The Philosophical Theory of the State

by Bernard Bosanquet

(ii.) But it is also and no less the very nature of self-consciousness. It is as much a demand of man’s intelligence or an inner and universal law as the “pure will” itself. [1] The difference between them is that the Ethical System is a system, a world, though from the point of view of will regarded as inner, that is to say, as something which is the motive and fulfills the demand of consciousness. Thus, it bears the character of a thoroughly systematised theory, as contrasted with the idea of a good will, which is a mere general point of view. And it is because of this systematic character that it is enabled to connect the individual or particular will with the universal spirit of the community. It is only in a system that a particular fact can be connected with a universal law, as the planetary motions are with the law of gravitation. The particular will, as we have explained above, is universalised by its relation to a systematic purpose which it partly implies and partly realises. A man wishes for this thing or that thing, but not at any price. The reservations to which his wish is subject, by reason of other purposes and postulates of life, are known to him only in part; but if they could be stated in full, they would constitute the system of his life as realised in the universal life of the community. It is precisely {268} analogous to the process which a common judgment of perception has to go through in becoming a scientific truth—the implications have to be stated in full, and the perception modified in accordance with them. And when this is done, we have no longer a fact, but a science.

[1] On all this portion of the subject, see Mr. Bradley’s Essay, “My Station and its Duties,” in Ethical Studies.

Regarded from this point of view, as the substance of the individual
Will, the Ethical System is the Soul of the moral world.

In analysing the Ethical System, we shall say nothing of “duties” or “virtues.” Duty is in each case what the relation requires—the attachment of the universal system of will to the individual life. Virtue is a habit of such action, considered as embodied in the nature of an individual. The idea of virtue and virtuousness is not, in Hegel’s view, altogether suitable to the members of an ethical commonwealth. It belongs rather to a time of undeveloped social life, when ethical principles and the realisation of them are ascribed to the nature of peculiarly gifted individuals. Virtue or excellence, to the Greek moralist, for instance, suggested doing something better than the average, or being in some way specially gifted, and it is still apt to indicate the desire to be some thing exceptional, and not simply to find yourself in genuine service. The meaning of the words to-day tends to narrow itself to certain special relations, and does not indicate that life of the member in the whole, which is the essence of what we really value.

The Ethical System, or the Order of Social Ethics, then—the mind and conduct of the citizen in Christendom—may be regarded as affirming freedom {269} in three principal aspects, necessarily connected, and supplementing one another. Outwardly these aspects are different groups of facts—different institutions; inwardly they are different moods or dispositions of the one and indivisible human mind.

Thus, Hegel’s analysis regards the social whole or system of social ethics from three points of view. First, in respect of the Family; secondly, in respect of what he has entitled Bourgeois Society; and thirdly, in respect of the Political Organism, or the State in the strict sense.

It is to be borne in mind that, like the three principal divisions in the sphere of Right, these headings represent explicit theories of society, as well as groups of facts.

6. Beginning once more, within an ordered social sphere, at the ethical factor which stands nearest to the natural world, and has taken, so to speak, the minimum step into the realm of purpose and consciousness, we start from the family. As the family exists in a modern civilised community, it is something necessary to society and the State, but absolutely distinct from both.

It first (a) represents the fact of the natural basis of social relations, being the embodiment of natural feeling in the form of love, both as between the parents, and as embodied for them in the children. It is in accordance with Hegel’s general views of the meaning of a system that he sees this element of mind primarily represented by the family, as an organ preserved and differentiated ad hoc, and not, or not merely, distributed indefinitely throughout the community. Thus, the modern family represents for him a higher stage {270} of civilisation—an organ to a fuller embodiment of mind—than the clan or tribe, or, in short, than any form of community in which the whole bond of union rests on merely natural feeling, kindness, generosity, or affection. In the nation, indeed, a tinge of natural affection, a colouring of unity by kinship, survives, just as feeling runs through the experience of the individual mind. But the distinctive character of the State is clear intelligence, explicit law and system, and so the natural basis of feeling, though necessary to be preserved and spiritualised, achieves these needs in the family as a special organ, and not in the State as such.

All those theories, therefore, which tend to assimilate the State to a family by a sort of levelling down of the former or levelling up of the latter (Plato’s Republic, the phalanstery, paternal government, and the like) involve for Hegel a mere confusion of relations. They recognise an element which is essential to society, and may truly be said to be even its foundation. But they do not see its right place in the whole, and do not understand that in order to attain a stronger and deeper unity (which is, in short, a stronger and deeper mind) the different elements must be allowed a greater emphasis and relief, and their respective characteristics must not be slurred or scamped.