8. A very different interpretation of such ideals can
be given, however, if we look at them not as devices
to cloak the brutal facts of political life, but as attempts
to interpret and give meaning to those facts, and to
pass judgment upon them on the basis of a precise
standard of value. From this point of view, what strikes
the observer is the predominance, in what we currently
call the “modern” as well as the “western” world, of
one particular standard, which from the turn of the
seventeenth century onwards is resorted to more and
more exclusively in order to account for political obli-
gation, and to justify the existence of the State. This
standard is drawn from considering the nature of man
himself. Indeed, it seems almost a paradox that at the
very moment in which the modern State, as the sole
holder of both force and power, emerges as the su-
preme arbiter and controller of man's life in society,
there should have taken place the unprecedented
assertion of the paramount importance of the “rights
of man.” Classical thought had conceived the State as
logically prior to the individual, as the condition for
the fulfillment of his nature and destiny. Christian and
medieval thought had turned to the will of God or
to the consequences of sin in order to prove the neces-
sity of political institutions. But now, and henceforth,
political theory would have to start, so to speak, from
the bottom: it was going to be progressively and sys-
tematically humanized and secularized. What took
place was a revolution in political philosophy; it might
be called a “Copernican revolution,” to paraphrase a
famous simile of Kant's.
Actually, this process of secularization and human-
ization of politics can be traced along two sepa-
rate lines, depending on whether the interest of politi-
cal theorists was focused on the ground or on the
purpose of the State. To provide a ground for the State,
now that natural growth or providential design were
no longer considered sufficient to legitimize power,
political theorists turned to the notion of the “social
contract”—an abstract notion for which some con-
firmation could be found in historical facts, but whose
rational value was entirely independent of that con-
firmation. The notion of the social contract underwent
several versions. It could be used to set up a framework
for constitutional government (as with Locke) as well
as one for absolute monarchy (as with Grotius and
Hobbes). It could provide an argument for resistance
and revolution, and at the same time one in favor of
the complete surrender of the individual to the State
(as is the case with Rousseau). But, however different
its uses, its basic elements remained unvaried, and these
in turn have become part and parcel of modern man's
attitude toward the State, long after the social contract
model had been discarded. These elements consist of
two propositions which are best stated in the very
words with which Jefferson gave them immortal
formulation, viz., “that all men are created equal,” and
that “governments derive their powers from the con-
sent of the governed.” Neither of these propositions
was entirely new or unheard of. The equality of men
had been proclaimed in the past by religious as well
as by philosophical currents of thought. Consent (or
acceptance) had been stressed throughout the Middle
Ages as the ultimate ground of the validity of law. But
if the bottle was old, the wine was an entirely new
one. What was new was the vindication of an equal
“right” in each individual to be respected both as a
person and as a citizen. What was new was the close
association of the respect for that right on the part
of the State and the duty of obedience on the part
of the individual.
But before we assess the final impact of such notions
on the idea of the State, one word must be said of
the theories concerning the purpose of State action.
Here, to put it briefly and in what may well seem at
first sight a paradoxical vein, the suggestion could be
made that the task assigned to the modern State was,
from its very inception, one of emancipation. To prove
the case one example should suffice, that of an author
who is usually considered a theorist of obedience and
certainly not one of liberty. One has only to consider
the contrast which is drawn in a famous passage of
Leviathan between the “state of nature” and the “civil
State,” in order to realize what benefits, what “values,”
according to Hobbes, are attained in the State. These
values are both material and spiritual; they concern
the comforts of life as well as the improvement of the
mind. They are what in modern terms we would call
“cultural” values; but cultural values are always, in
some way or other, associated with liberty, with the
free display of human initiative and energy.
It was left to later political theory to define and to
assess the means of securing that liberty, so as to make
it not a concession but the very aim of the State.
Liberty soon appeared as a complex and multi-faceted
concept, depending on whether greater importance
was given to the citizen's freedom from outside inter-
ference, or to his participation in basic decisions, or
to the removal of the obstacles which made of that
freedom and participation a sham. “Negative” liberty,
“positive” liberty, “social” liberty: such are the names
by which these different facets have come to be
currently described; and to each one of them there
does correspond in fact a different type of political
structure—the “liberal,” the “democratic,” and the
“socialist” State. But on closer inspection it is not all
too difficult to discover the common root of what at
first sight appear as widely contrasting theories, not-
withstanding the fact that in actual experience they
tend to be more and more intertwined and combined.
That common root is, once again, the paramount
importance given to the individual, the respect of
whose personality and rights has become part of the
modern idea of the State.
