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Universal Social Right

Introduction

The limits of this treatise on social right

1. We have made the essence of right fruitful by applying to it the principle of derivation. All particular rights of individuals were generated when set out in order under the title individual Right. We now have to continue this work of derivation by clarifying the generation of new rights through the societies in which individuals are bound. We can then go on to examine the nature of these rights and investigate their intimate connection. Thus, the second part of derived Right, social Right as we have called it, will be completed, as we promised.

2. Individual right, the first part of derived Right, is the most important because it contains the first threads of every kind of particular right. It is also rich in subtle, hard-to-define questions which have a peculiar attraction for philosophical minds. It is not universally superior, however, to the second part, which still has to be investigated. Social Right will, I think, be more attractive than individual Right for several reasons: it will be easier to follow, better suited to ordinary minds because of its obvious usefulness, more extensive in the interests it rules and protects, and more pleasing for the originality of which it is susceptible despite the work carried out on it during more than twenty centuries of thought and writing. Finally, it more easily finds an echo in the spirit, which sees in social right the principle of harmony between human beings, of social virtue, of gracious living and of all human progress.

3. I begin, as usual, by accepting the requirements of strict logic, and outlining the limits and precise sphere of the subject. I do this in order to restrict the almost infinite extension of the matter of social Right, a subject which would exceed my capacity and perhaps discourage my readers, as well as myself. Another reason for starting in this way is to provide a kind of thread that will lead us through the tortuous labyrinth of social jurisprudence.

4. I begin, therefore, by asking what can be omitted, of my own or others' work, without endangering this part of the philosophy of Right, and what seems altogether necessary to it. To make such a choice we have to recall what was said about the jural effects which the very fact of society implies for the human condition. We divide these effects into two classes in order to determine which belongs to the aim of the work and which may be excluded.

5. When human beings associate, they posit a new fact which greatly changes in their jural state (cf. Rights of the Individual, 1059).

6. This change, resulting from the fact of association, has two clearly distinct parts:
1. The modification of the rights which human beings previously possessed.
2. The acquisition of new rights and duties which result from the nature of the society formed by human beings (cf. RI, 1022).

7. It is not difficult to see that the rights of unassociated human beings are modified in various ways when society comes into existence.

1. A new subject of rights arises at the moment of association. This subject is the collective person who can have rights of the same nature as those belonging to individual persons (cf. RI, 1647-1652).

2. A new jural relationship arises between individuals and the collective person, towards whom individuals contract a duty of using their own rights with such moderation that neither they themselves nor the collective person suffers harm (cf. RI, 1649-1656).

3. Finally, individuals, by entering society, do not in fact despoil themselves of any of their rights, but of some part of the exercise of these rights which they entrust to the government of society to manage on their behalf for the greater benefit of all. For example, the exercise of the right of coercion is almost entirely removed from individuals to become the responsibility of civil government.

8. The modifications to which individual rights are subject when people associate will not feature ex professo in this philosophy of social Right. Although these rights undergo modification from society, as we said, they do not change their nature. They remain individual, not social rights.(1) We have, in fact, spoken in Rights of the Individual (cf. 1018-1043, 791-843) about the modifications received by individual rights from the factual existence of society. We considered individual rights in their nature and in all the accidental modifications they can undergo as the result of various facts posited by human beings.

9. I think that this procedure will result in a more compact, unified argument, and allow me to avoid treating the same matter in different places. The mind, when recollected and totally intent on the argument in hand, is content and perfects its own mental conceptions as it brings its meditation to perfection. The situation is very different, and tiring in the extreme, when we have to keep in mind scattered parts of the teaching about individual rights already dealt with in the appropriate place, and then try to bring them to bear on other teachings about the same rights in the very different treatise on social right. Breaking up the thread of ideas in this inconvenient and totally unnecessary way makes the work harder and impedes precise knowledge. We are held back unduly from seeing how our study forms and matures the fruit of justice and happiness on earth.

