| Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, a prominent nineteenth-century German Catholic bishop, used a language of rights that was essentially rooted in Catholic traditions. He used rights language, articulated a forward-looking social teaching, and 'performatively' acknowledged the value of representational politics, while nevertheless rejecting the individualism and atomism often associated with rights, liberalism, and democracy. Supporting his rights language, Ketteler's social theory was based on (1) an aristocratic/Romantic worldview, (2) German jurisprudence, (3) the Catholic theologians of Tubingen and Munich, and (4) the specific politics of the German states.; This intellectual archeology argues: (1) that rights language was part of the German legal landscape and non-controversial in Ketteler's context, including subjective rights language referring specifically to the freedoms of individual persons. A language of rights was used and recognized by most Germans in the mid-nineteenth century, including Roman Catholics, to protect fundamental freedoms and to insure basic material goods necessary for dignified human life; (2) that Ketteler's use of rights was firmly rooted in Roman Catholic traditions of natural law, relying directly upon St. Thomas Aquinas, and was embedded in the nineteenth-century Romantic conception of the 'organic social theory.' Ketteler referenced these traditions for both corporate and subjective rights with theoretical constancy; (3) that along with natural law, Ketteler's creative articulation of rights incorporated the methodological insights of secular legal traditions of nineteenth-century German jurisprudence, especially Savigny's historical school, and that the juristic (legal) realm of discourse influenced his political discourse; (4) that in challenging the foundations of German liberalism and the absolutist elements of German conservativism, he also creatively adapted their constructive insights to strengthen his own natural law system, and that this creativity was possible because of the central importance of practical reason in his teleological natural law system; (5) that Ketteler's life, work, and implicit philosophy of rights demonstrate a continuing relevance for the natural law, and the rich potential for the church in public life. |
