The Philosophical Theory of the State

by Bernard Bosanquet

[1] Many forms of social co-operation, it must be remembered, need no deadlift from the State as such. We are not setting self-help against co-operation, but will against automatism.

Thus we may say that every law and institution, every external fact maintained by the public power, must be judged by the degree in which it sets at liberty a growth of mind and spirit. It is a {200} problem partly of removing obstacles to growth, and partly of the division of labour between consciousness and automatism.

It ought to occur to the reader that the ground here assigned for the limitation of State action—that is, of social action through the public power—is not prima facie in harmony with the account of political obligation, according to which laws and institutions represented a real self or general will, recognised by individuals as implied in the common good which was imperative upon them. We spoke, for example, of being forced to be free, and of the system of law and order as representing the higher self. And yet we are now saying that, in as far as force is operative through compulsion and authoritative suggestion, it is a means which can only reach its end through a negation.

But this prima-facie contradiction is really a proof of the vitality of our principle. It follows from the fact that we accept self-government in the full strength of both its factors, and can deal with it on this basis. The social system under which we live, taking it as one which does not demand immediate revolution, represents the general will and higher self as a whole to the community as a whole, and can only stand by virtue of that representation being recognised. Our loyalty to it makes us men and citizens, and is the main spiritualising force of our lives. But something in all of us, and much in some of us, is recalcitrant through rebellion, indolence, incompetence, or ignorance. And it is only on these elements that the public power operates as power, through compulsion {201} or authoritative suggestion. Thus, the general will when it meets us as force, and authority resting on force, and not as a social obligation which we spontaneously rise to accept, comes to us ex hypothesi as something which claims to be ourself, but which, for the moment, we more or less fail to recognise. And, according to the adjustment between it and our complex and largely unintelligent self, it may abandon us to automatism, or stir in us rebellion or recognition, and so may hinder the fuller life in us or remove hindrances to it. It seems worth while to distinguish two main cases of the relation between the ordinary self and the general will. One of these cases covers the whole of our every-day law-abiding life, in its grades of active loyalty, acceptance of suggestion, and automatic acquiescence; and consists of the relation of our ordinary self to the general system of rights maintained by the State as ultimate regulator and arbiter. The other is confined to more exceptional situations, and has to do with collision between the particular and the general will, as treated in the theory of punishment. The subject of reward may be mentioned at the same time, if only to show why it is almost an empty heading in political theory. We will end this chapter, therefore, with a general account of the system of rights and of reward and punishment.

6. The idea of individual rights comes down to us from the doctrine of natural right, and has generally been discussed with reference to it. We need not now go back upon the illusions connected with the notion of natural right. It is enough if we bear in mind that we inherit from it the important {202} idea of a positive law which is what it ought to be. A right, [1] then, has both a legal and a moral reference. It is a claim which can be enforced at law, which no moral imperative can be; but it is also recognised to be a claim which ought to be capable of enforcement at law, and thus it has a moral aspect. The case in which positive enactment and the moral “ought” appear to diverge will be considered below. But a typical “right” unites the two sides. It both is, and ought to be, capable of being enforced at law.

[1] This is a right in the fullest sense. The nature of a merely legal or merely moral right will be illustrated below.

Its peculiar position follows from what we have seen to be the end of the State, and the means at its disposal. The end of the State is a moral purpose, imperative on its members. But its distinctive action is restricted to removing hindrances to the end, that is, to lending its force to overcome—both in mind and in externals essential to mind—obstacles which otherwise would obstruct the realisation of the end. The whole of the conditions thus enforced is the whole of “rights” attaching to the selves, who, standing in definite relations, constitute the community. For it is in these selves that the end of the State is real, and it is by maintaining and regulating their claims to the removal of obstructions that the State is able to promote the end for which it exists. Rights then are claims recognised by the State, i.e. by Society acting as ultimate authority, to the maintenance of conditions favourable to the best life. And if we ask in general for a definition and limitation of State action as such, the answer is, in a simple {203} phrase, that State action is coincident with the maintenance of rights.

The system of rights which the State maintains may be regarded from different points of view.

First, (a) from the point of view of the whole community, that is, as the general result in the promotion of good life obtained by the working of a free Society, as a statesman or outside critic might regard it. Thus looked at, the system of rights may be described as “the organic whole of the outward conditions necessary to the rational life,” or “that which is really necessary to the maintenance of material conditions essential to the existence and perfection of human personality.” [1] This point of view is essential as a full contradiction of that uncritical conception by which rights are regarded as something with which the individual is invested in his aspect of isolation, and independently of his relation to the end. It forces us away from this false particularisation, and compels us to consider the whole State-maintained order in its connectedness as a single expression of a common good or will, in so far as such a good can find utterance in a system of external acts and habits. And it enables us to weigh the value which belongs to the maintenance of any tolerable social order, simply because it is an order, and so far enables life to be lived, and a determinate, if limited, common good to be realised. From other points of view we are apt to neglect this characteristic, and to forget {204} how great is the effect, for the possibilities of life throughout, of the mere fact that a social order exists. Hegel observes that a man thinks it a matter of course that he goes back to his house after night-fall in security. He does not reflect to what he owes it. Yet this very naturalness, so to speak, of living in a social order is perhaps the most important foundation which the State can furnish to the better life. “Si monumentum quaeris, circumspice” If we ask how it affects our will, the answer is that it forms our world. Speaking broadly, the members of a civilised community have seen nothing but order in their lives, and could not accommodate their action to anything else.

[1] Krause and Henrici, cit. by Green, Principles of Political Obligation, p. 35. Cp. “The system of right is the realm of realised freedom, the world of the mind produced by the mind as a second nature” (Hegel, Philosophie d. Rechts, sect. 4).