity: without freedom, there can be no existentialism and 
both Beauvoir’s and Sartre’s entire philosophies would be rendered 
obsolete. Yet what if we had reason to posit determinism, specifically 
incompatibilist determinism, as a central, inescapable necessity? Then 

39  Prinz, Jesse. “Moral Sedimentation.” Essay. In Neuroexistentialism: 
Meaning, Morals, and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience , 87–108 
(Oxford University Press, 2018), 91-92.

40  Prinz, “Moral Sedimentation,” 92.
41  Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 93.



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we would have to accept that all events, including human decisions and 
actions, are predetermined and causally inevitable, which is incompatible 
with the idea of free will, and that therefore free will is nothing but an 
illusion–– human beings do not really have the capacity to choose freely 
and independently. We would have to rule out existentialism premise by 
premise: asserting that essence precedes (even determines) existence, 
that there can be no such thing as “authenticity” since there is no genuine 
freedom of choice. We would have to rule out, paradoxically, that the 
only possible form of authenticity is living in what Sartre would call bad 
faith, which in this case would come down to recognizing the different 
forms of determinism that make me unfree rather than self-deceptively 
asserting the illusion that I am free. For Sartreans, this reversal of ideas 
seems inconceivable and yet, contemporary cognitive science forces us 
to seriously consider it. In this subsection, we will explore several such 
objections to human freedom based on findings in neuroscience.

 When it comes to “radical” freedom, scientific objections 
are overwhelmingly obvious: as Levy writes, “Sartre’s optimism 
about agency conflicts with contemporary science.”42 For Sartre, the 
mind and consciousness are one and the same, and consciousness is 
“essentially free”43 from anything that could constrain or even guide 
it. Yet contemporary findings in cognitive science have revealed that 
the mind is not “essentially free” or “essentially independent” from 
external influences. Furthermore, unconscious processes––which 
Sartre rejected44––suggest that a large part of our mind is “opaque to 
introspection”: we consider ourselves to be affirming values “that have 
no foundation beyond our choice,” when these values may actually 
reflect “deep-seated unconscious impulses”45––echoing Beauvoir’s 
idea of sedimented values, though with more scientific backing and 
different conclusions. Indeed, Beauvoir used sedimentation to explain 
why historically marginalized groups have limited freedom; here, the 
presence of unconscious processes in the mind suggest that human 
beings are not free at all by showing how little control we really have 
over our thoughts and actions. 

 Levy illustrates this with the idea of modularity of mind. 
Though a popular conception of the mind treats the conscious mind, 

42  Levy, “Choices Without Choosers: Toward a Neuropsychologically 
Plausible Existentialism,” 114.

43  Levy, 114.
44  Levy, 114.
45  Levy, 114.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

or self, as a kind of “control center”46–– a “CEO” that delegates tasks 
to other parts of the brain––while the unconscious is like a rogue force 
that doesn’t report to the “CEO” but doesn’t offset the latter’s control 
over the mind either, contemporary cognitive science tells us that there 
is no such control center: rather, “the mind consists of nothing but such 
unintelligent mechanisms” as those supposedly directed by a “CEO” 
that does not exist. In other words, there is no unified self in control, just 
a collection of automated mechanisms or modules. There is “extensive” 
evidence in favor of this modularity of mind,47 an idea that conflicts 
with our conception of ourselves as a unified self, or “chooser” from an 
existentialist perspective. 

 Do the ideas of authenticity and genuine choice still hold in the 
face of this dissolution of the self into a multiplicity of modules? As 
Levy explains, if our moment-to-moment decision making is indeed 
shaped by the multiplicity of modules which constitute us and that 
are “obscured from consciousness”, then under many conditions those 
modules will shape our choice while causing us to have false views about 
the reasons behind our choice––a form of unconscious self-deception or 
“confabulation.”48 Sartre maintained that man is radically free as long 
as he has a consciousness, but what if the very notion of consciousness 
becomes hardly accessible or controllable? The existentialist conception 
of human beings as “unified agents making choices for reasons” that we 
can justify is thus challenged by empirical findings which we can hardly 
deny. 

 If you, naive Sartrean, feel anguished when confronted with 
this kind of antithesis, wait until you hear what hard determinist Robert 
Sapolsky has to say about human freedom. The title of his recent 
book says it all: “Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will.” 
As one of the leading researchers in neuroendocrinology today, his 
thesis against free will is worryingly strong in that, contrary to Sartre’s 
phenomenological method, it relies on extensive empirical research on 
the human brain. As such, when he asserts that “there is no free will” or 
at least that “there is much less free will than generally assumed,” we are 
compelled to listen.49 

46  Levy, 114.
47  Levy, 116.
48  Levy, 119.
49  Sapolsky, Robert M.. Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. 

Penguin Press, 2023, 15.



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 Sapolsky’s thesis rests on the idea that “nothing comes from 
nothing”: when I behave in a particular way, it is due to “the determinism 
that came before, which was caused by the determinism just before that”, 
and so on. There is no causeless, undetermined behavior that I may want 
to attribute to my free will, because free will is an illusion: I am as I 
am as a result of “the biology over which [I] had no control, interacting 
with the environment over which [I] had no control.”50 Explaining why 
a certain behavior occurred requires looking at what factors the agent 
was influenced by during their adolescence, when a key region in their 
brain was still being shaped by “socialization and acculturation”; it 
may require looking further back to how childhood experiences shaped 
the construction of their brain, and even further back to the genes they 
inherited.51 Once again, this somewhat echoes Beauvoir’s emphasis 
on the role of early life experiences and circumstances outside of our 
control––such as an abusive parent––in shaping our adult self, but with 
more scientific backing and drastically different conclusions, as well 
as different premises, considering Sapolsky’s belief in an “inherited” 
essence. 

 As for Sartre, his main ideas can be reformulated in polar 
opposite form by Sapolsky: man is not “what he makes of himself”52 
rather “nothing more or less than the cumulative biological and 
environmental luck over which [he] has no control.”53 Existence does 
not precede essence, rather the other way around, given that we are not 
born as a blank slate but with a particular genome that, together with 
environmental influences, “determines” our behavior. The only point 
on which Sartre would agree with Sapolsky is that “there is nothing 
but an empty, indifferent universe” which we will eventually fade into, 
yet their conclusions from that premise are expectedly incompatible: 
Sartre would say that, for as long as it exists, the self is much more than 
a collection of atoms, rather the independent source of all meaning in 
the universe––“uncaused causes who are the foundation of all values” 
in Levy’s terms54––while Sapolsky considers the so-called self to be 
nothing but a temporary arrangement of atoms that we each call “Me”.55 
Sartre and Saposky may also agree that people’s brains and behaviors 

50  Sapolsky, 11.
51  Sapolsky, 12.
52  Sartre, L’existentialisme est un humanisme, 30.
53  Sapolsky, 13.
54  Levy, “Choices Without Choosers: Toward a Neuropsychologically 

Plausible Existentialism,” 113.
55  Sapolsky, 360.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

can change through life, but while the former would articulate that in 
terms of freely chosen projects subject to change, the latter maintains 
that the science of change “doesn’t counter this being a deterministic 
world without free will.”56 In short, the two may have a couple premises 
in common, but not a single conclusion.

 This essentially comes down to a debate between free will and 
determinism. For Sapolsky, to be human is not to be “condemned to 
be free” but to be condemned to be determined despite believing that 
we are free. As he observes, belief in free will is extremely prevalent: 
it is at the root of all social practices and institutions––including the 
justice system which punishes criminals based on the assumption that 
they are responsible for their crimes. For Sapolsky, this widespread 
assumption shows that, faced with harsh truths about existence, humans 
have developed “a robust capacity for self-deception”, which “includes 
a belief in free will.”57 From this perspective, adhering to existentialism 
is a ironically a form of self-deception since in Sartrean terms, to adhere 
not to existentialism but to a form of determinism that does not posit 
man as a free and responsible agent is a form of bad faith, or self-
deception. Conversely, to be “authentic” from Sapolsky’s perspective 
would be to “face our lack of free will,”58 or to at least begin to question 
our certitude of ourselves and others as free by attempting to make the 
“radical changes” in our thinking and feeling that a lack of freedom 
would imply.

 At this point, the case for human freedom, let alone radical 
freedom, seems like a mere delusion. How can we genuinely see ourselves 
as free agents considering the empirical facts of social, biological, 
and neuronal determinism? Faced with sedimentation, modularity of 
mind and the debunked idea of causeless behavior, should we follow 
Sapolsky’s recommendation to face our lack of free will by reorienting 
ourselves towards determinism, giving up our conception of ourselves 
as “choosers” and accepting ourselves as temporary arrangements of 
atoms determined by various forces over which we have no control?

 
§ III: “EVEN THEN! I WOULD BE FREE TO INTERPRET 
MY CONDITION”: SARTRE’S REVISED CONCEPT 

56  Sapolsky, 23-24
57  Sapolsky, 362.
58  Sapolsky, 365.



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OF FREEDOM BASED ON BEAUVOIR’S THEORY OF 
SEDIMENTATION, AND WHY THIS EXISTENTIALISM 
CAN AND SHOULD BE RETAINED TODAY
  
 Direct confrontation with texts like Sapolsky’s might trigger 
such a felt necessity of reorientation towards “a life without free will”, 
but it doesn’t need to trigger a fundamental reorientation of our self-
perception and behavior––nor do I think it should. In this final section, 
I will argue that without blindly rejecting what is widely accepted 
today about the human brain and the extent to which genes and past 
experiences shape it, it is possible and even morally desirable to hold on 
to a nuanced version of radical freedom, conserving the moral imperative 
against bad faith, only without the now outdated conception of ourselves 
as “totalement libres.”

§ 1: ON SARTRE’S DERADICALIZED FREEDOM

 Before we elaborate on this nuanced version of radical freedom, 
it is important to insist that Sartre himself came to recognize the limits of 
his initial concept of freedom. Thereafter, he revised and “deradicalized” 
it to include the sedimentation of values, which he took from Beauvoir, 
as a more coherent basis for projects than bad faith. According to 
Webber, this more “mature” Sartrean existentialism made its first notable 
appearance in Sartre’s biography of vagabond and thief turned writer 
and political activist Jean Genet, published in 1952. 

 In Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, Sartre analyzes Genet’s 
character, lifestyle and writings as “expressions of a single complex 
project rooted in childhood”––an explanation he would never have 
given a few years earlier when his theory implied that childhood plays 
no fundamental role in the formation of the individual. According to this 
analysis, Genet’s project was born from the social environment and moral 
values he was exposed to as a child: raised by a family of poor peasants 
after his mother abandoned him, with the value of property (among 
others) instilled into him, he finds a way to acquire some property by 
committing petty thefts early on, for which he is labeled a “thief.”59 Over 
the years, “he comes to accept that this judgment correctly identities his 

59  Sartre, Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, 17. Quoted in Webber, Rethinking 
Existentialism, 126.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

essential nature”60 (note here Sartre’s mention of essence and nature); by 
internalizing society’s moral judgment of him based on actions that his 
childhood led him towards, society had “penetrated to the very bottom 
of his heart.”61 

 This instance of sedimentation, Sartre argues, partly explains 
why Genet continued to violate society’s moral code throughout his life, 
accepting this socially attributed “essence” rather than resisting it––a 
form of submission which former Sartre might have qualified as bad 
faith. Yet here he treats it as a “conversion” based on a conscious decision 
to embrace society’s judgment of him, which becomes sedimented as 
Genet’s outlook is “gradually transformed by his repeatedly deciding to 
embrace his supposed evil nature”62 as a thief in the eyes of society. This 
is the “project” that Genet becomes committed to, and the sedimentation 
underlying that project makes Sartre qualify it as a “prison without 
bars”: Genet’s commitment to being a thief does not make him unable 
of adopting “new points of view entailing new commitments,” but those 
would not displace “the original attitude” towards himself, so deeply 
internalized that it “continues to influence thought and action.”63 As 
such, Sartre’s revised concept of freedom recognizes the power of social 
forces, as Beauvoir did before him, while remaining attached to the 
imperative of embracing our capacity to “make” ourselves, to a certain 
extent: “we are not lumps of clay,” he writes, “and what is important is 
not what people make of us but what we ourselves make of what they 
have made of us.”64

 With sedimentation, Sartre no longer relies on bad faith to 
explain why we are sometimes unaware of our motivations or why 
we sometimes feel constrained. He now agrees with Beauvoir that we 
experience this when our deeply sedimented values conflict with our 
more recently endorsed values. He also corrects the incoherence of 
grounding a theory of shared cultural values on bad faith by showing 
how the values of one’s social environment, such as Genet’s peasant 
origins, can become sedimented in one’s outlook early on, creating 
the “prison without bars.” For these ideas he credits Beauvoir’s The 
Second Sex. He does not, however, entirely abandon his own version 
of existentialism in favor of Beauvoir’s: his theory of bad faith and his 

60  Webber, 126.
61  Sartre, Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, 21. Quoted in Webber, 126.
62  Webber, 127.
63  Sartre, Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, 69. Quoted in Webber, 127.
64  Sartre, Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, 49. Quoted in Webber, 127.



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claim that it is widespread remain, only now he is able to explain that 
widespread adoption of bad faith “in terms of its sedimentation” as a 
value.65 

§ 2: ON THE MORAL VALUE OF HOLDING ON TO OUR 
BELIEF IN FREE WILL AND APPLYING EXISTENTIALIST 
INSIGHTS TO TODAY’S WORLD

 Despite this “deradicalization”, Sartre is still not immune to 
caricaturesque comics: first, because he remains popularly associated 
with his earlier “radical” freedom; and second, because other objections 
can be brought even against his more socially conscious concept of 
freedom insofar as the very notion of human freedom has become 
seriously problematic considering contemporary cognitive science, as 
discussed above. 

 These objections and the evidence behind them push us towards 
a most un-existentialist conclusion: that us human beings, supposedly 
capable of transcendence, are actually nothing more than our facticity. 
As defined by Sartre and explained by Webber, facticity is “the set of 
one’s own physical features and the physical and social features of one’s 
situation” or “the facts that one has to deal with.”66 Hence to say that we 
are nothing more than our facticity is to say, joining Sapolsky’s thesis, 
that we are nothing more than the biological and environmental facts 
that shaped us and over which we have no control. While the influence 
of biological and environmental factors, as well as of sedimentation, 
on our brain cannot be reasonably denied, I would like to further the 
existentialist idea that we are more than our facticity: that no, we are 
not “determined” to remain stuck with the facts of our current situation 
unless we convince ourselves that we are, which is where I think Sartre’s 
concept of bad faith can still be of value.

 From a Sartrean perspective, human existence is structured by 
projects, which we choose in the context of our multi-layered facticity. 
Additionally, as Webber writes, the projects we choose to pursue “can 
either transform that facticity or simply maintain it.”67 As such, I can be 

65  Sartre, Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, 33-36. Paraphrased in Webber, 128. 
66  Webber, 191.
67  Webber, 191



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

more than my facticity if I pursue a project that aims to transcend it.68 
My choice of that project may still be influenced by sedimented values,69 
but then again, all projects are, to a certain degree, sedimented. We may 
become conscious of the effects of that sedimentation––for example, 
I may become aware of an inferiority complex–– and thereafter it is 
possible to pursue a project that aims to overcome those sedimented 
values woven into my facticity. 

 Indeed, the “chooser” may be just a collection of automated 
modules as Levy argues, or determined by a range of factors according 
to Sapolsky, but the fact is that in practice, I am still the one who does 
the action of choosing a project based on what I perceive as my reasons, 
and then acting accordingly. From a consequentialist perspective, it 
doesn’t really matter whether my choice was determined by this or that 
underlying factor: as long as I believe that I have the power to construct 
my own existence, rather than perceiving myself as determined and 
powerless due to some negative childhood experience or membership to 
some social group, I am less likely to turn biological and social factors 
into obstacles in themselves and then partly impose those limits on 
myself. This is similar to how Beauvoir argued that one can only become 
fully objectified if one submits to that objectification. 

 As such, insofar as it is possible to choose a project that transcends 
my facticity, we must recognize that facticity can be transformed, 
and that I am the only one who can make that effort for myself. To a 
certain extent, I can transcend the different forces that some might say 
“determine” me. This is neither naive nor idealistic when you consider 
different examples of real individuals who have achieved emancipation 
from constraining situations. Take Malala Yousafzai: when the Taliban 
took over and prohibited girls like her from going to school, did she 
submit? On the contrary, she resisted by speaking out publicly in favor 
of girls’ right to learn – which made her a target. At the age of 15, 

68  Except  in certain situations of oppression where one’s options are 
significantly reduced due to physical constraints. I won’t go on here about 
the possibility of emancipation from situations of oppression as my present 
purpose is to make a more general argument supporting the possibility to 
transcend one’s facticity. For more on the possibility of liberation from 
oppression, I recommend Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity.

69  For example, in The Second Sex, Beauvoir argues that only through paid 
employment can women regain the transcendence that male domination has 
historically denied them, but in her time and still in some places today most 
of the options available for paid employment became known as pink collar 
jobs for requiring more “female” skills.



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when the ban on girls’ education had just been lifted, she was shot by a 
masked gunman on her way back from a school exam. Yet despite this 
near-death experience which she survived, she still chose to continue 
her activism, eventually becoming the world-renowned advocate she is 
today. Young Malala could have accepted her facticity by submitting to 
the ban without pushback – with reason, given the danger of resisting – 
but instead she chose to pursue a project that transformed her facticity. 
In other words, Malala’s ontological transcendence remained within her, 
despite being “degraded into immanence”70 by those who tried to take 
away her fundamental freedom to choose her own course of life.71

 With this example in support of my argument against 
Sapolsky’s determinism and in favor of defending a nuanced form 
of radical freedom, my intention is not to reject the empirical fact of 
social inequalities, or the years of neurological research conducted by 
neuroscientists like Sapolsky. Rather, it is to warn against the concrete 
danger of confusing unlikelihood with impossibility. It was unlikely for 
Malala to rise against the Taliban considering the risks involved, yet she 
did. Therefore, transcending one’s facticity is not impossible. Similarly, 
it is not impossible to transcend sedimented values, but what is certain 
is that taking it to be impossible will remove that possibility altogether. 
Merleau-Ponty once argued that, although we can free ourselves from 
sediments, their deep “embodiment” in our practices and cultures 
renders such self-emancipation “unlikely.” Going back to the inferiority 
complex, he argued that after having built his life upon the latter, 
“continuously reinforced for twenty years, it is not likely that I would 
change,” given this “commitment” to inferiority.72 Of course, if I tell 
myself that I am “committed” to inferiority, then I will remain as such 
and act accordingly. Having never considered the possibility of working 
through that sedimented belief, I might live my whole life as a victim 
of my inferiority complex, with all the missed opportunities that entails: 
for example, not applying to top universities because I don’t believe I 
could ever be accepted, or never feeling secure in relationships because 
I don’t believe I deserve love. Following this thought pattern further 

70  Webber, Rethinking Existentialism, 191. Citing ideas from Beauvoir, The 
Second Sex.

71  Her father being an education activist and encouraging her to not limit 
herself certainly influenced her, but in no way did it determine her to 
become an activist herself. In a way, her father’s influence gave her 
(positive) sedimented values that contributed to her project of resistance, 
but that project was certainly not her only option. 

