Saturday, February 05, 2011

William T. Cavanaugh on the Modern Nation-State

Killing for the Telephone Company: Why the Nation-State is not the Keeper of the Common Good (pdf)

I agree with his conclusions regarding the modern nation-state. He seems to believe that its power should be limited, and I would agree with that. I disagree with him on what he says about the origin of the state (government) and the nature of politics as a science:

In Christian social ethics the assumption is often made, with a minimum of examination, that the responsibility for promoting and protecting the common good falls to the state. In this essay I want to examine that assumption. All too often Christian social ethics begins from ahistorical and idealized assumptions about the state as protector and benefactor. They are ahistorical because they assume that the state has been with us since biblical times. The state, as Charles Curran says, is “natural and necessary” and “based on creation”.2 It takes different forms—polis for Aristotle, regimen principum for Aquinas—but these different terms refer to the same essential reality; all historical forms of political community are conflated into the term “state”.3 These accounts are also idealized because they assume that society is prior to the state and broader than the state. Human society is represented as a pyramid: the family is at the base, other groups and associations are in the middle, and the state is at the top to coordinate and protect. The base has “ontological priority” to the state and calls forth the state to be at its service. Furthermore, “Society is broader than the state and includes much more.”4 The state is just one limited part of society, but is established in nature with an important role to play: “the end or purpose of the state or government [is] the pursuit of the common good”.5

What I find unhelpful about such accounts is the way that they float free from any empirical testing of their theses. Christian ethicists will commonly recognize that, in a sinful world, particular states always fall short of the ideal. Nevertheless, the ideal is presented not merely as a standard for Christian political practice but as a statement of fact: the state in its essential form simply is that agency of society whose purpose it is to protect and promote

the common good, even if particular states do not always live up to that responsibility. This conclusion is based on a series of assumptions of fact: that the state is natural and primordial, that society gives rise to the state and not vice-versa, and that the state is one limited part of society. These assumptions of fact, however, are often made without any attempt to present historical evidence on their behalf.

Certainly the study of history will aid those who wish to criticize the modern nation-state. While what Aristotle or others say about the genesis of political communities may be without sufficient evidence, an account such as Aristotle's does not consist of historical claims alone. The claims that are made regarding governing of a political community may make use of assertions about history as illustrations, but they are not dependent upon them? It only needs to be shown that people desire to live in society with others for the sake of friendship, and society also serves to bring about other goods.

Does some version of the naturalistic fallacy apply to attempts to bridge normative and descriptive "sciences" or "disciplines"? And is this what someone like Aristotle is trying to do, borrowing premises from a descriptive discipline (whether it be history or anthropology) to argue for certain norms? I think rather, it is the use of the historical imagination to show how certain norms have been instantiated in the past. There may be variation in the forms of government and in the goods that are being sought, but certain aspects of political [goal-oriented] reasoning are universal? I think the claim that he takes to be of fact (the purpose of the state, i.e. the government) is really a normative claim. I do not believe that Aristotle or Aquinas link the claim about the nature and purpose of government with "other assumptions of fact," even if it is the case that this is what Charles Curran does.


Started on July 31, 2010 at 5:38 PM.

No comments: