STATO. - The term has not always been used in the sense now usually attributed to II. For a long time it served to indicate the personal condition of individuals, according as they were free or slaves, citizens or foreigners. Traces of this usage remain even today in the expressions “personal status” or “family status.” By extension, it was later applied to designate the condition of certain social orders, as, for example, in France, where, until the Revolution of 1789, the assembly of the estates was called the States General. With the fifteenth century, the modern meaning appears in the history of political doctrines, introduced into the Italian language by Machiavelli and from there passing into the other European languages. French has État, English State, German Staat, Spanish Estado, and in all of them the term has the same fundamental meaning of a supreme political society, more or less independent.
Apart from this generic meaning, accepted by all, the rest is disputed in contemporary doctrine. The State may be subjected to a twofold inquiry. The first considers it as a social formation, really existing on the plane of reality, which appeared at an indeterminate time in the history of humanity, and investigates its origin, tracing it back to the historical causes by which the fact was produced. Under this aspect the State falls within the sphere of sociology, understood, however, as an empirical science, lest it be confused with social philosophy. The second considers it in its constituent elements, investigates its origin by tracing it back to natural and constant causes, determines its end, and strives to establish the laws governing its operation in relation to the essential aims toward which it tends. This is the branch of legal science commonly called the general doctrine of the State. The first task of an organic doctrine consists in the exact determination of its object, by means of a substantive definition expressing its concept and essential elements, which must be found in any social formation if it is to be recognized as a State. The theorists, however, are profoundly divided on this point. The definitions they give of the State are as numerous as the theories from which each proceeds.
Despite this extreme divergence of opinions, one cannot subscribe to Bastiat’s exaggeration, who promised a prize to the writer capable of proposing an acceptable definition of the State. The various currents and theories agree on certain elements, from which it is possible to reconstruct, with some approximation, the most common concept. Bluntschli, for example, defined the State as the political and organized personification of a nation in a given territory; Jellinek, as a territorial and organic community that recognizes no superior bond; Orlando, as a society politically organized for the protection of law. The difference among the definitions cited is considerable, and the influence of particular theories is evident; nevertheless, they contain certain common elements, which may be reduced to the following: the State is an organized and independent society, living in a given territory.
I. CONCEPT AND NATURE OF THE S
This common concept must nevertheless be refined and more precisely specified in order to arrive at a substantive definition offering all and only the essential elements of the S. First of all, it is an incontrovertible datum of experience that the S. is a social formation. In order to discover its concept, it is therefore necessary to go back to that of society and to derive from it the primary elements which must be present in any S. Now, a society exists when several intelligent individuals cooperate steadily in the pursuit of the same end. Consequently, the essential elements constituting it are two: a plurality of rational subjects,the material cause, and a stable bond of a moral nature, the formal cause, which joins their free wills and directs them toward a common goal, for the attainment of which they cooperate in unity of purpose and strength. The extrinsic cause producing the union of wills is this collective end, which, from the moment it receives the conscious assent of the individuals, becomes the end of the community.
It is sufficient to apply these primary data to the S. in order to obtain its generic element. The S., first of all, requires a plurality of human individuals, whether isolated or already grouped in smaller societies, whose totality is called a people. No S. exists without a people, whether more or less numerous, since number does not affect its nature. Both the great political aggregates, such as modern nations, and the small republics, of which a few examples still remain, are S. Nor does its existence require a people homogeneous in language, customs, traditions, and culture, as was maintained by the principle of nationality (v.), but for its rise and affirmation the universal similarities of human nature and the identity of man's fundamental aspirations suffice; from these the instinct of solidarity is effectively stimulated and guided. The S. is not identical with the nation, but can exist and does exist independently of II.
