Obedience as Virtue: The Case of Ignatius of Loyola

Discussing what he takes to be the primary notion of power in contemporary

thought, 'power-as-law,' Foucault says, "it is a power whose model is essentially juridical,
centered on nothing more than the statement of the law and the operation of taboos" (85). He
outlines several characteristics of this notion, stating that it is primarily negative or restrictive,
concerned with limits,and primarily prohibitive (i.e., Thou shalt not...). On this
perspective, "power... only has the force of the negative on its side, a power to say no; in no
condition to produce, capable only of posting limits, it is basically anti-energy" (85). It is not
difficult to grasp the effect that this notion has on conceptions of agency, autonomy and
freedom. Power would be something essentially stifiling and obedience would be effectively
the suicide of the rational agent. Speaking of this notion of power Foucault says, [a]ll the modes
of domination, submission, and subjugation are ultimately reduced to an effect of obedience"
(85). This negative judgement on obedience was not Ignatius of Loyola's view, nor ought we to
saddle him with this typically modern conception of law as the primarily prohibitve. "It is very
helpful," says Ignatius, "for making progress and highly necessary that all devote themselves to
complete obedience..." (Constitutions 123). And further that obedience should be interior so
that one should regard "the superior's will and judgement as the rule of their own, so as to
conform themselves more completely to the first and supreme rule of all good will and
judgment, which is Eternal Goodness and Wisdom" (123). Ignatius's claim here is twofold, that
obedience is essential and a fortiori useful for moral progress and that obedience to institutional
authorities enables one to fullfil the natural law and thus to acheive one's telos. What
Foucault's account of the legaistlist notion of power dominant in the modern period offers is a
picture of the conceptual framework operative in the background of contemporary rejections of
the virtue of obedience in the name of autonomy.

Why was Ignatius's account of obedience so vehemently rejected during the modern
period? The notion of law presupposed by the account of power which Foucault is criticizing -
the notion of law as primarily a limit, as prohibitive - lacks reference to the common good.
Without this reference obedience can only but appear as a limitation of agency. This picture of
law belongs to early modern theorizing regarding the social contract and the 'state of nature'
but it is equally rooted in the burgeoning individualism of this same period. With the rise of
capitalism the 'good' was essentially privatized and increasingly understood in terms of private
economic achievement as well in various strains of Romanticism in terms of self-expression.
Coupled with an increasing skepticism regarding the power of reason to understand the ends of
human action - a result of extreme varients of Augustine's theology as well as the rise of modern
science - individualistic self-conceptions came to match the increasingly antagonistic nature of
society. Against this background, where no conception of the common good had application
and individual agency was understood in terms of private goals, the notion of law as a limitation
of agency became plausible. Thus the picture of power as primariliy prohibitive law, which
Foucault offers, became dominant as a result of a variety of social factors all leading in the
direction of the eclipse of the possibility for any sort of application of the notion of the common
good or the intelligibility of any sort of common agency directed towards such a good.
Foucault's account of power as prohibitive law manifests the conceptual framework against the
background of which Ignatius's account of the centrality of the virtue of obedience cannot but
appear as unintelligible.

Foucault points to the rise of the nation state with its roots in the consolidation of
feudal society at the hands of various late medeval and early modern European monarchs as an
explanation for the prominence of the notion of power as law discussed above. "The history of
monarchy," says Foucault, "went hand in hand with the covering up of the facts and procedures
of power by juridic-political discourse" (88). This 'covering up' amounts to power's presentation
of itself as primarily prohibitive, as negative. It is the 'positive' - not beneficial but effective
rather than prohibitve - effects of power with which Foucault is interested. As noted above it
was the negative view of power which lead to the devaluation of obedience; on this view
obedience amounts to the limitation if not elimination of agency, i.e., freedom. Rejecting this
view Foucault goes on to chart the way in which various forces during the modern period
resulted in the creation of new conceptualizations of identity as well as new practices. His
account of sexuality as this concept developed during the modern period demonstrates that
power is effective, serving to lead people to embrace new goals, practices and self-conceptions.
He says, "let us ponder all the ruses that were employed for centuries to make us love sex, to
make knowledge of it desirable and everything said about it precious. Let us consider the
stratagems by which we were induced to apply all our skills to discovering its secrets..." (159).
Typically the history of sexuality is written as a history of liberation, during the course of which
people ceased to be obedient to tradtional laws and customs regarding sexuality and began to
act freely. Foucault's history, by cataloging the various influences through which sex and sexual
identity came to have a centrality in the self-consciousness of the modern subject, puts this
narrative in question. "The irony of this deployment," notes Foucault, "is in having us believe
that our 'liberation' is in the balance" (159). This is not a history of freedom, of the rejection of
stifling prohibitions, but of the embrace of new directives leading people to place a new
importance upon and seek to achieve new goals, in this case concerning sexaulity. One could
even view this history as the manifestation of new forms of obedience subordinated to new
authorities but it is most certainly not the history of the eclipse of obedience.

