Rielo’s principle of complementarity and Global Migration Issues

Riccardo Colasanti MD, Luis Casasus Latorre PhD

Global migration issues are at the top of the agendas of world leaders. Neoliberalism, which conceives the necessity of free movements of commodities and people, is nowadays hindered by theories that foster enforcement of borders, trade protectionism, and strict control of migration.

Paradoxically, anti-immigration supporters are anti-globalization, but do not belong ideologically to the non-global movement. Anti-migration is a big ideological container that gathers together alt-right movements, Souverainism supporters, Neomarxists, and proto-liberals that, for different reasons, cooperate on the protest. On the other side, Catholics and Neoliberals, for very different reasons, propose a right to migration and the defense of migrants.

Nowadays, the concept of “right to include” or “right to exclude” has entered into the ethical debate, but it seems clear that it lacks a metaphysical foundation to the "jus migrandi,",or the right to migrate and to be accepted by a host country, or, on the contrary, the right to refuse immigrants.

It is worthwhile to remember, in this University of Salamanca, that the renowned Domingo de Soto, one of the founders of International Law, and one of the most famous scholars of this university, was the first to set forth an intellectual defense of the "jus migrandi" or the right to migrate, and asserted the obligation of giving hospitality to migrants.

In 1540, a decree of Consejo Real forbade the poor the right to migrate, with the exclusion of cases of famine or severe calamities[1].

Fr. Domingo de Soto in "Deliberacion en la causa de los pobres[2]" a document published both in Latin and in Spanish, addressed Felipe II and claimed that the decree should have been rejected.

He set forth 6 reasons why the decree had to be rejected:

1.     It was a completely new law that was not natural, divine, or positive.

2.     No one can be exiled from any place. The reasoning is that exile is punishment and punishment is the consequence of a fault, but the poor cannot be blamed for their poverty.

3.     No law can prevent the poor from going out of their country to beg for alms when the country cannot give aid to her poor. This is not the fault of the poor.

4.     The difference in wealth between countries, which depends on differences in soil, weather, etc., implies that the rich have to give more to the poorest. Our Lord gave more riches to some lands only to provide aid to the poorest.

5.     There are different countries and cities, with different conditions, in some cases, less favorable to the poor. We cannot ask the poor, with more reason than the rich, to leave their country.

6.     The last reason is the obligation of hospitality.

Naturally, these reasons are still not completely defined philosophically, but it is certain that Domingo de Soto has been the first one to propose a special right for migrants.

In a natural manner, only in the last 50 years has the problem of migrants risen to the top of the world agenda, together with the problems stemming from globalization and the consequent reduction of sovereignty.

Usually, on the side of the denial of entrance to migrants, the argument is like this: “Yes, the earth belongs to and is for everybody, but because the concept of private property has been accepted as useful and rational by our civilization and because private property includes as a fundamental characteristic the right to exclude others from my property, in the same sense, the state, as a common property, has the right to exclude immigrants.

From a Marxist, and from a neo-Marxist, point of view, and even if communism has been internationalist from the beginning, migration is seen as a way for the capital to import a reserve army of proletarians[3], creating competition among the poor. For this reason, the tender pro-migration sentiments showed by neoliberals are nothing but a consequence of “false consciousness.”

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, both in Old and New Testament, evident affirmations can be found of the duty to protect migrants and hospitality[4].

Importantly, from a philosophical point of view, the concept of limited private property as defined by Thomas Aquinas[5], is a theoretical hub to build an opposition to souveranists.

Finally, neoliberals proposed some decades ago a project that should have produced the best society of all: nevertheless it produced one with a very small wealthy elite and a very large poor population and a continuous ongoing erasing of the middle-class.

The problems can be condensed in the following statement: Do foreigners have the right to enter my country, to share in the type of society that was created by my ancestors over the centuries? When the migrant is in my country, does he have the right to maintain his culture, his laws, and his traditions? Which are the bonds that connect native and foreigners to the point that we can consider them members of the same family? Can this membership arrive at the point that I am obliged by law to pay with my taxes to fix their problems?

To these questions, there is no universal agreement. As stated by Zizek, each possible answer is the worst[6].

