Michael Pakaluk is Ordinary Professor of Political Economy, Busch School of Business, The Catholic University of America; Ordinarius, Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas; and Distinguished Senior Fellow, Institute for Human Ecology. He has published many papers in philosophy and three books on Aristotle. In 2025 alone he published Be Good Bankers, The Shock of Holiness, and The Company We Keep, in addition to being a lead author for Natural Law: Five Views. He is married to the American economist and social philosopher, Catherine Ruth Pakaluk. They have eight children and live in Hyattsville, Maryland.
What I find fascinating about your work is how you draw from the well of ancient wisdom to address contemporary challenges as if the Apostles and Aristotle and Cicero were still writing today. One example is Be Good Bankers, which mines the Gospel of Matthew for insights into personal economics. Many people assume that if you’re turning a profit, you’re in danger of losing your soul. Yet you argue that we were designed by God to do business. Help the “otherworldly” understand how this can make sense since Christ seems to threaten the salvation of rich men.
Michael Pakaluk: Samuel Johnson said that a book you haven’t yet read is just the same as a recent publication. Philosophy, as I understand it, concerns enduring realities, so that the mere passage of time makes no difference to it. If Aristotle, say, in the 5th, 13th, and 18th centuries, was appraised by highly educated persons as a great genius, perhaps the greatest, “the Master of those who know,” then I think one would need to be deeply familiar with his work in order, responsibly, to maintain otherwise. But how many who dismiss him have studied him well? So, yes, I begin by regarding Aristotle and Cicero as on an equal playing field with anyone alive today, and if I find that they have superior insight, then they win the day, so to speak. Of course, it requires a little bit of work to understand them.
One way to understand Be Good Bankers is that it aims to use business analogies, which derive from Jesus, Paul, and the very choice by Jesus of a tax collector to be his main chronicler, to develop a good account of what self-love amounts to for a Christian. This is to say, what prudence (phronēsis) amounts to, because prudence is construed classically as the pursuit of one’s own genuine best interests in a clever way.
All the great Fathers and theologians of Christianity taught that self-love is of the highest importance. It comes second after love of God. The first precept of charity is to love God; the second is to love oneself for the sake (that is, the good) of God; and the third is to love one’s neighbor as oneself. But the second is typically left out, these teachers say, because we have no need of a commandment for self-love. We love ourselves as a matter of course. And yet self-love still needs instruction, which those other commandments, when articulated, provide.
That self-love is of the highest importance is clear if you consider the following contrast. Two heads of households are living in two houses side-by-side. The one takes care of his house and yard; the other’s house is a wreck, and the lawn has gone to seed. The one exercises and eats moderately; the other sits in a chair all day and eats junk food, becoming obese. The one tries to learn new things constantly, like languages and geography; the other plays video games. The one works hard to make life comfortable for himself and his dependents; the other is lazy and seems not to care. In sum, the one who loves himself more is living a life much more pleasing in the sight of God than the other.
Someone who loves himself improves himself and increases his wealth over time. What we call “profit” is, most basically, the gain in good that comes from his efforts. If, for instance, he starts exercising several times a week and he gains stamina as a result, then this gain in stamina is his “profit” from his exercise.
In sum, there cannot be self-love without the pursuit of “profit.” Therefore, if self-love is praiseworthy, then so must be taking profit.
Economics and business ethics loom large in your academic focus, but you also have written extensively on friendship and holiness. Is there a connection between being a friend and being “holy”? What would “holy” mean in this context?
I have many interests. For instance, I’ve been working on a book on the philosophy of music; another on spirituality and golf; another on courtship. As I pursue these, I do not worry about the connections among them. There will be connections inevitably, because the same person is pursuing these different things. But meta-questions like that are not my concern.
However, you have asked a meta-question! About holiness: traditionally, to be holy meant to be set apart for God. The “sacred,” the things so set apart, were one thing, and the “profane” were something else. But Christianity changed this conception. “The Word became flesh.” As a consequence, there becomes a distinct manifestation of holiness to be sought in Christianity, especially by laypersons, which is for holy things to inform, penetrate, and enter into profane things.
On this conception of holiness, every human good and every human reality is something that can be so “informed.” One might even wish to claim that a lay Christian does not succeed at this new project unless he has so “informed” every human reality in his life. Friendship is such a reality, and therefore it permits of being so “informed.”