What is relevant to the question of obedience is the implication this positive conception
of power has upon the negative evaluation of obedience which resulted from the notion of
power as (prohibitive) law. Once we begin to understand the way in which power often times is
productive, the way in which it is effective, bringing to light new goals and values, then it is clear
that obedience can be either positive or negative depending on what it is to which obedience
leads. If power is productive then often times obedience will help one to acheive goals of
whose value one is convinced. Consider a course in CPR, computer programming or the piano.
Ought we to conclude that obedience to the instructor amounts to subjugation, domination or
servility? As Foucault says,

In short, it is a question of orienting ourselves to a conception of power which replaces

 the privilege of law with the viewpoint of the objective, the priviliege of prohibition
with the viewpoint ot tactical efficacy, the privilege of sovereignity with the analysis of a
multiple and mobile field of force (?)

Power was not so fundamental a category in Aquinas' thought. Foucault's notion of

power tends to emphasize the sociological role of this concept whereas in Aquinas the tendency
is towards an ontological account. But the notion of law in Aquinas has an analogous place in
his analysis of social and political phenonema. What is interesting is the similiarity that his
account of law bears to Foucault's notion of power and its equally striking disimiliarity to the
notion of law in Foucault's account of power as law. For Aquinas the notion of the objective or
as he would say, the common good, is central to his account of law. And it is this account of law
which is presupposed by Ignatius and must be understood in order to grasp his account of
obedience.

Aquinas says "[l]aw is a rule and measure of acts, whereby man is induced to act or is
restrained from acting..." (I-II 90.1 response). Law as Foucault discusses it is essentially a limit; it
is prohibitive. But Aquinas's account takes note of both the prohibitve and effective aspects of
law. Having argued that law is directed to the common good Aquinas says, "the order to the
common good, at which the law aims, is applicable to particular ends. And in this way
commands are given even concerning particular matters" (I-II 90.2 ad1). Where Foucault
criticized what was an essentially liberal or even Hobbesian model of law in his account of
power as law for merely focusing on the prohibitive role of law, Aquinas' account concerns itself
with the objective, and using Foucault's terminology one may even say that it is tactical. By
placing the intelligibility of law in its ability to guide a community of agents towards a genuine
common good, Aquinas's account is concerned with the objective and by recognizing that law is
directed towards particular goods which themselves are ordered to the common good his
account is tactical. Thus Aquinas's account of law, which he understands broadly - not merely as
positive law - plays an analogous role to Foucault's notion of power as that which is operative
widely within social space providing direction and structure to various agents' actions.

