On Plato’s ‘Crito’ — Truth in Action
‘It is well known that Beccaria questioned the right of the state to impose capital punishment, on the grounds that it could not be presumed that the social contract included the consent of individuals to allow themselves to be killed, and that we ought rather to assume the contrary. But the state is by no means a contract, and its substantial essence does not consist unconditionally in the protection and safeguarding of the lives and property of individuals as such. The state is rather that higher instance which may even itself lay claim to the lives and property of individuals and require their sacrifice. — Furthermore, the action of the criminal involves not only the concept of crime, its rationality in and for itself which the state must enforce with or without the consent of individuals, but also the formal rationality of the individual’s volition. In so far as the punishment which this entails is seen as embodying the criminal’s own right, the criminal is honoured as a rational being. He is denied this honour if the concept and criterion of his punishment are not derived from his own act; and he is also denied it if he is regarded simply as a harmful animal which must be rendered harmless, or punished with a view to deterring or reforming him. — Besides, so far as the mode of existence of justice is concerned, the form which it has within the state, namely that of punishment, is not its only form, and the state is not a necessary condition of justice in itself’.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, ‘Elements of the Philosophy of Right’, 1820.
[Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria, Marquis of Gualdrasco and Villareggio, (1738–1794), criminologist, jurist, philosopher, economist, politician, Enlightenment thinker, author of ‘On Crimes and Punishment’, 1764, which condemned torture and the death penalty, a founding work in penology and criminology, considered to be the father of modern criminal law and criminal justice whose work has been credited with having a profound influence on the Founding Fathers of the United States].
Social contract theory, which Hegel was critical of, (‘the state is by no means a contract’), is the view that peoples’ moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form the society in which they live, and it was given a well known exposition and defense by Thomas Hobbes, (1588–1679). After Hobbes, John Locke, (1632–1704), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) are the most famous proponents of this inordinately influential theory, indeed it has been one of the most predominant theories within moral and political theory throughout the history of the modern Western world, and in the twentieth century moral and political theory regained some philosophical momentum on the back of John Rawls, (1921–2002), presenting a version of social contract theory as filtered through Immanuel Kant, (1724–1804). Hegel could well accept the starting point of social contract theory, the commitment to freedom, while rejecting what contractarians took to be an obvious implication of that starting point, the social contract theory of political legitimacy. For that is what is at issue, the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual, and from the principle of freedom it is possible to draw alternative accounts of social and political legitimacy.
Hegel attached great importance to the ways in which the major institutions of the modern operate to develop and sustain individual free agency, and one major objection to the social contract theory is that it disregards the function community performs in the constituting of free individuals. Hegel’s own theory of political legitimacy, informed by his own theory of recognition, involves determining what a community must be like if it is to be successful in fulfilling this function, and social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented either explicitly or tacitly to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or to the decision of a majority in exchange for protection of their remaining rights or maintenance of the social order, and albeit it is grounded upon some kind of mythical fable, (when have any of us signed a contract or given our consent to surrender some of our freedoms and submit to the authority of the state?), in the mid-17th to early 19th centuries social contract theory emerged as the leading doctrine of political legitimacy.
Hegel continued:
‘Beccaria is quite right to demand that human beings should give their consent to being punished, but the criminal gives this consent by his very act. Both the nature of crime and the criminal’s own will require that the infringement for which he is responsible should be cancelled. Nevertheless, Beccaria’s efforts to have capital punishment abolished have had advantageous effects. Even if neither Joseph II nor the French have ever managed to secure its complete abolition, people have begun to appreciate which crimes deserve the death penalty and which do not. The death penalty has consequently become less frequent, as indeed this ultimate form of punishment deserves to be’.
Somewhat ironically then an ancient statement of the social contract theory of government is to be found in Plato’s, (428/427 or 424/423–348/347 BC), dialogue ‘Crito’, where Socrates, (c. 470–399 BC), uses something quite like a social contract argument to explain why he must remain in prison and accept the death penalty. A conversation between Socrates and his wealthy friend Crito of Alopece, (c. 469–4th c. BC), is recounted regarding justice, injustice, and the suitable response to injustice after Socrates’ imprisonment, which is chronicled in the ‘Apology’. In the ‘Crito’, Socrates believes injustice should not be answered by injustice, and personifies the Laws of Athens, (contrary to Plato’s usual inclination to criticize the Athenian state and institutions), to demonstrate this, and declines Crito’s offer to finance his escape from prison. The meaning of the ‘Crito’ is contemporary debate tends to focus upon determining whether or not it is a plea for unconditional obedience to the laws of a society. It is one of the few Platonic dialogues seemingly uninformed by Plato’s own position on the matter under discussion, and it includes references to the state’s demand for loyalty, a social contract theory in effect, whereby citizens have a mutual agreement with the state and understand what being a citizen of the state entails, indeed, citizenship was not something conferred at birth but a person only became a citizen after undertaking a test called dokimasia.
The principal ideas put forward in the ‘Crito’ are as follows:
1. Albeit Socrates has been accused unjustly of corrupting the young and has been sentenced to death, he refuses to escape because to escape would be to break an implicit agreement with the State to abide by its laws and judgments.
2. Socrates contends that the important thing is not to live, but to live honourably.
3. It is never right to defend oneself against injury by an act of retaliation.
4. To remain in a state, after having been reared and educated under its laws, is, in effect, to agree to abide by its laws.
5. If Socrates were to escape a punishment legally decided upon by the State, he could no longer conduct himself as a philosopher devoted to justice and to the love of wisdom.
The ‘Crito’, a dialogue noted for its brevity, requires being read alongside and between the ‘Apology’ and the ‘Phaedo’, for the ‘Apology’ delivers an account of Socrates’ trial and condemnation; the ‘Phaedo’ describes his last conversations and death, and the ‘Crito’ recounts a friend’s urgent plea for Socrates to avail himself of the ample opportunity to escape and the latter’s justification on moral grounds for remaining in prison voluntarily, although the execution will occur two days after the present one. Perhaps the purpose of the dialogue is to explain Socrates’ personal reasons for taking this course of inaction, rather than to prescribe a universally applicable norm for the individual unjustly condemned by the State, and it has been suggested that Plato himself would probably have chosen to escape rather than to accept the sentence, as I would have done, for is there a principle worth dying for, especially one upon which not much hangs, if I may use that metaphor in this context? In this case the principle being that of a philosopher being true to his devotion to justice and love of wisdom, and a skilled philosopher could in any case easily construct some arguments to demonstrate that to escape is in accordance with true justice and true love of wisdom,and yet some profound political, social, and moral issues are raised to which there are no simple answers so that the reader can judge for him or herself on which side of an exceedingly fine line he or she should fall.
At the moment of the opening of the dialogue Socrates has been in prison a month, for no death sentences could be carried out in Athens during the annual voyage of the State vessel to Delos in commemoration of the legendary deliverance of the city from the Minotaur by Theseus, but the ship is reportedly about to return, and Crito, having arrived at the prison before dawn, is waiting for Socrates to awake, in order to break the news and try to persuade him to escape while there is yet time. Socrates, true to character, he slumbers peacefully while Crito is wakeful and desperate, and in the discussion that ensues it is Socrates who is the more rational and objective, albeit it is his own life which is at stake. Crito’s reasons for encouraging Socrates to escape, though maybe on a less elevated plane than the latter’s rebuttal, are not specious but are rather quite practical and compelling, and it is the cogency of these, plus that of the circumstances under which Socrates was condemned, that gives the dialogue its moral significance. Crito starts by pointing out that if Socrates dies, an irreplaceable friend will have been lost, besides which Crito will acquire a reputation for loving money more than his friends, in virtue of the fact that many people will believe that he could have saved Socrates had he only been willing to put up the necessary money, for they will not believe that Socrates remained in prison voluntarily.