72  Mearleau-Ponty, Maurice. (1945) The Phenomenology of Perception, 
Routledge, 2012,  466-467. bQuoted in Prinz, “Moral Sedimentation,” 89.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

sediments those beliefs and convinces me that I am forever stuck with 
my facticity, when in fact it is possible to overcome a deeply ingrained 
inferiority complex; it would certainly be a psychological challenge and 
it may require years of therapy , but it is not impossible.  

 My fundamental issue with arguments like Sapolsky’s and 
even Merleau-Ponty’s is that, by pushing us to reduce ourselves to our 
facticity and deny ourselves our own possibility of transcendence, they 
encourage us to invoke past experiences as excuses for acting a certain 
way and refusing to change, as if we were incapable of change. For 
example, although it has been shown that children who grow up with 
unfaithful parents are statistically more likely to cheat on their own 
partners,73 there is no direct causal link between having unfaithful parents 
and committing infidelity ourselves. Yet it’s an easy form of excuse that 
allows a cheater to paint themselves as the victim of circumstances 
outside of their control, thus avoiding responsibility and justifying any 
future infidelity on the same basis. In Sartrean terms, this is a form of 
‘bad faith’ – convincing oneself that one had no choice but to act in 
a certain way, that there is a necessary causal link between past and 
present at play, when really, past events in themselves do not determine 
me to commit a wrongdoing in the present. Suppose you learn that your 
partner had an affair (within an otherwise healthy relationship), and they 
justify themselves by saying they had no other choice, that they were 
‘determined’ to cheat for whatever reason. I doubt anyone (except for 
hard determinists like Sapolsky, and even then) would accept this as a 
valid excuse from their own partner. Yet it is not uncommon for us to 
use these kinds of excuses for actions that could have been avoided, 
including but not limited to cheating. In that sense, I join Sartre in arguing 
that the denial of one’s own freedom in ‘bad faith’ is an unfortunately 
widespread social phenomenon. 

 Now there is a way to transcend this phenomenon of which we 
have all been guilty at times, and this is where I join Webber in arguing 
that existentialism can still have an important value today, despite 
scientific and sociological objections made to it. Webber’s argument 
is that the “canonical” version of existentialism, based on The Second 
Sex, Saint Genet, as well as Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks, has “the 
potential to make significant contributions to moral thought, philosophy 

73  Weiser, D. A., Weigel, D. J., Lalasz, C. B., & Evans, W. P. (2015). Family 
Background and Propensity to Engage in Infidelity. Journal of Family 
Issues, 38(15), 2083-2101. 



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of mind, social psychology and psychotherapy.”74 This “canonical” 
existentialism does not treat the individual as “totalement libre”, nor 
as the “mere product of social forces,” but “combines the freedom to 
revise the values that shape one’s outlook with the sedimentation of 
one’s projects over time.”75 According to Webber, empirical psychology 
supports this core claim, and indeed existentialist perspectives have the 
potential to contribute to both the philosophy of mind and procedures 
of psychotherapy.76 On a more individual level, I would add that 
such existentialist perspectives as Beauvoir’s argument for the moral 
imperative of acting authentically can help us confront the values and 
experiences that make up our facticity and work to transcend those 
that keep us down (or at least know that it is possible). In this way, we 
may enlarge our horizon of possibilities, allowing ourselves to dream 
big and aim high in our projects, and catching ourselves whenever we 
are tempted to fall into bad faith. As Levy eloquently writes, while “we 
are all tempted to confuse convention with nature” and “social facts for 
fixed regularities”, the existentialist call to “face up to our freedom” and 
“recognize that we have options” is “salutary” in that it “can lead us to 
live more reflectively and more responsibly.”77

 So, is the slave as free as his master? The prisoner as free as his 
captor? Early Sartre would have argued that, although the slave may not 
have the same freedom to obtain due to physical constraints, he would 
have the same freedom to choose at the very least his interpretation of 
his situation. In less extreme situations, however, there is no “excuse” 
for considering oneself unfree: we always have the moral imperative to 
act authentically. While Beauvoir also believed in this moral imperative, 
she objected that not every individual is equally capable of turning their 
formal freedom into genuine freedom, namely due to sedimentation. We 
saw how Sartre then revised his radicality considering this objection. 
Yet he continued to face objections given his existentialist commitment 
to human freedom, a concept which contemporary cognitive science 
seriously challenges. Faced with this challenge, this paper has argued 
in favor of holding on to our conception of ourselves as free agents to 

74  Webber, Rethinking Existentialism, 188.
75  Webber, Rethinking Existentialism, 192.
76  For more on this argument that I find quite original and interesting but 

won’t explore in too much detail here, I recommend Chapter 11 of Webber’s 
Rethinking Existentialism.

77  Levy, “Choices Without Choosers: Toward a Neuropsychologically 
Plausible Existentialism,” 119.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

give ourselves the possibility of transcending the facticity which the 
objections above reduce us to. This paper has also made the case for 
conserving Sartre’s “bad faith” within a more nuanced version of radical 
freedom. 

 At this point, one might find it contradictory for me to still speak 
of “radical” freedom after so many have objected to it, and Sartre himself 
later “deradicalized” his concept of human freedom. My response would 
be that, in an era where more and more scientific findings on the human 
brain give strong support for the thesis of determinism, any degree of 
belief in free will may be considered “radical.” Yet if being a radical 
in this context means believing in our individual power to rise above 
our circumstances like Malala did and give ourselves a chance at living 
a better life, rather than constantly making excuses that limit our own 
potential, then we should all be radical existentialists. 



33Issue XII ◊ Spring 2025

To Live Free or To Make Excuses

REFERENCES
Aho, Kevin. “Existentialism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, January 6, 

2023. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/.

 Beauvoir, Simone de. The Ethics of Ambiguity. Translated by Bernard Frechtman. 
New York, NY: Philosophical Library, 2015. 

Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated and Edited by H. M. Parshley. 
London: Vintage Books, 1989. 

FØLLESDAL, Dagfinn, and Henri SARLET. “LA LIBERTÉ CHEZ 
SARTRE.” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 35, no. 135 (1981): 41–59. 
http://www.jstor.org/stable/23945373.

Kruks, Sonia. “Simone de Beauvoir and the Limits to Freedom.” Social Text, no. 
17 (1987): 111–22. https://doi.org/10.2307/466482.

Levy, Neil. “Choices Without Choosers: Toward a Neuropsychologically Plausible 
Existentialism.” Essay. In Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, Morals, and Purpose 
in the Age of Neuroscience, 111–25. Oxford University Press, 2018. 

Macomber, Melissa. “If My Parents Cheated, Will I? Myths, Realities and 
Solutions — Melissa

Macomber | What to do When a Parent is Cheating?” (2021, May 21).

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1945). Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by 
Donald A. Landes.

London: Routledge, 2012. 

Pepper, Ken.  The Phenomenology of Sensorimotor Understanding. In Bishop, J., 
Martin,

A. (eds) Contemporary Sensorimotor Theory. Studies in Applied Philosophy, 
Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 15. Springer, 2014. 

Prinz, Jesse. “Moral Sedimentation.” Essay. In Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, 
Morals, and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience , 87–108. Oxford University 
Press, 2018. 

Sapolsky, Robert M.. Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. Penguin 
Press, 2023. https://dokumen.pub/determined-a-science-of-life-without-free-
will-9780525560975-9780525560982-9780593656723.html

Existential Comics: a philosophy comic about the inevitable anguish of living a 
brief life in an absurd world. Also jokes. “Sartrean Freedom.” (n.d.) Accessed 
January 19, 2025. https://existentialcomics.com/comic/393.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

 Sartre, Jean-Paul. L’être et le néant: Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique. Paris: 
Gallimard, 1943. 

Sartre, Jean-Paul. L’existentialisme est un humanisme. Gallimard, 1996. 

Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. Edited by Robert Denoon 
Cumming. New York: Vintage Books, 2003. 

Webber, Jonathan. Rethinking Existentialism. New York, NY: Oxford University 
Press, 2018. 

Weiser, D. A., Weigel, D. J., Lalasz, C. B., & Evans, W. P. (2015). Family 
Background and Propensity to Engage in Infidelity. Journal of Family Issues, 
38(15), 2083-2101. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X15581660 (Original 
work published 2017).



35Issue XII ◊ Spring 2025

Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

OF EXPERIENCE AND BEING: APOPOS OF 
THIS AND THAT

AN ANALYSIS FROM DAOISM TO HEIDEGGER

SHEA DIVOLL

§ 1: TO BE

     “God is absolute nothingness. God is not, however, mere 
nothingness. An immovable unifying activity clearly functions at the 
base of the establishment of reality, and it is by means of this activity 

that reality is established.” 

––Nishida Kitarō 西田 幾多郎 in An Inquiry Into the Good

善の研究



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

§ 1.1: YELLOW-RED-BLUE

 I AM. Just two words. Two words so important, though, that 
they have come to mean God in one of the largest religions in the world.1 
The idea of Being2, of the I-am-ness, the you-are-ness, and the it-is-ness 
underlies the premises of philosophy in a few different ways. On one-
hand, much of language is structured implicitly around Being, the type 
of Being that lets humans describe things and people; it is the Being that 
says a certain cat is brown, or she is intelligent. Inasmuch as philosophy 
rests on the shoulders of language, it is thus subject to Being.Alterna-
tively, there are also more subtle questions that define a more tacit man-
ifestation of Being. What makes a being a being? How does a being be? 
Or, is the Being of different beings the same fundamental Being? Ques-
tions like these are, in part, the foundation of religion and philosophy. 
Consequently, it is reasonable to desire firm answers to the questions of 
Being, or at the very least, to inquire for a deeper understanding of Be-
ing. The man who perhaps spent the longest time addressing these que 
tions of Being was Martin Heidegger, a twentieth-century philosopher 
who laid the groundwork for most of modern philosophical discourse. 
By first explicating the context Heidegger arose in, then the philosophy 
he constructed, in addition to important ideas in classical Daoism, I will 
soon show how classical Daoist ideas like wuwei and equipmentality3 
seeped deeply into the works of Heidegger. Contrary to popular belief 
on the subject, I intend to demonstrate that Daoist sources had a clear 
influence on Heidegger’s early work, including Being and Time.

1 This refers to the use of “Ἐγώ εἰμί” in the New Testament of the Christian 
Bible. The phrase builds off of Exodus 3:14 in the Torah where God 
claims “I Am that I Am”, or in Hebrew, “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh”. Hence, at 
a very early point in the development of Western culture, inasmuch as that 
term is applicable, the idea of Being was at the forefront of religious and 
philosophical thought. See “Christianity” by Hogg et al or “‘I Am Who I 
Am’? The meaning of God’s Name in Exodus” by LeFebvre for a more in 
depth discussion of this topic.

2 From here on, I am going to use Heidegger’s convention of capitalizing 
Being, primarily because of its centrality to ontology and existence. The 
convention of capitalizing Being is remarkably similar to the convention for 
writing “God”; and to this end, Dr. Michael Sugrue’s lecture “Heidegger: 
Being and Time” on YouTube raises a fascinating point on how Heidegger’s 
treatment of the word “Being” mirrors a Christian’s treatment of the word 
God. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaobMHescwg.

3 Equipmentality is not in itself a classical Daoist idea. However, the paradigm 
of equipmentality that is later shown to be present in classical Daoism is the 
same paradigm Heidegger uses.



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§ 1.2: WANDERER ABOVE THE SEA OF FOG

 Born in the late nineteenth century, Martin Heidegger grew 
up in a Roman Catholic family in Meßkirch, Germany, whereupon he 
began training to be a priest in 1903. After leaving the program due 
to health issues, he shortly thereafter began to study the questions of 
Being. Heidegger found himself reflecting on the ontology of Aristot-
le, traditional Catholic theology, modern Protestant thinkers including 
Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Luther, as well as many other Western 
philosophical thinkers. By 1927, he published Being and Time (Sein und 
Zeit), and established himself as an important name in philosophy.

 A cursory glance through Being and Time, however, will raise 
some issues. Despite his elaborate education, we immediately see a stark 
contrast between his education and his philosophy. Consider the follow-
ing quote:

This undifferentiated character of Dasein's everydayness is not nothing, but 
a positive phenomenal characteristic of this entity.4  

Where did this diction and syntax come from? For Heidegger to have 
such a learned vocabulary in ontology, one would certainly assume he 
had an education which made him proficient in such terms. And in part, 
he did have some education in ontology, especially as he was a pupil of 
Edmund Husserl. Yet, if we follow the narrative of Martin Heidegger as 
a Catholic-turned-philosopher, it comes off as a non-sequitur for him to 
have such an emphasis strictly on Being. Although figures like Saint Au-
gustine come from a Catholic tradition and discuss ontology, Heidegger 
approaches ontology from a paradigm completely opposed to Christian 
education, rejecting and changing many premises Augustine would con-
sider fundamental. To emphasize my point:

4 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, ed. by John Macquarrie and Edward 
Robinson (108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK: Blackwell Publishers 
Ltd, 1962), 69, http://pdf-objects.com/files/Heidegger-Martin-Being-
and-Time-trans.-Macquarrie-Robinson-Blackwell-1962.pdf. The excerpt 
essentially means that Dasein, which translates roughly as Being-there, 
is not less relevant because of how worldly it is, rather it is more defined.
However, the quote was only provided to demonstrate the vocabulary of 
Martin Heidegger.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

The Interpretation in which the “not-yet––and with it even the uttermost 
“not-yet”, the end of Dasein––was taken in the sense of something still 
outstanding, has been rejected as inappropriate in that it included the 
ontological perversion of making Dasein something present-at-hand. 
Being-at-an-end implies existentially Being-towards-the-end.5 

Again, there is room for a reasonable amount of creativity and ingenuity 
on Heidegger’s part; nevertheless, his turn toward the ideas and concepts 
of Being and Time appears out of left field. However, this is only sur-
prising under the paradigm highlighted thus far of Heidegger as a Chris-
tian-turned-philosopher––and yet this is precisely the wrong paradigm. 
Although Heidegger commonly wrote on traditionally “Western” dia-
logues,6 he did have significant Eastern influences, especially Daoism. 
For instance, “Heidegger’s ‘A Dialogue on Language between a Japa-
nese and an Inquirer’ (1959) confirms that this engagement [with Dao-
ism] goes back to as early as 1921,”7 which is far before the publishing 
of Being and Time. Furthermore, at a dinner party in the 1930s,Heideg-
ger asked his host for Parables of Zhuangzi (Reden und gleichnisse des 
Tschuang-Tse), which he then gave a garrulous speech on.8 In some of 
Heidegger’s later works, he created the word Weg to mean a path or way, 
and it has striking similarities to the Chinese Dao (note that Heidegger 
himself compared Weg to the Greek hodós).9 Additionally, he cited the 
Laozi 老子 many times throughout his papers. Not only this, but he was 
so well acquainted with Daoist texts that he intentionally utilized paral-
lelism between his writing and early Daoist texts. In one text, “Heideg-
ger’s ‘Geheimnis aller Geheimnisse’ is a reference to xuan zhi you xuan 

5 Heidegger, Being and Time, 293. Here, Heidegger is discussing how Dasein 
relates with Being-towards-death and Being-towards-the-end, which is a 
bit out of the scope of this paper. Like the above excerpt, this is included 
strictly to emphasize the writing style of Martin Heidegger.

6 In terms of published works, Heidegger directly addressed Western 
philosophers in Kant and The Problem of Metaphysics in 1929, Nietzsche 
in 1961, Hegel’s Concept of Experience in 1970, Hegel’s Phenomenology 
of Spirit in 1988, Parmenides in 1992, Plato’s Sophist in 1992, Heraclitus 
Seminar in 1993, Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of 
Pure Reason in 1997, and Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle in 
2001.

7 Eric S. Nelson, “Heidegger’s Daoist Turn,” Research in Phenomenology 49, 
no. 3 (2019): 363, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26843235?seq=5.

8 Ibid.
9 Tobias Keiling, “Way (Weg),” in The Cambridge Heidegger Lexicon, ed. 

Mark A. Wrathall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 813-
814; Nelson, “Heidegger’s Daoist Turn,” 363.



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Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

玄之又玄”10 from the Laozi. All in all, there is significant evidence de-
veloping the connection between Martin Heidegger and Daoism, espe-
cially classical Daoism (to the extent that the Laozi and Zhuangzi 莊子11 
are pillars of classical Daoism).12

§ 1.3: THE SCREAM OF NATURE

 With an understanding of Martin Heidegger’s academic back-
ground, I will now give a selection of passages from Being and Time 
that are useful in later understanding how he may have had “hidden” 
sources.13

 Heidegger believed that the question of Being was central to 
philosophy. Thus, the primary concern for his philosophy was the pri-
mordial question of Being and the lack of an authentic approach to this 
question. To understand this exigence:

The question of Being aims therefore at ascertaining the a priori 
conditions not only for the possibility of the sciences which 
examine entities as entities of such and such a type, and, in so 
doing, already operate with an understanding of Being, but also 
for the possibility of those ontologies themselves which are prior to 
the ontical sciences and which provide their foundations. Basically, 
all ontology, no matter how rich and firmly compacted a system of 
categories it has at its disposal, remains blind and perverted from its 

10 Nelson, “Heidegger’s Daoist Turn,” 365. “Geheimnis aller Geheimnisse” 
means the “mystery within the mystery”, however the meaning changes 
significantly depending on the base language.

11  It may be worth noting here that although the Zhuangzi is historically said 
to be written by a figure named Zhuangzi, historians actually consider it an 
anthology with many sections by different authors. I will herein refer to the 
authors of the Zhuangzi as the single person named Zhuangzi, because this 
is useful in discussing the book and is valid insofar as the authors can all be 
approximated by a single name.

12 It is worth noting that my use of Daoism, and even classical Daoism, in 
reference to Heidegger could be too broad. Explicitly, Heidegger interacted 
with the Laozi and Zhuangzi exclusively, leading Graham Park on page 13 
of “Thoughts on the Way” to refer to Heidegger’s Daoist influences as the 
works of Lao-Zhuang. So, although I may reference Daoism and classical 
Daoism, when referring to Heidegger, I am more so talking about the Lao-
Zhuang authors.

