Luigi Taparelli
Luigi Taparelli was an Italian scholar of the Society of Jesus who coined the term social justice and elaborated the principles of subsidiarity as part of his natural law theory of just social order. He was the brother of the Italian statesman Massimo d'Azeglio.
Biography
His father, Cesare Taparelli, was at one time ambassador of Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia to the Holy See, and his brother, Massimo, was one of the Italian ministers of State. Cesare was a member of the associations Amicizia cristiana and Amicizia cattolica, and a main contributor to L'Ape, the first Catholic journal in Italy. Luigi was educated under the Piarists at Siena and in the Atheneo of Turin. He attended the military School of St Cyr at Paris for some months, but he was not destined to be a soldier. He entered the Society of Jesus at Rome, 12 Nov. 1814. He was the first rector of the Roman College after its restoration to the Jesuits by Leo XII. He taught philosophy for sixteen years at Palermo.Taparelli cofounded the journal Civiltà Cattolica in 1850 and wrote for it for twelve years. He was particularly concerned with the problems arising from the Industrial Revolution. He was a proponent of reviving the philosophical school of Thomism, and his social teachings influenced Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical, Rerum novarum.
In 1825, he became convinced that the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas needed to be revived, thinking that the subjective philosophy of René Descartes leads to dramatic errors in morality and politics. He reasoned that whereas different opinions on the natural sciences have no effect on nature, unclear metaphysical ideas about humanity and society can lead to social chaos.
The Catholic Church had not yet developed a clear philosophical view regarding the great social changes that were appearing in the early nineteenth century in Europe, which led to much confusion among the ecclesiastical hierarchy and laity. In response to this problem, Taparelli applied the methods of Thomism to these social problems in a coherent manner.
After the social revolutions of 1848, the church decided to enter the conflict raging between the laissez-faire liberal capitalists and the socialists. Up until then, the church relied primarily on evangelical charitable activities. In 1850, Taparelli, until then a liberal and revolutionary, was granted permission by Pope Pius IX to co-found Civiltà Cattolica with Carlo Maria Curci. In particular, he attacked the tendency to separate morality from positive law, and also the "heterodox spirit" of unconstrained freedom of conscience which destroyed the unity of society.
His major ideas include social justice and subsidiarity. He viewed society as not a monolithic group of individuals, but of various levels of sub-societies, with individuals being members of these. Each level of society has both rights and duties which should be recognized and supported. All levels of society should cooperate rationally and not resort to competition and conflict.