The liberal concepts of freedom, equality, and brotherhood, if we see them  from the point of view of the migrant, seem to grant him the right to emigrate. The same could not be said from the point of view of the native, where the hidden 4th commandment, the right to private property (i.e., the right to exclude), denies foreigners access to a richer country. The concept of property, in this case, shifts from “my own home or goods” to “my society, my customs, my traditions,” but it still says that something belongs to me (and others that have some special entitlement) but is not universal.

Private property the bourgeois' central tenet, which holds that without property, there is no liberty, clashes here with the concept of solidarity. It is universal rights versus local rights. “Fraternité,” the ambiguous concept of the French Revolution, wavers from a universal abstract concept to a local one. “In a free people there are only brothers or enemies” and “Every Frenchman is your brother until he openly shows himself to be a traitor to his homeland”[7] are some revolutionary expressions that denote that “brotherhood” is a concept that unites a group, making it “my group” against “the other.”The worst is that if I define my political community as a property of mine shared with others but not with all humanity, it means that citizenship is not universal and the entitlement to human rights does not appear to be universal, when both, by definition, are universal.

Can another central tenet of modern liberal democracies, the contractualistic concept of society, give us an answer?

The question is whether migrants belong to the same originary contract of the native community. Naturally, the idea of social contract is only a theoretical scheme, because there is no proof that somewhere and at sometime it was signed by someone, but, here, even as a theoretical point of view, there is no reason to think that different communities had signed multiple social contracts in multiple nations. Why does the “original position,” to use a typical Rawls term[8], have to be confined only to a country and not to all the primeval, originary community?

In this case, we should grant free access to migrants because all the inequalities and differences that have emerged in the history of humanity after the establishment of an original social contract cannot negate a right that is foundational: the right to membership, to belong to the same human group.

Unfortunately, the reality is that the idea of social contract has no temporal priority with respect to the actual society; on the contrary, the existence of the actual society needs, in order to avoid a continuous state of civil war, a scheme that we projected on the past but that never existed. It is a backward induction. It has to be noted that the current existence of our contemporary society determines the type of social contract, and it is not that the original social contract determines the type of actual society. Following a Nietzschean approach, like in the Genealogy of the Moral, we could apply the same argument of suspects to the genealogy of “community,” “country,” and “cultures.”

This is not a true explanation but a conservative way to reinforce current liberal values. The weakness of this explanation is clearly shown by the migration issue, where if social contract were a real first step of humanity, it would include every human being of every geographical territory.

The very same difference in societies and cultures need different explanatory models.

The social contract is aimed at the creation of a solidaristic society where i) we get rid of any transcendental value and ii) we exclude any metaphysical concept of the nature of political and social bonds that determine the polis and the state.

The idea is that we should "at least" find a way to live together like individuals even if we do not consider ourselves brothers or members of the same human family. However, this “at least” could shatter in a moment due to the depth in democratic societies of hatred for the different, for diversity, for everyone who is not myself.

In a metaphysics conference, we should try to define the central question that can give the foundations to the constitution of society, not with a minimal explanatory answer but with a strong model; alternatively, in case this is found to be impossible, throw in the towel and eventually run aground in a shore of extreme hatred, violence, war, and destruction.

What is the metaphysical nature of social bonds?

What is the nature of what binds us in a relation, prompting us to help the other not out of empathy or interest, not out of justice, but because the other is in tight substantial relation with ourselves?

Because if the predicament “relationship” among humans is only accidental, like stated by Aristotle in the Categories[9], or if what links us to one another is transcendent to human beings and not immanent, we stay in a situation where we can sway from a concept of society where we are united by a transcendent concept of “I” (like class, or motherland, or ideology, in all the socialistic models of societies), in which case we are subjugated to, and not free; to an individualistic concept of society where we are free but alone with an existential anguish so well-described by some philosophers of the last century.

We should find something that unites us on an immanent ground.

We can easily recognize that this is one variant of the old problem of ?ν κα? πολλ? that Florenskij pointed out as the central problem of Ancient Greek metaphysics[10]. The same riddle comes from Plato’s Parmenides on the topic of universals of Medieval philosophy: the central conundrum of thought.

Fernando Rielo gives us a clear explanatory model of the problem of the Most Holy Trinity, of the One and Three ("De Deo Uno et Trino").

For him, the absolute relationship among the three divine persons is an immanent, intrinsic complementarity.

