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

THE IDEALIST THEORY OF THE STATE 59 1
This presumably is the significance of the phrase from
Bradley quoted above: "What we call an individual man
is what he is by virtue of community, and communities
are not mere names but something real." The individual
members of the State are conscious of the fact of their
participation in it They know themselves both as individuals,
and as parts of the whole which is the State. So
strongly, indeed, is the presence of the community in the
individual, the participation by the individual in the com-
munity's will emphasized, that one might be tempted to
say that the end of the individual's life lies outside himself
in the State, were it not that the State is conceived to be
itself within the individual. Since it is within him, the
individual cannot help but be conscious of this whole of
which he is a part and which is part of him; at any rate
he should be conscious of it, and, in so far as he is, the
organism which is the State becomes both self-conscious
and self-willing. Hence Hegel speaks of the State as a
"
"
ethical substance and as a
self-conscious
"self-knowing
and self-actualizing individual". The State's will, know-
ledge and ethical aspirations are not derived from those
of individual persons as persons, but only from those of
individual persons in so far as they realize themselves as
parts of the community; for it is by virtue of this realization
that they bring into existence a new entity, the personality
of the State which, characterized by its own will, knowledge
and aspirations, proceeds to inform and determine the in-
dividual consciousnesses from which it takes its rise. Finally,
while individuals have a merely temporary existence, coining
to maturity and passing away, the State continues. The State
thus comes to be regarded as the permanent repository of a
spirit which is ever manifested afresh in the persons of its
members, just as it is the same earth which gives rise to apd
nourishes successive crops which are ever changing and ever
renewed. "Such an organization must," writes Mussolini,
"be in its origin and development a manifestation of the
spirit" which " transcending the brieflimits ofthe individual
life
represents the immanent spirit of the nation/'