Nevertheless, the plurality of subjects alone does not suffice for the formation of the S. unless it is reduced to unity by an inner principle of mutual cohesion, by virtue of which the original dispersion is succeeded by the coming together of the parts and their joining into a higher entity. This principle consists in the convergence of wills toward a common goal. A people morally united is an S. The internal unity which the S. requires as its constitutive element is not, nor can it in any way be, of a physical or biological order, since the rational subjects, which represent the matter to be unified, can be affected only by a cause of a moral order, a common ideal toward which particular wills spontaneously and freely orient themselves. The S. is consequently an essentially moral entity.
It should further be observed, however, that not every moral union forms an S. Its existence requires a stable and permanent union. Just as individuals accidentally assembled in a train or voluntarily gathered in a square do not form a society, so several subjects temporarily cooperating in an undertaking do not form an S., which, as its very etymology indicates, requires a union indefinite in time and ideally perpetual in the intention of its members, who precisely by reason of this permanence of the bond feel themselves bound to a common destiny. The S., therefore, is not identical with the individuals, nor does it result from their arithmetical sum. Rather, it is a moral entity distinct from its constituent parts, though inadequately so, possessing its own being, separate and distinct from the being of the subjects: it is a subject in its own right and therefore the bearer of ends of its own, which are not the ends of individuals taken separately or added together. This being, upon which its moral subjectivity rests, consists in the complex of relations constituting the fabric of social life; it is therefore a relational and not a substantial being, arising from a principle of order and not from a physical cause.
The rationality of the parts of which the S. is composed requires that another element be brought to light which, although not intrinsic, is necessary for identifying and classifying social formations. This element is the common end toward which the free wills of the subjects converge: « societas specificatur a fine ». The S. is an eminently teleological entity. Internal unity, indeed, could not be produced unless the intelligence of the parts perceived an end worthy of being pursued and attained, and the will, enlightened by intellectual reflection, made it the object of its aspirations. When man acts consciously, he always acts for an end, nor can he escape this law of his rationality in the creation of social being. If, therefore, he desires stable coexistence with his fellows and accepts cooperation, with all the burdens and limitations of his freedom that it entails, he desires and accepts it for a quite definite purpose.
As a teleological entity, the S. falls within the domain of morality. Its entire activity, governed by an intrinsic and essential teleology, is susceptible of evaluation according to the criterion of approach to or departure from the end toward which the wills tend, and this is a moral evaluation. Just as the physical subject is an ethical subject, in the sense that all its actions are subject to the laws of its ultimate end, so the moral subject, the S., is an ethical subject—not in the inferior sense that the source of ethics is found in it, but in the sense that all its operations are subject to the laws deduced from its intrinsic end.
The complete concept of the S. has not yet, however, been attained. The constitutive elements thus far emphasized are also found in other social formations—family, tribe, municipality, nation—and therefore provide only the genus, or generic aspect, of the S. It is necessary, then, to determine its specific aspect. The first and fundamental characteristic separating and distinguishing the S. from other social formations consists, as Aristotle had rightly understood, in its self-sufficiency, or, as scholasticism maintained, in its perfection. The S. is a perfect or self-sufficient society. This property must, however, be properly understood in order to avoid misunderstandings. Experimental analysis shows that all social formations, natural or voluntary, inferior to the S., have an end limited to the satisfaction of certain needs of human life and, moreover, do not possess within themselves all the means necessary to meet them. The family, for example, the first human social nucleus, has as its end the propagation of the species and the suitable education of offspring, and is not by itself sufficient to satisfy its many needs. From this limitation and insufficiency arises for these societies the necessity of entering into a broader society, which embraces within its end all the goods of human life and possesses the means indispensable for procuring them. They are therefore essentially subordinate and dependent societies.
