Recent Developments in European Thought

by Unknown

The idealistic school drew their inspiration from the theory of the Greek city state, and in their conception of the function of the state they assumed an essential identity between the Greek city state and the modern nation state. In so far as these two types of state have been the most self-conscious types of society that have existed, and have therefore displayed explicitly the purpose that is implicit in all society, the identification has been sound and fruitful; in so far, however, as the identity is pressed to imply that in the modern state the definite political or governmental organization should play the same function as it did in the Greek city state, the identification has been mistaken.

The Greek city state failed conspicuously to solve the problem of inter-state relations, and its philosophers, instead of recognizing the failure and trying to remedy it, made their ideal state even more self-centred and autonomous than the existing states around them. Modern Idealism, just because it glorifies the state as the necessary upholder of moral relations, has often found it hard to regard the state as in its turn a member of a moral world.

Again, the Greek city state, just because it was small, could take up into itself all the various social activities of its members. The state, in the sense of the Community in its political organization, directed and inspired Society, and the distinction between society and the state was not of great importance. In the modern world the boundaries of political organization are not nearly as definite boundaries in society as are the boundaries of the Greek city state. There are all manner of associations whose members are of different states and whose purposes are but to a small degree inspired or controlled by political organizations. Modern states are not all or completely nation states, and the nation is not as pervading and dominating an entity as was the Greek polis. This is not to say that the non-political associations could do without the state, as some recent writers have contended. Churches, e.g., could not exist were there not law and government. Yet it is impossible to maintain that in any real sense they are upheld by the state. They clearly get their inspiration from other sources. The difficulty is not evaded if we go behind both political and non-political organization to the community in which both exist and which upholds them both. For what in this reference is 'the community'? In regard to the political association it is the special solidarity of people living in a certain area; in regard to the non-political organization it is the solidarity of a section of the world-wide society, marked off from the rest on a non-territorial basis. The community in the two cases is not the same. Hence there arises in the modern state, as there arose in the mediaeval, a conflict of loyalties between the state and non-political associations. If we divide the world into states whose lines of division follow the divisions of the organization of force, we are faced with a host of problems concerning the proper place in society of these force-bearing organizations, and their relation to other associations.

In considering both sets of problems, international and internal, we may either begin with the division of the world into states, each of which will be an approximation of the State which we are studying, or we may regard the whole world as in some sort one society, covered with a network of overlapping associations of all kinds. On the former view the world is thought of as consisting of a number of independent communities, each shaping and controlling the various forms of social life within its own borders, upholding their moral world, and each being as a whole single entity a member of the community of states. On the latter we start with the solidarity and will to co-operate which pervades in all manner of degrees the whole world society, and regard the organization of force which marks the state as being the mark of a settled and determined form of that will to co-operate which is characteristic of all forms of human association. How dominant and determinant over other forms of association is that special form which controls organized force—that is the problem before us. We are concerned in technical language with the problem of sovereignty.

Let us consider first the problem of international relations. The doctrine of sovereignty, formulated in the seventeenth century and crystallized by Austin at the beginning of the nineteenth, made sovereignty the hallmark of the state. The person or persons, to whom the bulk of a given society render habitual obedience, either do or do not render habitual obedience in turn to some other person or persons. If they do not, the society constitutes a sovereign state; if they do, it is only part of a sovereign state. The world therefore was regarded as containing a number of sovereign independent states. As sovereignty and law necessarily went hand in hand, there could be no law between sovereign states. There could only be world-wide law if there were one world-wide state. So long as there are more states than one, there are communities between whom there is no law. The doctrine of sovereignty was in its inception individualist, but in so far as concerns the implications, though not the basis of sovereignty, it was taken over by Hegel and by the English idealist school with the exception of T.H. Green. Idealism, indeed, always insisted that will, not force, was the basis of the state, but whereas in Green the state is constituted by the moral willing of individuals for a general good, in Hegel and in Bosanquet the conflicting willings of individuals are reconciled by their being taken up into the supra-personal will of the state. With the former therefore the morality of individuals is the primary fact, the existence of the state the secondary; with the latter on the whole the existence of the state is the primary moral fact, the moral willing of individuals secondary. Just because the wills of individuals are reconciled, not by each recognizing certain abstract principles of duty, but by being taken up into the supra-personal will of the state, where there is no such supra-personal will there is no reconciliation of conflicting wills and no morality beyond and outside the boundaries of communities. Hence arises a conception of the state which fits into the absolutist doctrine of sovereignty which we have described.

