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SPECIAL-SOCIAL RIGHT
Part 3

Right In Civil Society

Introduction

1560. I now have to take in hand the most complicated, thorny and highly litigious part of social Right, split as it is by disparate opinions and encumbered with fierce resentment, hatred and love - stained even by blood. Sometimes these things spill over from society itself to disturb the tranquil reign of philosophy; sometimes they come to light as the illegitimate offspring of philosophy and then return to disturb and upset the very foundations of society.

Nevertheless, provided the beneficent light of truth and the authority of immortal justice is revealed to the eyes of human intelligence in all its purity and light, we can rest assured of the power of the progress of social Right in healing the atrocious evils which afflict this contentious branch of knowledge and suffering humanity. If only I could help in some small way to bring this hope to fulfilment!

This fierce longing may provide the reader with the true reason for the zeal which perhaps made us forget our weakness when we undertook to write this volume and its predecessors, which form a unity with it. Certainly, the sympathy of many kind and noble spirits has been of great encouragement in enabling us to persevere with such a difficult undertaking.

Having relied until now on the benevolence and wisdom of good, learned people, we have to recommend an even more difficult volume on social Right to those same gracious qualities. In doing so, we promise to carry out straightforwardly our investigation of what is true and what is just, without being influenced by passion, as far as we are aware. This is precisely what the learned require of us; this is the sole benevolent support, the sole recognition (I dare not say assent) they will want to give to our impartiality and to the human purpose which presides over our efforts. This has such value and esteem in our eyes that, in comparison with the severity of the ignorant and the malice of pessimists which is so ready to oppose honest efforts and all good principles, it will have no power to disturb us.

1561. How do we begin the exposition of the philosophy of Right relative to civil society? Because it is impossible to know the Right of any society whose nature is unknown, we have to proceed according to the order found in the previous books and begin by placing the nature of civil society in the clearest possible light. After that, we shall indicate, by reference to this nature, the Right presiding over civil society. It is true that in dealing with theocratic and domestic society, we spoke only briefly of their nature, which we indicated hand in hand with our exposition of Right in these societies. Here however we have to deal at length with the nature of the City before discussing civil Right.

The difference in approach is explained by the simplicity of the two preceding societies which we find comparatively easy to understand. Civil society, on the other hand, is extremely vast and complex, and requires great mental abstraction to be conceived in all its purity. Too many people, having already shown themselves incapable of this, are unable to reach the pure nature of civil society. We can see this from the multitude of treatises which, instead of clarifying and determining this nature, have obscured its concept endlessly by making it discordant and inhuman. In fact, the connection between the Theory of society and Right in society is such that every error posited in the former germinates most harmful opinions in the latter, which in turn give rise to a succession of cruel misdeeds.

1562. Does the theory of civil society, which according to us has to be dealt with first, really belong to the branch of knowledge called `Right'? It cannot be denied that the constituents of society, which form it into a jural entity, belong to the science of social Right. Nevertheless, the first jural acts which give rise to society are posited by individuals who, while still living in the state of nature, associate at some time prior to the presence of society. Strictly speaking, those jural acts pertain, as we have noted elsewhere (Rights of the Individual, 1059), to individual rather than social Right. We have, in fact, dealt with them under the heading of individual Right. However, we have to return to the argument here and treat it carefully. It is a precious thread leading us from individual to social Right and showing the connection between the two.

We shall explain, therefore, as clearly as possible, the Theory of civil society and the relationship of this theory with its corresponding Right before we move on to unfold the same Right in already constituted civil society.

Section One

Theory Of Civil Society

1563. To reveal the nature of civil society in relationship to the Right presiding over it, we have to investigate four things:

First, the concept of civil society, which provides us with sufficient knowledge to speak about it.
Second, the concept of its Right.
Third, its jural origin, that is, those acts and jural constituents with which human beings lawfully institute it.
Finally, the occasional causes of civil society, that is, the stimuli that serve as starting points from which human beings set out to form civil society.

The present section will therefore have four parts:

 Section 1 - Contents

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