The self-sufficiency of the State therefore refers to two terms, though not in the same manner or to the same extent. The first of these is the natural end, in relation to which it is autonomous on the temporal plane. The end of the State embraces all the goods of life; that is, it is universal in its scope and content, since it must procure for its members the sufficientia situs. As such, it is not subordinated to other ends; it is supreme in the hierarchy of human values and, on the temporal plane, subordinates to itself the particular ends of individuals and of lesser social groups. It nevertheless remains intermediate in relation to the transcendent end of the person, which it is called to serve. The second term to which self-sufficiency refers consists in the means useful and necessary for attaining that end, in relation to which it is only relative. The perfection of the State does not require absolute autarky, which is utopian and never attainable, but a relative sufficiency in the means indispensable to a humanly ordered collective life, varying according to the degree of civilization attained by peoples.
This perfection of the State, in relation to the lesser societies living within it and to other societies of equal rank with which it enters into relations, is visibly embodied in its independence, otherwise called sovereignty. The State is an independent and sovereign moral subject. Since its natural and essential end is not subordinated to another end of the same human order, neither is it subordinated to another society of the same order; it is therefore autonomous both in relation to the inferior societies which it subordinates to itself and in relation to equal societies, with which it enters into relations on a plane of perfect equality. Autonomous ends correspond to autonomous, independent, and sovereign subjects, internally and externally. This essential autonomy must not, however, be understood in the absolute sense, as contemporary thought has sovereignty (v.), but in the relative sense of independence of will and action in relation to societies of the same rank, so that its decisions need not be referred
to a higher authority for approval. The State remains subordinate to God, as the author of social life, and to His laws and prescriptions; in the temporal order, to the transcendent end of the human person, in relation to which it is a means; and in the supernatural order, indirectly to the Church in matters concerning the spiritual.
At the point reached in this analysis, the State may be defined, as Catholic thought has always defined it, as a perfect civil society. The terms of this definition should by now be readily understood. It is necessary, however, to make explicit an essential feature implicit in II. The being of the State, as has already been said, results from the complex of intersubjective relations of which society is composed and by which it lives. Now these relations have the particular characteristic of being juridical, both because they are founded upon a right and because they are regulated by law; thus law, both in the subjective sense of faculty and in the objective sense of norm, must be considered a fact coeval with the State. There is no State without law, although law may exist without the State. At the very moment when wills unite to give life to the State, law is spontaneously produced within it; the embryonic order arises, otherwise called the substantive constitution, which must guide and govern its action, just as the power of government arises equally spontaneously. The juridical order always accompanies the birth of the State and has therefore rightly been defined as original. It is not possible, however, to identify the State with its juridical order, since the subject is always distinct from the norm that regulates its conduct.
The juridical nature of social relations is reflected in the State itself, impressing upon it the character of a juridical subject, the holder of rights. The juridical personality of the State is not a fiction or a formalistic construction, but a reality rooted in its moral unity and in the autonomy of its ends and its value. It would nevertheless be an error to transfer to this personality the concept of person valid for the physical subject, or to conceive it in terms of private law. In this respect, analogy operates fully, and account must be taken of it in transferring concepts to the moral entity that is the State.
The most common doctrine regards the State, besides being a juridical subject, as a territorial entity, including territory among its constitutive elements. This opinion is not accepted by the majority of Catholic theorists, for whom territory is merely an integrating element. For if the State is a social formation, for whose production a plurality of rational subjects and the convergence of their wills toward the same end suffice, together with embryonic law and a supreme authority, a fixed territory is not in itself necessary for it to exist and operate. Nevertheless, at the present stage of civilization it is not possible to conceive a State without its own territory, from which the people derives the primary means of subsistence and with which it enters into an almost vital communion. The bond, however, that connects territory to the State cannot be configured as a right of the latter in proprium corpus, nor can it be classified among ordinary proprietary rights. Territory should rather be considered an object over which the State exercises its power of jurisdiction, a limit to its jurisdictional authority, a substratum within which it lives and rules. It is not, therefore, its property, nor can the concept of eminent domain, used by older writers, be applied in this regard.