This means that the relationships between the three divine persons are not transcendent or bonded into something above them because there is nothing beyond the Absolute. On the contrary, the relationship is immanent and complementary because none of the persons can exist without the others, and this relationship is intrinsic because it is not superficial. It happens to be the deepest relation of being and is essential and not accidental. Every extrinsic or accidental relationship will slip into a tritheism, and every non-transcendental relationship will determine that there is something more important than the Absolute, and every non-complementary relationship would permit monarchism and Sabellianism.

However, is it possible to have the same relationship in political society or human communities, though not in absolute form, as in the Trinity? Like the Calcedonian concept of the homousian of the divine hypostasis, is there a mystical homousian of human beings?

Can we find—even though not divine—a mystical (in the sense of Rielo), immanent, complementary, intrinsic relationship among human beings?

The anthropology of Rielo gives us a fascinating answer. According to Rielo we have two natures: human and mystical . The mystical nature is formed and constituted by the Divine constitutive presence (DPC) of the Absolute in us. It means that it is not created, and it is the very same presence of God into us.

This presence is profoundly rooted in ourselves; it dwells in the more intimate part of our beings, and it is not separate but infused completely inside our spirit, constituting our essence, non-accidental to her. The difference with Aquinas’ concept of divine grace is that, for him, grace is a presence of God by participation; it is accidental, not substantial[11], while DPC is essential respect human beings. As Rielo states, “We cannot deny the presence of the Absolute in ourselves; this presence is not accidental like the presence of what is not infinite, but it is essential, constitutive, defining.[12]" If this presence is essential, even if the DPC is different from myself, I cannot exist without it.

According to Rielo, in the human being, the two natures constitute a mystical hypostasis; that is to say, the human being is a mystical deity made in the image and likeness of a divine deity[13].

This DPC is in all human beings. For this reason, it is not bizarre to infer that while our human nature is the part of us that cannot be shared with the rest of humanity, in the case of our mystical nature, this presence is really not only identical, but the very same that dwells inside other human beings. The DPC being “coessential” that is, defining myself and internal to myself, it is an integral part of the ousia and if this divine constitutive presence is the very same in all human beings, we can be defined as different persons who mystically share the same ousia.

In this case, it is easy to understand the mysterious problem of why, on one side, we see that others are like us, but “strange” to us and, on the contrary, we can become with the other One Mystical homoousia. This union with the other in God has been very clearly stated by Christ in the John’s Gospel of the Last Supper.

In this case, we would share in a universal perspective, not only an identical nature but the very sameness, You are me, and I am you.

If the other is in a mystical sense “myself,” it transforms itself in “you.” And the profound definition of a “you” is to have something that ontologically belongs to me, better yet, that is, “me,” and to have something of myself that belongs to you, better yet, that is, “you.”

Therefore, the concept of “other” as enemy disappears. The Spinozian statement, “negatio est determinatio,” which means that—at least on Hegel’s interpretation in the Phenomenology—in order to be myself, I need to pass through the flames of confrontation and war with yourself, is fake.

Hegel’s concept posits that the progress, the development, and the perfection of the universe are grounded on a dialectical mechanism of determinate negation with casualties on one side and which is—on the other side—the realization of the Geist in history. This concept means awarding the role of source of goodness and liberty to sin, violence, and death. Nevertheless, we cannot accept that disease produces health, that crime produces peace, that murder produces life, and, of course, denying migrants and refugees aid and shelter is good for the world.

On the contrary, if we accept Rielo’s mystical conception of anthropology, we do not need an enemy to recognize us. Therefore the enemy becomes neighbor and brother and myself, in a continuous chain of proximity.

A polis grounded on this concept gives an answer to the problem of solidarity, far from a veil of ignorance and, at the same time, permits us to define a universal society where there is no difference among cultures, human beings, and countries.

If we are mystically homousian with our neighbors, and this is the essential definition of brotherhood, it means that, in a sense, I am defined by my brother and I define him, because DPC is transcendent and immanent at the same time in me and in all human beings. To be clear: “The Other is dead,” gone, forever, only exist “You”.

Sartre, in his famous play “No Exit,”[14] tells us that the “Other” is our hell. The play is set in a strange hell where the three characters, after their death, linked together by hatred and desire, must live together forever, and this is their eternal punishment.

