Catholic Social Science Review

Volume 11, 2006

Peter and Caesar

As noted in the above bibliography the essay below was originally published in now extinct Continuum, Vol.3, No. 4, (Winter 1966). Permission to republish was graciously granted by the original publisher and copyright holder, Justus George Lawler. It is reproduced below in the exact format as the original. But the ideal society is not more real than the ideal gas of physics. Not that the true and the good are to be denied; rather, on the contrary, from the errors and evils that must inevitably arise, we ought to draw lessons in the ways of acting with greater prudence and wisdom. That is the meaning of “ideal” in politics, its meaning from the point of view of action.