II. ORIGIN OF THE STATE
Opinions concerning the origin of the State are conflicting even within the sphere of Catholic doctrine. The contractualist theory retains only historical value. Criticism has demonstrated that the state of pure nature, as differently conceived and described by Hobbes and Rousseau, never historically existed; consequently, the supposed contract by which man is said to have ended his condition of absolute freedom in order to create social life is nothing more than a poetic construction unsupported by reality. More recent thought, particularly outside Catholic doctrine, is oriented in three directions. Some consider the question of the origin of the State pointless; the State, they maintain,needs no justification, since it imposes itself as a fact produced by particular political and social conditions, upon which law is superimposed.
Others attribute its birth to the spontaneous evolution to which nature is subject. Under the impulse of the forces immanent in it, nature evolves, giving rise to the variety of beings and organisms, among which the State would be the highest; its genesis must therefore be attributed exclusively to the physical and biological laws of the cosmos. Still others assign physical force as its cause. The State would be the effect of violent subjugation, a theory supported by so-called social Darwinism, which made the struggle for existence the foundation of political life, with the principle of the domination of the stronger over the weaker.
Within Catholic thought, two opinions still hold the field. The first traces its origin to a conscious and voluntary act of man, who, together with other subjects, strives to attain a purpose. This collective voluntary act is not, however, assigned the value of a contract, whether tacit or explicit. The second, on the other hand, traces it back to certain facts, from whose mere existence the State would arise spontaneously; its birth would not depend upon the causal influence of the will of the subjects, although this view cannot exclude a subsequent act of spiritual adherence to the fact. The facts to which the causality in question is attributed, and which are therefore called associative, would be the natural development of the patriarchal family, economic and commercial relations, subjugation as a consequence of a lost war, and others (cf. T. Tischleder, Ursprung und Träger der Staatsgewalt nach der Lehre des hl. Thomas, Gladbach 1923).
With regard to the question of origin, it must first of all be made clear that it does not concern the historical origin of this or that State, nor its remote and first cause, but its proximate cause, from whose action its being always results. There is no doubt that more than one State historically owes its origin to force, just as there is no doubt that certain facts may have influenced its appearance. The question, however, is whether these are the true causes or merely occasions in whose presence the true cause operated. As for the remote and ultimate cause, there is no divergence of opinion in Catholic thought. It is placed in God, who, having implanted in human nature, created by him, the invincible instinct of sociability, constitutes himself the supreme principle of every social formation and therefore also of the State. Contemporary doctrine does not concern itself at all with this problem, which is nevertheless fundamental to social theory; within it there are, as has been seen, some who exclude even the question of the proximate origin.
Yet this is mistaken, since a doctrine concerning the being, nature, ends, and powers of the State remains without foundation unless it goes back to its source. True science does not accept experimental facts in their ponderous materiality, but transcends them in the investigation of causes, in order to establish universal principles. Granted, then, that the State is a fact, an adequate knowledge of it necessarily requires finding the causes that explain II. Objective analysis of reality makes it possible to establish two essential points for resolving the question.
First of all, the elements of which the organism of the State is composed are rational subjects who possess an intelligence directed toward the pursuit of truth and a will directed toward the attainment of the good; as such, they are free, conscious, and responsible for their actions. From this first datum, which only short-sighted materialism can call into question, it follows negatively that all mechanistic, evolutionist, and biological theories must be excluded, since their determinism conflicts with the spirituality of the human being and with his rationality and freedom; and positively it follows that the causes of the State must necessarily belong to a higher order.
