disorder in politics

Where do political problems come from? Following Aristotle's definition, politics is the study of how human beings ought to order their lives together. It is, in the deepest sense, a study of human nature. Political problems, then, are human problems. Human problems have a multitude of sources. The source of our greatest problems is easiest to name: sin, or moral evil. Evil unquestionably causes disorder in politics. Its faces are many: Distrust, dishonesty, violence, arrogance, betrayal, the desire for power over others, to name a few. Sin is the ultimate problem and the problem that condemns us and causes the greatest disorders and evils. But is it the only problem? Father James Schall teaches us that it is not the only political problem

... finiteness, which is itself a good, is also responsible for much of the disorder in the world, as well as for much of the good. We cannot equate evil and disorder without further qualifications. This is another way of saying that man has a real task in the world itself, that the existence of God does not obviate the existence of man. Man's place and task in the world are, therefore, significant. They involve essentially the eradication of the cruder limits of finiteness by knowledge and experience. The world is there to be put in order by man. This is the primary political and social mission of the race precisely as the mortals who will pass through the world. This means too that man is dignified by God precisely by not having been given everything in a complete form. A good deal of the inflexibility and difficulty we experience, then, is due to the fact that man only slowly learns to attack the real problems before him because he it is who must learn to cope with his own life on Earth. Our generation begins to solve the problems the previous age suffered under. Yet, a new generation may forget or ignore the lessons of the previous ages. There is no necessary progress. And this is why the study of history is always fruitful, for men before our time really did know things, things we may well not know.

The limits of finitude, consequently, are expanded by labor and patience, by knowledge and memory. At this point, one further theological observation is worth making. If a man thinks that all of the suffering and disorder in the world are due, with no further qualification, to human evil and not also to finiteness, then he will end up logically by calling the human condition, as such, evil. He will probably even rebel at being a man at all since that involves, in part, the recognition of finiteness as a good, not an absolute good, but a good nonetheless. Indeed, I think a good part of the political turmoil in recent years has been the result of precisely this intellectual confusion...

- Father James Schall, S.J., "Christianity and Politics" pp. 86-87

This is an abstract point, but it seems to me to be something that is not often considered. Human beings are finite, the choices we make are limited. We have to decide to DO something, and there may be many courses of action that are valid and good. This multitude of good paths to choose from causes disorder in politics. We must organize ourselves somehow. We need to deliberate and choose between different courses of action.

This is perhaps why Aquinas held that, contrary to Madison, angels needed government. They are without sin, but they are finite creatures. Being finite creatures, their potentiality is limited, and therefore must decide what to do. They need to organize themselves in action to be efficient. This need for organization can cause disorder (perhaps not nearly as much disorder for angels, whose intellect is held to be greatly superior to ours).

I think there's a lot to this idea of finitude.