13 This is an allusion to an interesting book about Heidegger’s relationship 
with East-Asian philosophy called Heidegger’s Hidden Sources, East-Asian 
Influences on his Work by Reinhard May.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

ownmost aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of 
Being, and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task.14

 
Essentially, the Being of beings is a concern for Heidegger, and the at-
tempt to understand this is a nearly impossible task; as each approxima-
tion of true Being is coming from a being and a web of presuppositions 
surrounding Being. Thus, an authentic mode or system of ontology is 
concerned with the Being of beings, while an inauthentic one would per-
vert the meaning or purpose of ontology, often resulting in onticology.15

 The lack of a sufficient answer to the questions of Being has, in 
Heidegger's account, been due to the lack of bias-free approaches to the 
question. The pre-Socratic philosophers such as Anaximander, Heracli-
tus, and Parmenides had discourses in ontology which (at least in Heide-
gger’s opinion) were free from negative linguistic and cultural assump-
tions.16 Thus, in ontology, this meant that the pre-Socratics started from 
the point of view that we exist and built out what that means from there. 
However, following Socrates, and especially following Plato with his 
Theory of Forms, the assumptions philosophers made in ontology began 
to shift. Instead of considering what it means to exist right now, many 
philosophers started from the assumption that there is an afterlife, and 
found the meaning of existence to be a combination of the afterlife with 
the current life, the divine with the sublime, or something of that sort. 
This was only magnified by the growth of religions such as Christianity 

14 Heidegger, Being and Time, 31. The emphasis in this quote is directly from 
the source, it is not mine.

15 The term “onticology” is a play on Heidegger’s distinction between the 
ontological and the ontic. Contrary to its popular use, Heidegger used ontic 
to relate something to a being, while ontology regarded the Being of a 
being. Thus, I am presenting onticology as the study of being, rather than 
Being.

16 See Glenn W. Most, “Heidegger’s Greeks,” (n.d.), 85, https://www.bu.edu/
arion/files/2010/03/Greeks-Most.pdf. Most highlights Heidegger’s pre-
Socratic influence by describing the nature in which Heidegger adopted 
specifically non-Platonic and non-Aristotelian ideas from the ancient 
Greeks, going as far as calling the Greeks as Heidegger’s “Pagan Gospel”.



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Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

and Islam, which both further propagated this mode of ontology.17 For 
Heidegger, Being-towards-divinity or Being-towards- transcendence 
was necessarily skewing ontology; as he believed that ontology should 
start from the most fundamental aspects of Being, then build up. Due 
to the historical prevalence of the aforementioned religions (and their 
proselytizing nature), Western philosophers often interpreted divine and 
out-of-this-world notions as being fundamental aspects of Being - even 
when a more fundamental aspect would stem from simply Being-in-the-
world, thus “polluting” Western ontology.

 Hence, the starting place of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy 
is his rejection of most of Western ontology and the need for a com-
pletely new foundation of ontology. First, Heidegger’s philosophy 
requires a new word––Dasein.18 Dasein roughly translates as “Be-
ing-there,” which represents the fact that a human’s understanding of 
Being only exists insofar as they understand Being through the lens of 
a human being’s Being. As a construct, Being itself is inaccessible.19 
Thus, Dasein represents this underlying sense of Being-as-experienced, 
in contrast to Being proper:

Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities. Rather 
it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is 
an issue for it. But in that case, this is a constitutive state of Dasein&#39;s 

17 The Six Enneads by Plotinus began the thought-system of Neoplatonism, 
which led to the Western focus on forms of ontology which do not prioritize 
Being itself. Neoplatonism in Relation to Christianity: An Essay by C. Elsee 
is a good resource for understanding how Neoplatonism affected Christian 
theology during Christianity’s formative years. For Islam, see Neoplatonism 
and Islamic Thought edited by Parviz Morewedge to understand this 
dynamic. More precisely, John 3:16 of The Bible is a good example of 
Being-towards-divinity in Christianity; and for Islam, The Qur’an 29:64 
likewise endorses Being-towards-divinity. In both cases, the holy texts 
advocate for the afterlife being the purpose of this life, and thus ontology 
from these frameworks starts with framing humanity’s existence in terms 
of pursuing the afterlife, when in fact there is a current life we could frame 
ontology in.

18 Though Dasein can be translated as “Being-there”, and it is translated as 
such once in the above text, I will leave it untranslated for the majority of 
the essay because a translation only serves to misrepresent the context for 
which Heidegger invented the word.

19 The inaccessibility of Being is still a topic in contemporary literature, 
as the incredible work of Thomas Nagel in What Is It Like to Be a Bat? 
emphasizes the limitations of ontology. No amount of scholarship could 
uncover the similarities in the Being of a human and the Being of a bat. As 
a fact, there is no basis for understanding what it is like to have wings, what 
echolocation as a sensory perception feels like, etc.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

Being, and this implies that Dasein, in its Being, has a relationship towards 
that Being–– a relationship which itself is one of Being.20

Referring back to his critique of historical Western ontology, Heideg-
ger would argue (and to an extent did argue this in other places)21 that 
the object of Being, whose subject is Being (Dasein), was omitted from 
most of Western tradition in exchange for studying ontic entities, simple 
modes of Being, and Being-towards-divinity.22

 Being and Time, in addition to creating the framework for un-
derstanding Dasein, also highlights complementary concepts in ontolo-
gy, including Thrownness (Gerworfenheit), ready-to-hand (zuhanden-
heit), as well as present-at-hand (vorhanden). Thrownness23 refers to the 
human condition in which a human being is “thrown” into existence 
without proper consent on entering this life and with no choice in where 
they are born, when they are born, their personality, etc. Given the mag-
nitude of this condition and its universality, it is a key aspect of Dasein 
and is alluded to in context here:

Dasein has forgotten itself in its ownmost thrown potentiality-for-Being. 
This forgetting is not nothing, nor is it just a failure to remember; it is 
rather a 'positive' ecstatical mode of one&#39;s having been––a mode with 
a character of its own.24

Thus, one consequence of the intensity of Thrownness is that Da-
sein integrates the Thrownness to such an extent that it forgets 
to remember its more authentic Being, or as Heidegger says, po-
tentiality-for-Being takes precedence. The concept of Thrownness 
also corresponds well with the classical Daoist text entitled the 
Zhuangzi, and that correlative will assist in deepening our

understanding of Thrownness later.

20 Heidegger, Being and Time, 32.
21 See Heidegger’s Philosophy of Religion: From God to Gods by Ben Vedder 

for more details.
22 For the sake of brevity, I will have to skip over much of the characterization 

of Dasein given by Heidegger, and will assume this background is 
sufficient.

23 Geworfenheit is referred to as Thrownness because this is the academic 
consensus for the best translation of it. Some other translations include 
dereliction and dejection.

24 Heidegger, Being and Time, 339.



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Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

 Next, the idea of ready-to-handness is also similar to ideas 
in the Zhuangzi, and thus a discussion of it is warranted. First, 
consider a person about to locomote to their nine to five job. They 
step into their car, presumably listen to music or a podcast, or per-
haps just enjoy the present moment while driving, and they soon 
arrive at work. The car’s Being, though on one level is simply 
an ontical expression of car-ness, manifests to the person as an 
instrument of the immanence of soon being at work. The phaínes-
thai (φαίνεσθαι) of the car’s Being to the person is hence not as a 
car-in-itself ontically but rather as the ready-to-be-usedness of a 
tool. This ready-to-be-usedness is what Heidegger calls ready-to-
handness:

The ready-to-hand is not grasped theoretically at all, nor is it itself the sort 
of thing that circumspection takes proximally as a circumspective theme. 
The peculiarity of what is proximally ready-to-hand is that, in its readiness-
to-hand, it must, as it were, withdraw (zurückzuziehen) in order to be 
ready-to-hand quite authentically. That with which our everyday dealings 
proximally dwell is not the tools themselves (die Werkzeuge selbst). On the 
contrary, that with which we concern ourselves primarily is the work––that 
which is to be produced at the time; and this is accordingly ready-to-hand 
too.25

By this, he means that the most authentic ready-to-handness (thus 
the best definition for the term) is an object which is fully with-
drawn from one aspect of itself (namely the aforementioned ontic 
being) to be used as the essence of a tool.

 Meanwhile, present-at-hand also coincides with ready-to-
handness. While something ready-at-hand is currently available 
as a tool, an object present-at-hand exists in the world simply as a 
being but is able to become ready-to-hand if an instrumental par-
adigm sees it. This is because once someone with an instrumental 
view sees this present-at-hand object, it is no longer just ready to 
be or exist; instead, it is now ready to be used. Regarding objects 
present-at-hand:

25 Heidegger, Being and Time, 99.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

To entities such as these, their Being is 'a matter of indifference' or more 
precisely, they 'are' such that their Being can be neither a matter of 
indifference to them, nor the opposite.26

Hence, the principal focus of an object present-at-hand is the isness of 
itself. More precisely, it is the pure isness, to such an extent that neither 
Being nor non-Being is a concern. 

 With an understanding of a few Heideggerian concepts from  
Being and Time, I will now give a similar background of classical Daoism. 

§ 2: OR NOT TO BE?

 
“Those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know.” 

–– Laozi 老子 in Laozi 老子

§ 2.1: THE GOD OF SPINOZA

 Classical Daoism27 (4th century B.C.E to 9 C.E.)28 refers to the 
very beginning of the Daoist belief system in China. In this period, clas-
sical Daoism was subject to two separate segments of Chinese histo-
ry, existing during the Warring States Period 戰國時代 (from the birth 
of Daoism until 221 B.C.E.) then the Former Han dynasty 漢朝 (from 
206 B.C.E. until the end of classical Daoism in 9 C.E.)29 During these 
two eras, classical Daoism is well- characterized by the wealth of liter-
ature coming from this epoch, where essential texts included the Laozi, 
Zhuangzi, Guanzi 管子, Huainanzi 淮南子, Lüshi Chunqiu 呂氏春秋, 
and the Huangdi sijing 黃帝四經.30

 Hereupon, I will take any practice or thought system focused 
on the cosmological idea of the Dao 道 to be relevant to our discussion 

26 Heidegger, Being and Time, 68.
27 In the discussion of Daoism, the topic of translation is at the forefront of the 

conversation. For consistency, I will use the Hanyu Pinyin translation style 
over the Wade-Giles translation style for this essay. However, for the sake 
of clarity, I will also include any important terms from Daoism in Chinese 
the first time I use them.

28 Adrien Stoloff, “HU 3900 Mysticism Nei-yeh (Inward Training),” Worcester 
Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, 2024.

29 Stoloff, “HU 3900 Mysticism Nei-yeh (Inward Training),” 2024.
30 Ibid.



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and moreover to be a reasonable approximation for Daoism.31 The Dao 
is often translated as “the Way” or “the Path”; however, to best avoid 
projecting preconceived notions for interpreting the Dao, I will simply 
leave it as “the Dao.” Hence, emphasis will be placed on how the early 
Daoist texts characterized the Dao and not on a linguistic translation. To 
this end, we can now characterize the Dao:

The One is the most valued of all things. No one knows its source. No one 
knows its manifestations. No one knows where it starts or where it ends. Yet 
the myriad things take it to be their progenitor. The sage-king imitates it to 
keep his nature intact, to fix his life span, and to issue orders.32

Thus, as the Dao is one, any following characteristics will importantly 
be one aspect of a whole part, which when analyzing Heidegger, will 
be relevant. There is also a normative claim made here implying that a 
“good” person has a nature imitating the Dao, inasmuch as a sage-king 
is a good person. Additionally, the Dao is ineffable33 as seen in the Laozi 
here:

The way that can be spoken of  
Is not the constant way;  
The name that can be named  
Is not the constant name.34

In this context, the Dao is not only ineffable, but its ineffability implies 
its divine essence, which connects well with the conception of the Dao 
as both transcendent and immanent. Next, the Dao has intimate connec-
tions with the concepts of nothingness and creation. To begin to see this, 
consider the passage from the Laozi:

Its upper part is not dazzling;  
Its lower part is not obscure.  
Dimly visible, it cannot be named  

31 The idea of trying to separate Chinese concepts of religion and philosophy is 
yet another controversial issue; because there may be a tendency of Western 
academia to superimpose Western concepts (like religion and philosophy) 
onto Eastern belief systems, I will avoid characterizing Daoism and related 
concepts where it is unnecessary, and will choose more broad terms such 
as “belief systems”. This is all to say that the categorization of Daoism is 
not as important as the ideas present in Daoism, so Daoism is going to be 
conceived of as a belief system in pursuit of authenticity.

32 Lüshi Chunqiu, 111 as quoted in Adrien Stoloff, “Laozi 1,” Worcester 
Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, 2024.

33 Stoloff, “Laozi 1,” 2024.
34 Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, tr. by D.C. Lau (London: Penguin, 2003), chap. 1.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

And returns to that which is without substance.  
This is called the shape that has no shape, 
The image that is without substance.  
This is called indistinct and shadowy.  
Go up to it and you will not see its head;  
Follow behind it and you will not see its rear.35

First, notice how the shape is characterized as the shape that has no 
shape. Ontologically the Dao is the ontological entity that is comprised 
of the negation of ontological value; as in Being.36 The Dao is the mani-
festation of the Being of non-Being. It is a real thing; it does have a head 
and tail, but the head and tail are not visible. If the Dao’s meaning is 
unclear, the idea of a shadow is illuminating. In many ways, a shadow is 
not a tangible thing, it is simply an absence of a tangible thing, that 
is light. Thus, in the same way that a shadow is a being distinguished 
by and composed of non-Being, so too is the Dao the Being of non-Be-
ing. Although a philosophy or religion of nothingness, or the Nothing,37 
could seem to be in vain, the Laozi also addressed this:

Thus what we gain is Something, yet it is by virtue of Nothing that this can 
be put to use.38

In Daoism, the concern is not the uselessness of Nothing because of the 
existence of Something; rather, the concern is that Something is use-
less without Nothing. Insofar as an essence for the Dao is uselessness, 
uselessness is affirmed as being a positive thing in the paradigm of the 
useless tree in the Zhuangzi:

 After Carpenter Shi had returned home, the oak tree appeared 
to him in a dream and said, ‘What are you comparing me with? Are 
you comparing me with those useful trees? The cherry apple, the pear, 
the orange, the citron, the rest of those fructiferous trees and shrubs - 
as soon as their fruit is ripe, they are torn apart and subjected to abuse. 

35 Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 14.
36 Even when outside the Heideggerian framework, I am still going to 

capitalize Being to denote the context that the idea of Being requires as an 
ontological entity, and emphasize the difference between Being and the 
everyday use of being.

37 Similar to the convention for Being, I will capitalize terms like Nothing and 
Nothingness to emphasize their different meaning from everyday use, even 
when not discussing them directly in relation to Daoism or phenomenology. 
Furthermore, Nothingness as a concept can be likened to a religious ideal 
of God in the same way Being can, which is in part why the concept 
meontology exists.

38 Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 11.



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Their big limbs are broken off, their little limbs are yanked around. 
Their utility makes life miserable for them, and so they don’t get to 
finish out the years Heaven gave them, but are cut off in mid-journey. 
They bring it on themselves - the pulling and tearing of the common 
mob. And it’s the same way with all other things.’    
 ‘As for me, I’ve been trying a long time to be of no use, and though 
I almost died, I’ve finally got it. This is of great use to me. If I had been of 
some use, would I ever have grown this large? Moreover you and I are both 
of us things. What’s the point of this - things condemning things? You, a 
worthless man about to die - how do you know I’m a worthless tree?’39

 
Here, the text carefully establishes the merit of uselessness while also 
taking care not to conflate worthiness with usefulness––part of the value 
of the Dao is in uselessness. Meanwhile, as the Dao is transcendent and 
immanent, it is paradoxically useful and useless. Thus, the usefulness of 
Nothingness is made manifest in Daoist cosmogony, which is explained 
by:

The way begets one; 
One begets two; 
Two begets three; 
Three begets the myriad creatures.40 

The Dao (“the way” in this passage) has already been shown as a cos-
mological force that relates to Nothingness, so the fact that the Dao is 
the center of Daoist cosmology means that Nothingness is a pivotal part 
of Something; that non-Creation is a center of Creation; and later, that 
non-Being is a pivotal aspect of Being. We furthermore see it character-
ized as xu 虛 (empty), yuan 淵 (deep), zhan 湛 (dark), jing 靜 (still), yao 
窈 (dim), ji 寂 (silent) and liao 廖 (void); leading to the realization of the 
Dao’s essential action being wuwei 無為 (non-action).41

§ 2.2: THE CREATURES OF PROMETHEUS

 Now engaged in the Daoist paradigm, we are prepared to begin 
tackling the core concept of wuwei. As mentioned earlier, wuwei is the 
39 Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi Basic Writings, tr. by Burton Watson (New York: 

Columbia University Press, 2013), chap. 4.
40 Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 42.
41 Stoloff, “Laozi 1,” 2024.



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essential action of the Dao, which leads to many implications for the 
meaning of wuwei. First, wuwei is traditionally translated as “effortless 
action” or as “non-action,” both of which may necessitate some explana-
tion. Although it more closely translates in English to “non-action” from 
a linguistic perspective, the phrase non-action has the wrong connota-
tion for the meaning of wuwei (which is why I will leave wuwei untrans-
lated). Instead, “effortless action” better depicts the idea that wuwei is 
still an action, but it is an action that is not forced and is in harmony with 
the Dao. Although wuwei will be left untranslated, it can be thought of 
as connotationally meaning effortless action and denotationally meaning 
non-action.

 In most of the aforenamed classical Daoist texts, wuwei is a 
staple for understanding the Daoist worldview and the relation of the 
Dao to humanity and existence. Similar to the Dao, wuwei is better un-
derstood by seeing all the ways it is characterized rather than trying to 
fit it into a one-sentence definition. For instance, Xunzi 荀子 discusses 
wuwei as “an ideal way to ‘walk the path.’”42 From this definition alone, 
there is the interesting conclusion that the essential action of the Dao is 
the manifestation of the ideal way of experiencing the Dao (calling back 
to the definition of the Dao). Hence, using wuwei as an intermediary 
step, we learn that the Dao as a cosmological and mystical idea has an 
essential action of interacting with itself, further compounding its mysti-
cal nature. The Laozi also describes wuwei by describing the never-act-
ing of the Dao: 

“The way never acts, yet nothing is left undone.”43 

At face value, this is a characterization of the Dao (the Way). However, 
as the way never acts, the text is characterizing the Dao as having wuwei, 
and by virtue of having wuwei, nothing is left undone. Thus, returning to 
the discussion of effortless action versus no action, wuwei must be asso-
ciated with some action as nothing is left undone;  however, it is also not 
excessive action - again lending credibility to the translation of wuwei 
as effortless action. Furthermore, wuwei is a virtue present in the sage:

Hence the sage says, I take no action and the people are transformed of 
themselves; I prefer stillness and the people are rectified of themselves; I am 

42 Adrien Stoloff, “Mind Like a Mirror: Toward a Modern Understanding of 
Classical Daoist Wuwei,” PhD diss., (Brown University, 2019), 115, https://
repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:918791/.

43 Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 37.



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not meddlesome and the people prosper of themselves; I am free from desire 
and the people of themselves become simple like the uncarved block.44

Here, there is an emphasis placed on the lack-of-action aspect of wuwei, 
or more appropriately, the lack of improper action, insofar as adjectives 
like meddlesome are included to develop the nuance of wuwei advocat-
ing for a lack of improper action and not a lack of any action. This aspect 
of wuwei is present in sages, and thus the Laozi is making a normative 
argument for the value of acting in harmony with the Dao via wuwei. 
This harkens back to the passage on the Dao, which asserts that sage-
kings are in tune with the Dao; thus, having a nature imitating the Dao 
is both good and wuwei.