The distinction between Aquinas's account of law and the modern notion presupposed
in Foucault's account was elided in late Medeval accounts. Servais Pinckaers points to the
importance of William of Ockam in this regard. Of Ockam Pincakers says, "[o]ligation was for
him the very essence of morality" (247). Whereas Aquinas account of law had emphasized both
the goal to which law was directed and the essential role of authority in the establishment of
law - his finalized definition of law states "[law] is nothing else than an ordinance of reason for
the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated" (I-II 90.4
response) - Ockam's account tends to favor the role of the sovereign in establishing law. As he
says, "God can command the created will to hate him, and the created will can do this...
Furthermore, any act that is righteous in this world can also be righteous in the next, the
Fatherland; just as hatred of God can be a good act in this world, so can it be in the next" (247).
A gigantic shift is apparent in the use of the predicate 'good' here. Good no longer primarily
refers to those things which contribute to the well-being of some natural kind; for Ockam 'good'
is essentially a matter of being obedient to authority. According to Aquinas the natural law as
well as revealed law are the rules or directives for the achievement of eudamonia, or human
flourishing. For Ockam the relationship between God's commands and human happiness was
external; it was a matter of one recieving a reward for being obedient rather than obedience
being constitutive of human flourishing (constitutive because through obedience one is able to
achieve all of those goods which are constituitive of human flourishing). Throughout the
modern period Catholic moral theology became increasingly legalistic and much of the debate
centered upon determining the precise extent of the law's jurisdiction and correspondingly the
locus of freedom beyond the law. But this presupposes the same individualistic conceptions of
agency which lead to the condemnation of obedience; it presupposes an account of law which is
not intrinsically orderd towards a genuinly common good. And once one rejects the external
theological reward of obedience to such laws, it is easy to conclude that obedience is one of the
worst of vices.

It is at this point that we must situate Ignatius and his doctrine of obedience as a virtue.
What me must not do is assimilate him to Ockam. The latter stands as the forerunner of the
modern tradition of law, which focuses upon sovereignity and authority, and which fails to
appreciate the importance of the goals or objectives towards which law is directed and the way
in which law (in all of its various types: natural,revealed, positive) serves as an essential guide in
the achievement of the ends of agency. Just as Ignatius arrived at Paris the Dominicans had
begun to lecture on Aquinas's Summa; and Ignatius seems to have preferred the Dominicans
(The First Jesuits 248) O'Malley notes "the Jesuits' early predilication for Aquinas." As he
says, "Ignatius specifically recommended to Jesuits the study of the second part of Aquinas's
Summa theologiae, the part dealing with virtues and vices..."(248). This is of course where
Aquinas's account of law is to be found as well as his account of the telos of human agency.
Ockam's theological telos was exstrinsic and juridical; it was a matter of God's observing and
approving of one's rule following behavior. From an Ockamist viewpoint following God's law
was a necessary evil leading to a pleasing result, rather like going to the dentist for a root canal.
For Aquinas - as well as Ignatius - God's law is not merely a limit but a rule which leads to goals
which contribute to one's wellbeing or eudaimonia.1

In order to understand Ignatius's position regarding obedience in the light of a Thomist

view of the nature of law it must be understood that Ignatius's places much more emphasis on
determining which institutions one ought to join and thus, which sovereign's rules one ought to
follow. Aquinas recognized the possibility of an unjust law - in this sense his account is like
Foucault's in displacing soveignty - but Ignatius's considerations extend beyond this. He wants
to determine which institution or set of instutions will lead one to achieve one's telos,
recognizing that there are a variety of legitamate institutions. Thus the question is not merely
what are the rules and laws which have been issued with the question of sovereignty seen as
unproblematic- but who ought I to recognize as my superior, and included in this question is the
question of which institution I ought to be a part of in order to achieve my telos.

Ignatius uses two primary criterion to determine which institutions best enable one to
achieve one's telos. The first method regards the internal state of one's self-consciousness.
Ignatius thinks that the human telos is a matter of "praising, reverencing and serving God" (SE
23) and that one's psyche is unified through subordinating all of one's various ends to God.
Using the first method, which Ignatius calls the 'discernment of spirits' amounts to determing
one's inner state, whether it is unified and at peace with some particular course of action, or
whether one is agitated at the same time that one is attracted to some pursuit or goal. Because
it is essential that any particular option be considered - that the state of one's soul in relation to
this goal be examined - in the light of one's relationship to God, Ignatius bears some similarity to
Kierkegaard. The latter says "the single individual... determines his relation to the universal
through his relation to the absolute..." (Fear and Trembling 99) and from an Ignatian perspective
one can only properly determine one's place in the ethical order of institutions, practices and
laws through one's relationship to God. Ignatius thinks that this process will enable one to
determine which institution or set of institutions are most conducive to the achievement of
one's telos.2

But Ignatius is fundamentally an Aristotelian (of sorts). He begins his Spiritual Exercises
with what is called the Principle and Foundation (SE 23). This is a concise of account of human
nature.