What does this amount to practically speaking? Fundamentally friendship for a Christian will be undergirded by prayer; it will be assisted by divine action, which in the tradition is called “grace.” Its matter will be different; for example, the conversation and manners of the friends and the sacrifices they elicit will be more total.
Despite failed socialist experiment after failed socialist experiment, we now have self-described socialists as mayors of NYC and Seattle. Ignorance on the part of the electorate may be a factor, but what role does simply punishing “billionaires” or “white privilege” play in this resurgence, if any?
Envy has always been the fuel of socialism. Envy, defined as “sorrow at another’s good,” in the tradition is regarded as one of the Seven Capital Vices. They are called vices, rather than sins, because they stick inveterately in someone’s character and mar it. They are called “capital” from the word for “head” and “leader” because they are thought to elicit in the person who has one of these vices many more vices (referred to in the tradition as the “daughters” of the vice). Envy elicits self-righteousness and a twisted sense of justice, which leads people to steal from others and declare it to be right.
An atomized population is a seedbed for the particular envy that finds expression in socialism, because the individuals in such a population regard political society as their main society. It is their ersatz family. But fathers in a household are accorded freedom to take goods away and to determine who has care of the goods of the household. Members of an atomized society therefore easily assign to political authorities wealth-transfer powers that amount to theft. Needless to say, the younger residents in New York City form an atomized population.
Meanwhile, the macro-economy of the United States operates on principles of de facto socialism. Therefore, no principled relief is to be found there. Fiat currency has made the federal government the sole owner of all money. No one recognizes any de jure limits on the government’s taxing power. And Social Security overrides the obligations of generation to generation within the family.
I do not think it has been often observed that for a single man to claim authority, by arbitrary decision, to set down tariffs for an entire economy, which inflict immediate losses on businesses because the changes could not have been planned for—such an authority presupposes socialism. Theft takes different forms.
It’s popular also to talk of the common good, and not only among socialists. Is it possible to pursue a “common” good without falling into a collectivist trap?
Yes, of course. People who talk about the common good today typically fail to give a coherent definition, and they neglect the two most common formulations of the common good in the tradition.
In the tradition, the common good of political society was taken to be either: (1) God and communion with God, or (2) the virtue of its citizens. You can see the first operative in Aquinas, De Regno. The state’s job is to make citizens such that they can be “handed off” to higher religious authorities who have care of their eternal souls. You can see (2) in Aristotle: The state’s job is to provide the conditions of eudaimonia, but eudaimonia (true well-being or happiness) requires the virtues.
You received all three of your degrees from Harvard, which has come under fire recently for everything from ignoring rampant anti-Semitism on campus to activism in the classroom to eliminating Western civ as a focus of study. If you could walk into a room of Harvard trustees and offer one piece of advice to right its ship, what would it be?
Make space for the proper religious education of students who want it, by giving credit for sufficiently rigorous courses in a religious tradition, offered by a university-affiliated religious organization. For example, concretely, permit the Catholic Student Center to offer a course on Aquinas’s Summa so that students can take it for credit at Harvard in philosophy or liberal education; or a course on The Story of a Soul by St. Thérèse of Lisieux—and not taught “as literature.” And so on.
Now for some fun questions: (a) What book(s) have you read at least three times, and why? (b) If you could blow up one public building, à la Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, without endangering life or risking imprisonment, which one would it be? (c) What’s your favorite B&W film, and why?
(a) Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics; Plato, The Republic; Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy. Each of these books if studied properly gives a near complete and basically sound conception of the world and human life. Moreover, the discipline of mind acquired in mastering them is not easy to acquire elsewhere.
(b) So many choices! In the spirit of Roark, I would pick the Kennedy Center. It is a disgrace as a concert center for a world-class city. It looks as good as, and has aged as well as, everything else from the 1970s. The acoustics are poor besides. Time to start over. Demolition is in order.
(c) All my favorite films are B&W. I will pick one that is serious and one that is a comedy. My serious pick would be Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet (1955). The atmosphere, characters, composition, and storyline are very powerful. I can say no more! The ending must remain a surprise! My lighthearted pick would be Midnight, a 1939 screwball comedy starring Don Ameche and Claudette Colbert, directed by Mitchell Leisen. Screenplay by Billy Wilder. Supporting roles by John Barrymore and a stunning Mary Astor. (Great depth of talent.) It has so many hilarious turns! I guarantee you will fall out of your chair laughing. It is very charming besides, painting a lovely picture of Parisian manners in the 1930s.