 To leave the realm of abstractions, contemplate a more palpable 
illustration of wuwei. Suppose you are a Daoist, and there is a loud argu-
ment on the train you are riding.45 The fight is actively escalating, and it 
appears increasingly likely that the man in the fight is going to physical-
ly hit the woman he is fighting. Only a few options come to your mind. 
For one, there are plenty of other people on the train, and this argument 
is not your problem, so let the fight happen and move on with your day. 
Conversely, be a hero! Imagine the news clips showing a valiant paragon 
saving a woman from domestic abuse by gallantly fighting the abuser! 
But, what is the most Daoist way to react? How could you react with 
wuwei? In this exact scenario, a New York man responded by eating po-
tato chips to de-escalate the scenario.46 Rather than reacting in a forced 
way (as in by picking a fight), which could put more people in danger, 
the bystander decided to step between the two people fighting; confusing 
the potential abuser enough to fully quell the situation. Furthermore, the 
bystander did not choose to do nothing, mirroring the fact that wuwei is 
not “doing nothing”. Instead, the man took action, but not excessively, 
and in turn, this man exemplified acting with wuwei.

 Briefly returning to wuwei as classical Daoists described it, wu-
wei is the action of Tiān 天 (Heaven) and Di 地 (Earth), and therefore, it 
is the optimal life path, which is vital to lifelong health and happiness. 47 
With such a broad definition, there are countless valid explanations and 

44 Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 57.
45 Stoloff, “Laozi 1,” 2024. The idea of the ensuing narrative warrants full 

credit to Professor Stoloff.
46 See the video “Man breaks up subway fight while eating potato chips” by 

WPTV News - FL Palm Beaches and Treasure Coast at https://youtu.be/
hR5cfTVkf-0?si=rHAreMgFQVEebTea.

47 Adrien Stoloff, “Wuwei in the Zhuangzi 2” Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 
Worcester, MA, 2024.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

understandings of wuwei, not limited to the definitions provided herein.

§ 3.1: HOW MUCH LAND DOES A MAN NEED?
 
 The confluence of Being and Time with classical Daoism is a 
topic that has largely been both understudied and unacknowledged. Giv-
en the breadth of ideas I would like to incorporate in this section, I will 
first make explicit the general formatting of this chapter. By and large, 
I aspire to unveil places where Being and Time exhibits direct proof 
of Daoist influence and to begin an open discussion on the similarity 
of certain concepts in Being and Time and classical Daoism. This will 
be accomplished by directly presenting the praxes of my argument in 
the implied order, where the beginning arguments are direct proofs of 
Heidegger’s Daoist influences, and later arguments become nuanced 
discussions showing how classical Daoist ideals arise in Being and 
Time, regardless of the intentionality on Heidegger’s part. To that end, 
the preponderance of evidence suggesting direct Daoist sources in Being 
and Time ought to establish the plausibility of the similarities between 
the Heideggerian and Daoist worldviews as stemming from Heidegger’s 
direct inspiration from Daoist manuscripts.

§ 3.2: TWICE TWO MAKES FOUR 

 To set the stage for the magnitude of Daoist ideas in Being and 
Time, I will first present an excerpt which, even if hyperbolic, should 
help understand the view some of Heidegger’s colleagues had on his 
work: 

Ito Kichinosuke [伊藤吉之助], one of my teachers at university, studied 
in Germany in 1918 immediately after the First World War and hired 
Heidegger as a private tutor. Before moving 20 back to Japan at the end 
of his studies, Professor Ito handed Heidegger a copy of Das Buch vom 
Tee, the German translation of Okakura Kakuzō’s The Book of Tea, as a 
token of his appreciation. That was in 1919. Sein und Zeit (Being and 
Time) was published in 1927 and made Heidegger famous. Mr. Ito was 
surprised and indignant that Heidegger used Zhuangzi’s concept without 
giving him credit. Years later in 1945, Professor Ito reminisced with me 
and, speaking in his Shonai dialect, said, ‘Heidegger did a lot for me, but 
I should’ve laid into him for stealing’. There are other indications that 



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Heidegger was inspired by Eastern writings, but let’s leave this topic here. I 
have heard many stories of this kind from Professor Ito and checked their 
veracity. I recounted this story at a reception held after a series of lectures 
I gave in 1968 at the University of Heidelberg at the invitation of Hans-
Georg Gadamer. Japanese exchange students attended these lectures, and I 
explained that there were many other elements of classical Eastern thought 
in Heidegger’s philosophy and gave some examples. I must have said too 
much and may even have said that Heidegger was a plagiarist…48

 
 For context, the quotation above is from the point of view of a 
Japanese university student whose professor had hired Martin Heideg-
ger as a private tutor. The student recounts that his professor gave Heide-
gger a copy of The Book of Tea. When Being and Time was published, 
the professor was certain that Heidegger had used Kakuzō’s analysis of 
Daoism as the foundation of his philosophy, with the student later giving 
a lecture on this issue at an academic conference in Japan. In The Book 
of Tea, we directly read: “Taoism [is] the ‘art of being in the world.’”49 
The implication here regarding Heidegger is clear as day, as there is no 
proof of Heidegger using the term “Being-in-the-world” before he had 
read the German version of The Book of Tea. With the publication of Be-
ing and Time in 1927, Heidegger had already had access to this transla-
tion as well as a copy of the Zhuangzi for many years. This fact has held 
up in contemporary philosophy, as the few modern scholars discussing 
this issue all say something along the lines of “he has been suspected of 
borrowing the expression ‘being-in-the-world’ (in-der-welt-sein) from 
the 1919 German translation of Okakura Kakuzō 岡倉覚三, The Book 
of Tea (Cha no Hon 茶の本).”50

 Calling back to chapter one, recall that the majority of Being 
and Time is a characterization of Dasein in one way or another. Yet, 
the very term Dasein (Being-there) is derivative of Being-in-the-world, 
which itself is from the characterization of Daoism by Kakuzō. What 
then? Is not the entire web of Heideggerian concepts built outwards 
from the point of stolen intellectual property? As the evidence is pre-
sented, Heidegger did find a niche concept, wrote it off as his own, and 

48 Tomonobu Imamichi, In Search of Wisdom; One Philosopher’s Journey, 
(Tokyo, Japan: International House of Japan, 2004), 123-124.

49 Kakuzō Okakura, The Book of Tea (Global Grey, 2014), 16, http://pdf-
objects.com/files/Book-Of-Tea.pdf.

50 Eric S. Nelson, “Martin Heidegger and Kitayama Junyū: Nothingness, 
Emptiness, and the Thing” Asian Studies 11, no. 1 (2023): 30, https://
journals.uni-lj.si/as/article/view/10594.



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then wrote a book on the concept. Thus, the most logical position main-
tains the existence of Heidegger’s Daoist influences; any objection must 
first develop proof of Heidegger's conception of this concept before he 
interacted with East Asian culture. Moreover, Being-in-the-world from 
The Book of Tea attempts to describe the state of humanity as presented 
in early Daoist literature. Insofar as Dasein is the Being-there of con-
sciousness, then Dasein in the setting of the world is best described as 
Being-in-the-world.

 Now, from an understanding that Heidegger assuredly took in-
fluence from Daoism, it is reasonable to look at specific instances of 
Daoist ideas shining forth in Being and Time. In particular, the Dexter-
ous Butcher of the Zhuangzi bears remarkable similarities to Heidegge-
rian ideas:

Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, “What I care about is the Way, 
which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see 
was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now 
— now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes…’

“A good cook changes his knife once a year — because he cuts. A mediocre 
cook changes his knife once a month — because he hacks. I’ve had this 
knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, 
and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. 
There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no 
thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s 
plenty of room — more than enough for the blade to play about it. That’s 
why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first 
came from the grindstone…”51

On a more fundamental level, Zhuangzi uses this parable to characterize 
wuwei by referencing scenarios any layperson could understand. How-
ever, in doing so, he presents a novel view of tooling. The tool is not 
simply used and separate from the user; it ebbs and flows to and from the 
user in this passage. The tool’s Being as part of the user is made manifest 
through its inability to break, as the durability of the equipment mirrors 
the continued Beingness of the being using it, signifying a lack of dis-
tinction between the two. This characterization is nearly 

unparalleled, not only due to the uniqueness of the idea but also the 
51 Chuang Tzu, Chuang Tzu: The Basic Writings (Columbia University Press, 

1964), Section 8, quoted in Bureau of Public Secrets, Chuang Tzu: “The 
Dexterous Butcher,” (n.d.), Section 8, https://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/
passages/chuang-tzu.htm.



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specificity. Furthermore, up until modernity, there was really no impetus 
to prompt philosophers to think extensively about the relationship be-
tween a tool and its user. And yet, we see for Heidegger that:

Equipment can genuinely show itself only in dealings cut to its own 
measure (hammering with a hammer, for example); but in such dealings 
an entity of this kind is not grasped thematically as an occurring Thing, 
nor is the equipment-structure known as such even in the using. The 
hammering does not simply have knowledge about the hammer's character 
as equipment, but it has appropriated this equipment in a way which could 
not possibly be more suitable. In dealings such as this, where something 
is put to use, our concern subordinates itself to the "in-order-to" which 
is constitutive for the equipment we are employing at the time; the less 
we just stare at the hammer-Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and 
use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the 
more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is - as equipment. The 
hammering itself uncovers the specific 'manipulability' ("Handlichkeit") of 
the hammer.52

He takes special care to characterize the nature of the equipment pre-
cisely. His characterization likewise strays away from the convention of 
conceiving of equipment, tooling, or technology as external to humans. 
Rather, it is by the use of a hammer that the hammer’s Being is revealed. 
Although Heidegger elaborates his theories concerning instrumentality 
and technology later in his career, especially in The Question Concern-
ing Technology, he has already laid the groundwork for the discussion at 
this point in Being and Time, presumably taken from classical Daoism. 
The emphasis on equipment as not existing outside of humans continues 
for much of the book:

The ready-to-hand is not grasped theoretically at all, nor is it itself the sort 
of thing that circumspection takes proximally as a circumspective theme 
… That with which our everyday dealings proximally dwell is not the tools 
themselves (die Werkzeuge selbst). On the contrary, that with which we 
concern ourselves primarily is the work - that which is to be produced at 
the time; and this is accordingly ready-to-hand too. The work bears with it 
that referential totality within which the equipment is encountered.53

The tool becomes such a part of the person that only its ready-to-hand-
ness is present, again painting an artistic flow between the user and the 
equipment. The equipment’s Being in conjunction with the user has no 

52 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 98.
53 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 99.



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medium, similar again to the Zhuangzi: “Confucius said, ‘A good swim-
mer will get the knack of it in no time ––that means he’s forgotten the 
water … he sees the water as so much dry land.’”54 What could we infer 
about a good tradesman? Perhaps, he has forgotten the tool, and sees the 
tool as much as his hand.

 Moving forward, the paradigm Heidegger and classical Daoist 
authors share regarding equipment is most clear if we only take Heide-
gger’s excerpts in a vacuum. In reality, much of Heidegger’s writing 
in Being and Time is in the context of Dasein, which turns out to be 
intricately related to wuwei. As already displayed, Dasein is an object 
of Being whose subject is Being. Likewise, considering wuwei under an 
ontological lens, we can make a few observations. First, wuwei is not an 
ontic entity because even if it is not necessarily an object of Being, it is 
undoubtedly closer related to Being than being. Whereas an ontic entity 
would be a statement of isness; an ontological entity is a statement of the 
isness of isness (deriving from the definition of ontology versus onticol-
ogy). Furthermore, towards which direction does the ontological entity 
of wuwei turn? Given that it is the ideal path of following the Dao, wu-
wei orients itself towards the Dao. And, inasmuch as the Dao has been 
characterized as both transcendent and immanent, as well as Nothing 
and Something, then wuwei is left with no physical direction to turn. 
This fact is only magnified as the Dao and wuwei get better and more 
precisely defined, because better definitions increase the mystical and 
ineffable perception of them. Hence, wuwei, in its possible ontological 
Beingness, must turn to itself as an essential action of the Dao, leading to 
its potential ontological Beingness shining forth in its subject of Being. 
Physically, this statement manifests in the idea that wuwei is generally 
accepted as being capable of occurring in nearly every hobby or work. 
Because wuwei has a subject of Being, or alternatively is a concept out-
side of the paradigm of means and ends (or even within that paradigm, 
wuwei would have wuwei as its own ends), it can be as attainable in 
sports as it is in a trade as it is in an art.55 The only limitation on wuwei 
as an ontological Being exists in the classical Daoist emphasis of wu-
wei manifesting in action. Then, whereas Dasein is simply Being-there, 
wuwei is a way of confronting Being-there authentically. Further, the 
relationship of wuwei to the Dao is that of Dasein to Being, where the 
former acts as a collapse of the potential ontological essence of the latter.

 Not only does Dasein exist as a relative of wuwei, but Heidegger 

54 Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi: Basic Writings, section 19.
55 Stoloff, “Wuwei in the Zhuangzi 2,” 2024.



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also more implicitly incorporates wuwei:

Circumspection operates in the involvement-relationships of the context 
of equipment which is ready-to-hand. Moreover, it is subordinate to the 
guidance of a more or less explicit survey of the equipmental totality of the 
current equipment-world and of the public environment which belongs 
to it. This survey is not just one in which things that are present-at-hand 
are subsequently scraped together. What is essential to it is that one should 
have a primary understanding of the totality of involvements within which 
factical concern always takes its start.56

Here, the transformation of both the person and the equipment created 
because of the inherent goal of a ready-to-hand tool is similar to wuwei. 
Compared with the aforecited “The Dexterous Butcher” section of the 
Zhuangzi, in both cases, the user of a tool becomes more intertwined 
with their tool as they become better at using it. From this, a psycholog-
ical flow state is produced, and given that a psychological flow state is 
similar to wuwei, Heidegger is at least demonstrating the production of 
an idea approximating wuwei.

 Next, there are strong parallels between Heidegger’s charac-
terization of Dasein using Thrownness and the motif of fate in Daoist 
works. In the Zhuangzi, we read:

“I was born on the dry land and felt safe on the dry land - that was what I 
was used to. I grew up with the water and felt safe in the water - that was 
my nature. I don’t know why I do what I do - that’s fate.”57

Here, the Being of the narrator is not justified as reasonable. There is 
no metaphysics presented to justify why they were born on the dry land, 
why they grew up with water, or why this is their nature. Instead, the 
narrator chalks this up to fate. Similarly, Heidegger’s ontology avoids 
normative ethics and metaphysical judgments. In the provided excerpts 
from Being and Time, none advocate for the reader to do anything (al-
though one could argue his presentation of Dasein implies a method of 
living authentically). Hence, Heidegger too, does not care if there is an 
answer to the questions of Thrownness. Instead, he presents his argu-
ment as a truism about the world, saying, “this is just how it is.” Thus, 
both Heidegger and Zhuangzi address the origins of certain determinis-
tic mechanisms in life by illuminating the existence of said mechanisms 

56 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 410.
57 Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi Basic Writings, tr. by Burton Watson (New York: 

Columbia University Press, 2013), Section 19.



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but ignoring why the mechanisms exist.

 Having considered both Dasein and Thrownness in the context 
of Daoism, it is

imperative to realize that the majority of Being and Time is focused on 
Dasein, let alone the even larger spotlight given to both concepts to-
gether. So, to rephrase, a majority of Being and Time is derivative of 
classical Daoist texts. Not only this, but the derivative aspects of Dao-
ism in Heidegger’s work are not simply details, rather, they are entire 
metaphysical, epistemological, and ontological structures underlying 
the thought upon which the book is built. The shining forth of Thrown-
ness from classical Daoism, for example, is not a trivial detail; it is an 
entire ontological structure, a web of presuppositions, which Heidegger 
and Zhuangzi both take for being true. As such, to say Daoism underlies 
Being and Time is not saying that Heidegger directly discusses Daoist 
ideals. On the contrary, he is extracting a more fundamental influence 
from Daoism in the form of the structures through which he views phi-
losophy––these are: fate/Thrownness as a condition of Being, Dasein as 
a complex relationship with wuwei, and the relation of humans with the 
world as fundamentally integrated into the world lacking emphasis on 
instrumentality and equipmentality.

 However, there are limits to my arguments presented. First, the 
idea of Dasein being similar to wuwei is new, and thus, although its 
validity should be seen in this paper, there certainly are important dif-
ferences between Dasein and wuwei. For instance, wuwei is first and 
foremost part of the Daoist belief system and is best understood in ref-
erence to the Dao. By taking wuwei away from the Dao, so too does it 
lose meaning. Furthermore, Dasein is fundamentally a description of 
the world, whereas wuwei entails much more in a normative sense; it 
tells you how to act. So, although I was careful to avoid conflating the 
two ideas directly, this is still worth considering. Another limitation of 
my arguments lies in the possibility that Heidegger took Being-in-the-
world from classical Daoism and then came up with all other ideas inde-
pendently. But this is highly unlikely for a few reasons. First, Heidegger 
took the idea of being in the world and passed it off as his own; there is 
no denying this. His willingness to do so implies he had no qualms about 
taking ideas from Daoism and repurposing them as his own, and he may 
not have realized people would find his source. Second, the similarities I 
presented between Heidegger and classical Daoist texts were not minor 
details that could be recreated; they were entire philosophical structures 
of viewing the world. The best chance for Heidegger not stealing from 



57Issue XII ◊ Spring 2025

Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

Daoism lies in the slight chance that he simply had the same epistemo-
logical, metaphysical, and ontological presumptions as classical Daoists 
had.

In the case a reader could still write off the connections between Martin 
Heidegger and Daoism as coincidental, then it is important to note that 
there are many more philosophical assumptions shared by Heidegger and 
Daoists. First, a significant connection between Heidegger and classical 
Daoist authors has already been developed regarding a few points. The 
discussion of utility’s relationship to usefulness, the interdependence of 
things on relationships, and the revelation of Nothingness in the world 
have all been discussed in David Chai’s Daoist Resonances in Heideg-
ger, especially in the first chapter by Graham Parker.

 Furthermore, more connections still need to be discovered. For 
instance, Heidegger stems from the Husserlian tradition of phenomenol-
ogy.58 In this tradition, there is a focus on studying consciousness by un-
derstanding the first-person point of view of experience.59 For Heidegger 
specifically, “The interconnectedness of Experience serves as the point 
of departure for methodical study.”60 Clearly, then, there is a primacy of 
experience central to Heidegger’s philosophy. In comparison, the Daoist 
cosmology emphasizes the primacy of experience by claiming:

The Way begets one;  
One begets two…”61

 
From the Dao comes oneness, and from oneness comes Yin and Yang, 
and everything else comes to Yin and Yang. Or, assuming that wuwei 
as the essential action of the Dao implies experience is present in this 
cosmology, then this short passage from the Laozi is an expression of 
the primacy of experience in the world. This is yet another structure un-
derlying the worldview of Daoists and Heidegger alike. After this short 
digression, it should be easy to see the reasoning that can be utilized 
elsewhere in Being and Time to identify even more Daoist influences.

§ 3.3: WHERE DO WE COME FROM? WHAT ARE WE? 

58 David Woodruff Smith, “Phenomenology,” Stanford.edu, Stanford 
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, November 16, 2013, https://plato.stanford.edu/
entries/phenomenology/.

59 Ibid.
60 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 75.
61 Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 42.