Socrates answers that men of reason will believe only the truth, why should one regard majority opinion? Crito then points out that popular opinion is not to be taken lightly, which fact is confirmed by Socrates’ present circumstances, but the philosopher responds that common people, unfortunately, are of limited capacity to do evil, since otherwise they could likewise do great good, in actual fact they can make one neither wise nor stupid. Once again the Socratic identification of wisdom and virtue puts in its appearance alongside his belief that no real evil can happen to a good man even if his body is destroyed. Crito acquiesces in this point but continues by assuring Socrates that he need not be concerned about any consequences to his friends if he chooses to escape, which apparently would have been quite a straightforward matter under the circumstances, if not actually desired or intended by those who brought Socrates to trial. They are prepared to risk a large fine, loss of property, or other punishment, and there is no shortage of money available to buy off informers, and Crito knows men who will take Socrates out of the country for a moderate fee. Not only Crito’s money, but also that of Simmias and Cebes, foreigners who would not be so liable to punishment, is at Socrates’ disposal, though at his trial Socrates had rejected banishment to a foreign society but Crito assures him of comfort and protection among friends in Thessaly.
Furthermore, he continues, Socrates will do a wrong in voluntarily neglecting to save his life, for he will be inflicting on himself the penalty his enemies desired. And what of his young sons? Will he not be failing them by leaving their education unfinished and deserting them to the lot of orphans? Crito finishes his argument by expressing once more his concern for the reputation both Socrates and his friends will incur if he refuses escape, a reputation for cowardice and lack of initiative resulting from, first, Socrates’ unnecessary appearance in court, for it was customary for Athenians whose conviction was probable to leave the country before trial), second, the manner in which the defense was made, for Socrates had refused all compromise and had deliberately taken a position which might, and did, result in conviction, and third, the present situation, which will suggest sheer bungling and lack of spirit. In short, the suffering of Socrates’ death will be augmented by disgrace. To all of this Socrates makes a reply remarkable for its calm, detached, and rational tenor. Much as he appreciates Crito’s concern, he points out that his choice to face death is not a sudden impulse, rather his practice has always been to follow the course that reason indicates to be best. The issue, then, is whether the opinions he has previously adopted are still true or whether their truth has been altered by the turn of events, for we must not be frightened into a change of outlook, he reassures Crito, by incarceration, loss of goods, or execution. And with characteristic but good-natured irony Socrates asks Crito to consider the matter with him, for since Crito is himself in no danger of death he is more likely to be impartial and objective.
Is it not true, Socrates inquires, that only some opinions are tenable and not all, that those to be respected are the good ones, and that these belong to the wise? And is it not the case that the opinions of the few qualified experts, rather than those of the masses, are to be regarded, as is illustrated in the case of athletic training? If this is true in general, then it follows that in the present case Socrates and Crito should be concerned only with what the expert in right and wrong will think, not with what the majority will say. The fact that the latter have the powers of life and death in their hands is irrelevant to the argument, and in the considerations that follow it is apparent enough that Socrates is not at all interested in discussing the possibility or the means of escape, but rather its rightness or wrongness. His premises are that ‘… the really important thing is not to live, but to live well… And … to live well means the same thing as to live honourably or rightly’. Crito’s concern about expense, reputation, and the upbringing of Socrates’ children are those of the common people, whose attitudes and acts are unrelated to reason. Socrates says: ‘Our real duty… is to consider one question only … Shall we be acting rightly in paying money and showing gratitude to these people who are going to rescue me, and in escaping … or shall we really be acting wrongly in doing all this? If it becomes clear that such conduct is wrong, I cannot help thinking that the question whether we are sure to die, or to suffer any other ill effect … if we stand our ground and take no action, ought not to weigh with us at all in comparison with the risk of doing what is wrong’.
Wrong doing, Socrates maintains, is reprehensible not merely on most but on all occasions, and there are no exceptions. While most people think it natural and right to return wrongs done them, Socrates disagrees: ‘… it is never right to do a wrong or return a wrong or defend one’s self against injury by retaliation…’ If this is so, and it is agreed that one should always fulfill morally right agreements, then it follows, Socrates concludes, that it would be wrong for him to leave without an official discharge by the State, for he would be doing the State an injury by breaking an implicit agreement with it. He then explains what he means by personifying the Athenian Laws and Constitution and imagining the dialogue that might take place between them and himself were he to favour escape. They would first point out to him that such an act would subvert the Laws and the State, for the latter cannot subsist if its legal decisions are to be set aside for the benefit of individuals. And yet suppose that Socrates should retort that the proposed escape was in reprisal for the wrong done him by the State? The answer of the Laws to this would be that not only was there no provision made for such evasion and insubordination, but Socrates is under agreement to abide by the State’s judgments. He has no legitimate complaint against them, the Laws continue, but rather positive obligations to abide by them. The Laws, by sanctioning the marriage of his parents, in a sense gave him life itself, and they also provided a proper education for him. He is thereby their child and their servant, and as such does not have rights equal to theirs, any more than a son has the right to rebel against his father. Indeed, ‘.. compared with your mother and father and all the rest of your ancestors your country is something far more precious, more venerable, more sacred, and held in greater honour both among gods and among all reasonable men…’ Whatever it orders one must do, unless he can justly persuade it otherwise, and of course, during the trial Socrates failed to persuade the jury though he was confident he might have done so if given more time.
In spite of all the blessings vouchsafed to Athenian citizens, the Laws continue, any young man upon reaching maturity may evaluate the political order and the administration of justice, and if he disapproves, he is free to leave the State with all his possessions, whereas if, on the other hand, he surveys the political and judicial arrangement and voluntarily stays, his act is equivalent to an agreement to abide by the State’s commands, or rather its proposals, since they are not blunt dictates and the citizen has the choice of either obeying or persuading the State to change its decision. Should Socrates should run away now he would be more blameworthy than any other Athenian, for his implicit agreement to abide by the law has been more explicit than that of any other citizen because he above all has remained at home, never crossing the border except while on military duty. Although he admired Sparta and Crete because of their good governments and respect for law, he has never emigrated to those city-states, and furthermore, during the trial when the defendant was given the customary opportunity to propose an alternative penalty, Socrates did not choose banishment. His covenant with the State was thus made freely, consciously, and under no stress in relation to time, for after all he has spent seventy years in Athens.
