BOOKS
The Sovereign State
BY GEOFFREY BARRACLOUGH pouncst, theory, we are commonly taught, is a continuous stream of thought, reaching back through converging channels to Greek antiquity. In the end, whether he knows it or not, every one of us is born a little Platonist or a little Aristotelian. Today we are beginning to realise that there is something artificial and unsatisfactory about this view. It stresses a surface continuity at the expense of the disparity of facts and the in- compatibility of conditioning environments. How profitable is it to talk about political thought and political theory in the Middle Ages* when the very word 'state,' which is central to all our conceptions, was still unknown? Writers have got round the inherent difficulties by treating Aristotle's polls as a generic term, which can be expanded or contracted at will, and if necessary made commensurate with the European national state of the nineteenth century; but it is a highly dubious procedure. The Greek 'city-state' was soli generis; even its nearest parallel in more modern times, the city-state of medireval Italy, Was structurally and constitutionally dissimilar.
,In mediaeval times, as Sir Maurice Powicke has Pointed out, the word 'state' was 'never used in our sense of the word, as a geographical and Political entity.' Even as late as the time of Machiavelli slat° meant no more than the prince himself and his immediate entourage. Only when this 'state within a state' had expanded until the ruling power had established its authority over the 'states' of other classes and persons within a fixed territorial boundary, was the modern State born; and this process is usually placed in the age of the Enlightenment. Nor is the other cardinal Conception of 'sovereignty,' conceived by Bodin in the confusion of the French wars of religion, substantially older. In the Peace of Westphalia (1648) it was still necessary tp paraphrase it by the colourless word superiaritas, and we have only to think of the way King Henry VIII of England fell back upon the notion of imperitim to achieve his ends, to see how stumbling the approach to a consistent idea of sovereignty was.
But the approach, of course, was made and median/al political theory can be interpreted as the story of the steps by which it was done. It could not have occurred, as Mr. Morrall perceives, with- out a preceding 'economic renaissance.' But the decisive facts were the revival of Roman Law and the rediscovery of Aristotle in the twelfth century. It was the peculiar (and accidental) service of Islamic civilisation, with its great centres of learn- ing in Moslem Spain, to restore to the West the long-forgotten categories of Aristotelian thought. Avicenna, the subject of Dr. Afnan's sympathetic biography,t and Averroes, the greatest of
* PourtrAL THOUGHT IN MEDIEVAL TIMES. By John B. Morrall. (Hutchinson, 18s.) .1 AVICENNA. HIS LIFE AND WORK. By Soheil M.. Afnan. (Allen and Unwin, 30s.) 1 THE KING'S Two BODIES. A STUDY IN MEDIEVAL POLE! ICAL THEOLOGY. By Ernst H. Kantorowicz. (Princeton U,P.; London : O.U.P., 80s.)
Aristotelian commentators, threw a new ferment into Western political speculation. Both men, curiously, were more influential in the West than in the Moslem world. Avicenna, who came into conflict with Islamic orthodoxy, was 'never a popular figure' in the Orient although, like St. Thomas in the West, he tried 'to harmonise reason • with revelation' and strike a balance between philosophy and religion. Averroes, more thorough-going in his Aristotelianism, was a con- troversial figure in both worlds; but Averroism, although (in Dr. Afnan's words) 'the chief intel- lectual heresy of the thirteenth century,' started a chain of reactions in Western thought which condemnation could not halt. It was one of the most powerful forces provoking new ideas and radical thinking about the State.