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WHERE ARE WE GOING? 

 In conclusion, the blatant plagiarism shown in Martin Heideg-
ger’s use of the phrase Being-in-the-world (derived from Daoism) opens 
the door for Being and Time being inspired by

classical Daoism. From this position, a nuanced analysis of Being and 
Time reveals that Heidegger approaches philosophy from a similar worl-
dview as Daoists approach the world, not limited to epistemological, 
metaphysical, and ontological presuppositions. The more analysis of 
Being and Time that is conducted, the more evident the similarities are. 
Some ideas I showed as derivative of Daoism include Dasein, Thrown-
ness, and Equipmentality. Thus, in the context of Heidegger’s confirmed 
reading and use of Daoist terms, I conclude it is more likely than not that 
Heidegger’s presentation of Daoist ideas is due to his adoption of them, 
not mere coincidence. The recognition of Daoist sources in Heidegger’s 
work is imperative not only for historicity but also because it allows 
for future scholarship surrounding syncretism. Given the connections 
between wuwei and Dasein, could wuwei represent the most authentic 
Clearing in Heideggerian philosophy? Or is wuwei truly the most au-
thentic experience for Dasein? In either case, discussions like these are 
essential for future scholarship in the history of philosophy and religious 
studies.



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REFERENCES
Berling, Judith A. “Daoism.” Asia Society. Accessed January 28, 2024. 

https://asiasociety.org/education/daoism#:~:text=Classical%20Daoist%20
philosophy%2C%20formulated%20by.

Bureau of Public Secrets. n.d. “Chuang Tzu: ‘the Dexterous Butcher.’” 
Www.bopsecrets.org.  
https://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/chuang-tzu.htm.

Chuang Tzu. 1964. Chuang Tzu: The Basic Writings. Translated by Burton 
Watson.Columbia University Press.

Down, Bernard. 2000. “Death in Classical Daoist Thought.” Philosophy Now, 
2000.https://philosophynow.org/issues/27/Death_in_Classical_Daoist_
Thought.

Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time. Edited by John Macquarrie and 
EdwardRobinson. 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK: Blackwell 
Publishers Ltd.http://pdf-objects.com/files/Heidegger-Martin-Being-and-Time-
trans.-Macquarrie-Robinson-Blackwell-1962.pdf.

Hogg, William Richey, Henry Chadwick, and Bernard J. McGinn. 2018. 
“Christianity.” In Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/
Christianity.

Imamichi, Tomonobu. 2004. In Search of Wisdom; One Philosopher’s Journey. 
Tokyo, Japan: International House of Japan.

Keiling, Tobias. 2021. “Way (Weg).” In The Cambridge Heidegger Lexicon, edited 
by Mark A. Wrathall, 813–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-heidegger-lexicon/way-
weg/D350F4ACC834CBB7637D68AA18D068AA.

Kitaro, Nishida. 1911. An Inquiry into the Good. New Haven and London: Yale 
University Press. https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/good.pdf.

Lao Tzu. 2003. Tao Te Ching. Translated by D.C. Lau. London: Penguin.

LeFebvre, Dr. Michael. 2022. “‘I Am Who I Am’? The Meaning of God’s Name 
in Exodus.” The Center for Hebraic Thought. February 15, 2022. https://
hebraicthought.org/meaning-of-gods-name-i-am-exodus/.

Lü Buwei, John Knoblock, and Jeffrey K Riegel. 2000. The Annals of Lü Buwei.

Most, Glenn W. n.d. “Heidegger’s Greeks.” Accessed February 28, 2024. https://
www.bu.edu/arion/files/2010/03/Greeks-Most.pdf.

Nelson, Eric S. 2019. “Heidegger’s Daoist Turn.” Research in Phenomenology 49 
(3): 362–84. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26843235?seq=1.



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Nelson, Eric S. 2023. “Martin Heidegger and Kitayama Junyū: Nothingness, 
Emptiness, and the Thing.” Asian Studies 11 (1): 27–50. https://doi.
org/10.4312/as.2023.11.1.27-50.

Okakura, Kakuzō. 2014. The Book of Tea. Global Grey. http://pdf-objects.com/
files/Book-Of-Tea.pdf.

Parks, Graham. 2022. “Thoughts on the Way: Being and Time via Laozi and 
Zhuangzi.” In Daoist Resonances in Heidegger: Exploring a Forgotten 
Debt, edited by David Chai, 12–46. Bloomsbury Academic. https://www.
grahamparkes.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Parkes_-_Thoughts_on_the_
Way_2.pdf.

Plotinus. 1992. The Six Enneads. Translated by Stephen Mackenna and B.S. 
Page. Classics.mit.edu. Larson Publications. https://classics.mit.edu/Plotinus/
enneads.1.first.html.

Smith, David Woodruff. 2013. “Phenomenology.” Stanford.edu. Stanford 
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. November 16, 2013. https://plato.stanford.edu/
entries/phenomenology/.

Stoloff, Adrien. “HU 3900 Mysticism Nei-yeh (Inward Training)” Lecture, 
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, January 18, 2024.

Stoloff, Adrien. “Laozi 1.” Lecture, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, 
MA, January 25, 2024.

Stoloff, Adrien. “Wuwei in the Zhuangzi 2.” Lecture, Worcester Polytechnic 
Institute, Worcester, MA, February 15, 2024.

Stoloff, Adrien. 2019. “Mind like a Mirror: Toward a Modern Understanding of 
Classical Daoist Wuwei.” https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/
bdr:918791/.

Wheeler, Michael. 2011. “Martin Heidegger.” Stanford Encyclopedia of 
Philosophy. October 12, 2011. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/.

Zhuangzi. 2013. Zhuangzi Basic Writings. Translated by Burton Watson. New 
York: Columbia University Press.



61Issue XII ◊ Spring 2025

Perfect Society or

PERFECT SOCIETY OR 
VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION? 

LOCKE, MARITAIN, AND THE AUTONOMY OF 
CHURCH AND STATE

SEAN SCULLY, CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

§ 1: INTRODUCTION  

 The liberal project began in Europe amidst fierce religious 
divisions. In the two centuries that followed the Protestant Reformation, 
competing claims of spiritual authority had driven the continent into 
a number of armed conflicts and suppressive campaigns. Given this 
context, it is not difficult to see why some desired a political arrangement 
that promoted a peaceful coexistence between different denominations. 
It was during this time period that John Locke published his Letter 
Concerning Toleration, which famously argued that the way to achieve 



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this coexistence was by making the state autonomous from the Church.62 
According to this vision, the jurisdiction of each entity would be entirely 
separated from the other, denying governments the right to coerce on 
behalf of any religious creed. This novel approach to political theory 
helped lay the groundwork for liberal philosophy and challenged the 
prevailing notion of the time that the state had a responsibility to promote 
both the temporal and the spiritual welfare of its citizens. 

 While this view was met with resistance from several Christian 
denominations, it faced particularly strong opposition from Catholic 
intellectuals. From the Middle Ages through the Counter-Reformation, 
the Church had always maintained that it was superior in dignity to the 
state and, as such, had the right to instruct and guide the state on spiritual 
matters.63 For this reason, the liberal idea that the state had no right to 
coerce on behalf of spiritual authority was seen by several popes as a direct 
threat to the rights the Church had traditionally claimed for itself.64 Since 
democracy and pluralism are now considered to be essential attributes 
of liberalism, this tension raised the question of whether a democratic 
and pluralistic society could ever realize the Catholic Church’s idealistic 
vision for Church-State relations.  

 Some Catholic thinkers have since been more optimistic about 
Catholicism’s compatibility with democracy. Jacques Maritain, a political 
theorist and committed Thomist, was one such thinker. In his book Man 
and the State, Maritain offers an alternative theoretical justification for 
secular democracy that does not rely on liberal presuppositions. In the 
process, he provides an extensive account of how a separation between 
Church and state could actually work for the benefit of the Church. 

 Although Locke and Maritain both argue for a kind of political 
secularization, they disagree starkly on the type of society that political 
secularization should bring about. Their disagreement strikes at the 
core of the Church-State question: what kind of status should organized 
religions enjoy in a democracy with no established religion? Furthermore, 
how should members of religious congregations, bound by specific 
moral dictates, participate in a political body composed of individuals 

62 For the purposes of this paper, whenever I speak of “the Church,” I am 
referring to the Roman Catholic Church.

63 See St. Thomas Aquinas’ De Regno, Giles of Rome’s On Ecclesiastical 
Power, Robert Bellarmine’s On the Roman Pontiff, and Francisco Suarez’s 
Defensio Fidei.

64 See Libertas and Immortale Dei by Pope Leo XIII and Quanta Cura and the 
Syllabus of Errors by Pope Pius IX.



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of all faiths? This paper aims to clearly explain the ways in which 
Locke and Maritain address these questions in their political theories. 
After drawing out their theoretical differences, I will assess which 
arrangement is more practically realizable. In doing so, I hope to show 
that only Locke’s theory is structured to fulfill its stated ambitions, while 
Maritain’s envisioned society fails to achieve its desired relationship 
between Church and State.

§ 2: LOCKE’S CONCEPTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH 

 Following more than a century of religious upheaval, Locke 
wrote his Letter Concerning Toleration in an attempt to provide civil 
leaders with a roadmap for governing a commonwealth with competing 
religious factions. Although the treatise employs a number of theological 
arguments regarding the nature of Christian Faith, of interest to us here 
are the various claims Locke makes about the proper jurisdiction of both 
political and ecclesiastical authority. 

 Beginning with civil power, Locke defined the state as nothing 
more than “a Society of Men constituted only for the procuring, 
preserving and advancing of their own civil interests.”65 These “civil 
interests” are restricted to temporal goods, such as “Life, Liberty, Health, 
and Indolency of Body” as well as the “Possession of outward things” 
like “Money, Lands, Houses, Furniture, and the like.”66 Furthermore, the 
Letter draws a distinction between temporal and spiritual goods, claiming 
that the state’s authority “neither can nor ought in any manner… be 
extended to the Salvation of Souls.” According to this view of political 
rule, the state exists to provide for the bare necessities of life (such as 
health, money, and property) and to give men the freedom to determine 
how they ought to be used. 

 These claims about civil society rely on several assumptions 
that are treated more extensively in Locke’s Second Treatise on 
Government.67 To better understand what Locke views as the state’s 
purpose, I will highlight just a few of its main ideas. Firstly, the Second 
Treatise describes the pre-political condition of man as being a “state of 

65 John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. James H. Tully 
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), 26.

66 Ibid 26.
67 For the purposes of this paper, I am assuming that both the Letter and the 

Second Treatise present a singular, consistent theory of the state.



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perfect freedom” where all people can “order their actions, and dispose 
of their possessions and persons, as they think fit.”68 Without a governing 
entity to hold licentious men accountable, however, the natural equality 
and liberty that each man should enjoy is left insecure. For this reason, 
men freely (and conditionally) enter into political communities to 
preserve and protect their “lives, liberties, and estates.”69 This agreement, 
commonly referred to as the “social contract,” defines the purpose of the 
state as well as its jurisdictional limits. Locke reiterates this conception 
of the “social contract” in his Letter, where he argues that the state only 
has the authority to regulate matters that “advantage or prejudice the 
Life, Liberty, or Estate of any man.”70

 Most relevant to the topic of this paper, however, is the state’s 
obligation to preserve a man’s “liberty.” As David J. Lorenzo noted, the 
right to liberty remains after men enter into the “social contract,” and as 
such, the “government cannot rationally justify a policy forbidding us 
from acting on our remaining natural liberty.”71 From elsewhere in the 
Second Treatise, we can see that Locke’s conception of liberty within 
the commonwealth is similar to the kind of freedom from restraint that 
he believed we enjoyed in the state of nature. Elaborating on this point, 
Locke argued that the “end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to 
preserve and enlarge freedom” as well as to allow men “to dispose, 
and order as he lists, his person, actions, possessions, and his whole 
property within the allowance of [the] law.”72 Because Locke believes 
we enter into a political community to secure this kind of freedom, he 
is by extension arguing that the state has an obligation to secure and 
“enlarge” the liberty of men to conduct their lives as they see fit. 

 Noting this, let us return to the Letter. As we discussed, Locke 
believes that the state is responsible for protecting and preserving 
man’s “civil” goods. Why, then, are religious beliefs and customs 
not considered to be one of these “civil” goods? According to Locke, 
one reason is that they are acquired through entirely different means. 
Remember, in Locke’s theory, coercive authority is invested in the state 
only for the purposes of securing “lives, liberties, and estates.” In these 

68 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C.B. Macpherson 
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1980), Chapter II, §4.

69 Ibid. Chapter IX, §123.
70  John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, 39.
71 David J. Lorenzo “Tradition and Prudence in Locke’s Exceptions to 

Toleration.” American Journal of Political Science 47, no. 2 (2003): 254. 
https://doi.org/10.2307/3186136.

72 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Chapter VI, §57.



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instances, coercion can effectively encourage upright behavior, such as 
when thieves are punished with fines or imprisonment. Religion, on the 
other hand, depends upon the “inward and full perswasion of the mind,” 
which cannot be brought about through force.73 For example, although 
incarceration can dissuade a man from vandalizing property, Locke 
would argue that it could not be used to convince someone of the truth 
of a particular religion. If it were, the individual’s confession of  “faith” 
would only be given to avoid punishment, rendering it both inauthentic 
and meaningless.

 Locke even goes as far as to argue that forcing a man to betray 
his conscience is counterproductive to achieving his salvation. In 
his words, “to impose such things… [that are] contrary to their own 
Judgement, is in effect to command them to offend God.”74 Because the 
state is not given the kind of power that could effectively achieve the end 
of individual salvation, the state likewise cannot promote any particular 
path to salvation. For a state to do so would be an overreach of its proper 
authority. Instead, “the business of Laws is not to provide for the Truth 
of Opinions, but for the Safety and Security of the Commonwealth, and 
of every particular mans Goods and Person.”75

 The imposition of a religion, however, does not only fall outside 
of the state’s authority. It also actively undermines its obligation to 
“enlarge” liberty. Recall Locke’s theory that our original condition in 
the state of nature is one of “perfect freedom” to order our actions as 
we see fit. If this is the case, then this “perfect freedom” would likely 
extend to the ability to conduct our lives according to whichever creed 
we deem most correct. Indeed, Locke confirms this toward the end of 
his Letter, where he declares that the “Liberty of Conscience is every 
man’s natural Right.”76 For this reason, Locke argues that the “care of 
each Mans Salvation belongs only to himself.”77 Thus, while the state 
can provide for the basic conditions necessary for a good life (health, 
wealth, property, etc.), the state cannot, in the most fundamental sense, 
dictate how private citizens ought to pursue it. 

 So what authority does the Lockean commonwealth have over 
the Church? To determine where the Church falls within the state’s 

73 John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, 26.
74 Ibid 39.
75 Ibid 46.
76 Ibid 51.
77 Ibid 47.



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jurisdiction, we must first identify the kind of organization Locke deems 
the Church to be. Toward the beginning of his Letter, Locke defines a 
church as a mere “voluntary Society of Men.”78 Like all other voluntary 
associations, churches do not have “any Jurisdiction in Worldly matters” 
and therefore have no right to advance their cause by any means of 
coercion.79 

 This model of Church-State relations is not unfamiliar to us 
today. Still, it is not extraordinary to find a liberal-democratic legal 
system that elevates religious congregations above other forms of 
“voluntary associations.” For example, think of how the United States 
exempts religious entities from certain kinds of taxation. Locke, on 
the other hand, makes no such distinction. As Eric R. Claeys correctly 
noted, “Locke treats church denominations as the equivalent of secular 
societies.”80 As evidence, Claeys points to the fact that Locke, when 
speaking of voluntary societies, refers interchangeably to churches 
and groups of “philosophers for learning, of Merchants for Commerce 
[and]… of men of leisure for mutual Conversation and Discourse.”81 
According to this model, there is no legal distinction between the 
Catholic Church and your local gardening club. 

 The status of “voluntary association” does afford the Church 
some basic liberties. Firstly, Locke maintains that all voluntary societies 
have the right to determine their own internal rules. In his words, “no 
Church or Company, I say, can in the least subsist and hold together, 
but will presently dissolve and break to pieces, unless it be regulated 
by some Laws, and the Members all consent to observe some Order.”82 
Since private societies have a right to exist within the Lockean 
commonwealth, and since these societies require rules and regulations to 
maintain themselves, it follows that they also have the right to regulate 
their internal affairs. To enforce their rules, such societies also have a 
right to admit and exclude members at their discretion. This allowance, 
however, does have one condition; the exclusion of a person from 
a religious society cannot deprive that person of any of their “Civil 

78 Ibid 28.
79 Ibid 32.
80 Eric Claeys, “The Private Society and the Liberal Public Good in John 

Locke’s Thought,” George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper no. 
07-43, 5, accessed November 26, 2024, https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/
files/publications/working_papers/07-43.pdf.

81 John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, 10; 51.
82 Ibid 28.



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Goods.”83 Since these goods fall under the protection of the magistrate, 
the religious organization in question would be liable to civil punishment 
if it infringed upon them. In this way, the congregation is prevented from 
possessing coercive power over citizens. 

 Beyond mere logistical regulations, Locke also grants churches 
the right to establish their own doctrines. As he wrote in the Letter, 
“the Magistrate ought not to forbid the Preaching or Professing of any 
Speculative Opinions in any Church, because they have no manner of 
relation to the Civil Rights of the Subjects.”84 Each denomination is 
free to have its members assent to whatever articles of faith they deem 
to be true. Whether a denomination affirms the veracity of the New 
Testament or believes in the Real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is 
of no concern to the state. If a ruler is to uphold Locke’s conception of 
the “liberty of conscience,” he must tolerate any number of “speculative 
opinions,” recognizing that such opinions fall entirely outside the realm 
of civil authority.

 This does not mean that churches are allowed to profess any 
belief whatsoever. On the contrary, Locke argues that the state has an 
obligation to quell opinions that subvert the fulfillment of its own ends. 
To explain the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable doctrine, 
Locke makes a distinction between speculative opinions, which require 
mere intellectual assent, and practical opinions, which bear directly on 
someone’s ethical choices or political decisions.85 Confessing belief in 
the triune God, for example, would be a speculative opinion, while the 
adhering to the laws laid down by the ten commandments would be 
a practical one. Speculative opinions, as we have mentioned, have no 
relation to a man’s civil goods and therefore fall outside the regulatory 
authority of the commonwealth.

 In contrast, Locke defends the state’s right to regulate practical 
opinions that fail to promote the virtues necessitated by liberalism. In his 
words, “A Good Life, in which consists not the least part of Religion and 
true Piety, concerns also the Civil Government…Moral Actions belong 
therefore to the Jurisdiction both of the… Magistrate and Conscience.”86 
For this reason, the state has the authority to restrict those opinions 

83 Ibid 31.
84 Ibid 46.
85 Ibid 46.
86 Ibid 46.



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which are contrary to the “moral Rules which are necessary for the 
preservation of Civil Society.”87

 Determining which opinions to suppress requires, as Claeys puts 
it, “a tough-minded calculation [of] how to tolerate the widest freedom 
of thought consistent with the community’s responsibility to perpetuate 
the conditions in which such freedom is possible.”88 Remember that 
Locke believes that the freedom we enjoy in the commonwealth ought 
to imitate the freedom from restraint that he believes we enjoy in the 
state of nature. As part of the “social contract,” the state is obligated 
to “enlarge” this freedom. If, therefore, the Lockean state chooses to 
suppress a particular opinion, it does so to preserve what Locke identifies 
as as man’s natural right to pursue his own conception of a good life. 

