Reason of State

REASON OF STATE. - Ratio is the principle, the rule that governs the life of the State. R. di S. is the translation of ratio reipublicae. The celebrated phrase makes its appearance in the Italian language with the Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze of Francesco Guicciardini (cf. ed. by R. Palmarocchi, Bari 1932, p. 163). Its original sense (according to the Latin etymology of ragione: ratio Status) is concept of the State, and such is the sense of the title given by Botero (v.) to his book of politics: Della r. di S. (Venice 1589), famous in its time as a work meant to be set against Machiavelli's Prince (v.). But already then (end of the 16th century) the phrase began to be given a somewhat different sense, taking ragione in the meaning of reason for acting and therefore exigency.

At first it is restricted to the existence of what is necessary in order not to perish, that is, to guaranteeing the State's right to existence. R. di S. was invoked to justify measures of an exceptional character that limited the ordinary rights recognized either by law or by custom to peoples, or that seemed to violate international justice. The phrase had a very elastic sense, thus serving in politics and diplomacy to cover with a mantle of dignity the egoistic interests of a nation or of a dominant caste (cf. G. Chiaramonti, Della r. di S., Florence 1635). In this sense it was not without precedents in the maxims and practice of politicians of all times, such as the Roman salus publica suprema lex and the peroration of Caiaphas: «You understand nothing: you do not reflect that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, rather than that the whole nation should perish» (Jn 11:49-50).

In political doctrine, which develops in the footsteps of Machiavelli, what at first was presented as an emergency measure became a maxim: the interest of the State stands above everything (Prince, ch. 18 § 2). Gradually, with the prevailing of the Enlightenment mentality, there fell away the limits that respect for the moral doctrines of religion itself, of the State itself, imposed, at least in appearance, upon that maxim: the theory of the modern State was being perfected, and received from Hegel its metaphysical formulation. R. di S. thus ends in the identification between reason and State: the State is the highest realization of reason, of Spirit.

Medieval doctrine, summarized by St. Thomas, assigned to the State an end that is ulterior to the State itself, that is, the bonum humanum, the good of the human person

(cf. Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ-2ᵃᶜ, q. 102, a. 1; 2ᵃ-2ᵃᶜ, q. 174, a. 2; I. Leclercq, L'Etat ou la politique, Namur 1929). The modern State, on the other hand, recognizes no end ulterior to itself: it absorbs the individual into itself, who is not truly a man except insofar as he is a cell of the State, and has no rights except those he receives from the State, nor can he assert before it exigencies that do not coincide with the life of the State. Likewise, the lesser societies, intermediate between the State and the individual (among which the first is the family), do not exist for a reason of their own, but only as an emanation of the State: the State is not content to direct them and discipline them with its sovereignty; it absorbs them into itself as the principle of their very existence. The State monopolizes entirely the social nature of man, denying or ignoring that it can be realized in ways that do not fall within the ambit of the State itself, as happens with the bond of universal humanity, or with the spiritual bond that links Christians to one another in the supernatural society, the Church of Christ (M. Missiroli, Date a Cesare, Rome 1931, pp. 7, 339 ff.; A. Hitler, Mein Kampf, Munich 1933, especially pp. 451 ff., 490 ff.; G. Del Vecchio, La crisi dello Stato, in Saggi intorno allo Stato, Milan 1936, p. 49 ff.; C. Benoist, La crise de l'état moderne, Paris 1936). In such a conception, characteristic of the modern State, r. di S. is no longer only an intransigent affirmation of the prevalence that the interest of the State has in the face of any other consideration, even moral; and it is not even merely the proclamation of the autonomy of politics (v.), as a category irreducibly different from that of ethics (a doctrine that is traced back in some way to Machiavelli); but it becomes the supreme rationalization of reality, and therefore the very principle of ethics identified with politics (cf. C. Schmitt, Politische Theologie, Munich-Leipzig 1922). The inhuman consequences to which such a doctrine leads in practice enter into the historical experience of recent decades. A reaction (cf. C. Dawson, Il giudizio delle nazioni, Milan 1946; H. Belloc, La crisi della civiltà, Brescia 1948) has already appeared, and the above-mentioned doctrine of the modern State is beginning to provoke objection in our days, even outside the field of Catholic scholars, who have always excluded it as false in itself and the mother of despotism (cf. J. Huizinga, Lo scempio del mondo, Milan 1948).

Giuseppe Bozzetti