The first thing to be said about this doctrine of the independent sovereign state is that political facts have obviously outrun it. It was derived from a study of the unitary state and will hardly fit any federal state. It is manifestly absurd when applied to the British Empire. If we disregard, as we must, the superficial legal facts and look at the real nature of the British Empire, we must admit that the Dominions are neither separate sovereign states nor parts of one sovereign state, and that the unity of the Empire is a unity of will—a willingness to co-operate which has not yet clothed itself in legal forms, and which is not, for geographical and other reasons, as intense as that will to co-operate which must be at the basis of a unitary sovereign state. This must suggest to us that the willingness to co-operate admits of degrees, and the relations of communities to one another to have stability must reflect these degrees. The importance of these considerations is obvious if we think of the problems with which we are confronted at the present moment, when we are attempting to form an international organization. The problems which have confronted the Peace Conference have brought two things clearly to light. The first, that the nation state is far too simple a solution of modern difficulties. Self-determination will not carry us very far. There are many cases where the boundaries dictated by nationality on the one hand and by the need for common organization on the other do not coincide, and where the only solution is one which impairs sovereignty in the old sense. The second is that the League of Nations, if it is to mean anything at all, will have to impair the sovereignty of the states which join it without thereby constituting in itself a world state. Much of the opposition to the League of Nations is concerned with this implied impairment of sovereignty. Whether this opposition will weigh with us will depend on whether we regard the independent sovereign state as the be-all and end-all of political theory, or see that the fundamental fact to be taken into account is man's readiness to co-operate for common purposes. If we take the latter view, we shall still be holding to what was the fundamental contribution of the idealist school, the teaching that the basis of all political questions is moral. The essence of the matter is how we are prepared to treat other people, for what purposes we are prepared to act with them, how far we are prepared to recognize and give settled organized recognition to our mutual obligations. The political organization is the vehicle and not the creator of these moral facts. As the facts vary, so will its forces. We may learn from the Hegelian school to recognize the enormous importance of the state, the great achievement of the human spirit which its organization represents, and the folly of light-heartedly endangering its existence, without making one form which it has taken in the nation state sacrosanct and absolute.

Let us turn now to the second of our problems, the relation of the state to associations, such as churches and trade unions, within its borders. Here again we find a principle, originating in earlier individualist theory, taken up into idealism. In the beginnings of modern political theory in the seventeenth century, the absolutist doctrine of the state was the outcome of the need of the times for strong government. A state that was not master in its own house was felt to be incapable of the hard task these troublous times set before it. The French Revolution made no change in the attitude of the state to associations. New-born democracy was not inclined to look favourably on the independence of religious non-democratic associations, and the fact that Leviathan had become democratic was thought to have transformed him into a monster within whose capacious maw any number of Jonahs might live at ease or liberty. Association against a tyrant might be a sacred duty; against the people it could only be a suspicious superfluity. In a very different way the Prussian state, centralized, efficient, and Erastian, organizing the whole resources of the community under the guidance of the state, enforced the same principle. The state is a moral institution, it cannot surrender the inculcation and upholding of morality to an alien or independent body. From all the sources of modern idealistic political theory, Plato, Rousseau, Hegel, comes the same principle of state absolutism over associations within the state. The principle was put in idealistic form in the doctrine that the state is a supra-personal will, absorbing in itself the activities of its members.

Of late years dissatisfaction with this doctrine has been making itself more and more loudly expressed. Along with an increasing belief in the extension of the state's administrative capacities has gone an increasing disinclination to leave men's moral and cultural activities to the political organization. The ideal of the Kulturstaat is now sufficiently discredited. Men are coming more and more to recognize the part played in life by non-political organizations and to insist on the importance of preserving the independence and freedom from state control of such associations as churches. The loyalty of individuals to their associations, churches or trade unions, has been conflicting with their loyalty to the state, and men are not prepared to admit that in all such cases of conflict loyalty to the state ought to be paramount.

Curiously enough, the central doctrine of the later idealistic school, the personality of the state, lent a force to the criticism of the doctrine of state absolutism. If the state can be described as a person, may not also a church and a trade union? We have begun to learn from Gierke, interpreted and reinforced to us by Maitland, that what is sauce for the state goose is also sauce for the corporation gander, and that associations within the state may claim from the state a greater independence and a recognition of their intrinsic worth because they, as it, embody in some sense a real will over and above the wills of their members. This doctrine of corporate personality is of great interest and complexity, and has not yet been satisfactorily worked out. But I shall not discuss it now because it will not help us far towards a solution of the problem of what are the proper relations between associations and the state, be they personalities or not.

Recent writers have mainly attempted to solve the problem by the principle of differentiation of function. This will certainly help us in considering the relation of church and state. For we can say that the task of the political organization is to maintain the conditions of the good life, leaving the work of developing the meaning of the good life, the fostering and inculcation of ideals, to voluntary associations. The state will then maintain a certain minimum of moral behaviour, while the more delicate and freer work of inspiration is left to individuals and voluntary associations. This will not always provide a clean-cut and sufficient differentiation. The state must make up its own mind what is essential to the maintenance of the good life, the voluntary associations may hold that what the state ordains is flatly evil, as the state may hold that what a voluntary association teaches is subversive of all that makes a common ordered life possible, and both must be true to the facts as they see them. When such conflict arises, as it has arisen lately, if the only answer we can give at present is the old answer given by Dr. Johnson, 'The state had a right to martyr the Early Christians, and they had a right to be martyred,' yet at least we are farther on if each side honestly recognizes the importance of the work that the other has to do.