Public Opinion

PUBLIC OPINION. - I. NOTION. - Public opinion is not simply the sum of individual opinions, but is rather a body of ideas, sentiments, judgments, and practical positions which at a given time represents and expresses a collective attitude, shaping the psychology of individuals and resulting from an intimate persuasion, produced more or less spontaneously, whereby a rather large number of men think and feel in a uniform way about some fact or problem of the day.

In the case of public opinion, the term "opinion" does not have a value perfectly identical to that intended when "opinion" is contrasted with certainty (v.) and doubt (v.), as the second degree of knowledge, which consists in an imperfect assent that oscillates between doubt (first degree), which is indecision between two contrary theses, and certainty (third degree), which is firm and sure adherence to one side. Individual opinion is adherence to a thesis, but with fear of erring, owing to the lack of an intrinsic objective evidence (certainty of reason) or founded on other certainties (certainty of faith: cf. Sum. Theol., 2nd-2nd, q. 2, a. 1; De Veritate, q. 14, a. 1).

Public opinion, on the other hand, can result from acts of assent that subjectively constitute certainty, and in any case from more or less spontaneous and more or less rational adherences on the part of many to ideas which, through collective communication or under the action of more powerful personalities, of centers of propaganda, of political and social organizations, etc., have succeeded in winning over their thought or feeling. A phenomenon thus occurs similar to that of the formation of practical conscience. In practical life, in fact, the judgments of many concerning action do not go beyond the degree of opinion, given the complexity of the circumstances in the human act and the difficulties arising from an interior state that is often disordered or confused. In order to pass to action, recourse is then had to some reflected principle, which helps to form a prudential practical judgment, that is, one conformable to right appetite, so that the passage to action is legitimate (cf. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, De Beatitudine, "de actibus humanis et habitibus", Turin 1951, pp. 384, 389). The counsel of a wise and prudent person can help in such a pronouncement of conscience, and sometimes even substitutes, by its authority, for personal considerations regarding the reasons for a choice and the legitimacy of a position.

Thus in the field of public opinion; since it is generally a matter of knowing and judging contingent and complex facts or of choosing a line of action on the basis of motives that are not always fully convincing; or also of behaving according to dictates of conscience often beset by passions and interests, it is difficult, and almost impossible for many, to form a personal certainty. Many others do not engage in the work of inquiry and judgment out of laziness, skepticism, or other reasons. Then the thought or authority of some intervenes, who by the skillful presentation of ideas (whether true or false in themselves) accompanied by psychological motives and emotional charges (popular themes) determine a current in a certain direction, which many follow with sure assent. It is one of the modes of psychological interaction, as sociologists say, which substantially consists in persuading others to embrace one's own points of view and to follow one's own practical directions. The importance and the dangers of such a phenomenon are evident.

II. IMPORTANZA

Machiavelli had already alluded (and later Locke demonstrated it, in Essay concerning Human Understanding, London 1690) to the enormous importance for public life of knowing and of arousing opinions in others. G. B. Vico pointed out that the renewal of institutions is the result of the transformations accomplished in what Montesquieu would later call the "general spirit" and Rousseau the "general will." According to Vico, public opinion governs customs and law, just as it commands language. The people give to the laws the meaning they want, and rulers must more or less willingly adapt themselves to the people's meaning, just as they must acknowledge the people's sovereignty over language (cf. Scienza Nuova, IV, 6).

Already among the Romans there is talk of communis opinio, vox populi, fama popularis, rumores, and the phenomenon was known also to the Greeks, especially in Athens. In the Middle Ages it was considered also by jurists as a general consensus, which could furnish arguments, or indications, or testimonies. It has always influenced the course of public life, the political configuration of society, the establishment and the fall of public powers. Although it does not concern exclusively political and social reality (being able to have also other objects, such as fashion, sport, the work of art, etc.), nevertheless its greater importance manifests itself above all in that field, since undoubtedly public opinion exerts its influence in the most effective way in determining choices and rejections in public life; and it is difficult and in the long run impossible to govern without it or against it, at least in modern democratically constituted society, in which the people hold in their hands the instruments capable of determining and influencing the public powers; to the point of being able to say with William Temple that public opinion is the foundation on which the authority of rulers rests (Essay upon the Origin and Nature of Government, London 1672).

Especially with the French Revolution public opinion gained ground as an operative force in society and has gone on ever more vigorously asserting and organizing itself, to the point of constituting with journalism (v.) the so-called "fourth power." The Encyclopedists left a vast literature on the subject. Especially Montesquieu, Rousseau, Spencer, brought into relief the importance of this kind of "social consensus." Today, moreover, the influence of public opinion, especially through the great means of publicity and propaganda, is decisive in all fields, from the commercial to the cultural. After the people, by free suffrage, have expressed a parliamentary majority on the basis of a preference of theirs determined in large part by public opinion, this remains ever the means by which the people can influence Parliament and the government. In this sense sociologists are wont to distinguish "dynamic" public opinion (leavened by rational values, progressive, operative) from that which is "static" or passively accepted and autocratically imposed, especially in absolutist regimes or in masses skillfully worked upon and reduced to a blind conformism.

III. DANGERS

The dangers that public opinion can represent for individuals and for society are therefore also evident. In reality, powerful organizations today often stifle every spontaneity of public opinion, to the point of reducing it to an irrational conformism that is a negation of spontaneous reason and a lowering of man's intellectual and ethical level. Unfortunately this often happens also around religious and moral questions that cannot be the object of public opinion, but of personally matured adherence or of faith, so that one witnesses phenomena of collective deception of colossal proportions, and one often notes the hollowness of the saying: vox populi, vox Dei. In this field, very serious problems of a moral, pastoral and pedagogical order open up, which give rise to the need for a careful study of the phenomena of public opinion and of the means to form it, correct it and guide it according to truth and honesty.

IV. STUDY OF PUBLIC OPINION

In more recent times p. o. has been subjected to scientific study, according to its various aspects: historical, philosophical, psychological, sociological, ethical. An attempt has also been made to establish a special science, demodossalogy, that is, the science of p. o. According to others, p. o. can be studied within a special branch of sociology. To carry out this scientific study of p. o. and of its means, special schools have been established, generally inserted as institutes or as specializations within university faculties. The United States of America began as early as the second half of the last century, followed successively by the principal countries. In the Catholic world one may especially note the schools of journalism established at the Catholic Faculty of Lille (where journalism was taught as early as 1896), at the Catholic University of Louvain, the Asociaciones de Propagandistas Católicos of Madrid, several American universities, the University of St. Thomas of Manila, the international institute Pro Deo of Rome.

Raimondo Spiazzi