 While Locke enumerates a number of unacceptable opinions, 
there is one that is particularly relevant to this paper, namely the ban 
he places on churches whose condition of membership requires that 
“all those who enter into it, do thereby, ipso facto, deliver themselves 
up to the Protection and Service of another Prince.”89 This, in Locke’s 
view, allows for the possibility of having citizens who feel obligated to 
undermine the activities of their magistrate because of commands they 
received from their religious leader. Even though he only cites Muslims 
beholden to the Ottoman Empire as an example, this restriction is also 
clearly applicable to Catholics, who recognize the supreme authority 
of the Roman Pontiff. In this instance, the Church and the unity of its 
doctrine would be subordinated to the end of the state. Locke, then, 
affords the Church no special designation or exemption for the sake of 
maintaining the entirety of its faith. Rather, if the Church’s teachings 
are deemed counterproductive to the security of each man’s “liberty of 
conscience,” then the expectation is that the Church must discard those 
teachings. 

 Throughout the course of his Letter, Locke presents a view of 
Church-State relations that is very familiar to contemporary readers: 
“the Church it self is a thing absolutely separate and distinct from 
the Commonwealth.”90 Since its publication, the Letter’s position of 
“separation of Church and State” has become standard among Western 

87 Ibid 49.
88 Claeys, “The Private Society and the Liberal Public Good in John Locke’s 

Thought,” 28.
89 John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, 50.
90 Ibid 33.



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nations. In this dynamic, the state is the only entity which possesses 
coercive authority, and churches are partially shielded from government 
overreach through each man’s right to form “voluntary associations.” If 
the Church is regarded as a voluntary association like any other, however, 
then it is difficult to claim any special right for it. As we shall see in 
the next section, this very limitation created a dilemma that Catholic 
philosophers are still grappling with. 

§ 3: MARITAIN’S ATTEMPT TO RECONCILE 
CHRISTIANITY AND PLURALISM 

 A cursory glance at the history of Catholic political thought 
reveals the challenge Locke’s view (and, by extension, the classical 
liberal tradition) poses to the Church’s traditional stance. As late as the 
nineteenth century, there were papal encyclicals published condemning 
the process of rapid liberalization that most Western nations were 
undergoing. In these encyclicals, there are a number of clear and succinct 
rejections of the arguments that were discussed in the previous section. 

 For example, in 1864, Pope Pius IX published the Syllabus 
of Errors, a document that contains a list of 80 propositions that were 
condemned by the pope as heretical and erroneous. Among the claims 
it rejects is the idea that a civil ruler “may interfere in matters relating 
to religion, morality and spiritual government, ” directly rebuking the 
state’s authority to regulate the Church’s opinions.91 The Syllabus also 
condemns a statement which sounds like it could have been written by 
Locke himself: “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the 
State from the Church.”92 

 These ideas are elaborated upon in Pope Leo XIII’s 1885 
encyclical Immortale Dei. In it, Leo XIII seems to reject the Lockean 
conception of religious liberty, denying “that everyone is to be free to 
follow whatever religion he prefers.”93 He likewise rejects the idea that 
the state ought to refrain from attending to spiritual affairs, arguing 
instead that “it [is] a sin for the State not to have care for religion as 
a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of 
many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with fancy.”94 

91 Pius IX, The Syllabus of Errors,§44.
92 Pius IX, The Syllabus of Errors, §55.
93 Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, §26.
94 Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, §6.



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Later on, he makes it clear that the ideal political arrangement is not 
one where the state merely facilitates religious liberty, but one where 
the “religion instituted by Jesus Christ, established firmly in befitting 
dignity, [flourishes] everywhere, by the favour of princes and the 
legitimate protection of magistrates; and Church and state [are] happily 
united in concord.”95 By the turn of the twentieth century, it seemed 
clear that magisterial authority had not yet placed its faith in secular 
democracy. 

 This put Maritain in a tough position. As we mentioned briefly 
in the introduction, Maritain was pleased by many of the developments 
that had taken place in civil society throughout his lifetime. He spoke 
favorably of democracy, describing it as “the only way of bringing about 
a moral rationalization of politics” and the “only way through which 
the progressive energies of human life [come to] pass.”96 At the same 
time, however, Maritain recognized that some of these improvements in 
human flourishing were advanced on the basis of principles at odds with 
his Thomistic philosophical commitments.97 Thus, one of Maritain’s 
objectives in Man and the State was to formulate a new political theory 
that defended pluralistic democracy on non-liberal grounds. Although 
the book is comprehensive in its treatment of political authority, what 
is of particular interest to us here is his sixth chapter, where he directly 
addresses the Church-State issue.

 In order to grasp Maritain’s general argument, it is important to 
understand his distinctive philosophy of history. Maritain was aware that 
his predecessors within the Catholic intellectual tradition (Bellarmine, 
Pius IX, Leo XIII, etc.) held a very different view of Church-State 
relations than he did. In Maritain’s view, however, it was a mistake 
to assume that a political arrangement deemed ideal in its time would 
necessarily remain ideal for all times. Instead, Maritain believed that 
each epoch possessed its own unique “historical climate” that had to be 
considered when determining the ideal form of Church-State relations.98 
Only in the context of a society’s current “social, political, and juridical” 
circumstances could a political ideal be fashioned.99

95 Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, paragraph 21.
96 Jacques Maritain, Man and the State, (Washington D.C.: Catholic University 

of America Press, 1951), Chapter III, 59-60.
97 Ibid Chapter VI, 159.
98 Ibid Chapter VI, 156.
99 Ibid Chapter VI, 156.



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 Maritain did not take this to mean that new political theories could 
be formulated without reference to the past. Rather, Maritain believed that 
a set of conditions, or “immutable principles,” had to be met for any theory 
of Church-State relations to be adequate.100 In this way, he could propose 
a new ideal relationship between Church and State while maintaining 
continuity with previous teaching. The immutable principles laid out by 
Maritain are threefold. First, the state must acknowledge that its end of 
temporal welfare is inferior to each individual person’s spiritual end and, 
consequently, is subordinate to the spiritual in dignity.101 Secondly, the 
Church, as the “Kingdom of God” on Earth, must be given the liberty to 
carry out its mission of teaching, preaching, and worshipping.102 Finally, 
as creatures that are both corporeal and spiritual, those who profess faith 
in the Church are simultaneously members of the Church as well as the 
body politic. Because of this, the “Church and the body politic cannot 
live and develop in sheer isolation…from one another.”103 Consequently, 
there must be some kind of cooperation between Church and State.104 

 Now, as Maritain suggests, let us contextualize our own time 
period with what Maritain considers to be our particular “historical 
climate.” For him, our age is a “secular” one, defined by the gradual 
rise of the state as completely differentiated and autonomous from the 
Church.105 Maritain sees this as a positive development that fully realizes 
the “Gospel’s very distinction between God’s and Caesar’s domains.”106 
This does not mean that the state must be irreligious or indifferent toward 
religion. Instead, it merely means that the state is “only concerned with 
the temporal life of men and their temporal common good.”107 As a 
faithful Thomist, however, Maritain believed man to be a unity of body 
and soul, and as such, he saw the good of each man as transcending his 
mere material conditions. For this reason, the state must provide for the 
fulfillment of the “higher ends of the human person” by “supervising the 
development of sound conditions and means in the body politic for good 
human life, both material and rational.”108 Unlike Locke, Maritain does 
not believe the state exists exclusively to secure a man’s “life, liberty, 
and estate.” Rather, the “common good” envisioned by Maritain is much 

100 Ibid Chapter VI,  157.
101  Ibid Chapter VI, 149-150.
102  Ibid Chapter VI, 151-152.
103  Ibid Chapter VI, 153.
104  Ibid Chapter VI, 154.
105  Ibid Chapter VI, 159.
106  Ibid Chapter VI, 159.
107  Ibid Chapter VI, 153.
108  Ibid Chapter VI, 173b.



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more comprehensive, encompassing both material interests as well as 
the spiritual good of each person. 

 But alas, as a secular institution, Maritain’s state does not confess 
faith in the Catholic religion in quite the way Leo XIII would have hoped. 
This is because such a state would respect what is acknowledged as man’s 
natural right to “free association” and to “believe the truth recognized 
by one’s conscience.”109 As such, the state would be prohibited from 
imposing a singular belief system or way of life on its citizenry. Instead, 
Maritain argues that the state must respect the open discussion of ideas 
and opinions, for “[f]reedom of inquiry, even at risk of error, is the normal 
condition for men to get access to the truth.”110 In this way, Maritain’s 
society bears a resemblance to the Lockean commonwealth, which is 
entirely unconcerned with the “truth of opinions.” Furthermore, both 
thinkers would agree that the state is “not equipped to deal with matters 
of intelligence”––or speculative opinions as Locke would call them.111 
Thus, neither Locke nor Maritain believe that opinions can be restricted 
purely for their moral quality.

 Maritain does, however, elevate the Church (and other churches) 
above the status of a mere voluntary association. Maritain’s state, 
rooted in the natural law, acknowledges the importance of collectively 
acknowledging faith in a lawgiver.112 Although this does not have to 
be done according to the Catholic Faith, such a state would have the 
right to grant institutional recognition and support to those “religious 
communities historically rooted in the life of the people.”113 Thus, full 
autonomy for Maritain is not synonymous with a complete lack of 
cooperation.

 Indeed, this model of governance intends to preserve the 
Church as a “perfect and perfectly independent society” fully capable of 
achieving its own ends.114 In Maritain’s view, when the Church is made 
independent from the state, it will be able to exercise its function more 
“purely.”115 In this way, Maritain’s “christianly inspired” democracy 
grants the Church the liberty it requires according to the three immutable 
principles mentioned earlier. The freedom to fulfill its mission will, in 

109  Ibid Chapter VI, 150.
110  Ibid Chapter VI, 162.
111  Ibid Chapter V, 118.
112  Ibid Chapter VI, 172-173.
113  Ibid Chapter VI, 174.
114  Ibid Chapter VI, 175.
115  Ibid Chapter VI, 169.



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turn, inspire and rejuvenate the faithful, who will then influence all 
the states of the world through their universal and pervasive influence 
(which, in Maritain’s view, provides for the spiritual superiority of the 
Church).116 Finally, Maritain’s state will achieve the immutable principle 
of cooperation by simply fulfilling its own proper end effectively.117 
As we have shown before, Maritain believes that the “common good” 
that the state strives for aims to secure our “higher ends” as well as our 
material interests. Therefore, just as grace builds on nature, Maritain is 
proposing that what the state owes to the Church is a well-formed and 
cultivated citizenry. Thus, in showing us how this arrangement satisfied 
all three of his immutable principles, Maritain is optimistic about the 
Church’s ability to carry out its mission within a pluralistic society. 

§ 4: AUTONOMY IN PRACTICE:
 By now, we have discussed two theories of secular democracy. 
While both posit a kind of autonomy between Church and State, their 
intentions are radically different. Locke’s theory aims to reduce the 
Church to the status of a voluntary association, subject to the state’s 
coercive correction if they are deemed subversive to the values of a 
liberal society. Maritain’s theory, on the other hand, seeks to liberate the 
Church from cumbersome political concerns, allowing it to conduct its 
mission in the freest sense possible. As this paper draws to a close, we 
will be testing the strength of these theories by investigating which end 
secular society is more capable of achieving. 

 To begin, let us return to a point in Maritain’s argument which 
may give pause to contemporary readers: the idea that the Church and 
State must “cooperate” with one another. As was made clear, Maritain 
does not take this to mean that the state must conspire on behalf of a 
singular religious institution. If, however, the Church is regarded as a 
“supreme and sovereign” authority over matters of faith and morals (as 
Maritain would have it), it becomes hard to see how civil governments 
could act independently of the Church’s directives.118 Conversely, if the 
Church is not viewed as “supreme and sovereign,” it becomes challenging 
to distinguish it from any other kind of voluntary association.

 This very criticism was made cogently by a philosopher named 
Gregory Vlastos. A contemporary of Maritain’s, he too greatly admired 

116  Ibid Chapter VI, 164.
117  Ibid Chapter VI, 178.
118  Ibid. Chapter VI, 185.



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the secularization and democratization of civil society. Although he 
believed that there was much to be commended within Maritain’s book, 
he was utterly dismayed by Maritain’s conception of Church and state. 
He questioned whether the Church could exercise her full authority 
without “infringing on the ‘full autonomy’ of civil society.”119 Whereas 
Maritain was optimistic about society’s ability to separate “God and 
Caesar,” Vlastos noted that if the Church were to maintain its claim of 
absolute authority over matters of morality, its jurisdiction would have 
to include the temporal welfare of society. After all, peace, justice, and 
human flourishing are all moral goods.120 This very idea is explicitly 
maintained within the encyclicals of Catholic social teaching, such as 
when Pope Pius XI proclaimed that “social” and “economic activities” 
belong underneath the Church’s “supreme jurisdiction.”121 Such claims 
about the nature of papal authority make a neat division between 
“secular” and “spiritual” matters impossible.

 Vlastos went on to argue that if the pope can authoritatively 
interpret and apply the natural law, he would then also possess the 
power to render the laws of sovereign nations illegitimate.122 In making 
this claim, he employs Maritain’s own Thomistic belief that an “unjust 
law, even if it expresses the will of the people, is not law.”123 Thus, 
if members of the Church “were so instructed by the [pope] as to 
understand that a given law of their state…goes ‘against the laws and 
dictates of nature,’ they would be conscience-bound to hold that it is not 
a law.”124 His argument can be restated more simply in the following 
syllogism: if an unjust law is no law at all, and the pope has the authority 
to determine whether a law is unjust, he therefore also has the authority 
to render democratically-instituted laws illicit. If the pope reserves 
the right to nullify the legitimacy of state law, then, theoretically, the 
legitimacy of political activity hinges upon the tacit or explicit approval 
of ecclesiastical authority. Consequently, democratic governments 
possess moral authority over Catholics only to the extent permitted 
by the Church. Thus, the state would only appear autonomous when, 

119  Gregory Vlastos, “Of Sovereignty in Church and State.” The Philosophical 
Review 62, no. 4 (1953): 575-576. https://doi.org/10.2307/2182462.

120  Ibid 569.
121  Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, encyclical letter, May 15, 1931, para. 

41, accessed November 27, 2024, https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/
en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo-anno.
html.

122  Vlastos, “Of Sovereignty in Church and State,” 570.
123  Jacques Maritain, Man and the State, Chapter II, 48.
124  Vlastos, “Of Sovereignty in Church and State,” 570.



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in actuality, the validity of its activities would depend on the moral 
directives of the Church.

 This is why Locke cautioned against permitting religions that 
“deliver” their members “up to the Protection and Service of another 
Prince.” In such cases, citizens could not only face spiritual penalties for 
obeying secular laws, but might also feel morally obligated to enforce 
their denomination’s moral teaching through legislation. If this were to 
occur, Vlastos argued, then the Church would threaten the autonomy 
of the state and “cease to be a voluntary association.”125 In Lockean 
fashion, Vlastos prioritizes the conditions that enable religious pluralism 
over any particular church’s right to adhere to the fullness of their faith.

 One point I hope is clear by now is the challenge of maintaining 
that the Church and state can operate in entirely separate spheres of 
jurisdictional authority without ever infringing on one another. To return 
to the dilemma that we presented at the beginning of this section, if the 
authority of the Church is to be regarded as “supreme and sovereign” 
over matters of faith and morals, then the otherwise legitimate functions 
of a democratic and pluralistic state cannot be truly autonomous from the 
moral judgements of the Church. What is considered to be the Church’s 
proper sphere of influence (faith and morals) too frequently intersects 
with political and social matters for this to be possible. 

 Within Maritain’s framework of mutual autonomy, one can 
certainly imagine functions which would be more appropriate for one 
entity or the other. No pope, as far as I am aware, has ever made a ruckus 
over the decisions a political body has made regarding their own traffic 
laws. It is those matters where faith, morals, and politics intersect that 
present more complex challenges. The debates surrounding the legality 
of abortion, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia, for example, have all 
been highly-politicized issues on which the Church has taken strong 
stances. In these instances where the teaching of the Church might 
conflict with the enactments of a sovereign nation, the question shifts 
from determining which entity has authority over the issue to deciding 
whose authority takes precedence. 

 Up to this point, we have been considering a hypothetical in 
which the members of the body politic recognize the moral authority 
of the Church. In our own day, however, the general public is far more 
likely to acknowledge and comply with the coercive power of the state 

125  Vlastos, “Of Sovereignty in Church and State,” 574.



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than the directives of any one church or religious congregation. There are 
certainly many whose political opinions are influenced by their religious 
convictions, but governments in Western nations generally do not allow 
objections from clergy to prevent them from implementing duly-enacted 
laws. Thus, in practice, it certainly seems as if most Western nations 
recognize the state’s authority over the Church whenever they encounter 
these “mixed” matters. 

 Maritain himself knew full well that the state was no 
longer beholden to the Church’s bidding––in fact, he celebrated 
this development. He never seemed to anticipate, however, that the 
secularization of society would correspond with the waning influence of 
religion. Instead, as we have covered, he believed that the separation of 
Church and state would lead to the Church being able to conduct itself 
more “purely” and “in a completely free and autonomous manner.”126 
In doing so, the Church would exercise a “vivifying” influence on the 
body politic, influencing the affairs of state through the activity of its 
laypeople rather than the demands of the clergy.127 

 It is abundantly clear to us today that this arrangement has not 
come to pass. The different Christian churches certainly still have a right 
to congregate and worship according to their particular doctrines, but 
beyond that, their ability to influence and change public opinion has only 
decreased. This is because, as Thomas Pink noted, when a society no 
longer feels obligated to acknowledge the truth of a particular religion, 
it simultaneously ceases to promote religion in general as a distinctive 
and transcendent good. In his words, “[i]t seems that unless the truth 
of supernatural revelation is accepted, there is simply no reason for 
denying the state the same authority over religion as over other natural 
goods.”128 As a result, the state then “seeks to direct religion, but 
without recognizing religion as a distinctive natural good, assimilating 
it instead…as one among many forms of subjectively fulfilling personal 
commitments, like a sport or a hobby.”129 

 In other words, when the Church is not publicly recognized by 
the state as having a supernatural character that distinguishes it from all 
the other denominations claiming the same status, the Church is reduced 

126  Jacques Maritain, Man and the State, Chapter VI, 163.
127  Ibid 162.
128  Thomas Pink, “Jacques Maritain and the Problem of Church and State,” 

The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 79, no. 1 (January 2015): pg. 
29.

