State and Society

The state, in the sense of a particular form of communal life, is, insofar as history and experience show, as ancient as humanity itself: its essential elements are found among all peoples and tribes. Even among savage peoples one can already discern the essential features of political life—in submission to a common chief, in definite common customs and usages that regulate relations within the family and in external life. Therefore the idea of the state lies, as it were, in the very nature of man and justifies the well-known saying of Aristotle, that man is by nature a political being (ἄνθρωπον φύσει πολιτικόν ζῶον). Notwithstanding, however, a certain innateness in man of the idea of statehood, the immediate causes and purpose of the founding of the state still constitute an unresolved question for philosophy and science. The foundation of the state is sought now in the voluntary surrender by men of a portion of their personal rights in favor of the common state power, now in the mutual needs of men and the mutual relations arising from them, now in the naturally existing authority of one man over another—resting either on natural kinship or on physical or intellectual superiority. Once established, the state in its continued existence is sustained, in the view of, for example, the philosophy of Rousseau, by the so-called “social contract” between rulers and subjects—a contract that has a certain plausibility as an abstract idea but carries no weight as a historical reality. Corresponding to one theory or another, the entire structure of political life is also determined. But, as is apparent from the very essence of all these theories, they suffer from one-sidedness and incompleteness, and in any case not one of them individually provides conditions for the normal development of social life, presupposing in it a sharp duality—of rulers and subjects. A completely different principle lies at the foundation of the Mosaic state. Here this principle is the most universal and exalted principle possible for human society—namely, the supreme headship of Jehovah, which reconciles the extremes of dominion and subjection. The reason for this distinctive feature of the Mosaic state lies in the particular position it occupied in world history.