Furthermore, the Laws ask, what will Socrates gain by escaping? The risk of banishment or loss of property would be inflicted upon his friends. If he entered well-ordered states, he would be regarded as a lawbreaker by their citizens and would confirm the jury’s opinion of him, but if he chose to go to states with little or no respect for law and order, would that kind of life be worthwhile? He could not continue to converse as usual about goodness in persons and governments, for it would be hypocrisy to do so, and he would not want to rear his children in such an environment, and if they remained in Athens, they would be more likely to receive good care with Socrates dead than with him alive illegally and in exile. Surely his friends, if true to their profession, would care for them. So in conclusion the Laws advise Socrates, ‘… do not think more of your children or of your life or of anything else than you think of what is right; so that when you enter the next world you may have all this to plead in your defence before the authorities there’. To disobey by escaping will not really better either his friends or Socrates in this world or the next. ‘As it is, you will leave this place, when you do, as the victim of a wrong done not by us, the Laws, but by your fellowmen’. But if he retaliates and returns evil for evil, breaking his agreement and wronging himself, his friends, his country, and the Laws themselves, he will incur the wrath of the Laws both here and in the next life. Socrates thus concludes the speeches he has put in the mouth of the Laws and asks Crito whether he has anything to say in opposition to these arguments, which seem so persuasive that Socrates professes to be scarcely able to hear any others. Since Crito offers no refutation, the matter is settled and Socrates will obey the law even though it means his death.
What are we to make of Socrates’ decision and his justification for it? Difficulties arise in answering this given several factors that arise to complicate things. Socrates’ trial, insofar as one can tell, was legal,and as A. E. Taylor, (1869–1945), pointed out while discussing the ‘Apology’, the real reasons for which Socrates was prosecuted concerned matters for which general amnesty had been extended by the Act of Oblivion, (an amnesty designed to heal the wounds caused by the previous years’ civil war and which prevented the prosecution of those considered as political enemies through having supported the Thirty Tyrant), and so the court could not have jurisdiction over these. hence the failure of Anytus, (c. 5th — 4th century BC), and Meletus, (5th — 4th century BC), Socrates’ accusers, to explain their charges. However, although the ostensible charges were thus specious, and though Socrates demonstrated them to be absurd, the jury had voted in proper order to convict him, and so the letter of the law had been fulfilled. The very fact that this case quite clearly demonstrated that an innocent and supremely good man could be condemned unjustly under the law and hence that the law needed revision was cited as an excellent reason for escape, but Socrates contended that such reform should be demanded at a time other than that at which his own fate was affected in order that reform would not be motivated by mere favouritism.
And yet as Socrates makes the Laws say it is not the laws but the men administering them who wronged him, and Socrates argued that respect for law in general is more valuable than one man’s life lost by maladministration. A somewhat delicate point, for had the miscarriage of justice occurred merely through ignorance, albeit Socrates regarded vice as a kind of ignorance, it would have been easier to accept the sacrifice, but the reader will perhaps find it difficult to avoid the feeling that the court is more intent on ridding Athens of Socrates than it is on reaching a just verdict. It is true that Socrates argued that were he to evade the death penalty people would think him insincere in his former teaching about integrity and obedience to the law, but Crito might well have turned one of his own statements against him by replying that it is only what reasonable and wise men think that really matters, which would have been a good point to make and one wonders how Socrates would have answered. Nonetheless, the example set by escape might have been harmful to men of less comprehension, and Socrates recognised the value of consistency and stability in the State and its dispensation of justice. A state does not consist merely of the persons administering and living in it at any given time, indeed to function best a state must have a continuity transcending the irregularities of individual fortunes. Presumably this was Socrates’ intent in valuing the State above parents and ancestors, albeit contemporary Western readers may feel that Socrates revered the State too much. Yet whether we concur with Socrates’ decision here or not we can hardly fail to admire the philosopher’s devotion to principal, (or can we?), nor deny that the nobility of such a death enhances life for the living (or does it?).
A. D. Woozley, (1912–2008), legal and political philosopher, has written on Socrates with regard to disobeying the law. He notes a clear connection between the ‘Crito’ and the ‘Apology’, most obviously in that they form two adjoining items in a sequence of dialogues that Plato wrote to display Socrates’ character and behavior during his trial and death. This group of writings includes the ‘Euthyphro’ at one end and the ‘Phaedo’ at the other, and certainly it need not be the case that the dialogues were written in that sequence, and it is certain that the ‘Phaedo’ is later than the others, but nonetheless the best evidence and reasoning show that the ‘Apology’ and the ‘Crito’ were written fairly early in Plato’s dialogue-writing career, and furthermore it seems eminently reasonable to presume that it was Plato’s purpose in those early works to portray Socrates more or less as he was. Given such assumptions about the two dialogues a pressing problem arises that Woozley was not the first to notice has certainly been the principal instrument in making it an important issue in contemporary Socratic/Platonic studies.
The problem is as follws. In the ‘Apology’, when explaining to the court what his life has involved, Socrates imagines the court proposing to acquit him on the condition that he give up his questioning ideas, that is, that he give up doing philosophy, and his response to that offer is that if he were to be acquitted with that condition, he would not change his behavior no matter what the consequences. For Socrates to have said that would have amounted to his declaring that he would disobey the court if they handed down a conditional decision, and the court did not make that decision, and consequently in the dialogue Socrates is portrayed as in prison waiting for the death sentence to be carried out. His friend Crito proposes to help him escape. Socrates proceeds to argue that it would be wrong for him to escape, and one of the arguments he uses is that escaping would mean that he would be violating a legitimate order of the court, that is, he contends that disobedience of a court order is wrong and so he refuses to escape. It certainly appears as if, albeit Socrates at his trial declared that as a matter of principle he would disobey a certain court order, only a month later he contends that it is in principle wrong to disobey procedurally correct legal commands, even one threatening one’s own life, and the problem, in consequence, is how one resolves, if at all, that apparent or perhaps real contradiction in Socrates’ views.
In addressing this problem, Woozley argues that there is no possibility that one of these apparently inconsistent positions is not being genuinely Socratic or that Socrates changed his mind in the interval between trial and prison. Hence, there remain only two choices, either the inconsistency was not noticed or there really is no inconsistency. Woozley regards the first choice as wholly implausible, a man of principle such as Socrates could hardly fail to see such an inconsistency, so the solution depends upon discovering a way of treating the two situations so that they are seen not to be in conflict, and Woozley believes he has discovered such a way. The difference between the two situations Woozley discerns to reside in matters concerning openness of action and persuasion. In the ‘Apology’ Socrates declares he would disobey a restraining court order by openly going about his business and trying to persuade Athens of her wrong behavior. However, to escape, as Crito proposes, would be to evade the law by stealth and would do nothing to try to reason the state out of wrongful conduct. Hence, Woozley holds that under certain circumstances Socrates condones genuine civil disobedience, openly breaking the law, in an attempt to persuade the state to alter its behaviour.
In his study of Socrates, Gerasimos Xenophon Santas, (1931–2021), picks up the problem developed by Woozley, the question of whether there is a contradiction between the ‘Apology’ and the ‘Crito’ on the matter of Socrates’ conclusions as to whether he should disobey court orders. Several things should be noted before inquiring into Santas’ manner of solving the problem. First, in his discussion of this issue Santas is particularly concerned to set out Socrates’ arguments in full detail and in approved official form, and second, he expressly states that he disagrees with the solution proposed by Woozley in his essay, and third, despite Santas’ claim that his solution is different from Woozley’s, there is a great deal of similarity between the two positions. This is not to say that there are no differences, even significant ones, rather, the differences are in matters of comparative detail and both scholars concur that there is no contradiction between the two dialogues and also concur in the general line of solution to the apparent inconsistency.