The second point that objective analysis of reality makes it possible to establish consists in determining the deepest and most universal motives that stimulate man’s natural tendency toward social life. These motives are two: the irresistible need to extend one’s self and one’s personality beyond the narrow circle of individuality through an affective bond, by which, while the feeling of solidarity is satisfied—which at bottom is nothing other than natural love toward those who share the same nature—the person also expands either through offspring or through the exchange of goods; and the need to remedy, with the help of others, the deficiencies with which man is born. Since he cannot by himself attain conditions of life adequate to his rational nature, nor alone achieve the physical, intellectual, and moral perfection toward which his higher faculties tend by natural impulse in a particularly pronounced way, man seeks the stable cooperation of his fellows in order to remedy his indigence. The motives described are irresistible demands of nature, but at the same time they rise to the level of the moral order, since, becoming spiritualized in the rational creature, they act upon his free will and effectively stimulate him to emerge from isolation.
The proximate cause of the State therefore lies in the will of the subjects, in that free and conscious act of adherence to a common purpose which, by generating unity of intention, produces the being of the State. This conclusion is strengthened by the first of the points established above. If the material part of the State consists of rational, free, and conscious beings, and if, by virtue of their essential rationality, they always act for a known and willed end, then they must operate in the same way in producing the political entity. It must therefore once again be acknowledged that the proximate cause of the State can reside only in the will of man. Associative facts are therefore not the true causes of the State, but merely external conditions that have facilitated, to a greater or lesser extent, the moral cohesion of wills. The principal one of these, the patriarchal family, could be transformed into the State only when the family relationship was changed into a juridical relationship; and this could occur only when the individual families or individuals recognized in the patriarch the new quality of social head, no longer invested with a simple private function but with an essentially public function.
At the origin of the State, therefore, stands the free and conscious human person, who by an act of will first creates it and then maintains it in being through continued adherence to the collective purpose once accepted. Nevertheless, a Catholic remains free to uphold the theory of associative facts as a probable explanation of the origin of the State. The theory presented here was dominant until the eighteenth century and has once again become the most common.
III. THE STRUCTURE OF THE S
The opinions concerning the natural structure of the S. are divided into two extreme currents, which may be designated by the names of atomism and monism, and an intermediate one, which reconciles the conflicting positions of the former through a synthesis of the individual and the social.Atomism recognizes in man an autonomous value, with a reason that is the sole criterion of truth, and an absolutely free will, the independent source of every law. As such, man cannot be subject to an authority that he himself has not acknowledged. Consequently, the S. is not a unitary entity resulting from the convergence of individual wills, but the arithmetical sum of individuals, drawn to collaborate by the impulse of their private interest, like atoms that do not fuse into a common social being. Its authority is the sum of partial sovereignties, calculated according to the rule of the majority; its end does not differ from the private ends of individuals; its task is exhausted in the protection of private interests and rights. This, schematically, is the individualistic conception of the French Revolution and of the liberal current derived from II.
Monism branches out into various theories, some spiritualistic and others materialistic, of which it will suffice to give the general outlines. Immanentist monism rests on the concept of the uniqueness of absolute spirit, which, evolving by virtue of an internal and necessary dialectic,
becomes conscious of itself in man and becomes in the S. the reality of the ethical idea, which thinks itself and accomplishes what it knows insofar as it knows II. The S. is the reality of substantial will and the rational in itself and for itself; in its appearance one must see the entry of God into the world. The individual is a transient phenomenon of it, without any autonomous value, destined to serve II. No ends transcend the S., which can be nothing other than an end in itself.
Several nationalist conceptions have been based on this monistic foundation: Fichte’s is immanentist, while the others are contaminated by materialistic elements. Society, according to the latter, would be a fraction of the human species, and the nation a summarizing unity of the succession of generations, an organism that functions through other organs, that has its immanent laws of life, and in which individuals are infinitesimal and transient elements, wholly subordinated to its higher purposes.
