The Anarchy of Nations
The State as Frankenstein
In his essay A Genealogy of the Modern State, historian Quentin Skinner outlines the formation of the concept of the state as it emerges in Anglo-political thought. Quotations from myriad English translations of thinkers over the centuries, from Bodin, to Machiavelli, to Hobbes, to Blackstone, conceive the state as a persona ficta, complete with a human body, the health and status of which is paramount.
The obvious example is in Hobbes. He paints it as Leviathan, which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended. The frontispiece on that book displays an illustration of a giant man composed of individual men.
This kind of imagery was the personification of the corpus politicum, the body politic, as it reigned in medieval political thought.
Given the conception as the state as a person, it became easier for those in power to afford their State sovereignty and natural rights, the likes of which any real person could only ever dream.
The States of Nature
The idea isnt entirely outmoded, though. Terms such as head of state, body politic, corporation, are found in modern language today, all employing the metaphor of the corpus in order to represent a multitude of people as one complete being.
As strange as this conception may seem today, those in power still employ a Westphalian system in international affairs. The United Nations, for instance, is based explicitly on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its members. These members are, of course, States.
Through membership in organizations such as the United Nations, those in power get together and afford each other the natural rights that would make a lowly anarchist seethe with envy. Perhaps ironically, that dreaded State of Nature Hobbes so feared is regnant on the international stage, based as it is on his conception as the state as a person.
Each state is an equal member in the organization. The state is not represented by some other body, nor is it coerced by some over-arching compulsory judicial system like us subjects, but represents itself and decides on its own affairs within its own dominion. States must consent to be bound by any treaty, and are therefor afforded voluntary rather than coercive cooperation among its fellow members, without any positive legal obligations. Each state is afforded dominion over its own territory without interference by any other membersand should any other state interfere, the members get together and seek peaceful resolutions rather than violent ones.
In any case, even with the absence of a world government and the conception of the state as rights-holding individual, the bellum omnium contra omnes seems non-existent in this space. Through the application of equal rights, individual sovereignty, and voluntary cooperation, it appears a viable model of anarchy has arisen to govern states themselves.
The Anarchy of Nations
One has to wonder, why does this State of Nature seem to work on such a grand scale, and with such non-entities, but is refused on the smaller scale and with real, living, flesh-and-blood human beings? Why is it rugged individualism for the powerful and the collective, but a paternal collectivism for the powerless and the individual?
In his essay A Genealogy of the Modern State, historian Quentin Skinner outlines the formation of the concept of the state as it emerges in Anglo-political thought. Quotations from myriad English translations of thinkers over the centuries, from Bodin, to Machiavelli, to Hobbes, to Blackstone, conceive the state as a persona ficta, complete with a human body, the health and status of which is paramount.
The obvious example is in Hobbes. He paints it as Leviathan, which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended. The frontispiece on that book displays an illustration of a giant man composed of individual men.
This kind of imagery was the personification of the corpus politicum, the body politic, as it reigned in medieval political thought.
Given the conception as the state as a person, it became easier for those in power to afford their State sovereignty and natural rights, the likes of which any real person could only ever dream.
The States of Nature
The idea isnt entirely outmoded, though. Terms such as head of state, body politic, corporation, are found in modern language today, all employing the metaphor of the corpus in order to represent a multitude of people as one complete being.
As strange as this conception may seem today, those in power still employ a Westphalian system in international affairs. The United Nations, for instance, is based explicitly on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its members. These members are, of course, States.
Through membership in organizations such as the United Nations, those in power get together and afford each other the natural rights that would make a lowly anarchist seethe with envy. Perhaps ironically, that dreaded State of Nature Hobbes so feared is regnant on the international stage, based as it is on his conception as the state as a person.
Each state is an equal member in the organization. The state is not represented by some other body, nor is it coerced by some over-arching compulsory judicial system like us subjects, but represents itself and decides on its own affairs within its own dominion. States must consent to be bound by any treaty, and are therefor afforded voluntary rather than coercive cooperation among its fellow members, without any positive legal obligations. Each state is afforded dominion over its own territory without interference by any other membersand should any other state interfere, the members get together and seek peaceful resolutions rather than violent ones.
In any case, even with the absence of a world government and the conception of the state as rights-holding individual, the bellum omnium contra omnes seems non-existent in this space. Through the application of equal rights, individual sovereignty, and voluntary cooperation, it appears a viable model of anarchy has arisen to govern states themselves.
The Anarchy of Nations
One has to wonder, why does this State of Nature seem to work on such a grand scale, and with such non-entities, but is refused on the smaller scale and with real, living, flesh-and-blood human beings? Why is it rugged individualism for the powerful and the collective, but a paternal collectivism for the powerless and the individual?
Comments (12)
The sovereignty of "equal members in the organization" is not the equivalent of anarchy such as you depict. The comparison with those national associations and the forms of authority employed by individuals in their community overlooks where Hobbes saw the desire to stop violence as integral to daily life became a common interest amongst many.
Quoting NOS4A2
The medieval vision was more like Aquinas description of the leader, an artist living in the greater work of the Big Guy.
Quoting Aquinas, DE REGNO
Not the logic of Hobbes of finding the creation of order through an exchange of permissions and restraints. The deal is struck between men.
Is there some sort of hierarchical government governing these states that I am not aware of?
To which states are you referring to? The Westphalian ones?
The agreement to international standards and development of cooperative projects and institutions is agreed to by each member. If they are all one against all, the activity is meaningless.
The members of the United Nations in particular. Voluntary cooperation without any hierarchical government is a hallmark of anarchism.
If a form cooperation is agreed upon, that means the agreement itself is order of a kind, at least to the extent it recognizes members as equal.
One of the 'live and let live" portions of that agreement is that sovereign nations have limited influence upon coercive practices within other ones. It is hard to see how that sort of permission can count as a model for the libertarian form of life that dispenses with coercion of any kind.
Right, but voluntary organization is not antithetical to anarchism. The point is that there is no hierarchical sovereign, authority, or government governing these fictitious persons.
Its a simple model, to me. Individuals afford each other sovereignty, natural rights such as dominion over their own property, and come together voluntarily to cooperate on matters that affect them all. A sovereign over and above these individuals never factors in. Far from the war of all against all, there seems to be relative unity, give or take.
That's mainly because letting them "eat cake" led to revolutions. It's necessary to throw them a bone.
We are all children of our time. Hobbes saw the English Civil War, hence his experiences of "Parliamentarism" are very different from ours. Just as, well, every smart philosopher with an interest to politics, he would have likely wanted something else if he would have lived couple hundred years later in a more peaceful Great Britain.
Quoting NOS4A2
Why wonder?
Those who have power justify it for themselves and those who haven't are told that they have the power through collectivism. So go and vote in the next elections, little NOS4A2, and do your duty as a citizen!
Never again!
Because a group is more powerful than any of its individuals alone?
No individual alone could put a satellite into orbit, end the Holocaust, create or maintain all that's required for this forum to function as it does, ...
It seems that whatever groups (be they states or corporations or whatever) emerge sort of naturally?
I guess an individual's expected actions, as part of a group, can be partially pre/proscribed and/or constrained, and if they're born into a group...
(Apologies if you had something else in mind.)
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
A State has its own legal existence that the individuals that make up its population do not enjoy. I would say it's a naïve view, or even ignorant, to think that the nations exist purely to take care of its population -- food, shelter, well-being. Nations are political and governmental in essence. You must have forgotten that the memoirs of the ancient emperors were full of the rise and fall of their fortunes.