An ethical philosophy of life presented in its main outlines

by Felix Adler

The leading theories of the state should be kept in view for comparison with the ethical theory here set forth—the theories of Aristotle and Plato, St. Augustine and the mediæval schoolmen, Rousseau’s contract theory, and the German conceptions of the state propounded by Kant, Fichte, Hegel. Moreover, since the ideas actually embodied in governments, in the Persian monarchy, for instance, in the Greek City State, Venice, etc., are not identical with the constructions of the philosophers, the leading facts of the history of politics should be borne in mind as well as the leading theories.

The state has two aspects: (1) It is the balance wheel of the vocational groups included within it. (2) It is the political expression of the national character, and its ethical purpose is to develop this empirical national character into a spiritual character. I shall speak of the first aspect in this chapter.

1. The state exists in order to furnish increasingly from age to age the conditions under which the reactions between the groups described above can take place effectually. In concentrating attention upon the vocational groups as the entities to be harmonized with one another, account is taken by implication of the family and of the individual. The sub-organisms are embraced within the superior organisms. A more general statement would be that the state supplies the external conditions required for development towards ethical personality by those who pass through the institutions of the family, of the vocation, etc.

The state possesses a spiritual character in so far as it supplies these conditions, and in as much as it has a spiritual character it is not merely justified but ethically required to use force. Force is spiritualized when employed to establish the conditions indispensable to spiritual life. The conditions enforced must be such as in the opinion of the preponderant number of citizens indisputably make for the development of personality. Examples of such conditions are protection of life, property, reputation, compulsory education, the maintenance of the monogamic family, protection against foreign invasion, etc. All the functions of the state commonly enumerated follow from the ethical principle. But over and above the recognized ones, new and nobler functions of the state will appear.

The redeeming thought with respect to the use of force by the state consists in regarding force as ethical discipline, and in making the extent to which it is favorable to spiritual freedom the measure and test of its rightful use.[85] When men are compelled to spend the major part of their time in the protection of bare life, as was the case, for instance, in the early days of feudalism, they are to that extent unfree. Freedom consists in energizing the highest and most distinctive human faculties.

The development of the state should proceed in two directions. It should withdraw from many functions exercised by it in the past, notably from such as properly belong to the sub-organisms. At the same time, it should lay its coercive hands upon new matters, imposing new limitations on capricious freedom in the interest of spiritual freedom, as soon as the pertinency of such limitations to the ethical end becomes clear. For instance, the state may, and doubtless will, interfere with marriage to a far greater extent than it has yet done. It will forbid the marriage of the unsound. If a study of character-types should ever become advanced enough—a hazardous conjecture—to make it predictable that the union of certain character-types will lead to infelicitous marriage, the state will be justified in prohibiting such unions.

Law, ideally defined, is the sum total of conditions, capable of being enforced, which are necessary or favorable to the development of personality. The purpose of law is two-fold: to maintain the more developed members of society at the level they have reached, and, by educative penalties, to bring the backward up to the same level. In the article on “Force and Freedom” referred to above, law is compared to such bodily actions as walking, which at first are superintended by consciousness, and then become automatic, thereby setting consciousness free to attend to new and more important business. Similarly, law is designed to render the conditions favorable to personality so explicit that their observance shall become automatic, and that mankind shall be at liberty to discover new and more significant conditions which in their turn are again to become automatic.

Because of the lack of the ethical point of view, the exercise of force by the state has seemed purely arbitrary, and has given rise to a perverted and disastrous conception of sovereignty. The sovereignty of the state has two aspects: the one internal, the other external. Sovereignty means supremacy. The state is sovereign, within limits, however, with respect to its citizens. The state is also sovereign, within limits, however, with respect to other outside states.

With respect to the internal aspect of sovereignty some writers hold that citizens have no rights as against the state—only rights accorded by the state. But this from the ethical point of view is a wholly untenable position. There are rights of the individual, rights of the family, rights of the vocational group, which the state does not create but is bound to acknowledge and which its power cannot properly infringe. As against the state the individual has, for instance, the right which is commonly designated as “the freedom of conscience.” The family has rights against the state; the law cannot interfere with the intimacies of the marriage and parental relations. The vocational group likewise is only partially subject to public reglementation. I have defined law as the sum total of the conditions. The state can prescribe the conditions, but cannot trace the ways of freedom within the conditions. The state prescribes the enforceable conditions; it has no concern with unenforceable inner processes.

It thus appears that sovereignty or supremacy is an attribute not peculiar to the state, although it looms up larger and more impressive when exercised by the state. Supremacy belongs to the individual in his private sphere, to the family in its proper province, to the vocation, etc. Sovereignty or supremacy belongs to each of the social institutions within its precincts, in so far as the supremacy within that precinct is requisite for the accomplishment of the ethical end to be therein attained. But sovereignty is not absolute in any sphere; neither in that of the individual, nor of the family, nor yet of the state. The absolute conception of sovereignty is the result of the lack of an ethical conception of the social institutions. The state is sovereign only so far as the exercise of its supremacy is necessary to the spiritual end of citizenship. On this account and for this purpose it may rightfully constrain the sub-organisms within it, and may also pronounce its noli me tangere as against the larger group of states encompassing it. But so far as the spiritual ends to be achieved in the international relations are concerned, the state with respect to these is subject to international sovereignty,—a new conception which mankind is striving to bring to the birth today. The false notion of state sovereignty as arbitrary and absolute, is admittedly today a chief stumbling-block in the way of the formation of an international organization of peoples.