Materialist monism has more numerous branches. In general, it rests on the biological concept of the organism. The S. would be a living organism, governed by its own laws, within which individuals are nothing more than perishable cells. Substance, being, and living person, the S. carries out its activity in a manner wholly independent of men, who have value only insofar as they are integral parts of its organism and lose it if they are detached from it, like a cell from a living body. Evolutionary theories lent their support to this crude organicism. If not all those who embraced it went as far as Schaffle’s exaggerations, in which he described the anatomy of the S., designating its muscles, veins, nervous system, and so on, or those of Bluntschli, who discovered its sex, the organic theory served all of them to absorb the individual into the unity of the S., nullifying him as an autonomous person. Materialist racism and classism are merely variants of this materialism; both, in fact, though differently structured, arrive at the nullification of the individual in the S., identified with race or class.
The legal monism that dissolves the S. into law is of a different nature. Kelsen and the Viennese school founded by him identified the S. with the legal order, to which they attributed sovereignty, thereby succeeding in detaching its concept from the human reality on which its existence rests. A few observations suffice to bring down the edifice erected by all these theories.
Atomism shatters the S. into its elements and fails to account for its internal unity, the cohesion of wills, and its organic character. Immanentist monism is opposed by the testimony of conscience, which has never apprehended or borne witness to the existence of a universal substance. On the contrary, it affirms an entirely opposite principle, namely, the distinction, separation, and complete subjectivity of each human person, who is intent on proclaiming himself the source of his actions and responsible for them—a claim that would have no foundation if spirit were unique and universal. Experience, moreover, teaches that the S. is not a self-subsisting substance endowed with its own principle of operation, but an aggregate in which individuals preserve their entire substantiality and freedom of action.
Biological-organicist monism lacks any scientific foundation. As Sombart observed, soul and organism are bound to life and can be found only where there is a true unity of life; this occurs only in individuals, and therefore in the S. there is no other truly and properly organic subject apart from its individual components. Physical and social organisms, Jellinek further maintains, differ substantially in this respect: in the S., the unity of will is never the work of nature’s creative hand, but the effect of conscious procedures; the will of the S. is very often actualized through coercion consciously practiced, whereas in unitary organisms neither a will resulting from several wills nor the coercion of one will by another is in any way conceivable.
In its less crude forms, social monism configures the S. as an entity distinct from individuals, endowed with its own free and autonomous will. But this construction proves as fanciful as that of biological organicism, since the being of the S. is not substantial and results from the network of intersubjective relations, while will, as a faculty, resides only in the human person. Only man thinks and wills; the S. thinks and wills through persons who place their own capacities at its service.
The natural structure of the S. can be defined neither by atomism nor by monism, but by a theory that, preserving intact the two terms of the social relationship, the individual and the S., then reduces them to unity by means of a moral principle. This is precisely the orientation of Catholic thought, respectful of all the values of nature and chiefly concerned to safeguard the human person, stifled by the preceding conceptions or excessively exalted by them. It accepts the organic character of the S., but does not assign organicism a physical value, rather an analogical one, as an image suited to explaining its unity. In the S., man does not lose his own being, nor does he renounce his rights and transcendent ends; his personality continues to exist intact, with all its rational requirements, subordinated only to the ends of the collectivity and to its authority insofar as the common good is concerned. Nevertheless, he is joined to other men by a bond that is not substantial but accidental, not physical but moral, which gives rise to a higher entity, the S., one in its structure and bearer of its own ends, which are not properly the ends of individuals, but to which it must nevertheless serve as a means for attaining earthly well-being.
The analogy involved in applying organicist theory to the S. makes it possible to avoid the twofold danger of social atomism, which reduces it to its elements, and monism, which dissolves these elements into the S.; it thus resolves the age-old question of the relations between the individual and the S. through a harmonious conception that neither disparages the S. nor nullifies the individual, but makes both coexist within the unity of political life, as terms that presuppose and mutually complement one another.
Regarding the essential purpose of the S. and political power, questions or aspects of the general doctrine that still require elucidation, V. RENE COMUNE E AUTORITÀ, where they have been dealt with extensively. For forms of government V. ARISTOCRAZIA; AUTOCRAZIA; DEMOCRAZIA; MONARCHIA, etc.