129  Ibid 29.



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to a mere voluntary association of the Lockean variety. As such, the 
state has the same sort of jurisdiction that it would over other voluntary 
associations. To name just one example, were churches considered 
“essential services” during the 2020 lockdowns? Or were their activities 
restricted in the same way restaurants and gyms were? The answer to 
this question indicates that contemporary society has joined Locke in 
seeing no substantive distinction between religious congregations and 
secular associations. Far from what Maritain had hoped for, the process 
of secularization has not promoted the idea that religion is “essential” to 
fulfilling the ends of a human person. Instead, it has only lent itself to the 
Lockean view of Church-State relations.

§ 5: CONCLUSION
 Allow me to now make explicit what I have merely been 
suggesting; Locke, in his theory of Church and State, presents a much 
more realistic vision of the kind of relationship these two entities can 
maintain in a secular society. The conflict between Church and state 
arises in their competing claims of ultimate authority–– with the Church 
asserting authority over faith and morals and the state asserting authority 
over the political common good. Maritain argues that, in our secular 
era, the Church and state can remain simultaneously autonomous and 
sovereign within their respective spheres, and that this arrangement is 
ordered toward the benefit of both. This argument, however, presupposes 
that the jurisdictions of Church and state never overlap; otherwise, one 
authority would inevitably be subordinated to the other. As we have 
shown, however, there are plenty of “mixed matters” in which both 
entities can legitimately claim stake. 

 Furthermore, Maritain attributes to the Church no special power 
or privilege that would indicate that the Church would take priority over 
these “mixed matters.” Because of Maritain’s sincere belief in intellectual 
pluralism, his theory offers the Church no means for enforcing its vision 
of the common good. Although he personally believes in the truth of the 
Catholic religion, his ideal state would allow each man to pursue the 
“truth recognized by one’s [own] conscience.”130 Locke’s theory, on the 
other hand, provides the theoretical justification for censoring those who 
subvert the purpose of the liberal state. In the Lockean commonwealth, 
the magistrate is given full authority to censor those “practical opinions” 
which endanger men’s liberty. Maritain has no such provision to regulate 

130  Ibid Chapter VI, 150.



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those who would subvert his “christianly inspired” state. For a believer 
such as Maritain, the Church may be the kingdom of Heaven on Earth. 
As Locke would say, however, “every Church is Orthodox to itself.”131 

 As both Vlastos and Pink show, I am not the first one to point out 
some of the vulnerabilities in Maritain’s theory. Both authors correctly 
point out that the Church cannot exercise the rights it has traditionally 
claimed for itself within the context of a liberal, pluralistic state. My 
intention in this paper, however, was not merely to identify these areas 
of tension. Rather, I wanted to contextualize this ongoing discussion by 
digging deeper into the theoretical framework which gave rise to the 
secular state. In doing so, I hoped to show how Locke’s theory of a 
liberal society (as well as secular society as it has unfolded) is designed 
to be insulated from the influence of any one, particular denomination. 
Although Maritain offers an alternative theory of secular democracy, the 
fruits of history have shown that the intended consequences of Locke’s 
theory were far more plausible.

131  John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, 33.



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REFERENCES
Claeys, Eric. “The Private Society and the Liberal Public Good in John Locke’s 

Thought.” 

George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper no. 07-43 (2007): 1–29. 
Accessed November 26, 2024. https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/
publications/working_papers/07-43.pdf.

Locke, John. A Letter Concerning Toleration. Edited by James H. Tully. 
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983.

Lorenzo, David J. “Tradition and Prudence in Locke’s Exceptions to Toleration.” 
American Journal of Political Science 47, no. 2 (2003): 248–257. https://doi.
org/10.2307/3186136.

Maritain, Jacques. Man and the State. Washington, DC: The Catholic University 
of America Press, 1998. 

Pink, Thomas. “Jacques Maritain and the Problem of Church and State.” The 
Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 79, no. 1 (January 2015): 1–42.

Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, encyclical letter, November 1, 1885, accessed 
November 27, 2024. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/
documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_01111885_immortale-dei.html.

Pope Pius IX. The Syllabus of Errors. December 8, 1864. Accessed November 27, 
2024. https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9syll.htm.

Pope Pius XI. Quadragesimo Anno. Encyclical letter, May 15, 1931. Para. 41. 
Accessed November 27, 2024 https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/
encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo-anno.html.

Vlastos, Gregory. “Of Sovereignty in Church and State.” The Philosophical 
Review 62, no. 4 

 (1953): 561–576. https://doi.org/10.2307/2182462. 



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THERE IS NO SUCH FINIS ULTIMUS
LIBERAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND CHURCH-
STATE  
RELATIONS CONSIDERED

MICHAEL ELLISON

 In this paper, I will describe the philosophical anthropology 
presupposed by the liberal tradition and demonstrate how that 
anthropology influences liberal conceptions of the relationship between 
Church and state. My analysis will draw from the works of Thomas 
Hobbes, John Locke, and John Rawls. I will also offer a critique of 
liberal anthropology and an alternative view of the relationship between 
Church and state based on the Thomistic tradition of Aquinas and Pope 
Leo XIII.

 Despite the diversity and variety of the liberal tradition, the three 
liberal thinkers mentioned above are united by common threads. One 
such thread is that all three of them are social contract theorists. Hobbes’ 
Leviathan and Locke’s Second Treatise of Government are explicitly 
social contract works. Rawls’ system, outlined in A Theory of Justice 
and Justice as Fairness, is slightly different, involving not a contract that 
charters a government but an agreement on certain principles adopted 
by citizens in a hypothetical “original position” characterized by being 



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under a “veil of ignorance.”1 Rawls states that his theory “generalizes 
the familiar idea of the social contract,” but modifies it by “making 
the object of agreement the first principles of justice… rather than a 
particular form of government.”2 Thus, despite his modifications, Rawls 
identifies himself with the social contract tradition of Hobbes and Locke 
and clarifies that his system shares its basic structure.

 However, the most significant commonality between the liberal 
thinkers is the philosophical anthropology they share and presuppose 
in their political theories. Here, there is distinct congruence between all 
three authors: despite the various conclusions they draw about the ideal 
system of government and how to structure it, they all hold a common 
understanding of human nature and the human person. This liberal 
anthropology views man as having no determinate good toward which 
he is naturally inclined but instead as defining his own conception of the 
good and being primarily governed by the passions.

 This view of man results from the liberal rejection or bracketing 
of teleology. In Hobbes’ Leviathan for example, he explicitly rejects the 
teleological notion of man having a highest end or good to which he is 
compelled by nature. He states:

[W]e are to consider that the felicity of this life consisteth not in the 
repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such Finis ultimus (utmost aim) 
nor Summum Bonum (greatest good) as is spoken of in the books of the 
old moral philosophers.3

 Here, Hobbes asserts that man has no end or good to which he 
is inclined. Instead, Hobbes argues that man’s happiness is driven by “a 
continual progress of the desire, from one object to another, the attaining 
of the former being still but the way to the latter.”4 It is continual because 
“the object of man’s desire is not to enjoy once only, and for one instant 
of time, but to assure forever the way of his future desire.”5 Importantly, 
Hobbes leaves the object of man’s desires undefined because he believes 
that man’s desires are simply whatever he is inclined to at any particular 
moment. Thus, man has no ultimate good that he desires, which leaves 

1  See John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly 
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), Pt. I, §6.2-3, p. 15-16. 

2  Ibid., §6.3, p. 16.
3  Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett 

Publishing Co., Inc., 1994), Pt. I, ch. xi, par. 1, p. 57.
4  Ibid.
5  Ibid.



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him free to define the good for himself. Hobbes substitutes for the 
teleological conception of the human good a private notion of the good 
based on each person’s appetites and desires.

 Locke also rejects a teleological notion of man’s ultimate 
good and adopts the notion that each person can define the good for 
themselves. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he writes, 

The Mind has a different relish, as well as the Palate; and you will as fruitlesly 
endeavor to delight all Men with Riches or Glory… as you would to satisfy 
all Men’s Hunger with Cheese or Lobsters…. Hence it was, I think, that 
the Philosophers of old did in vain enquire, whether Summum bonum 
consisted in Riches, or bodily Delights, or Virtue, or Contemplation: And 
they might have as reasonably disputed, whether the best Relish were to be 
found in Apple, Plumbs, or Nuts…6 

Once again, we see the rejection of an objective human good in favor 
of the good being reduced to personal preference. Locke’s comparison 
of debates regarding the good to arguments about preferred foods and 
his use of “relish” and “palate” vividly illustrate that man’s good comes 
down to personal taste. He says, “What has an aptness to produce 
Pleasure in us, is that we call Good…”7 Locke clarifies that people define 
their conception of the good based on what they find pleasurable. Haig 
Patapan and Jeffery Sikkenga connect this to Locke’s concept of the 
“pursuit of happiness,” writing, “Locke argues that…. [w]e define what 
is good by what gives us ‘Happiness,’ which Locke defines as ‘the utmost 
Pleasure we are capable of.’”8 This, in turn, results in “[t]he person’s 
pursuit of a ‘greatest good’ for him as a human being transform[ing] 
into the person’s ‘pursuit of happiness’ for him as an individual.”9 Thus, 
for Locke as well as Hobbes, human happiness depends on the private 
conception of the good a person has.

 John Rawls takes a slightly different approach to the question of 
the human good. Like Hobbes and Locke, he affirms that human beings 
can define their own conception of the good. He states, “Citizens are free 

6  John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. 
Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), Bk. II, ch. xxi, §55, p. 
269, ln. 11-14, 18-22.

7  Ibid., §42, p. 259, ln. 2-3.
8  Haig Patapan and Jeffery Sikkenga, “John Locke’s ‘Unease’: The 

Theoretical Foundation of the Modern Separation of Church and State,” 
Political Theory 52, no. 5 (2024): 822.

9  Ibid., 824 (citations removed).



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in that they conceive of themselves… as having the moral power to have 
a conception of the good.… [T]hey are seen as capable of revising and 
changing this conception on reasonable and rational grounds…”10 Rawls 
even says the ability to do this is a fundamental liberty.11 However, 
unlike Hobbes and Locke, Rawls does not say that this ability to define 
a conception of the good for oneself is because there is no objective 
human good to begin with. Rawls does not even provide an argument 
against this teleological conception of the human good. Instead, Rawls 
simply brackets the issue entirely and states that “reasonable pluralism,” 
the presence of many competing conceptions of the good in the public 
sphere, is a fact of life. Objective conceptions of the human good are

not… excluded by deductive argument…. Instead, they are ruled out by 
the historical conditions and the public culture of democracy that set out 
the requirements for… a modern constitutional regime. Among those 
historical conditions is the fact of reasonable pluralism…12 

In response to those who would say that “the religiously true, or the 
philosophically true, overrides the politically reasonable,” Rawls asserts 
that there is no place in public reason to investigate such claims: “We 
simply say that such a doctrine is politically unreasonable. Within 
political liberalism nothing more need be said.”13 Rawls states that 
the “fact” of reasonable pluralism requires society to structure itself to 
incorporate many different conceptions of the good, despite religious 
and philosophical arguments that there is an objective good that human 
nature inclines people toward. In a sense, he assumes what needs to be 
proved—that human nature does not incline man toward an objective 
good, or that this fact is unknowable to reason.14 

 Whatever the deficiencies in Rawls’ refusal to provide an 
argument against an objective human good, one can see that rejecting a 
teleological conception of the human good, which humans are directed 
to by nature, is a common thread in liberal anthropology. It also leads to 
the second common feature of liberal anthropology, the characterization 
of human beings as driven primarily by their passions. Since the 

10  Rawls, Justice as Fairness, Pt. I, §7.4, p. 21.
11  See ibid., Pt. III, §32.4, p. 113.
12  Ibid., Pt. I, §8.2, p. 25.
13  John Rawls, Political Liberalism, expanded ed. (New York: Columbia 

University Press, 1993), Pt. 4, p. 488.
14  This is Allan Bloom’s primary criticism of Rawls’ system. See Allan 

Bloom, “Justice: John Rawls Vs. The Tradition of Political Philosophy,” 
The American Political Science Review 69, no. 2 (1975): 648-662.



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liberal tradition holds that there is no objective conception of the good 
determined by human nature, liberal thinkers must explain what the 
primary determining factor is in a person’s private conception of the 
good. As seen above, Hobbes, Locke, and Rawls all say that a person 
seeks whatever they find brings them enjoyment or pleasure. Hobbes 
clarifies this by adding that enjoyment “ariseth… from the diversity of 
passions.”15 

 Locke echoes this sentiment in the comments cited above about 
taste and palate, but he also argues that one particular passion is behind 
our actions: unease. Patapan and Sikkenga outline Locke’s definition of 
unease as “‘[a]ll pain of the body whatsoever and disquiet of the mind.’ 
Purely bodily pains are those such as hunger and thirst, and other natural 
desires…. Disquiet of the mind is caused by ideas…”16 Locke argues 
that unease compels humans to seek what they believe to be the good. 
After all, no one wants the pain, disquiet, and discontentedness that 
comes from feeling unease, so one seeks what they think will quell their 
unease and views whatever that is as good for doing so.17 Lest anyone 
construe Locke’s idea of unease like Augustine’s restlessness, Patapan 
and Sikkenga explain how Locke’s unease is not tied to any notion of an 
objective good: 

[Locke’s unease] allows him to abandon finally the last vestiges of the 
“old Philosophers” and scholastics who argued… that we are by nature 
drawn toward a summum bonum. Consequently, Locke’s unease is not like 
Augustine’s inquietum and Pascal’s inquiètude, a feeling of lacking some 
profound good in our lives, which makes us unhappy and thereby gives rise 
to a longing for that greater good. Rather, unease is based on physical and 
mental pain and need not necessarily point to or disclose our neediness for 
the divine.18 

Since Locke’s unease is based on physical and mental pain, it is clear 
that his account of human action is based on seeking what one believes 
to be the good in response to the pleasures and pains one is confronted 
with. Of course, it is the passions that govern pleasures and pains, 
which means that human action is motivated at the root by the passions, 
according to Locke. As seen above, this is Hobbes’ position as well, but 
Patapan and Sikkenga argue that Locke’s concept of unease represents 
15  Hobbes, Leviathan, Pt. I, ch. xi, par. 1, p. 57.
16  Patapan and Sikkenga, “John Locke’s ‘Unease’,” 824 (citations and 

footnotes removed). 
17  Cf. Locke, Essay, Bk. II, ch. xxi, §31.
18  Patapan and Sikkenga, “John Locke’s ‘Unease’” 827.



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a break with Hobbes’ passions. However, they fail to demonstrate any 
fundamental disagreement between Hobbes’ passions and Locke’s 
unease; instead, they only show how Locke’s concept of unease leads 
him to a different model of government than Hobbes’ Leviathan. Thus, 
I argue that while Hobbes and Locke may differ on the implications that 
their theories have on governmental structure, the role of the passions in 
human action that they presuppose is essentially the same.19

 Regarding the role of the passions, Rawls is more nuanced. 
He does not say that the passions are the primary driving force behind 
a person’s actions. Instead, he says that a person defines their private 
conception of the good based on any number of “comprehensive 
doctrines” or worldviews. Whichever one a person deems as resulting in 
“a fully worthwhile life” is what defines their conception of the good.20 
Rawls names both “the fulfillment of… (rational) preferences” and the 
fulfillment of “desires (as in a utilitarian view)” as among what people 
consider to be a happy and worthwhile life,21 so he clearly makes a place 
in his system of models of human action that place desire as the primary 
motivator, even if he differs from other liberal thinkers by not explicitly 
affirming such a model himself.

 Thus, one can see that the liberal tradition presupposes a 
common anthropology that denies an objective conception of the good 
determined by human nature. Instead, it posits no teleological good or 
end for human beings and argues that without this, people are free to 
define their own private conception of the good. This conception is, in 
turn, heavily influenced by the pleasures and pains that people encounter 
in their lives, which elevates the passions to a place of prominence in 
the realm of human action, since it is the passions that govern pleasure 
or pain and, therefore, incline one to seek or not seek certain things 
inasmuch as one perceives them as good or bad. Having explored the 
liberal anthropology, its effects on liberal conceptions of church-state 
relations can now be analyzed.

 As mentioned above, Hobbes, Locke, and Rawls all adopt a 
form of social contract in constructing their political systems. A closer 
look reveals that the government set up under the social contract secures 
the conditions necessary for people to pursue their private conception 
of the good for each of these thinkers. These thinkers only differ as to 

19  See Patapan and Sikkenga, “John Locke’s ‘Unease’,” 827-829.
20  Rawls, Justice as Fairness, Pt. I, §7.1, p. 19.
21  Ibid., Pt. II, §17.3, p. 60.



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what those necessary conditions are. For Hobbes, human beings have 
“a perpetual and restless desire for power after power, that ceaseth only 
in death” because they want the means to attain and secure the objects 
they desire.22 However, because all people desire the same scarce goods 
and nature has made people relatively equal in their physical and mental 
faculties for securing these, this results in a state of constant competition 
where no one is secure in achieving their private conception of the good. 
This is what Hobbes calls the “war… of every man against every man.”23 
From this, Hobbes argues that all people desire peace and security 
because it alone guarantees them the ability to pursue their private 
conceptions of the good without the threat of others.24 Since the state 
is constituted so as to ensure peace and security, the direct purpose of 
the state is to secure the conditions under which people can pursue their 
conceptions of the good.25

 Similarly, Locke says that the state is instituted to preserve 
people’s civil interests, which he says are “Life, Liberty, Health, and 
Indolency of Body; and the Possession of outward things.”26 However, 
Locke makes clear that liberty is simply the means “whereby [men] may 
acquire what they… want” and that the reason for securing it, along 
with the other civil interests, is that they “contribute to the Comfort 
and Happiness of this Life.”27 As demonstrated above, the pursuit of 
“happiness of this life” for Locke is nothing other than the pursuit of 
one’s private conception of the good. Thus, the civil interests that the 
state is instituted to protect are simply the conditions under which one 
can pursue their private conception of the good. Therefore, for Hobbes 
and Locke, securing the conditions necessary to pursue one’s private 
conception of the good is the purpose and mission of the state.

 Rawls’ system is not much different. Having assumed the 
“fact” of reasonable pluralism, Rawls argues that despite their differing 
conceptions of the good, no person can achieve their conception of the 
good without human society and the resources and security it gives 
them. Thus, people must cooperate in society despite their different 
ideas of the good so that all can achieve their conceptions of the good. 
This is what Rawls means by his definition of society as a “fair system 
22  Hobbes, Leviathan, Pt. I, ch. xi, par. 2, p. 58.
23  Ibid., ch. xiii, par. 8, p. 76; see also par. 1-4. 
24  Cf. ibid., ch. xiv, par. 4, p. 80.
25  See ibid. Pt. II, ch. xvii, par. 13, p. 109.
26  John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. James H. Tully 

(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc., 1983), p. 26.
27  Ibid., 47.



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of social cooperation.”28 But, as in any system of cooperation, there must 
be “publicly recognized rules and procedures” that govern conduct and 
cooperation.29 Only with these in place can the conditions under which 
people can secure their conceptions of the good be realized. For Rawls, 
these conditions end up being none other than his two principles of 
justice, which serve to guarantee people the rights and goods requisite to 
pursuing any conception of the good and to mitigating social inequalities 
that may arise in society.30 Once again, Rawls clarifies the point that 
the liberal state exists to protect and secure the conditions under which 
people can pursue their conceptions of the good.

