The Philosophical Theory of the State

by Bernard Bosanquet

[1] Cruelty, it has been said, is a good deal owing to laziness. It is more comfortable to sit in the shade rubbing red pepper into a man’s eyes to make him confess than to run about in the sun collecting evidence. I quote from memory, from a lecture, I think, by Mr. Leslie Stephen.

A public act which inflicts loss, such as war, confiscation, the repudiation of a debt, is wholly different from murder or theft. It is not the act of a private person. It is not a violation of law. [1] It can hardly be motived by private malice or cupidity in the strict sense, and it is not a breach of an established moral order by a being within it and dependent upon it for the organisation and protection of his daily life. It is the act of a supreme power, which has ultimate responsibility for protecting the form of life of which it is the guardian, and which is not itself protected by any scheme of functions or relations, such as prescribes a course for the reconciliation of rights and secures its effectiveness. The means adopted by such a supreme power to discharge its responsibilities as a whole, are of course subject to criticism as respects the conception of good which they {327} imply and their appropriateness to the task of realising it. But it is mere confusion to apply to them names borrowed from analogous acts of individuals within communities, to impute them, as it were, to individuals under dyslogistic predicates and to pass moral judgment upon them in the same sense as on private acts. The nearest approach which we can imagine to public immorality would be when the organs which act for the State, as such, exhibit in their public action, on its behalf, a narrow, selfish or brutal [2] conception of the interest of the State as a whole, in which, so far as can be judged, public opinion at the time agrees. In such a case the State, as such, may really be said to be acting immorally, i.e. in contravention of its main duty to sustain the conditions of as much good life as possible. This case must be distinguished, if I am right, from the case in which the individuals, acting as the public authority, are corrupted in their own private interests [3] not shared with the public. For then the case would rather be that the State, the organ of the public good, had not been given a chance to speak, but had simply been defrauded by those who spoke in its name.

[1] An act which violates its own law is not an act of the State. And the State is not subject to the law of any other State.

[2] e.g. If, with the knowledge of Parliament, and without a protest from it, a price were offered for the killing of a hostile statesman or general.

[3] e.g. Bribed by a foreign potentate, or pursuing Stock Exchange interests.

We do not suggest, then, that the action of States is beyond moral criticism, nor that action of individuals in their interest is above or below morality, except in the sense in which one moral claim has constantly to be postponed to another. But we {328} deny that States can be treated as the actors in private immoralities which their agents permit themselves in the alleged interest of the State; or, again, can be bound by the private honour and conscience of such agents; and we deny, moreover, that the avowed public acts of sovereign powers, which cause loss or injury, can be imputed to individuals under the names of private offences; that someone is guilty of murder when a country carries on war, or of theft when it adopts the policy of repudiation, confiscation, or annexation.

8. It is obvious that the idea of humanity, of the world of intelligent beings on the surface of our earth, conceived as a unity, must hold such a place in any tolerably complete philosophical thinking, as in some way to control the idea of particular States, and to sum up the purposes and possibilities of human life. The idea of humanity is universal, and whatever limits we have tacitly in mind—whatever limits the Greek thinker had in mind while he based his ethics on the distinction between man and beast—yet, when we rely on the idea of man as man, we are committed to treat in some way of the world of mankind.

(a) The first point which forces itself upon our attention is, that the idea which we tacitly entertain when we refer to humanity, is not true of the greater part of mankind. No doubt, we are quite aware of imperfection and inconsistency in the family and the State. But here, in the case of mankind, the problem reaches an acuter form. According to the current ideas of our civilisation, a great part of the lives which {329} are being lived and have been lived by mankind are not lives worth living, in the sense of embodying qualities for which life seems valuable to us. [1] It is true that, in all to whom we give the name of man, we suppose a possibility of such living, in the sense that they have an intelligence distinguishable from that of animals. But it is a possibility which, for the most part, has been very slightly realised, and which involves no conscious connection, so far as we can see, with any realisation. Our idea of man is not formed by simple enumeration, but by framing a law which explains the less perfect and consistent facts with reference to the more perfect and more consistent facts.

[1] This idea is embodied in the doctrine of Salvation confined to the few, and contains perhaps a similar error. But it has a prima facie truth.

(b) This being so, it seems to follow that the object of our ethical idea of humanity is not really mankind as a single community. Putting aside the impossibilities arising from succession in time, we see that no such identical experience can be presupposed in all mankind as is necessary to effective membership of a common society and exercise of a general will. It does not follow from this that there can be no general recognition of the rights arising from the capacities for good life which belong to man as man. Though insufficient, as variously and imperfectly realised, to be the basis of an effective community, they may, as far as realised, be a common element or tissue of connection, running through the more concrete experience on which effective communities {330} rest. Such a relation as that of England and India brings the matter home. Englishmen cannot make one effective self-governed community with the Indian populations. It would be misery and inefficiency to both sides. But our State can recognise the primary rights of humanity as determined in the life of its Indian subjects, and enforce or respect these rights, whether India be a dependency or an independent community. The problem is not unlike that raised by the idea of a universal language. As a substitute for national languages, it would mean a dead level of intelligence unsuited to every actual national mind, the destruction of literature and poetry. As an addition to existing languages, or more simply, if it became customary for every people to be acquainted with the tongues of other nations, there would be a common understanding no less firm, and a vast gain of appreciation and enjoyment, a levelling up instead of levelling down. The recognition of human rights through communities founded on organic unity of experience may be compared in just these terms to the idea of a universal society including the entire human race.