Even earlier there had been significant changes in outlook. First, the shift from personal to ter- ritorial rule, the process by which the King became rex /Mete instead of rex Anglorum. Then, the distinction between the King's two capacities or 'two bodies,' about which Professor Kantorowicz has written with such a wealth of learning*—the distinction between 'the individual King' and 'his immortal dignity' which was a necessary makeshift so long as men could not conceive of the State in the abstract. These, how- ever, were straws in the wind, indicative rather than compelling. What was decisive was the con- ception, stemming from Aristotle and his Arab commentators, of political society as 'natural,' not merely a remedy for sin. Now for the first time (in Mr. Morrall's words) people in Europe came 'face to face with the possibility that political society was of value in its own right.' Now they began to see that 'the secular community' had 'a clear field of autonomy.' For Dante kingship, which had so long been sanctified as a sacred office, became (in Professor Kantorowicz's phrase) 'man-centred.' With Marsilius of Padua, a few years later, we meet 'a down-to-earth concentra- tion on political life dictated by the material human conditions of economics, biology and psychology.' From this moment the way was pre- pared for the separation of ethics and politics— for the idea that the State had its own rules and raison d'être, different from and often conflicting with the rules of ordinary morality—and we are standing on the threshold of the self-sufficient, self-embracing State of modern times.
Today most of us follow this process with feel- ings akin to those of the rabbit terrified by a ferret. The conception of the sovereign State, which we have seen arising step by step in the latter Middle Ages, stirs in us the same sort of revulsion as we feel at the thought of 'economic man'; its realisation seems a perversion, and attempts in our lifetime to embody it in practice a calamity. Was there a wrong turning, we ask ourselves, and . when? And so we go back again to the Middle Ages looking not for premonitions of modern practice, but for signs of something better.
Nevertheless it is hard, despite all that has been written, to find anything which we can call politi- cal thought in medireval times, unless we use the words in a purely metaphorical sense. Because the conception of the State. as we know it, was alien to the Middle Ages, most writers have sought the key to medieval thinking in its antithesis, a univer- sal Christian commonwealth. For Mr. Morrall, also, this notion, its 'rise, development and col- lapse,' is 'the fundamental medieval political idea.' But while no One would deny the part played by the ideal of a Christian commonwealth in medireval thought, we may well query whether it was a political ideal. If, by 'commonwealth' we mean (in Mr. Morrall's words) a sense of 'divinely inspired and commonly shared spiritual fellow- ship,' then we may reply that it was something which not only cut across but transcended the boundaries of States. If, on the other hand, the description of mediaeval society as 'a Christian commonwealth' has any practical political appli- cation—if, in other words, it was meant to be a political society—then we .are justified in asking for a closer definition of its character and extent. Did England, for example, ever admit to belong- ing to a larger society, in a political sense? It was part of Christendom, of course; but as a kingdom, or political unit, it recognised no superior.
This question is important because it necessarily affects our whole conception of the mediaeval contribution to political thought. Much that is commonly treated as political, including not only the conception of transcendental unity but also the problem of authority and obligation, was seen by medieval men as religious; and precisely be- cause he is aware of this, because he writes in terms of 'political theology,' of liturgy and iconography, of rites and symbols, Professor Kantorowicz is in some ways nearer to mediaeval reality than Mr. Morrall. Many of the notions with which he deals appear (as he says) 'hazy and ambiguous today'; but that is because the main- springs of mediaeval thinking about the forms of human association cannot be caught in modern categories. Paradoxically, what is valuable about medieval thinking—until the ferment of Aristo- telianism undermined its basic assumptions—is that it is not political; it retains its relevance precisely because it does not revolve round the State. From the Middle Ages, as perhaps from no other period of history, we can learn that the State is not the sole or highest form of social com- munity, and therefore that values derived from the State are only relative values.
Two fundamental notions stand out. One was that the State was a 'community of communities,' all endowed with inherent rights, not a Leviathan devouring them. Since the central government was only gradually superimposed on other more fundamental associations, it had no right to abrogate their functions. The other was the belief that power was not an end in itself. Acquired by force and fraud, it could only be justified if it was used for superior moral purposes, since' these alone raised political communities 'above their original title-deeds of brigandage and usurpation.' Such beliefs are not so much political ideas as basic postulates which set the limits of political thinking. But today, when the national States of classical political thought are crumbling before our eyes, and everyone can see the hollowness of their pretensions, their relevance is plain. We can- not, of course, go back, and no one would advo- cate nostalgic, romantic medievalism as a cure for modern ills; but precisely because the Middle Ages did not share the political illusions from whose aftermath our generation is soffert.Irt their experience can indicate the limits within which sanity must operate.
Previous page
