The Philosophical Theory of the State

by Bernard Bosanquet

[1] B. Jowett, in conversation, to author.

To the individual and society thus conceived—A, B, C, and the rest—it is plain that government can be nothing but self-protection. It is, in fact, a form of the impact of “others,” scientifically minimised, and accepted because it is minimised. For this reason it is, as we saw throughout, alien to the self, and incapable of being recognised as springing from a common root with the spontaneous life which we pretend to be aware of only within our private magic circle. Then the forcible impact of B and C upon the circle of A is a necessary evil, a diminution, pro tanto, of A. And the more altruistic A is, the more he will recognise this, as affecting not himself only, but B and C also.

It is for this reason that, on the views in question, all law and government necessarily remain formal and negative as compared with the substantive and positive ends of the self. The maintenance of “liberty,” of the circular or hexagonal [1] fences round A, B, C, and the rest, is {84} conceived as involving no determinate type of life, no relation to the ends which the units pursue within their hexagons. If in any way the self went beyond itself, and A recognised a positive end and nature which peremptorily bound him to B and the others, it would be impossible to keep this nature and end from reflecting themselves in the determinate content of the conditions of association between them. The assumption would be destroyed which keeps “government” alien to “self,” and it would be possible to consider in what sense and for what reason the nature of a spiritual animal turns against itself with the dualism which the paradox of self-government embodies, and that in pursuit of its true unity.

[1] See P. 73

2. We will now discuss Rousseau’s treatment of the paradox of “self-government.” And we discuss it, not because it is complete or self-consistent, but rather because, while breaking through to the root of the whole matter, it is as incomplete and as inconsistent as are the efforts of our own minds to lay hold of any profound truth. It displays, in fact, on the great stage of the history of philosophy, precisely the struggle which each of us has to go through if he tries to pierce the surface of commonplace fiction and tradition which persistently weaves itself about social facts. On almost every page there is relapse and vacillation. The fictions which are being cast aside continually reassert themselves; the embodiment of the principle which the author’s genius has discerned is sought for in expedients essentially opposite to its nature, while the instruments which it has developed for itself are contemptuously rejected.

{85} We are going to examine the main thesis of Rousseau’s Contrat Social. The reader who is surprised to find in our account little or nothing of the “return to nature,” “natural equality,” and the “natural rights of the individual,” may refer for these to Rousseau’s earlier essays on theses propounded by the Academy of Dijon. The first of the theses (1750) ran, “Whether the re-establishment of the sciences and the arts contributed to purify morals”; and Rousseau’s discourse, which won the prize, following the lead of the thesis, started from the later Renaissance, and dealt in general with the phenomena of decadence—a very real problem. The notable feature of this brief essay is its constant vacillation between the attack on science, art, and education as such, and the criticism, by no means an undiscerning criticism, of their abuses. Rousseau’s head is full, not of primitive man, but of Socrates and Cato, of Sparta and republican Rome. A writer who speaks of Newton and Verulam as preceptors of the human race can hardly be hostile to true intellectual achievement. [1] It is noteworthy that his zeal for educational reform is already apparent in this first published work.

[1] The whole piece breathes a spirit of prize essay paradox, and though, if sympathetically read, it is seen to be most characteristic of the author, no serious conclusion should be drawn from it as to his hostility to civilisation. A comic instance of his vacillation is produced by the necessity he felt himself under, of excepting, from his general dispraise of modern letters, such Academies as that of Dijon, which was to judge his essay. For an excellent appreciation of these earlier works, and of Rousseau in general, see the essay on “Our Natural Rights,” in the Lectures and Essays of the late Professor W. Wallace, Clarendon Press, 1898.

The second essay (1754), a much longer and {86} more serious piece, is on the thesis, “What is the origin of Inequality among mankind, and is it justified by natural law?” It was dedicated, with expressions of extravagant laudation, to Rousseau’s native state, the Republic of Geneva. His enthusiasm for this community, as for the ancient city-states, is a far truer guide to his genuine social ideas than any of his paradoxes about the state of nature and the bondage of social man. His genius, in fact, is very much under-rated by those who suppose him at any time to have believed the primitive state of nature, or earliest imaginable condition of the human race, to be capable of furnishing an ideal of life. He is perfectly aware that a state of nature, which is to furnish an ideal, must be selected at least from among the higher phases of man’s evolution, after morality and the family have begun to form themselves, and language and property have made some advance. Here, again, his vacillation is strikingly observable, and we can see that it arises from his profound insight. The vices of civilisation tend to force the desirable state of man down the scale of evolution, but the value of morality and respect for human nature tend to force it up, and Rousseau’s argument embodies the struggle. For Rousseau is far too critical and clear-sighted to ascribe true morality or strictly human nature to a state of animal innocence, and he knows that virtue involves potential vice; [1] and therefore it is with hesitation and regret that he selects a middle state as {87} representing his ideal, fully aware that it has forfeited animal innocence without having attained human morality. Even the famous declamation against the first founder of property in land seems to pass away in an admission that this was an inevitable stage in the growth of human capacities, which the author would not seriously desire to remain undeveloped. Two further points may be noted; first, the fundamental contention that men are by nature not equal but unequal, the evil of civilisation lying just in the replacement of natural by political inequality. If this political inequality were considered as modifiable, it is plain that the view would point to an advantage in the way of equality [2] possessed by society over nature. Secondly, the view here taken of natural liberty in relation to the social pact should be compared with that of the Contrat Social. In the essay, “natural liberty” is on the whole preferred; in the Contrat, another kind of liberty is held a truer good, although much of the tone and language associated with the preference of natural liberty continues by the side of the later view. It is plain that we are dealing, not with an unconsidering fanatical enthusiasm for one or another state of man, but with a struggling insight, which sees evil but also good in all, and, with hesitation and reluctance, depresses the scale first in favour of the one, and then in favour of the other condition of human beings.

[1] He seems to regard the beginnings of industrial co-operation as the end of the “state of nature” in the widest sense. The remark that “iron and corn civilised man and ruined the human race,” anticipates much in later speculations.

[2] We find Rousseau actually drawing attention to this in the Contrat Social. See Cont. Soc., I. ix. fin., where observe (i) that he half believes himself to have spoken of natural equality, and not of natural inequality, in the “Essay”; and (2) the “hedging” footnote on the illusoriness of social equality.