Abstract
The paper considers the nature of the state understood as the political unity articulated on the basis of a collective identity which provides the state with its capacity to make decisions. The foremost decision of the state to protect and defend this identity is the source of its authority to enforce laws. Collective identity thus represents an object of special interest, unlike both “political” interests (Millian other-regarding acts) and private interests (Millian self-regarding acts). The validation of laws through this special interest is a necessary condition for both of these latter kinds of interests to materialize. Hence, unlike the Millian thesis of two different kinds of interests (self- and other-regarding), here we take that there are three types or spheres of interests. Any conception of rights, then, will cover a subset of interests found in the domains of all of those three types of interests: in the domain of political interest the issue concerns selection among competing sets of legitimate interests, within the domain of private interests the point is to discern those that will be protected by law, while the third type of interests, the object of which is a unique collective identity and its defining specificity, represents an overarching interest that is embedded in any legitimate collective concern. In this scheme, well-suited for democratic theory, the majority/minority discourse is a matter of distinguishing which particular set of legitimate interests is chosen to be dominant (e.g., which political party is in power) and which ones are waiting for the opportunity to achieve their transformation from minority (opposition) to majority (i. e. government). If, however, there is no well-defined collective identity, minorities acquire a new meaning. Rather than being possible future majorities, they form a nucleus of competing collective identities with, sometimes hopeless but still alive, aspirations to sovereignty. Thus they become sources of likely conflicts that may go well beyond political controversies.
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Notes
In J. S. Mill’s well-known distinction between self- and other-regarding actions, the interests from the first and third sphere would fall into the second group while the interests from the second sphere would fall into the first group of acts. Cf. Mill [6, p. 136ff]. One interpretation of Mill claims him holding that only the second group of actions (our first and third sphere) properly belongs to the concerns of ethics, while the domain of liberty in the strong sense is completely private. Cf. On Liberty, Chapter V; cf. also Brown [4, pp. 133-158]. Liberty in the proper sense of the word, however, also comes to play a significant role in the case of other-regarding actions, which may be chosen politically—that is, these are actions that are neither forbidden nor exactly determined by the need to avoid harming or hurting others. This represents the entire domain of human cooperation, particularly the segment that permits a formal and precise articulation. Cf. Babić [2].
The term has been used in the sense that can be found, for instance, in Berlin essay [3].
This does not mean that suicide should be forbidden by law. Still there is little sense, if any, in claiming a right to it.
For a quite different approach, see Norman [7, pp. 197–210].
Here is how Hobbes describes life in the state of nature:”In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruitfulness thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, no use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing such things require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, Th. Hobbes [5, p. 84].
Cf. St. Augustine [1]: “Remove justice, and what are states but gangs of bandits on a large scale?”.
One of the best examples of how things can go terribly wrong when the fact that collective identity is both logically and de-facto prior to the viable state is ignored, is the application of the Uti posidetis iuris principle in the process of decolonization of Africa. By treating as sacrosanct the borders created by colonial powers, a number of states were created inhabited by minorities that can never become majorities. At the moment of the “transition of power” such states lacked an underlying national identity, while the newly established “nations” could not be subjected to a democratic style of decision-making. The departing former colonizers left a legacy of stillborn states, because those newly established “nations” did not represent viable forms of life. They were not collectivities in the sense described in this paper, but instead just an aggregation of minorities without the opportunity to become majorities in the future. Democratic governance was not an option, precisely because neither the “minority” nor the “majority” represented parts of a same truly living collectivity. They were rather mechanically combined parts of divided collectivities that stretched across frontiers of newly concocted states. The inability of those states (or quasi-states) to constitute their collective political identities, i. e. the non-existence of interests from the third sphere, prevents the possibility for the “majority” and “minority” to play appropriate political roles, i. e. roles they should have in the context of the interests of the first sphere. Consequently, these states have been disabled from the get go in the constitution of their democratic general wills. Hence, they have been condemned to mere survival, typically through the sell-off of natural recourses while fostering political dictatorships.
References
Augustine, St. The city of god. Bk. IV, Chap. III.
Babić, J. 2006. Self-regarding/other-regarding acts: Some remarks. Prolegomena 5(2).
Berlin I. essay. 2002. Two concepts of liberty. In I. Berlin, Liberty, ed. By H. Hardym, Oxford University Press, pp. 166–217.
Brown, D.G. 1972. Mill on liberty and morality, Philosophical Review April.
Hobbes, T.h. 1996. Leviathan, ed. by J. C. A. Gaskin.
Mill, J.S. 1971. On Liberty (J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism—On Liberty—Essay on Bentham, ed. by Mary Warnock, Collins—The Fontana Library.
Norman, R. 1988. A case for Pacifism. Journal of Applied Philosophy 5(2).
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Babić, J. On State, Identity and Rights: Putting Identity First. Int J Semiot Law 25, 197–209 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-011-9219-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-011-9219-8