The State - What is its Foundation

I was reading a compendium of Kant’s political philosophy, and though I have issues with his morality, both his rabid deontology, and the fact that he asserts that duties are universal to all of humanity and not based upon the qualities inherent in the person himself, I do find many healthy ideas in his political philosophy. This is basically set around nature of the state. To elaborate upon this I will have to explain the more perverse ideas of the state that are contained in the philosophies of Locke and Rousseau. For Locke the right to property was prior to the state, and the justification for having property came from the original act of appropriation. Since I have mixed my labor into the world, the object created through this labor becomes mine. The next issue is how to coordinate the entirety of the individual wills of the members of society. This is where Rousseau comes into play with his notion of the general will, which is the collective will of all the members of society. For me to take part in this social contract, I must place my individual will under the authority of the collective will. Since this social contract is based upon a historical fact rather than an unassailable principle, it creates a condition of members in this society being obliged to follow the state’s laws rather than obligated to do so. We now see how the state is justified. It is through property rights in and of themselves with no corresponding responsibility and duty, and with a contract based on set of historical circumstances which do not create conditions of obligation. For Kant, it is not a historical fact that justifies a social contract, but a regulative idea of reason. For all of us unfamiliar with Kantian philosophy, what he could not prove using epistemological means, which were ideas of God and the soul, were affirmed based upon moral reasons. God is postulated as the synthetic a priori between justice and happiness, and the soul is postulated as allowing us to achieve the summum bonum of virtue. The idea of the state will be seen as a requirement of reason to establish a government based upon the notion of the universal will. This universal will is not the will of the collective, but an idea of practical reason. It is this state based upon the universal will which creates the necessity of property for members of this society to be free.

The main problem with a government based upon these principles of Locke and Rousseau is that they tend to reduce government to the lowest common denominator. Basing a state upon property just creates a state that serves the interest of those with more wealth. Also basing a social contract upon the will of the majority tends to reduce agreement to the lowest common denominator as well. The leaders will just pander to whoever controls the majority viewpoint. If we start with the idea that it is the state that justifies property, then property seems to be based upon an ethical ideal. Property now has a moral burden in that those with more property have a stronger duty to promote this ethical ideal and aesthetic ideal of the state. This can be seen in the notion of the aristocracy who felt it was their duty to fund the arts and other forms of high culture. If one has received a lot, much is expected. The notion of a universal will based upon a regulative idea of reason rather than the whims of the masses will create a bedrock from which intelligent policy can follow, rather than appealing to the whims of the masses.

To put all of this into a more layman’s perspective, think of lowering oneself into the depths or rising up into the mountain. The excessive focus on purely economic interests and plebian desires is tantamount to going deeper and deeper into the swamp, whereas higher ideas and the notion of the universal will seem like a sacred object on top of a mountain. To develop these ideas further and better we will have to pass beyond Kant to the German Idealists and Traditionalists. The Hegelian notion of the State as the Divine Idea on earth will unite both the regulative ideas of God and the State. This object spirit is delineated thoroughly in law, morality, and social ethics. The ideal development of this is in the book Men Among the Ruins by Julius Evola in which many principles of the Traditional State are explicated. To quote Julius Evola, “The Idea is our Fatherland”.