Santas goes over all the relevant arguments so that one can see how Socrates comes to his conclusions and how Santas arrives at his conclusions, and to find out whether Socrates contradicted his assertions in the ‘Apology’ by what he argued while in prison, it is necessary, Santas maintains, to consider both the arguments in the ‘Crito’ which lead to the conclusion that it would be wrong for him to escape and the arguments in the ‘Apology’ that are employed to support his claim that he would continue to philosophize even if ordered to stop. There are two central lines of argument in the ‘Crito’ leading to the conclusion that escape would be wrong. Albeit both are awkward to reconstruct in detail, though Santas assumes the task, the chief lines are clear enough. He argues that to escape, given all the circumstances, would be, first, to do harm to the state and so violate a moral principle which says one ought not do harm and, second, to break an agreement with the city and so violate a principle concerning the rightness of keeping agreements. The arguments in the ‘Apology’ that bear upon this issue are more diffuse that those in the ‘Crito’ and so are even more difficult to set out fully, but again the main points are clear. Socrates concludes that if he were given an acquittal with the proviso that he cease doing philosophy, he would refuse to cease for the reason that to cease philosophizing would be to disobey God and to stop doing what is the greatest good for the city.
How do the arguments of the ‘Crito’ apply to the case in the ‘Apology’, and vice versa? Santas maintains that the arguments of the ‘Crito’ do not fully apply to the situation envisioned in the trial, and, just as significantly, that they do not mention all the relevant facts in that situation, especially the question of obedience to God. And therefore those arguments do not show Socrates to have come to the incorrect decision when defending himself before the court. On the other hand, the arguments in the ‘Apology’ do support his later decision not to escape, hence, there is no contradiction in that direction either. Socrates’ behavior was consistent, civil disobedience was not ruled out by the arguments of the ‘Crito’. Woozley having by now re-examined the ground covered by his earlier paper as well as that covered by Santas, recognised that the issue of Socrates’ inconsistency concerning civil disobedience was not the only issue worthy of notice in connection with the dialogue now brought up another matter arising from the ‘Crito’. Crito gives his long-time friend Socrates several reasons for escaping. Socrates first rejects those reasons and then turns around and constructs his own argument to show that it would be wrong to escape, and it is certainly of interest both for the light it throws upon his views and upon his character to consider how Socrates rejects the reasons why he should escape.
Woozley mentions four reasons advanced by Crito for escaping. It is to be remarked that three of these reasons are never directly responded to by Socrates, and they are, first, if Socrates does not escape but remains to die, Crito will be losing a friend he can never hope to replace, second, by staying and dying, Socrates would allow to happen what his enemies want to happen, and, third, if Socrates does not escape he will be failing his children by failing to see them properly educated and reared. Socrates merely alludes to these considerations dismissing all that kind of talk as irrelevant to the situation, a dismissal which Woozley finds rather uncaring and indifferent. Crito is very much concerned with the fourth reason and Socrates does devote time criticizing it, which is about reputations, namely, if Socrates does not escape then Crito and Socrates’ other friends will acquire reputations as men too miserly or too cowardly to help their friend escape. Woozley is first of all interested in considering whether this is proposed as a moral reason for escaping and his conclusion is that it was most likely intended to be a moral consideration, that a man’s reputation, especially that of a friend, should undeservedly be allowed to suffer by one’s actions is something that morally matters.
What was Socrates’ response to that argument? As Woozley points out, Socrates treats Crito’s worry about the reputation of Crito and others with contempt, and Woozley sees that since Crito made his point as part of a moral argument, it is difficult to hold that Socrates acted properly in simply casting the argument aside, in saying in effect not to worry about your reputation unless it is your reputation in the eyes of people who know what they are talking about. Woozley, in fact, wants to defend Crito’s position that the weight of public opinion must sometimes be considered significant even if what the public believes is wrong, for sometimes to refuse to take public opinion into account may have a serious effect if the public is mistaken or ill-informed. On the other hand, Woozley does believe that there is a flaw in Crito’s argument, although it is one which Socrates seems not to have noticed, that is to say, Crito’s reputation would not be likely to suffer much since Socrates was not popular anyway, and friends of Socrates were not likely to be much blamed for not having assisted in an escape. Scholars while believing Socrates emerges impressively from most of the dialogues even though making mistakes of reasoning at times (to put it mildly) they also see it as is evident from Woozley’s sort account of the response to Crito that there were flaws in Socrates’ character and Woozley’s assessment is that Socrates was not at his finest in the exchange with Crito about the reasons given for escaping.
And what of social contract theory? What are we to make of that? Thomas Hobbes, (1588–1679), lived during the time of the English Civil War, (1642–1648), a clash between the King and his supporters, the Monarchists, who preferred the traditional authority of a monarch, and the Parliamentarians led by Oliver Cromwell, (1599–1658), who demanded more power for the quasi-democratic institution of Parliament. Hobbes rejected the theory of the Divine Right of Kings, a monarch’s authority was invested in him or her by God, that such authority was absolute, and therefore that the basis of political obligation lay in our obligation to obey God absolutely, which is to say, political obligation is subsumed under religious obligation. Hobbes also rejected the early democratic view, taken up by the Parliamentarians, that power ought to be shared between Parliament and the King. He was a radical conservative in other words, believing that political authority and obligation are based on the individual self-interests of members of society who are understood to be equal to one another, with no single individual invested with any essential authority to rule over the rest, while at the same time maintaining the conservative position that the monarch, which he called the Sovereign, must be ceded absolute authority if society is to survive.
Hobbes’ political theory consists of a theory of human motivation, psychological egoism, (the thesis that we are always deep down motivated by what we perceive to be in our own self-interest, rather difficult to prove given we can attribute to others whatever motives we like for their actions), and a theory of the social contract, founded upon the hypothetical State of Nature. In the ‘Leviathan’, 1651, Hobbes endeavours to provide a theory of human nature that would parallel the discoveries being made in the sciences of the inanimate universe and is therefore informed by mechanism, the general view that everything in the universe is produced by nothing other than matter in motion. Extending this to human behaviour then human macro-behaviour can be seen as the effect of certain sorts of micro-behaviour, albeit some of this latter behaviour is invisible to us, and therefore such behaviours as walking, talking, and the like are themselves produced by other actions inside of us, and these other actions are in turn caused by the interaction of our bodies with other bodies, human or otherwise, which produce in us particular chains of causes and effects, and that eventually give rise to the human behaviour that we can clearly witness. We, including all of our actions and choices, are then explicable in terms of universal laws of nature as are the motions of heavenly bodies. The gradual disintegration of memory, for instance, can be explained by inertia, and as we are presented with ever more sensory information, the residue of earlier impressions slows down over time. We are in essence very complicated organic machines responding to the stimuli of the world mechanistically and in accordance with universal laws of human nature, a mechanistic quality of human psychology that implies the subjective nature of normative claims whereby ‘love’ and ‘hate’, for instance, are mere words used to describe the things we are drawn to and repelled by, respectively. And ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are words have no meaning other than to describe our appetites and aversions, that is, moral terms do not describe some objective state of affairs but are rather reflections of individual tastes and preferences.