10. A similar reason leads me to omit in this treatise on social Right any mention of mutual rights and duties between equal societies. These rights and duties could be usefully gathered together under the name `intersocial Right'.(2)

11. Properly speaking, the rights of equal societies are individual rights which have changed only their subject and sometimes their form, but never their nature. In this case, the subject is no longer the individual, but the collective person. And there is certainly no doubt that all sound authors define international Right as the very right of nature or reason applied to the mutual interests of nations.

12. A further reflection dissuades me from expounding intersocial Right. The principal part of this Right is international, and as such has been dealt with competently by various recent authors even here in Italy.

13. Moreover, rational international Right is easily deduced by applying the principles of individual Right to the collective persons of nations and States. I myself have given some idea and several examples of this application in my exposition of this Right (cf. RI, 1649-1687, 1746, 1819, 1855-1881, 1884-1900, 1947-1950, 1988-1991).

14. Today, there are many authoritative, hard-working diplomats whose great, decent glory is the long, happy peace enjoyed in Europe as a result not of their political prudence, but of their jural equity and wisdom. Consequently national interests are regulated at present almost entirely through just treaties. Rational, international Right has partly been put into practice through positive dispositions, and partly ceded to arbitrary conventions established between peoples.

15. I do not say this to diminish the importance of rational international Right; I am quite sure that this science is destined to progress and amend everything unjust, inequable, inhuman and harmful in international agreements. However, the progress and benefit expected from such a serious discipline will come, I think, only when its root, that is, individual Right, has been improved. I am quite sure that if the source were perfected, there would be no further need to aim at perfection in international Right, the justice of which is simply that of individual Right.

16. Note that we want to exclude from social Right the rights and duties present between equal societies. There is a reason for this. In fact, the opposite has to be said about unequal societies, that is, about societies subordinate to, or included in one another.

17. Jural relationships proper to disequal societies belong strictly speaking to social Right. They are relationships arising from the nature of societies, and cannot exist between mere individuals. Consequently, they cannot be included in individual Right. Clearly, the relationship between family and State, for example, is a new relationship, productive of new rights and duties; it is not a modified relationship involving rights and duties between already existent individuals. This kind of relationship between societies bound together subordinately needs to be considered by social Right.

18. Social Right, as I understand it, is therefore the Right of every society; it is not confined to civil society, although this is its common understanding.

19. I think it necessary to consider the Right of society from such a broad point of view. The principles of civil-social Right can only have their foundation, justification and reason in a preceding universal-social Right. Indeed, more mature considerations arising from my study of the principles dealt with in public Right have convinced me of the following truth: the Right of civil society (the most important Right of all) will never be purified from the errors and prejudiced opinions springing from passion, interests, occasional positive intervention and contrary customs of various peoples, until it is brought back to its authentic origin. In other words, it has to be carefully confronted and compared with the simple principles of universal-social reason which on their own evidence are undeniable and, through their universality, unchangeable; principles on which every particular-social Right, however varied it may be, has to draw as from a pure fount.

20. I shall, therefore, dedicate a book to tracing the outlines of universal-social Right, and another three to particular-social Right, which has to be limited to the three societies that alone seem indispensable to the perfect, preordained organisation of mankind. Each one of them will provide sufficient matter for a book. Every possible society does indeed have its own particular Right, and it would be impossible to investigate the particular Right of each. But I cannot omit the Right of the society which mankind makes between itself and God (theocratic society), nor that of domestic society, or that of civil society. All three of these special or particular societies are found wherever mankind is sufficiently extended and developed. Without the aid of these societies, the human race could never progress towards the attainment of its own moral perfection, which is fittingly called HUMANITY.

Notes

(1) We call social rights those only which have their origin in society. _

(2) I call this part of Right `intersocial' because such a general title expresses the systematic study of rights and duties of all equal societies. It does not apply simply to civil societies. The part of Right applicable to these societies is normally called today either the `Right of nations', or `external public Right', or `international Right'. The last title seems to me the clearest and most accurate.

Chapter 1

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