Society And its Purpose
Book 2 - The End of Society
CHAPTER 8
The error of those who tend to materialise society
214. We can now see clearly the error of governments who only want to materialise society, positing all social progress in the continuing increase of external goods. Their considerations stop at the proximate end of society, or rather at part of it; they do not see the final end, in which alone consists that real good whose achievement every society must essentially procure. Consequently, while they think they are satisfying the people by increasing the quantity of material enjoyment, they are in fact only causing disquiet and discontent. An increase in material pleasures in no way effects an increase in contentment of spirit, in which alone we find rest; rather, the contrary often happens.
Politicians acting in this way are taught by a large number of authors who restrict political theory to the externals of society and the production of material goods. This neglect of philosophy, a philosophy that considers the whole human being, the needs of his heart and the longings of his nature, is one of the principal, deeper causes of the evils afflicting present civil societies. In fact, matters have reached such a pass that to speak of the real needs of the whole human being and of his total contentment is considered by many as out-dated. Ephemeral authors are ashamed of the discussion; they are rightly afraid of not appearing progressive enough to their readers. It is a pity they do not realise that the first truly progressive step taken after their demise will consist in proclaiming them ignorant!
215. Another reason why moral, eudaimonological philosophical teachings (for example, those concerned with the common end of societies) are excluded from political treatises is the self-imposed duty of many authors to follow abstract methods. As a result, what ought to be strictly unified is divided into different treatises.
Let us imagine a society formed for the specific end of commercial speculation. The gain intended by the members through their association is obviously the object or immediate end of the association. In this society, the remote end (contentment of spirit) lies entirely outside the society and is left to the prudence and morality of individual members who seek contentment as human beings but not as members of the society. In a word, the remote end in this example can be called entirely extra-social. If the administrator of the society were to say: `I must act in such a way that the commercial society entrusted to me obtains the greatest possible profit, which is the aim of the society; I am not responsible for procuring the contentment and happiness of the members from the profit,’ he would be right and could not be faulted.
But things are not like this in civil or domestic society. These societies have a kind of universality in their end, and are not limited by nature in any way to procuring some determined good for their members. On the contrary, they are instituted to obtain for all their members without distinction the good they can obtain. These societies must do this however by using only means which are proper to them and within their jurisdiction. Both these societies therefore have an undeterminedextension in their end, and, by using pertinent means, can greatly influence the procurement of contentment and satisfaction or disquiet and discontent of the human spirit. Thus, it is clear that the remote end (human contentment) is included in societies of this extent, and that the philanthropic vision of their administrator must look to this end. However, the authors under discussion, instead of considering civil society in all its extension, stop at external, material prosperity, which they consider the only end of civil society — as if it were a society limited to business or something similar, with an exclusive, determined end. They claim that whatever leads to contentment of spirit must be the work of individuals alone. In other words it is an extra-social end, a work foreign to society.(67)
Notes
(67) Some writers limit the end of civil societies to safeguarding rights; others extend it to the acquisition of external prosperity. Heeren says that `safeguarding ownership constitutes the first and perhaps the only aim of civil association' (Sull'origine, lo sviluppamento e l'influenza delle teorie politiche nell'Europa moderna, A. H. L. Heeren, professor of history at Göttingen). These authors excessively limit the end of civil society. This end is undetermined; up to the present it has been determined in practice only by laws and customs, in different ways in different nations, and at different times of nations' existence. A time will certainly come when what has up to the present been tacitly and factually determined will be expressly determined by the will of interested parties; dependent on their interests and needs, the end of civil association and the offices entrusted to its government will be restricted or expanded. Nevertheless, no matter how much we reduce the functions and determine in writing what is expected from civil association, it will always be true that individuals living in community have, from the moment they civilly associate, an inexhaustible means of good in their association, and that this association has, at least in potency, a very extensive, almost unlimited aim. The most common errors of modern publicists consist in their excessive restriction of the aim of civil society and in their excessive expansion of the means it can use.