From such mechanistic theory of human nature humans are necessarily and exclusively self-interested pursuing only what they see to be in their own individually considered best interests as they respond mechanistically by being drawn to that which they desire and repelled by that to which they are averse, and this is a universal claim meant to cover all human actions under all circumstances, in society or out of it, with regard to strangers and friends alike, with regard to small ends and the most generalized of human desires, such as the desire for power and status. All that we do is motivated solely by the desire to better our own situations and satisfy as many of our own, individually considered desires as possible, and we are endlessly appetitive and only genuinely concerned with our own selves. Even the reason that adults care for small children can be explicated in terms of the adults’ own self-interest, indeed in saving an infant by caring for it we become the recipient of a strong sense of obligation in one who has been helped to survive rather than allowed to die. Furthermore, human beings have the rational capacity to pursue their desires as efficiently and maximally as possible, though their reason does not, given the subjective nature of value, evaluate their given ends, rather it merely acts as ‘Scouts, and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired’. Rationality is thereby purely instrumental, it can add and subtract, and compare sums one to another, and thereby endows us with the capacity to formulate the best means to whatever ends we might happen to have.
From these premises of human nature we can see why we ought to be willing to submit ourselves to political authority, for just imagine persons in a situation prior to the establishment of society, the State of Nature. The justification for political obligation follows from persons being naturally self-interested yet rational, they will choose to submit to the authority of a Sovereign in order to be able to live in a civil society, which is conducive to their own interests. In the hypothetical State of Nature persons are naturally and exclusively self-interested, they are more or less equal to one another, for even the strongest among them can be killed in their sleep, there are limited resources, and yet there is no power able to force men to cooperate. In such conditions the life of persons is ‘nasty, brutish and short’, (sounds like Joe Pesci, (1942 -)), where every person is forever in fear of losing his or her life to another, and hey have no capacity to ensure the long-term satisfaction of their needs or desires, no long-term or complex cooperation is possible in a state of utter distrust, and given the reasonable assumption that most people want first and foremost to avoid their own deaths, the State of Nature is the worst possible situation in which persons can find themselves, a state of perpetual and unavoidable war.
It is not hopeless however because persons are reasonable and can see their way out of such a state by recognizing the laws of nature, which show them the means by which to escape the State of Nature and create a civil society, the first and most important of which commands that each person be willing to pursue peace when others are willing to do the same, all the while retaining the right to continue to pursue war when others do not pursue peace. Being reasonable and recognizing the rationality of this basic precept of reason, persons can be expected to construct a social contract that will afford them a life other than that available to them in the State of Nature. This contract is constituted by two distinguishable contracts, first, they must agree to establish society by collectively and reciprocally renouncing the rights they had against one another in the State of Nature, and second, they must imbue some one person or assembly of persons with the authority and power to enforce the initial contract. That is to say, to ensure their escape from the State of Nature, they must both agree to live together under common laws and to create an enforcement mechanism for the social contract and the laws that constitute it. Since the sovereign is invested with the authority and power to mete out punishments for breaches of the contract which are worse than not being able to act as one pleases, persons have good, albeit self-interested, reason to adjust themselves to the artifice of morality in general, and justice in particular, and society becomes possible because, whereas in the State of Nature there was no power able to overawe them all now there is an artificially and conventionally superior and more powerful person who can force men to cooperate. While living under the authority of a sovereign can be harsh, because persons’ passions can be expected to overwhelm their reason, the sovereign must have absolute authority in order for the contract to be successful, it is at least better than living in the State of Nature, and howsoever much we may object to how poorly a sovereign manages the affairs of the state and regulates our own lives we are never justified in resisting his power because it is the only thing that stands between us and that which we most want to avoid, the State of Nature.
Morality, politics, society, and everything that comes along with it, all of which Hobbes terms ‘commodious living’ are purely conventional, and prior to the establishment of the basic social contract, according to which persons agree to live together and the contract to embody a sovereign with absolute authority, nothing is immoral or unjust, anything goes,and after these contracts are established society becomes possible and people can be expected to keep their promises, cooperate with one another, and so on. The social contract is the most fundamental source of all that is good and that which we depend upon to live well, and our choice is either to abide by the terms of the contract or return to the State of Nature, which no reasonable person could possibly prefer. Given such severe view of human nature Hobbes still manages to produce an argument that makes civil society, along with all its advantages, possible,and within the context of the political events of England at the time he in addition managed to argue for a continuation of the traditional form of authority that his society had long since enjoyed while nonetheless placing it upon what he saw as a much more acceptable foundation.
The necessity of an absolute authority in the form of a Sovereign followed from the utter brutality of the State of Nature that was completely intolerable and so rational humans would be willing to submit themselves even to absolute authority in order to escape it, in Hobbes’ view. For John Locke, (1632–1704), the State of Nature was a quite different sort of place and therefore his argument concerning the social contract and the nature of men’s relationship to authority are consequently quite different though he uses Hobbes’ methodological device of the State of Nature, as do virtually all social contract theorists, but to a different end,outlined in his ‘Two Treatises on Government’. The State of Nature, the natural condition of mankind, is a state of perfect and complete liberty to conduct one’s life as one best sees fit, free from the interference of others which does not mean that it is a state of license for one is not free to do anything at all one pleases, or even anything that one judges to be in one’s interest. The State of Nature, although a state wherein there is no civil authority or government to punish people for transgressions against laws, is not a state without morality, pre-political it may be but not pre-moral and persons are assumed to be equal to one another and therefore equally capable of discovering and being bound by the Law of Nature, the latter being the basis of all morality and given to us by God and commands that we not harm others with regards to their ‘life, health, liberty, or possessions’. In virtue of the fact that we all belong equally to God and we cannot take away that which is rightfully God’s we are prohibited from harming one another and so it is that the State of Nature is a state of liberty where persons are free to pursue their own interests and plans, free from interference, and given the Law of Nature and the restrictions that it imposes upon persons it is relatively peaceful. The State of Nature is not the same as the state of war but it may well devolve into a state of war, in particular, a state of war over property disputes, it is the state of liberty where persons recognize the Law of Nature and therefore do not harm one another, and the state of war begins between two or more men upon one man declaring war upon another by stealing from him or by trying to make him his slave. And given that in the State of Nature there is no civil power to whom persons can appeal and since the Law of Nature allows them to defend their own lives, they may then kill those who would bring force against them, and given that the State of Nature lacks civil authority then once war begins it is likely to continue, which is one of the strongest reasons that persons have to abandon the State of Nature by contracting together to form civil government.
Property plays a critical role in the argument for civil government and the contract that establishes it, for private property is created when a person mixes his labour with the raw materials of nature, for instance when one tills a piece of land in nature and makes it into a piece of farmland that produces food then one has a claim to own that piece of land and the food produced upon it. Locke therefore thought that America did not really belong to the natives who lived there given that they were failing to utilize the basic material of nature, that is to say, they didn’t farm it and so they had no legitimate claim to it, and others could therefore justifiably appropriate it. Given the implications of the Law of Nature, there are limits as to how much property one can own, one is not allowed to take more from nature than one can use, thereby leaving others without enough for themselves, and because nature is given to all of mankind by God for its common subsistence, one cannot take more than his own fair share. Property is pivotal in Locke’s argument for the social contract and civil government given that it is the protection of their property, including their property in their own bodies, that persons seek when they decide to abandon the State of Nature.