The human person was created to praise, reverence and serve God Our Lord, and by so
doing to save his or her soul. The other things on the face of the earth are created for
human beings in order to help them pursue the end for which they are created.

Ignatius understands this goal in much the same way as Aristotle's function argument in Chapter
7 of the first book of the Nichomachean Ethics and not at all in some extrinsic fashion. For
Ignatius one's own flourishing is achieved when one directs one's life towards God and concerns
oneself with the well-being of others. The second method of determing which institution or set
of institutions one ought to join is "when one considers, first, for what man is born -- namely,
to praise God our Lord and save his soul -- and desiring this chooses as means a life or state
within the limits of the Church, in order that he may be helped in the service of his Lord and the
salvation of his soul" (SE 177). These two complementary methods, Ignatius believes, enable
one to correctly determine oneself in relation to one's telos.

When Ignatius places great stress upon obedience it is because he assumes that one has
determined one's place in the universal, in the ethical order, through one's relationship to the
Absolute. But since the authority which one has chosen to follow has been so chosen because
one believes that such authority is the best route to the goals to which one is ordered by one's
nature, obedience to such authority is actually a way to increase one's freedom and happiness.
As Ignatius says, through obedience" [y]ou do not destroy [your freedom]...; rather you bring it
to perfection as you put your own wishes in line with the most sure rule of all rightness..." (254).
You increase your freedom by being better able able to act rationally in the pursuit of one's
telos.
 Ignatius offers two reasons for understanding the importance of the virtue of
obedience, the former is epistemological and the latter is political. Because the untutored state
is one in which one is unable to perfectly understand the nature of one's telos Ignatius
recommends that we take a guide and offer our obedience to this guide. This obedience is not
irrational because by stipulation one's judgement regarding one's telos is unreliable and the
guide has been chosen as the most likely route to this telos. In addition to this the political
concern relates to the nature of the good involved. Since the human good is a common good,
and is irreducible to the private good of individuals, this good can only be achieved by a
common effort. Thus, unless a communitity of agents share the same intention of the end they
will be unable to act in concert and the common good will be unacheivable. It is for this reason
that obedience can even be the virtue of revolutionaries. For when people act against an unjust
and tyrannical order to bring about a new social order, they must be obedient to recognized
revolutionary leaders. Ignatius can in some sense be compared to such a revolutionary leader,
although the order which he envisions can only be properly understood in a theological context.

One further objection might be noted. Speaking ofAdolf Eichmann's distortion of Kant's
notion duty, Hannah Arendt says,

all that is left of Kant's spirit is that a man do more than obey the law, that he go beyond
the mere call of obedience and identify his own will with the principle of the law--
the source from which the law sprang. In Kant's philosophy, that source was practical
reason; in Eichmann's household use of him, it was the will of the Fuhrer. (136-137)

Eichmann even refered to the "obedience of corpses" (136) a metaphor which Ignatius himself
uses to describe the practice of obedience. The objection is that obedience can lead to all
sorts of monstrosities. Ignatius does counsel blind obedience but only "where manifestly there
appears no sin" (LO?). Because obedience is placed within the context of the agent's goal
directed behavior within an institution chosen because of its apparent conduciveness to achieve
the agent's telos, any command directing one to violate those most basic precepts without
which no common agency is possible - those precepts constitutive of the natural law - provides
one with no reason for action because it a priori prevents one from engaging in the sorts of
common activities by which common goods can be achieved and thus it should not be obeyed.
This stipulation provides a contrary pole to the political motive of obedience; no goal can justifiy
a violation of those precepts of the natural law which are necessary conditions for any adequate
objective of human agency.

