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

59* * POLITIC!
(5) The Mortlity of the State
To a State conceived on these lines* there is attributed
a higher morality than that of the average individual.
The main grounds for this attribution are the theory of
the disinterestedness of the General Will 1 and the con-
ception of Social Righteousness already described. A further
ground is derived from the conception of the State as a
whole of wholes. The State is, after all, not the only whole
to which the average individual belongs. He is also a
member of a family; he is possibly a member of a club,
a guild, a trade union and a church. Now all these organizations
are themselves parts of the State. The State is, there-
fore, not merely a collection of individuals and something
more than that collection, in the sense in which a body is
more than the sum of its organs, or the movement of a
sonata more than the sum of its individual notes; it is
also a system of wholes which is more than that system,
just as a tribe is more than the sum of its families and
the sonata more than the sum of its movcmenls. Following
the line of thought embodied in Rousseau's theory of the
General Will, Hegel argued that the whole which is the
repository of the General Will, just because it comprises
and gathers up within itself all the common wills of its
component parts, is more disinterested and, therefore,
more moral than the individual's will, which is composed of
selfish as well as of disinterested elements. Hence we reach
the conclusion that, the larger and more embracing the
whole, the higher the degree of morality which charac-
terizes it. This conclusion is in accordance with the Hegelian
dialectic which equates higher degrees of reality, and,
therefore, of morality, with more inclusive degrees of
wholeness. 1
The attribution of a higher morality to the State is not,
at least in Hegel's view, incompatible with the recognition
of the morality of organisation* other than the State and
1 See Chapter XIII, p. 510.
See my God* to
Ptnluopk?, Chapter XV, pp.
account of the Hegelian Dialectic.
402-407, for an