The State of Nature is not a condition of individuals but is populated by mothers and fathers with their children, or families, what he designates ‘conjugal society’ and these societies are based upon the voluntary agreements to care for children together, and they are moral but not political for political society comes into being when individual persons, representing their families, come together in the State of Nature and agree to each give up the executive power to punish those who transgress the Law of Nature, and hand over that power to the public power of a government. Once they have done this they then become subject to the will of the majority, which is to say, by making a compact to leave the State of Nature and form society, they make ‘one body politic under one government’ and submit themselves to the will of that body. One joins such a body, either from its beginnings, or after it has already been established by others, only by explicit consent, and having created a political society and government through their consent, persons thereupon gain three things which they lacked in the State of Nature, laws, judges to adjudicate laws, and the executive power necessary to enforce these laws. Hence every person hands over the power to protect himself and punish transgressors of the Law of Nature to the government that he has produced by means of the compact.
In virtue of the fact that the end of ‘men’s uniting into commonwealths is the preservation of their wealth, and preserving their lives, liberty, and well-being in general, Locke can readily envisage the conditions under which the compact with government is destroyed, and persons are justified in resisting the authority of a civil government, such as a king. Once the executive power of a government devolves into tyranny, such as by dissolving the legislature and therefore denying the people the ability to make laws for their own preservation, then the resulting tyrant puts himself into a State of Nature, and specifically into a state of war with the people, and they then have the same right to self-defense as they had before making a compact to establish society in the first place. Which is to say, the justification of the authority of the executive component of government is the protection of the people’s property and well-being, so when such protection is no longer present, or when the king becomes a tyrant and acts against the interests of the people, they have a right, if not an outright obligation, to resist his authority and the social compact can be dissolved and the process to create political society begun anew. Beginning with a happier view of the State of Nature than Hobbes Locke can conceive of conditions under which one would be better off rejecting a particular civil government and returning to the State of Nature, with the objective of constructing a better civil government in its place, and hence the view of human nature together with the nature of morality itself account for the differences between Hobbes’ and Locke’s views of the social contract.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (1712–1778), has two distinct social contract theories, the first laid out in his ‘Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men’, an account of the moral and political evolution of human beings over time, from a State of Nature to modern society and which contains his naturalized account of the social contract which he has problems with, and the second laid out in the ‘Social Contract’, a normative or idealized theory of the social contract meant to provide the means by which to alleviate the problems that modern society has created for us. In the Discourse he describes the historical process by which humanity began in a State of Nature and over time progressed (for want of a better word) into civil society. The State of Nature was a peaceful and somewhat dreamy time when people lived solitary, uncomplicated lives with their few needs being easily satisfied by nature the abundance of which together with the small size of the population rendered competition non-existent and persons seldom saw one another much less had cause for conflict or fear, and moreover these simple, morally pure folk were naturally endowed with the capacity for pity, and therefore were not inclined to bring harm to one another.
As time passed, however, humanity faced certain changes, for the overall population increased and the means by which people could satisfy their needs had to change and people slowly began to live together in small families, and then in small communities. Divisions of labour were introduced both within and between families, and discoveries and inventions made life easier, giving rise to leisure time which inevitably led people to make comparisons between themselves and others, resulting in public values, leading to shame and envy, pride and contempt. Most significant however was the invention of private property, which constituted the pivotal moment in humanity’s evolution out of a simple, pure state into one characterized by greed, competition, vanity, inequality, and vice. Indeed the invention of property constitutes humanity’s fall from grace out of the State of Nature, for with private property initial conditions of inequality became more pronounced as some have property and others are forced to work for them, and the development of social classes is under way. And so it comes to pass that those who have property perceive that it would be in their interests to create a government that would protect private property from those who do not have it but can see that they might be able to acquire it by force, and thus government is established through a contract that purports to guarantee equality and protection for all, even though its true purpose is to reinforce the very inequalities that private property has created. Which is to say, the contract, which claims to be in the interests of everyone equally, is in actual fact in the interests of the few who have become stronger and richer as a consequence of the developments of private property, and such a naturalized social contract is responsible for the conflict and competition with which modern society is beset.
The normative social contract is intended to respond to such a sorry state of affairs and to remedy the social and moral ills that have been created by the development of society. Rousseau distinguished between the factual situation of humanity and how it ought to live together, for while we ought not to ignore history, nor ignore the causes of the problems we have to confront, we must resolve those problems through our capacity to choose how we ought to live and might never makes right though it pretends that it can. ‘Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains’, a claim working as a conceptual bridge between the descriptive work of the Discourse and the prescriptive work to come, for humans are essentially free, and were free in the State of Nature, but the progress (for want of a better word) of civilization has substituted subservience to others for that freedom, through dependence, economic and social inequalities, and the extent to which we judge ourselves through comparisons with others. Since a return to the State of Nature is neither feasible nor desirable the purpose of politics is to restore freedom to us, thereby reconciling who we truly and essentially are with how we live together and so the fundamental philosophical problem to address concerns how can we be free and live together, or how we can we live together without succumbing to the force and coercion of others. This can be achieved through submitting our individual, particular wills to the collective or general will, produced through agreement with other free and equal persons. Like Hobbes and like Locke and unlike the ancient philosophers all people are made by nature to be equals, therefore no one has a natural right to govern others and the only justified authority is the authority that is generated out of agreements or covenants.
The social pact is the most basic covenant, the agreement to come together and form a people, a collectivity, which by definition is more than and different from a mere aggregation of individual interests and wills, for an act whereby individual persons become a people is ‘the real foundation of society’ and through the collective renunciation of the individual rights and freedom that one has in the State of Nature, and the transfer of these rights to the collective body, a new person so to speak, as it were, is formed for a sovereign is formed when free and equal persons come together and agree to create themselves anew as a single body, directed to the good of all considered together. And just as individual wills are directed towards individual interests the general will, once formed, is directed towards the common good, understood and agreed to collectively. Included in this version of the social contract is the idea of reciprocated duties, for the sovereign is committed to the good of the individuals who constitute it, and each individual is likewise committed to the good of the whole, and in light of this individuals cannot be given liberty to decide whether it is in their own interests to fulfill their duties to the sovereign while at the same time being allowed to reap the benefits of citizenship, not a bit of it, they must be made to conform themselves to the general will, they must be ‘forced to be free’.
An extremely strong and direct form of democracy, as Rousseau sees it,for one cannot transfer one’s will to another, to do with as he or she sees fit, as one does in representative democracies, on the contrary, the general will depends upon the coming together periodically of the entire democratic body, each and every citizen, to decide collectively, and with at least near unanimity, how to live together, that is to say, what laws to enact, and as it is constituted only by individual wills these private, individual wills must assemble themselves regularly if the general will is to continue. From which it follows that this is a strong form of democracy consistent with the general will and is also only possible in relatively small states for the people must be able to identify with one another, and at least know who each other are. They cannot live in a large area, too spread out to come together regularly, nor cannot they live in such different geographic circumstances as to be unable to be united under common laws. In no way could the present-day U.S.A satisfy Rousseau’s conception of democracy and albeit the conditions for true democracy are stringent they are also the only means by which we can save ourselves and regain the freedom to which we are naturally entitled. The two social contract theories unite to form a single, consistent view of our moral and political situation whereby we are endowed with freedom and equality by nature, but our nature has been corrupted by our contingent social history, though we can overcome this corruption by invoking our free will to reconstitute ourselves politically along strongly democratic principles which is individually and collectively good for us.
