The Philosophical Theory of the State

by Bernard Bosanquet

[1] Chapter III.

The only way in which the idea of means and end can be applied to the social whole and its parts, is to take Society when at its lower level, being dealt with under the aspect of mere plurality, as a means to what it is at its higher level, when realised as a communion of individualities at their best. But from this point of view we get no distinction of means and end as between Individuals and Society. What we get is Individuals and Society alike, as understood and partly existing at one level (that of commonplace Individualism and Collectivism), taken as a means to both Individuals and Society at a higher level. As we have seen, the only true explanation of self-government is to throw the reality of the self outside what passes for its average nature, and in this sense the average nature may be treated as a means to the truer or fuller self—as something, that is to say, which is instrumental to the latter, and has no rights against it.

2. For us, then, the ultimate end of Society and the State as of the individual is the realisation of the best life. The difficulty of defining the best life does not trouble us, because we rely throughout on the fundamental logic of human nature qua rational. We think ourselves no more called upon to specify in advance what will be the details of the life which satisfies an intelligent being as such, than we are called upon to specify in advance {182} what will be the details of the knowledge which satisfies an intelligent being as such. Wherever a human being touches practice, as wherever he touches theory, we find him driven on by his intolerance of contradictions towards shaping his life as a whole. What we mean by “good” and “truth” is practical and theoretical experience in so far as the logic which underlies man’s whole nature permits him to repose in it. And the best life is the life which has most of this general character—the character which, so far as realised, satisfies the fundamental logic of man’s capacities.

Now, it is plain that this best life can only be realised in consciousness, that being the medium of all satisfaction and the only true type of a whole in experience. And all consciousness, as experienced by man, is on one side particular, attached to bodies, and exclusive of consciousnesses attached to other bodies. In a sense, it is true that no one consciousness can partake of or actually enter into another. Thus, it is apt to be held, as we have amply seen, that the essential danger of State interference lies in the intrusion of something originated by “others” upon a distinct particular consciousness, whose distinction and particularity—its freedom—are thus impaired. It is all-important to our point of view that this prejudice should be dispelled. Force or automatic custom or authoritative tradition or “suggestion” are not hostile to one individuality because they come from “others,” but because their nature is contradictory to the nature of the highest self-assertion of mind, because they are, so to speak, in a medium incompatible with its medium. They {183} are just as hostile to this self-assertion, just as alien, if they emanate, as they constantly do, from conflicting elements in our complex private experience, as if they come to us, as we say, “from without.” The question is of their “nature” and tendency, not of their centre of origin. Individuals are limited and isolated in many ways. But their true individuality does not lie in their isolation, but in that distinctive act or service by which they pass into unique contributions to the universal. True individuality, as we have said, is not in the minimisation which forbids further subdivision, but in the maximisation which includes the greatest possible being in an inviolable unity. It is not, therefore, the intrusion upon isolation, as such, that interferes with individuality; it is the intrusion, upon a growing unity of consciousness, of a medium hostile to its growth.

But we have seen that force, automatism, and suggestion, are in some ways necessary to the support and maintenance of the human consciousness, owing to its animal limitations. They are, indeed, as is well known, the condition of its progress. Therefore, in promoting the best life, these aids must be employed by society as exercising absolute power—viz., by the State. And the problem presented by their employment is not a question of the “interference of the State with the Individual”—an antithesis which is strictly meaningless; but it is a question how far and in what way the use of force and the like by the State is a hindrance to the end for which the State itself exists. In other words, it is to be ascertained how far the fullest self-assertion of the social {184} universal in its differences—the best life—can be promoted or is likely to be endangered by means which are of a different order, and so in some circumstances opposed to it. The point is not that I and some thousands more break in by force upon you in particular and violate your isolation; but that such breaking in by force, whoever does it and whoever suffers by it, and even if through passion or obsession you do it to _your_self and I to _my_self, is hostile prima facie to the living logic of the will, which alone can create a unity and realise a best. How then, and under what reservations, in the complicated conflict of the fuller and narrower self, can this dangerous drug of violence be administered, so to speak, as a counter-poison to tendencies which would otherwise give no chance to the logical will? With this difficulty in our minds, we will endeavour to determine the general principle on which force and menace should be used by the State, and a routine be mechanically maintained by it.

3. We have hitherto spoken of the State and Society as almost convertible terms. [1] And in fact it is part of our argument that the influences of Society differ only in degree from the powers of the State, and that the explanation of both is ultimately the same. But on the other hand, it is also part of our argument that the State as such is a necessary factor in civilised life; and that no true ideal lies in the direction of minimising its individuality or restricting its absolute power. By the State, then, we mean Society as a unit, recognised as rightly exercising control over its members {185} through absolute physical power. The limits of the unit are, of course, determined by what looks like historical accident; but there is logic underneath the apparent accident, and the most tremendous political questions turn upon the delimitation of political units. A principle, so to speak, of political parsimony—entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, “two organisations will not survive when one can do the work”—is always tending to expand the political unit. The limits of the common experience necessary for effective self-government are always operating to control this expansion. We might therefore suggest, as a principle determining the area of states, “the widest territorial area compatible with the unity of experience which is demanded by effective self-government.” But the State de facto (which is also de jure) is the Society which is recognised as exercising compulsory power over its members, and as presenting itself qua a single independent corporation among other independent corporations. Without such power, or where, if anywhere, it does not exist, there can be no ultimate and effective adjustment of the claims of individuals, and of the various social groups in which individuals are involved. It is the need for this ultimate effective adjustment which constitutes the need that every individual in civilised life should belong to one state, and to one only. Otherwise his “real” will might have no working representative at all, but all be sheer conflict. That Society, then, is a State, which is habitually recognised as a unit lawfully exercising force. We saw that the characteristics of Society pass gradually into those of the State. It would not be true that {196} Society is a State only as actually exercising force; but it would perhaps be true to say that State action as such, though far from being limited to the downright exercise of force, yet consists of all that side of social action which depends on the character of ultimate arbiter and regulator, maintainer of mechanical routine, and source of authoritative suggestion, a character which is one with the right to exercise force in the last resort.

[1] See, however, p. 150 ff.

The end of the State, then, is the end of Society and of the Individual—the best life, as determined by the fundamental logic of the will. The means at its disposal, qua State, always partake of the nature of force, though this does not exclude their having other aspects as well. Taxation may have the most reasonable and even the most popular purpose, yet the generality and justice of its incidence, and the certainty of its productiveness, can only be secured by compulsion. No State could undertake its work on the basis of voluntary contributions. A universal end, we might say, is indeed not a mere general rule; but you cannot carry out a universal end in a plurality of units—and a set of human individuals is always in one aspect a plurality of units—without enforcing general rules.

4. Here, then, we have our problem more closely determined than in the previous chapters. There we saw, in general, that self-government can have no meaning unless we can “really” will something which we do not always “actually” will. And we were led to look for a clue to our real or implied will in the social spirit as incorporated in laws and institutions, that is to say in Society as a {187} working whole reflected in the full system of the consciousnesses which composed it.

We supposed ourselves prepared, then, it would seem, to do and suffer anything which would promote the best life of the whole—that maximisation of our being which, from the nature of our real will, we saw to be imperative upon us—a demand implied in every volition and from which we could never escape.