But if the Other is hell, and the Other is the only problem, how can we imagine heaven the way Sartre imagined it: an eternal loneliness? An island where I am alone? The misunderstanding comes when we remove from our nature the divine presence of the Absolute. A human being deprived of the Absolute is less than a subject: he has lost his essence and has alienated himself, a simple bundle of hatred and desires without direction and meaning.

So, he is hell to himself because he is not himself.

 

 

[1] F. Capriglione https://www.academia.edu/28904515/Alle_origini_dello_ius_migrandi.pdf consulted on 2018-09-25

[2] Soto, D. ., & Junta, J. . (1545). Deliberacion en la causa de los pobres. En Salamanca: En la officina de Jua[n] de Ju[n]ta.

[3] Marx Engels, The Capital Chapter 23 Book I

 

[4] Typical is the verses of Leviticus 19:34 “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God.” And Matthew 25:34-36 “Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’”

 

[5] “Aliud vero quod competit homini circa res exteriores est usus ipsarum. Et quantum ad hoc non debet homo habere res exteriores ut proprias, sed ut communes, ut scilicet de facili aliquis ea communicet in necessitates aliorum. Unde apostolus dicit, 1 ad Tim. 6 [17-18], divitibus huius saeculi praecipe facile tribuere, communicare”. Queste citazioni e la traduzione in italiano sono tratte dal: San Tommaso d’Aquino . (2014). La Somma Teologica. Bologna: ESD. Versione online https://www.edizionistudiodomenicano.it/on-line.php

[6] Z?iz?ek, S. (2016). 

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A

gainst the double blackmail: Refugees, terror and other troubles with the neighbours

. London: Allen Lane.

[7] “Fraternité” in Ozouf, M., & Furet, F. (1989). A critical dictionary of the French Revolution. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

[8] Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, Mass. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

[9] “It is a problem whether (as one would think) no substance is spoken of as a relative or whether this is possible with regard to some secondary substance. In the case of primary substances it is true; neither wholes nor parts are spoken of in relation to anything. An individual man is not called someone’s individual man, nor an individual ox someone’s individual ox” . In Aristotle, ., Ackrill, J. L., & Aristotle, . (1963). Aristotle's Categories and De interpretatione. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 8a 13, pag.22

 

[10] “Forse la fondamentale απορ?α (difficoltà) della filosofia è il problema dell’?ν κα? πολλ? (uno e molti), o por lo meno lo è stato nella filosofia greca. I problemi dell’individuo e dell’ambiente, dell’atomo e del vuoto, della frammentareità e dell’integrità, della continuità e della discontinuità, dell’?π?στασι? (ipostasi) e dell’ο?σ?α (sostanza) ecc., sono tutte variazioni dell’?ν κα? πολλ? (uno e molti). La negazione dell’?ν (uno) di πολλ? (molti)e di παν (tutto) porta alla negazione della conoscenza, alla negazione del senso della realtà, alla negazione dell’eterno nel temporaneo. Invece il riconoscimento di παν (tutto) e πολλ? (molti) nell’?ν (uno) esige un chiarimento per capire come ciò sia possibile.” In Pavel Florenskij. Il significato dell’idealismo. Pag. 65. Rusconi Libri. 1999. A cura di Natalino Valentini. Traduzione di Smysl idealizma. Sergei Posad 1914

[11] “Ad secundum dicendum quod omnis substantia vel est ipsa natura rei cuius est substantia,vel est pars naturae, secundum quem modum materia vel forma substantia dicitur. Et quia gratia est supra naturam humanam, non potest esse quod sit substantia aut forma substantialis, sed est forma accidentalis ipsius animae. Id enim quod substantialiter est in Deo, accidentaliter fit in anima participante divinam bonitatem, ut de scientia patet. Secundum hoc ergo, quia anima imperfecte participat divinam bonitatem, ipsa participatio divinae bonitatis quae est gratia, imperfectiori modo habet esse in anima quam anima in seipsa subsistat. Est tamen nobilior quam natura animae, inquantum est expressio vel participatio divinae bonitatis, non autem quantum ad modum essendi.”

Ivi I-II.110.2.ad.2

[12] Rielo, F. (2013). Concepcio?n mi?stica de la antropologi?a

Madrid: Fundación Fernando Rielo. Pag. 74 (my translation)

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Ivi, pag. 75

[14] Sartre, J. P. (1947). Huis clos. Pari?s: Editions Gallimard.