The Philosophical Theory of the State

by Bernard Bosanquet

It should be mentioned as a danger of this point of view that, fascinated by the spectacle of the social fabric as a whole, we may fail to distinguish what in it is the mere maintenance of rights, and what is the growth which such maintenance can promote but cannot constitute. Thus we may lose all idea of the true limits of State action.

(b) We may regard this complex of rights from the standpoint of the selves or persons who compose the community. It is in these selves, as we have seen, that the social good is actual, and it is to their differentiated functions, [1] which constitute their life and the end of the community, that the sub-groupings of rights, or conditions of good life, have to be adjusted each to each like suits of clothes. The rights are, from this point of view, primarily the external incidents, so far as maintained by law—the authoritative vesture as it were—of a {205} person’s position in the world of his community. And we shall do well to regard the nature of rights, as attaching to selves or persons, from this point of view of a place or position in the order determined by law. It has been argued, I do not know with what justice, that, in considering the relations of particles in space, the proper course would be to regard their positions or distances from each other as the primary fact, and to treat attributions of attractive and repulsive forces as modes of expressing the maintenance of the necessary positions rather than as descriptive of real causes which bring it about. At least, it appears to me, such a conception may well be applied to the relative ideas of right and obligation. What comes first, we may say, is the position, the place or places, function or functions, determined by the nature of the best life as displayed in a certain community, and the capacity of the individual self for a unique contribution to that best life. Such places and functions are imperative; they are the fuller self in the particular person, and make up the particular person as he passes into the fuller self. His hold on this is his true will, in other words, his apprehension of the general will. Such a way of speaking may seem unreally simplified when we look at the myriad relations of modern life and the sort of abstraction by which the individual is apt to become a rolling stone with no assignable place—indeed “gathering no moss”—and to pass through his positions and relations as if they were stations on a railway journey. But in truth it is only simplified and not falsified. If we look with care we shall see that it, or nothing, is true of all lives.

[1] I do not say merely social functions, i.e. functions dealing directly with “others” as such.

{206} The Position, then, is the real fact—the vocation, place or function, which is simply one reading of the person’s actual self and relations in the world in which he lives. Having thoroughly grasped this primary fact, we can readily deal with the points of view which present the position or its incidents in the partial aspects of rights or obligations.

(i.) A right, we said, is a claim recognised by society and enforced by the State. My place or position, then, and its incidents, so far as sanctioned by the State, constitute my rights, when thought of as something which I claim, or regard as powers instrumental to my purposes. A right thus regarded is not anything primary. It is a way of looking at certain conditions, which, by reason of their relation to the end of the whole as manifested in me, are imperative alike for me and for others. It is, further, the particular way of looking at these conditions which is in question when I claim them or am presumed to claim them, as powers secured to me with a view to an end which I accept as mine. I have the rights no less in virtue of my presumed capacity for the end, if I am in fact indifferent to the end. But, in this case, though attributed ab extra as rights, they tend to pass into obligations.

(ii.) If rights are an imperative “position” or function, when looked at as a group of State-secured powers claimed by a person for a certain end, obligations are the opposite aspect of such a position or group of powers. That is to say, the conditions of a “position” are regarded as obligations in as far as they are thought of as {207} requiring enforcement, and therefore, primarily, from the point of view of persons not directly identified with the “position” or end to which they are instrumental. Rights are claimed, obligations are owed. And prima-facie rights are claimed by a person, and obligations are owed to a person, being his rights as regarded by those against whom they are enforceable.

Thus, the distinction of self and others, which we refused to take as the basis of society, makes itself prominent in the region of compulsion. The reason is that compulsion is confined to hindering or producing external acts, and is excluded from producing an act in its relation to a moral end, that is, the exercise of a right in its true sense; though it can enforce an act which in fact favours the possibility of acting towards a moral end that is, an obligation. This is the same thing as saying that normally a right is what I claim, and the obligation relative to it is what you owe; as an obligation is that which can be enforced, and that is an act or omission apart from the willing of an end; and a right involves what cannot be enforced, viz., the relation of an act to an end in a person’s will. But even here the distinction of self and others is hardly ultimate. The obligation on me to maintain my parents becomes almost a right [1] if I claim the task as {208} a privilege. And many rights of my position may actually be erected into, or more commonly may give rise to, obligations incumbent on me for the sake of my position or function. If the exercise of the franchise were made compulsory that would be a right treated also as an obligation; but it might be urged that qua obligation it was held due to the position of others, and only qua right to my own “position.” But if the law interferes with my poisoning myself [2] either by drains or with alcohol, that, I presume, is the enforcement of an obligation arising out of my own position and function as a man and a citizen, which makes reasonable care for my life imperative upon me.

[1] I do not know that I can compel my parents to be maintained by me, and therefore it is not my legal right to maintain them; but at least the obligation, if I claim it, ceases to depend on force. An East-End Londoner will say, “He had a right to maintain his father,” meaning that he was bound to do so; and Jeannie Deans says, “I have no right to have stories told about my family without my consent,” representing her own claim as an obligation on herself as well as on others. She represents the thought, “I have a right that you should not tell stories, etc.,” in a form which puts it as a case of the thought, “You have no right to tell stories,” disregarding the distinction between herself and others as accidental.

[2] The law used to interfere with bad sanitation only as a “nuisance,” i.e. as an annoyance to “others.” It now interferes with any state of things dangerous to life as such, which probably means that a change of theory has unconsciously set in. Legislation for dangerous trades almost proves the point, though here it is possible to urge that the employer is put under obligation for the sake of his workers, and not the workers for their own sake. But the distinction is hardly real.

(c) It is commonly said that every right implies a duty. This has two meanings, which should be distinguished.