John Rawls,(1921–2002), published ‘A Theory of Justice’ in 1972, a theory reliant upon a Kantian understanding of persons and their capacities whereupon persons have the capacity to reason from a universal point of view, which in turn means that they have the particular moral capacity of judging principles from an impartial standpoint, on which basis Rawls contends that the moral and political point of view is discoverable by impartiality. He invokes this general point of view, that Thomas Nagel, (1937 — ), describes as the view from nowhere, by envisaging persons in a hypothetical situation, the Original Position, which is characterized by the epistemological limitation of the Veil of Ignorance. The Original Position (I prefer the missionary myself) is the State of Nature in abstraction from which we can discover the nature of justice and what it requires of us as individual persons and of the social institutions through which we will live together cooperatively. In the Original Position behind the Veil of Ignorance (what a night that was) one is denied any particular knowledge of one’s circumstances, such as one’s gender, race, particular talents or disabilities, one’s age, social status, one’s particular conception of what makes for a good life, or the particular state of the society in which one lives, and persons are assumed to be rational and disinterested in one another’s well-being. For those are the conditions under which one can choose principles for a just society which are themselves chosen from initial conditions that are inherently fair. Because no one has any of the particular knowledge he or she could use to develop principles that favour his or her own particular circumstances, in other words the knowledge that makes for and sustains prejudices, the principles chosen from such a perspective are necessarily fair. For instance, if one does not know whether one is female or male in the society for which one must choose basic principles of justice, it makes no sense, from the point of view of self-interested rationality, to endorse a principle that favours one sex at the expense of another, since, once the Veil of Ignorance is lifted, one might find oneself on the losing end of such a principle. Rawls therefore characterises his theory as justice as fairness, and because the conditions under which the principles of justice are discovered are basically fair justice thereby proceeds out of fairness.
While in the Original Position behind the Veil of Ignorance everyone is in the same situation and everyone is presumed to be equally rational, and given that everyone adopts the same method for choosing the basic principles for society, everyone will occupy the same standpoint, that of the disembodied, rational, universal human. Therefore all who consider justice from the point of view of the Original Position would agree upon the same principles of justice generated out of such a thought experiment, and any one person would reach the same conclusion as any other person concerning the most basic principles that must regulate a just society. The principles that persons in the Original Position behind the Veil of Ignorance would opt for to regulate a society at the most fundamental level, which is to say, prior even to a Constitution, are designated by Rawls as the Two Principles of Justice, and it is they that determine the distribution of both civil liberties and social and economic goods. The first principle asserts that each person in a society is to have as much basic liberty as possible, as long as everyone is allowed the same liberties, that is, there is to be as much civil liberty as possible as long as these goods are distributed equally, thereby precluding a scenario under which there was a greater aggregate of civil liberties than under an alternative scenario but under which such liberties were not distributed equally amongst citizens. The second principle, the Difference Principle, asserts that while social and economic inequalities can be just, they must be available to everyone equally, that is, no one is to be on principle denied access to greater economic advantage and such inequalities must be to the advantage of everyone. What this amounts to is that economic inequalities are only justified when the least advantaged member of society is nonetheless better off than he or she would be under alternative arrangements, and so only if a rising tide lifts all boats can economic inequalities be tolerated in a just society. The method of The Original Position supports the Difference Principle in virtue of the fact that when we are behind the Veil of Ignorance and therefore do not know what our situation in society will be once the Veil of Ignorance is lifted we will only accept principles that will be to our advantage even if we end up in the least advantaged position in society.
The first principle in distributing civil liberties as widely as possible consistent with equality is prior to the Difference principle that distributes social and economic goods, that is to say, we cannot decide to forgo some of our civil liberties in favour of greater economic advantage, on the contrary, we must satisfy the demands of the first principle before we move on to the second, a serial ordering of the principles that expresses a basic rational preference for certain kinds of goods, that is, those embodied in civil liberties, over other kinds of goods, i.e., economic advantage. A rational person inhabiting the Original Position and placing him or herself behind the Veil of Ignorance to discover the two principles of justice a social contract theory constructed at the highest level of abstraction given that rather than demonstrating that we would or even have signed to a contract to establish society it instead shows us what we must be willing to accept as rational persons in order to be constrained by justice and therefore capable of living in a well ordered society. The principles of justice are more fundamental than the social contract as it has traditionally been conceived, indeed, the principles of justice constrain that contract and set out the limits of how we can construct society in the first place. If we consider, for instance, a constitution as the concrete expression of the social contract, the two principles of justice supposedly delineate what such a constitution can and cannot require of us, it is therefore a theory of justice that constitutes the Kantian limits upon the forms of political and social organization that are permissible within a just society.
I said at the beginning that Hegel could well accept the starting point of social contract theory, the commitment to freedom, while rejecting what contractarians took to be an obvious implication of that starting point, the social contract theory of political legitimacy. And in taking freedom to be the fundamental principle of his project of reconciliation, Hegel acknowledges an important debt to Rousseau and to Kant: ‘It was the achievement of Rousseau to put forward the will as the principle of the state, a principle which has thought not only as its form … but also as its content, and which is in fact thinking itself . And he adds while discussing Kant’s practical philosophy: ‘It is a great advance when the principle is established that freedom is the last hinge on which man turns, a highest possible pinnacle, which does not allow itself to be impressed by anything, so that man allows no authority, or anything else, to be valid if it goes against his freedom’. However, freedom might well constitute the fundamental axiom of moral and political argument, but Hegel strongly rejected the contractarian account of social and political legitimacy that Rousseau and his followers take to be an implication of that axiom: ‘Marriage cannot … be subsumed under the concept of contract … The nature of the state has just as little to do with the relationship of contract, whether it is assumed that the state is a contract of all with all, or a contract of all with the sovereign and the government’. Hegel can both accept the starting point of social contract theory, the commitment to freedom, and reject what social contract theorists take to be an obvious implication of that starting point, the contractarian account of legitimacy, for what Hegel means by freedom is radically different from what a contractarian would understand by the term, indeed there is a discrepancy between his conception of freedom and the everyday conception that equates freedom with being able to do as one pleases. Freedom is rather rational self-determination, and Hegel’s objective is to reconcile modern Europeans to the central institutions and practices of their social world, a project that involves giving people reason to feel at home in their social institutions and practices rather than alienated and unfulfilled, by showing those institutions and practices to be necessary for the full actualization of their freedom, as Hegel understands the latter.
Hegel distinguishes between two possible approaches to political philosophy, one of which is identifiable with contractarianism, the other with his own view:
‘There are always only two possible viewpoints in the ethical realm: either one starts from substantiality, or one proceeds atomistically and moves upward from the basis of individuality. This latter viewpoint excludes spirit, because it leads only to an aggregation, whereas spirit is not something individual but the unity of the individual and the universal.