 The fact that the liberal state exists to secure people’s ability to 
define and pursue the good as they see it has direct consequences on the 
relationship between the Church and the state in liberal thought. In each 
case, there is either an explicit or implicit subordination of the Church 
to the state and severe limitations placed on it, inasmuch as it threatens 
the liberal state’s ability to secure the conditions under which people can 
pursue their private conceptions of the good. In Hobbes, this is explicit: 
Hobbes views the Church and its ecclesial hierarchy as embodying a 
rival sovereign to the state.31 The presence of a rival sovereign that can 
command its subjects undermines the monopoly of power that the state 
sovereign is given in the social contract to preserve peace, which is 
the condition under which people can define and pursue the good for 
themselves.32 Thus, the Church must be completely subordinate to the 
state to preserve this condition. Hobbes says the rights of judging what 
doctrines are true, preaching, and even administering sacraments are 
“annexed to the sovereignty” for “the preserving of peace and security,” 
which is to say for preserving the ability to define and pursue one’s 
private conception of the good.33 As Hobbes summarizes, “[The civil 
sovereign] hath the supreme power in all causes, as well ecclesiastical 
as civil…”34

28  Rawls, Justice as Fairness, Pt. I, §2.1, p. 5.
29  Ibid., §2.2, p. 6.
30  See ibid. §2.3; Pt. II, §13.1, 3; §17.1-2.  
31  Since Hobbes indiscriminately defines the church as any group gathered 

together to profess the Christian religion, his comments on the relationship 
between the Church and the state extend indiscriminately to the Anglican 
Church, the Roman Catholic Church (against which much of the later 
parts of Leviathan is directed) or any church denomination.. See Hobbes, 
Leviathan, Pt. III, ch. xxix.

32  Cf. Hobbes, Leviathan, Pt. II, ch. xix, par. 3, p. 119.
33  Ibid., ch. xviii, par. 8-9, p. 113; see also Pt. III, ch. xlii, par. 71-72, p. 368-

369.
34  Ibid. Pt. III, ch. xlii, par. 80, p. 373; see also ch. xxxix, par. 5, p. 316.



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 Rawls and Locke are less explicit in their subordination of the 
Church to the state. Each supports the separation of Church and state35 or 
claims to have a system that is neutral or indifferent to all “comprehensive 
doctrines of the good.”36 However, in their discussions of tolerance in a 
pluralistic society, they make several statements which imply a non-neutral 
position. Locke, for example, states in his Letter Concerning Toleration that 
the state is not to extend religious toleration to sects that promote doctrines 
that would “arrogate to themselves… some peculiar Prerogative… in effect 
opposite to the Civil Right of the Community.”37 Because such a practice 
is “contrary to… the preservation of Civil Society,” these groups are not 
to be tolerated.38 However, recall that the preservation of civil society for 
Locke is essentially the preservation of the ability to pursue one’s private 
conception of the good since this is the purpose for which society is 
instituted. Thus, by not extending toleration to such groups, Locke says 
that any group that promotes opinions that give them authority over the 
state should not be tolerated because they will impose that authority on 
others and jeopardize people’s ability to pursue the good as they see it. 
Significantly, he names several Roman Catholic teachings, such as the right 
of the Church to depose apostate kings, as among these adverse opinions, 
thus explicitly denying toleration in this case.39

 Similarly, Rawls states that a group that sees its conception of the 
good as the true one and seeks to structure society accordingly is not to be 
tolerated if it has a realistic chance of overturning the Rawlsian system. 
This is because he views the group’s acceptance of the Rawlsian system, 
structured around the two principles of justice, as only conditional, based on 
the fact that they are a minority who cannot restructure society according to 
the conception of the good they hold to be objectively true. Thus, he says, 
such doctrines are “a threat to democratic institutions, since it is impossible 
for them to abide by a constitutional regime except as a modus vivendi.”40 
The “democratic institutions” and “constitutional regime” Rawls refers 
to are nothing less than the Rawlsian system and its two principles of 
justice. Since these, as outlined above, are instituted to preserve people’s 
right to define the good for themselves, Rawls is making the same point as 
Locke, that groups who infringe upon others’ ability to define the good for 
themselves by promoting an objective good are not to be tolerated. He says 

35  See Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, 26.
36  Cf. ibid, 26-27; Rawls, Political Liberalism, Pt. 2, Lect. V, §1.1, p. 175.
37  Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, 49.
38  Ibid.
39  Ibid., 49-50.
40  Rawls, Political Liberalism, Pt. 4, p. 489.



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such groups ought to be “curbed,” which, though sounding mundane, 
leaves the door open for any variety of state actions against such groups 
in a Rawlsian polity.41

 Thus, the liberal anthropology, with its view that there is no 
objective good for man and that he is free to define and pursue the good 
as he sees fit, directly affects the relationship between the Church and 
state that each of the liberal thinkers envisions. In each case, it results 
in explicit subordination of the Church to the state or severe limitations 
being placed on the freedom and toleration granted to the Church by the 
state since the Church’s promotion of an objective human good directly 
confronts the purpose of the liberal state, which is to protect people’s 
right to pursue whatever they imagine the good to be. With all of this in 
mind, I will now give a Thomistic critique of the liberal anthropology 
and explore how the Thomistic tradition has understood the relationship 
between the Church and the state.

 To begin, Aquinas explicitly denies the fundamental premise 
of liberal anthropology, that there is no objective, final good for man. 
Aquinas argues that human nature inclines humans to an objective 
good that is in accordance with their nature.42 Since man is by nature 
a rational being, the objective good that nature inclines him toward is 
living according to reason, or virtuous living.43 Now, it is important 
to note that Aquinas does not believe these principles are believed 
solely by faith. Rather, Aquinas believes that this is philosophically 
demonstrable because it follows from God’s governance of the universe 
through divine providence, in which God “direct[s] nature towards 
good as an end.”44 Since Aquinas believes that divine providence is 
rationally demonstrable,45 then it follows that man’s objective end is also 
demonstrable and knowable to human reason. This is a direct rebuttal to 
the liberal anthropological claim that man either has no objective good 
to which he is directed, or such a good is not knowable to human reason. 
In particular, it undermines Rawls’ reliance on the “fact” of reasonable 
pluralism, for if man has the determinate end of virtuous living, which is 
knowable to human reason, then one cannot simply assume reasonable 

41  Cf. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 
1971), Pt. 2, ch. IV, §35, p. 220. 

42  Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologiae [ST], trans. Fathers of the 
English Dominican Province, online edition, accessed November 11, 2024, 
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/, I-II.1.1.

43  Cf. ibid. I-II.1.3, 93.5. 
44  Ibid. I.103.1 co.
45  See ibid. I.22.1 for Aquinas’s demonstration of divine providence.



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pluralism as Rawls does since it is equally reasonable that all people could 
come to know this end through the exercise of their rationality. In addition, 
Aquinas’s argument that man is inclined to live according to reason and not 
according to passion further undermines the aspects of liberal anthropology 
that follow from its denial of an objective end for man, that man is primarily 
driven by the passions.46

 Regarding the origins and purpose of the state, Aquinas states 
that “man is by nature a social and political animal,”47 and people form 
political communities to “live well in a way that would not be possible for 
each of them living singly.”48 Thus, Aquinas believes that the state should 
promote the good of man by promoting virtuous living. However, Aquinas 
notes that man’s final end does not consist solely in living a virtuous life 
in society: it has a further spiritual dimension to it since “through virtuous 
living” man “attain[s] to the enjoyment of the Divine”—the Beatific Vision, 
which is his ultimate and final end.49 The state, being concerned merely 
with temporal living, cannot safely direct man to the transcendent, spiritual 
aspect of his end which is the Beatific Vision.50 Thus, Aquinas says man 
“has need of another, spiritual, care by which he is guided towards the 
harbour of eternal salvation. And this is… the Church of Christ.”51 From 
this, Aquinas concludes that both the Church and the state are necessary for 
man to achieve his good and live well. The Church is needed to govern and 
provide “those things which pertain to the salvation of the soul,” while the 
state is necessary to govern and provide “those things which pertain to the 
civil good.”52 

 These two entities must work together and cooperate to fulfill 
Aquinas’s vision of both of them governing and directing man to his 
good. However, the practicalities of how the Church and the state work 
together to make this happen are not entirely clear in Aquinas’s thought. 

46  See also ibid. I-II.2.6, where Aquinas demonstrates that bodily pleasures 
toward which the passions incline people cannot constitute true happiness and 
the fulfillment of man’s nature.

47  Thomas Aquinas, De regime principum, Bk. I, ch. I, in Thomas Aquinas, 
Political Writings [APW], ed. and trans. R.W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 2002), p. 5-6.

48  Ibid., ch. xv, 40 (emphasis mine).
49  Ibid., 41. See also Thomas Aquinas, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith 

[Summa Contra Gentiles], trans. Anton C. Pegis et al., online edition, accessed 
April 6, 2025, https://isidore.co/aquinas/ContraGentiles.htm, bk. 3, ch. 25.

50  Cf. ibid. 39-40.
51  Ibid. 40.
52  Thomas Aquinas, Scripta super libros sententiarum II, Dist. 44, quaest. 3, in 

APW, 278.



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He certainly makes clear that both are needed to direct man to his 
good and that the spiritual power is ultimately superior since it guides 
man to his higher, transcendent end.53 Still, he does not specify the 
constitutions or governmental structures most conducive to Church-
state relations. However, Pope Leo XIII, a disciple of Aquinas, provides 
one way it could take shape: the confessional state. In his encyclical 
Immortale Dei, Leo states that the close cooperation of Church and state 
produces “benefits… manifold and great” in civil society.54 Drawing 
on Thomistic anthropology and divine providence, Leo says that the 
state arises naturally from man’s desire to live well, both morally and 
intellectually, and argues that since the state “has its source in nature,” it 
has, “consequently, God for its Author.”55 In light of these demonstrable 
facts, Leo says the state has a natural obligation to publicly recognize its 
origin in God and give thanks to Him by professing true religion.56

 With this principle in mind, Leo outlines his vision for the 
confessional state. Roman Catholicism is recognized as the true religion 
and privileged by the state, giving the Church ample freedom to fulfill 
her divine mission. Leo says such an arrangement will bring about the 
benefits he speaks of in the opening section. By giving the Church the 
freedom to promote the gospel and teach virtue, Leo says the result will 
be a strong foundation for human rights, unifying beliefs in society, laws 
that are informed by truth and justice, reverence toward the authority of 
the state, and citizens who treat each other with charity and virtue.57 All 
this, Leo says, is a result of the confessional state actively promoting 
true religion instead of relegating religious truth to a matter of personal 
opinion, like in a liberal society. In fact, Leo says that the privatization 
of religion and ignorance of the common good for the sake of the private 
good, characteristic of the liberal tradition, leads to societal degradation. 
This is because exiling religion to the private sphere casts aside the 
innumerable, valuable benefits that healthy Church-state cooperation can 
bring. Leo warns that such individualism is “not in itself an advantage 
over which society can wisely rejoice.”58

53  See Aquinas, De regime principum, Bk. I, ch. xv, 41.
54  Leo XIII, Immortale Dei [ID], §1, Vatican trans., https://www.vatican.

va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_01111885_
immortale-dei.html. 

55  Ibid., §3.
56  Cf. ibid., §6.
57  See ibid., §17-19.
58  Ibid., §32.



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 Despite the strong opposition of the Thomistic tradition to core 
aspects of liberal political theory, Aquinas and Leo both note that, in Leo’s 
words,

[N]o one of the several forms of government is in itself condemned, inasmuch 
as none of them contains anything contrary to Catholic doctrine, and all of 
them are capable, if wisely and justly managed, to insure the welfare of the 
State.59 

This is to say that the confessional state model is not the only way in 
which flourishing Church-state relations can be achieved, and society can 
be governed for the good of man. Instead, the Thomistic tradition allows 
that even a government structured according to a social contract model, 
such as Hobbes, Locke, and Rawls’ systems, could, in theory, accomplish 
this. However, the obstacles would be significant. Firstly, as seen above, 
the liberal anthropology that is directly opposed by the Thomistic tradition 
plays an indispensable role in setting up the political systems envisioned 
by the liberal thinkers, as the goal of their state is to protect people’s ability 
to define the good for themselves. Rawls and the other liberal thinkers see 
this as a way people are equal in society, that all are equally capable of 
defining the good for themselves. However, as Paul Weithman points out, 
Aquinas’s defense of an objective good that is common to all men makes 
him understand equality differently than the liberal tradition: 

[I]n Aquinas’s view, members of society are coparticipants in its common 
good…. He argues that realizing the common good depends upon 
harmonizing… differences so that each compensates for what others lack, 
and differences work for the good of all. He thinks that in a well-functioning 
political society, members complete or complement one another. Aquinas 
therefore endorses what might be called the complementarity view of political 
membership.60

Because of this fundamental understanding of human beings as having 
an objective good shared by all of them, a common good that they must 
work together in society to achieve, Weithman concludes that a complete 
synthesis between Thomistic political principles and democratic liberal 
political theory would be nearly impossible. As Weithman concludes, 

Since Aquinas held the complementarity view rather than the egalitarian 
view about political membership, he did not hold a democratic conception 

59  Ibid. §36.
60  Paul J. Weithman, “Complementarity and Equality in the Political Thought of 

Thomas Aquinas,” Theological Studies 59, no. 2 (1998): 280-281.



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of political equality. And since complementarity is central to his social 
as well as his political thought, framing a democratic Thomism would 
require significant revisions in Aquinas’s position.61

I have now shown how the liberal tradition shares a common anthropology 
that denies an objective good that man is by nature guided toward and 
argues that all people are equally capable of defining their own private 
conception of the good. I have also demonstrated how this anthropology 
not only dictates how the liberal state is constituted, as it exists to ensure 
people’s ability to define the good for themselves but also how this 
anthropology directly influences the liberal conception of Church-state 
relations, creating a society in which the Church must be “curbed” since 
it promotes an objective good. Lastly, I have also shown how Aquinas 
would attack the central premises of the liberal anthropology, arguing 
that an objective human good is rationally demonstrable through divine 
providence, and outlined how the Thomistic tradition has envisioned 
societies such as the confessional state where the Church and state work 
together to promote the common good of man.

61  Ibid., 281-282, emphasis mine.



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REFERENCES
Aquinas, Thomas. On the Truth of the Catholic Faith [Summa Contra Gentiles]. 

Translated by Anton C. Pegis et al. Online edition. Accessed April 6, 2025. 
https://isidore.co/aquinas/ContraGentiles.htm. 

—. Political Writings. Edited and translated by R.W. Dyson. Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 2002.

—. The Summa Theologiae. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican 
Province. Online edition. Accessed November 11, 2024. https://www.
newadvent.org/summa/.

Bloom, Allan. “Justice: John Rawls Vs. The Tradition of Political Philosophy.” 
The American Political Science Review 69, no. 2 (1975): 648-662.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett 
Publishing Co., Inc., 1994.

Leo XIII. Immortale Dei [On the Christian constitution of states], encyclical letter, 
November 1, 1885. The Holy See. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/
encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_01111885_immortale-dei.html. 

Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Peter H. 
Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.

—. A Letter Concerning Toleration. Edited by James H. Tully. Indianapolis: 
Hackett Publishing Co., Inc., 1983. 

Patapan, Haig, and Jeffery Sikkenga. “John Locke’s ‘Unease’: The Theoretical 
Foundation of the Modern Separation of Church and State.” Political Theory 
52, no. 5 (2024): 808-833.

Rawls, John. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Edited by Erin Kelly. 
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.

—. Political Liberalism. Expanded edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 
1993.

—. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971.

Weithman, Paul J. “Complementarity and Equality in the Political Thought of 
Thomas Aquinas.” Theological Studies 59, no. 2 (1998): 277-296.



95Issue XII ◊ Spring 2025

PALOMA FIGUEROA
McGuill University
Paloma Figueroa is a junior at McGill University studying Philosophy, International 
Development, and Arabic. She recently joined the Honours Philosophy program 
to spend more time doing what she finds most intellectually fulfilling – exploring 
topics like the one she wrote about for this journal, and applying philosophical 
insights to practical settings. She believes that ‘philosophizing’ is a way of life from 
which everyone – not just Philosophy students – can benefit, and has made it her 
goal to demonstrate this through both writing and conversation. Aside from meta-
philosophical questions, she is particularly interested in 20th century existentialism, 
as well as in the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis. Beyond 
academics, Paloma enjoys engaging with 1970s pop culture through her Instagram 
account @70smania, dancing (especially salsa & bachata!), and engaging with 
different languages and cultures through music, movies, food, and strolls around 
Montréal or her native NYC.

 
SHEA DIVOLL 
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Shea Divoll is a junior at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he is completing a 
double major in Physics and Mechanical Engineering. He completed his Humanities 
and Arts Requirement in the Philosophy and Religious Studies Program - taking 
classes on Wuwei in Classical Daoism, Buddhism in America, epistemology, and 
ancient Chinese religion. More specifically, he enjoys writing and learning about 
the more mystical and esoteric side of religion, as well as the often underlooked 
cross-cultural exchanges of ideas by various thought systems. Outside of class, 
he enjoys hiking in the White Mountains, travelling to see architecture, reading, 
watching movies, and listening to music. After graduation, he is open to working 
in the engineering industry or getting a higher education (including an openness to 
studying physics, philosophy, math, or economics) - and he also has a long-term 
goal of starting an architecture and design practice on the side.

 
SEAN SCULLY

The Catholic University of America
Sean Scully is a senior at the Catholic University of America studying Philosophy. 
He has a strong interest in the areas where philosophical disciplines (most 
especially metaphysics and political philosophy) can borrow from theological 
insights. Foremost among his concerns is the question of how a regime can 
properly prepare its citizenry to exercise their rights and liberties well. Outside of 

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the classroom, he is currently interning on Capitol Hill, where he plans to pursue 
full-time opportunities upon his graduation in May. 

MICHAEL ELLISON
The Catholic University of America
Michael Ellison is a senior studying philosophy at the Catholic University of 
America. His interests are mainly in metaphysics, political philosophy, and the 
philosophies of Plato and Aquinas. He enjoys exploring how the philosophical 
theories of the past have influenced modern culture and the ways that they can speak 
to the issues and questions society faces today. In his free time, he enjoys hiking and 
being outdoors, travelling, and playing violin. After college, he plans to do a year 
with the Fellows Initiative in North Carolina.  



Dianoia fosters open philosophical discussion and writing 
among undergraduate students. The journal is committed to 

providing the opportunity for intellectual reflection that bridges 
the academic disciplines in pursuit of holistic understanding.

The ancient Greek word ‘διάνοια’ translates as ‘thought’ but 
connotes a discursive direction or search for a higher form of 
knowledge. We thus hope to direct philosophical discourse 

toward an intellectually rigorous level of thinking.

Dianoia is sponsored by

The Institute for the Liberal Arts and the
Philosophy Department of Boston College