Ignatius also counsels what he calls representation, which is the mandate for one to
reports one's viewpoints to the superior, in those cases where it seems that one has some
insight to offer. He also requires superiors to be willing to consider the viewpoint of others.
Thus obedience presupposes an atmosphere of mutual trust. This serves as a reenforcement to
the epistemological motives behind obedience; it ensures thats the institution of which one is a
part is informed by rational deliberation and thus ensures that it is conducive to the
achievement of one's telos.
 Modern accounts of law as a negative or limiting instrument of a powerful sovereign
make the virtue of obedience unintelligible. Only with a conception of the common good to
which human beings are ordered by nature and an understanding of law as a guide towards the
achievement of a genuinely common good is it possible to understand the importance of this
virtue. Without this perspective law appears at best as a necessary evil designed to prevent
greater evils and at worst as an arbitrary limitation of human freedom but in neither case is it
understood to be something which preserves and actually increases freedom. Ignatius views
the virtue of obedience as one of the primary means by which one's good may be achieved - by
allowing one to be guided by a more experienced and knowledgeable person as well by allowing
one's intention to be identical with that of others aiming at the same good. His account is
informed by a theological and philosophical perspective which sees human agency as directed
towards the achievement of the telos of one's nature but always in the context of one's personal
relationship with the Absolute, who for Ignatius was most visible in the man Christ Jesus.

And for us, as we seek to achieve goods in the context of a late capitalist society that is
increasingly hostile to any sort genuinely common good, we ought to practice not only the
cardinal virtues or the theological virtues but the virtue of obedience. It is only insofar as we
can act in concert with others in order to achieve common goods that culturally and legally
mandated individualism characteristic of modernity can be overcome.

Caleb Bernacchio

(caleb.bernacchio@gmail.com)

1 Aquinas, for instance, reads the 10 Commandments as a codification of the natural law given to the
people of Israel, who had come to be severely uncultured due to many years of slaverly and wandering in
the desert. This period of deculturalization led, so says Aquinas, to a poor understanding of the natural
law (see look up in summa). According to this perspective God's laws serve to instruct human beings as to
the goods and goals towards which we are naturally directed.

2 Ignatius is in agreement with Kierkegaard when the latter says "the single individual... determines his
relation to the universal through his relation to the absolute..." but he would be skepitcal of Kierkegaard's
corrolarly that the individual does not determine "his relation to the absolute through his relation to
the universal" (Fear and Trembling 99). If we identify the universal with the ethical order of institutions,
rules, and practices where obedience is an issue, Ignatius believes that one can only properly determine
which institutions one ought to be a part of through a personal relationship with the absolute. Ignatius
determined his course of life while meditating during an extended period of convalesence. Ignatius
recognized a reciprocal relationship between one's relationship to the Absolute and to the Universal. One
can see this in a significant episode in Ignatius's life. As his Autobiography records, after his conversion
Ignatius travelled to Jerusalem with the intention of living a life of prayer and service. Ignatius "had a
great conviction in his soul that God was to give him the means of going to Jerusalem..." (32). Ignatius
explained this to the Fransicans who had charge of the Holy Land but when he was told by one of them
that he would be excommunicated if he did not leave, he said, "since this was their judgement, with the
authority they had, he would obey them" (35). This journey of his was entirely a journey of faith; "his
whole aim was to have God alone as a refuge" (29). And "Abraham had faith" (FT 65). As Kierkegaard
portrays him, Abraham relationship to the Absolute was not unlike Ignatius's, it was a matter of complete
trust, of entrusting himseself fully to God no matter what emperical reality intimated at any particular
moment. But the difference between Ignatius and Kierkegaard is that he recognized that his religious
experience was a part of a religious tradition born by a very particular institution. Ignatius recognized
Jesus Christ as the absolute and he recognized the Catholic Church as the bearer of the tradition which
had its source in Christ. Thus for Ignatius one's relationship to the Absolute was itself inscribed in the
Universal. But conversely, for Ignatius one could only determine which institutions one ought to be a part
of and thus which authority one ought to obey by refering to one's spirtual experience, to one's relation
to the Absolute. This was the purpose of his Spiritual Exercises.