Indeed so, why did Socrates not prescribe a universally applicable norm for the individual unjustly condemned by the State? Whereas an open-ended, individualistic conception of freedom lends itself to a social contract theory of political legitimacy, Hegel’s more rationalist, less individualist, conception naturally leads to an account of Spirit whereby the dispute between himself and social contract theorists, is ultimately a disagreement about how best to interpret the concept of freedom.Furthermore, Hegel’s theory retains a connection between individual freedom and political legitimacy for even if the state is not established by the voluntary decisions and actions of individuals one characteristic of a good state is that it is subjectively assented to and affirmed by its members and a role for the individual will in political legitimacy is preserved, for in the absence of will in any active sense in such a theory of the state whereby contract theory and much participation, opinion, and conscience as traditionally defined are downplayed what remains is will as recognition, in particular as acceptance of the rationality of the universal.
Hegel puts forward many convincing objections against social contract theory, in particular to do with this mythical or hypothetical State of Nature. The State of Nature is not so much an inhospitable place to live but the very capacities for freedom and reason so much cherished by social contract theorists would not be present, rather the attitudes and capacities that make up free and rational agency cannot reliably be developed and sustained in the state of nature but only in the context of social institutions, including the rational state. Human beings in the state of nature are little different from the lower animals, they are not free because they lack the mental complexity necessary to evaluate and regulate their impulses, they cannot be said to be self-determining in anything but the weakest sense. Hegel writes:
‘Freedom as the ideal condition of what is as yet purely immediate and natural does not itself possess an immediate and natural existence. It still has to be earned and won through the endless mediation of discipline acting upon the powers of cognition and will. For this reason, the state of nature is rather a state of injustice, of violence, of uncontrolled natural impulses, and of inhuman deeds and emotions. It does involve some restrictions imposed by society and the state, but such restrictions are imposed only on those brutal emotions and crude impulses already referred to, on reflected inclinations, on the needs which arise with the progress of culture, and on arbitrariness and passion. Restrictions of this kind are part of that process of mediation whereby the consciousness of freedom and the will to realize it in its true (i.e. rational and essential) form are engendered … Such restrictions are the indispensable conditions of liberation; and society and the state are the only situations in which freedom can be realized’.
Hegel draws an analogy between the State of Nature and childhood. Human beings in the State of Nature are like children having the potential for freedom and reason but that potential has not yet been realized. For that potential to be unleashed they must undergo an often laborious process of self-formation. education and acculturation, (Erziehung or Bildung), to achieve freedom and rationality, a process undertaken n the schoolroom, at the knee of a parent or preceptor, and also in the broader context of his or her social, cultural, or political experience.
Social contract theory operates with an excessively instrumental view of state and society imagining as it does human beings with fully developed capacities for free and rational agency choosing to adopt major social institutions in order to advance their ends and interests, thereby the theory commits the common error of supposing crude peoples to be free and thus ignoring the absolute worth of Bildung. In the absence of social institutions such as the rational state, human beings could not develop and maintain capacities for freedom and reason and thus could not possibly be in a position to give or withhold their free consent. Social contract theory assumes that the universal can be separated from the individual ‘as if the individual could on its own be what it presently is, and the universal did not make it that which it is in truth’, which is to say, contractarian thought disregards the significant role that social institutions have to play in constituting the free and rational individuals whom they take for granted, and this reaches its absolutely absurdity in Rawls’ ‘rational agents’ assuming the Original Position behind a Veil of Ignorance … by what means have they become so rational?
Furthermore, any alternate theory has to avoid the paradoxical notion with which social contract theory is infected, namely forcing people to be free. For if freedom is rational self-determination, if being free consists in following the dictates of reason, and it is granted that some people are more successful at discerning and enforcing these dictates than others, then this seems to open up the possibility that the rational people can force, coerce, or manipulate the irrational into pursuing the right ends and thereby make them free, but by its very nature freedom is opposed to force, coercion, manipulation, and so on. But freedom for Hegel is not merely a of performing the right actions, those prescribed by reason, but also of having the right motivation as well as an understanding of the rationality of one’s activity, something lacking in Rousseau’s account submitting an individual, particular will to the collective or general will thereby forcing them to be free. It is possible to force someone to go through the right motions, but it is self-defeating to force or coerce or manipulate a person into having the right motivation or understanding, an an inner acceptance of one’s action, just as for the religiously inclined freedom of the Spirit involves not just a set of rituals and performances but, critically, an inner reconciliation with God.
An alternative to social contract theory may then be as follows. One must focus upon the substantiality of the ethical realm rather than starting from the isolated individual,that is to say, we now return to Plato and justice. For Plato an account of justice in the state is methodologically prior to an account of justice in the individual and an understanding of justice in the individual requires an exploration of the nature of a well-ordered state, so working out the implications of a concern for the freedom of the individual paradoxically requires abandoning the standpoint of the individual in favour of an account of a community of individuals. And the strategy by which we can reconcile persons to the major institutions and practices of our modern European social world will involve demonstrating the necessity of those institutions and practices for the development and maintenance of the capacities for free and rational agency. Like social contract theory, this approach starts from a commitment to human freedom, unlike social contract theory it is sensitive to the social and political basis of the capacity for freedom.
Enter the Hegelian account of recognition to explain how individuals could come to have, and to reinforce, a self-understanding or consciousness of their freedom, the condition under which agents can gain a sense of their own subjectivity or achieve self-certainty, for the struggle for recognition is ‘a necessary moment in the Bildung of all people’ and represents ‘the beginning of true human freedom’. An agent can achieve self-certainty, or confirmation of his or her freedom and independence, only through interacting with his or her environment, for simply being told that you are free is not enough: ‘the assertion that one is free does not suffice to make one so’. To establish an identity as free and independent, an agent needs to see that he is actively affecting other things or people, that his will is making a difference in the world, and that he is not dependent on these things, he is not a plaything of outside forces and authorities. And an agent can force other human agents to recognize his independence, or he can enjoy the freely given recognition of other human agents. This latter is the one to go for given that an agent can attain the desired sense of independence, or self-certainty, only through the recognition of his fellows: ‘self-consciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness’, and: ‘Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being recognized’.
Social institutions mediate and stabilise recognition. Human freedom is the basis of social and political legitimacy, and the capacity for freedom is not something that every adult human being automatically has, but is developed and sustained only in the context of a community of mutual recognition, it is the recognition of other free agents that reinforces the idea of oneself as free that is essential to being free. A community of mutual recognition is possible only if it contains certain mediating institutions and practices, it is through these institutions and practices that individuals attract and express recognition, and the set of institutions that make up the modern social world, and that include the state, represent the minimum self-sufficient institutional structure that is capable of mediating mutual recognition. Similarly to social contract theory this alternative approach seeks to ground the legitimacy of the major institutions of the social world in freedom, but whereas for social contract theory this is done by imposing a requirement that those institutions enjoy the consent of all of their members which presupposes that individuals outside institutions such as the state could have and maintain the capacities for subjectivity involved in making a free and rational decision about joining the state, it is rather ultimately only in a social world containing the state that individuals develop these capacities, because such a social world is the minimum self-sufficient social world that is capable of mediating mutual recognition.
And there it is. We have a reason grounded in freedom to affirm and endorse the modern social world, including the modern state, whether or not we have consented to it.
When the Stranger says: ‘What is the meaning of this city ?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?’
What will you answer? ‘We all dwell together
To make money from each other?’ or ‘This is a community?’
- T. S. Eliot, (1888–1965), ‘The Rock’
