GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

584
'*
POLITICS
of which I
develop my capacities and realize my nature,
the system which assigns to me my position, and of whose
well-being my performance of the dudes appropriate to
my petition is a necessary condition, must itself be a moral
system. For, if I realize the end appropriate to my nature
in doing my duty to society, it follows that society has
also an end, an end which is realized only when each of
its members does his duty to it. If society has an end,
it follows that it must be a whole in the technical sense
already considered in an earlier chapter; 1
it follows,
that is to say, that it transcends the sum of its parts, since
if it did not, there would be no entity to assign to me
my position, to prescribe to me my duties and to benefit
from my right performance of them. Just as the policy of
a government is a whole which is logically prior to the
series of acts which it determines and through which it
takes concrete shape, so the State is a whole which is
logically prior
to the various individuals whose functions
it assigns, and whose duties it prescribes.
THE STATE AS A SELF-SUFFICING ENTITY.
The idealist theory owns another important source in
Greek thought Owing largely to an accident of history,
Greek thinkers conceived and developed their political
views in relation to the City-State. Both in Plato and in
Aristotle the State, that is to say, the City-State, is dis-
cussed as if it were a single self-sufficient entity, identical
with the whole of society. Thus Aristotle begins by abruptly
announcing that it is the nature of the State to be selfsufficing,
and Plato on the whole takes the same view.
Where the existence of other States is
specifically referred
to, it is assumed that the only relation which they can
have to the State is one of hostility. Thus the natural or
juristic relation of one Greek State to another was one of
latent enmity, and was recognized as such* The tradition
of the self-sufficiency of the State continues after the Renais-
sance. The Dutch jurist Grotius (1583-1645) held the
1 Srr Chapter I, pp. 52, 53. See aUo below, pp. 589, 590.