Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation: Reprinted from Green's Philosophical Works, vol. II., with Preface by Bernard BosanquetGreen, Thomas Hill
Philosophy
Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation: Reprinted from Green's Philosophical Works, vol. II., with Preface by Bernard Bosanquet
Green, Thomas Hill
Liberty; Natural law; Political obligation
172. In fact, just so far as states are thoroughly formed, the
diversion of patriotism into the military channel tends to come to an
end. It is a survival from a condition of things in which, as yet,
the state, in the full sense, was not; in the sense, namely, that
in each territory controlled by a single independent government,
the rights of all persons, as founded on their capacities for
contributing to a common good, are equally established by one system
of law. If each separately governed territory were inhabited by a
people so organised within itself, there would be nothing to lead
to the association of the public spirit of the good citizen with
military aggressiveness,--an association which belongs properly not
to the πολιτεία [1], but to the δυναστεία. The Greek states, however
complete might be the equality of their citizens among themselves,
were all δυναστείαι in relation to some subject populations, and, as
such, jealous of each other. The Peloponnesian war was eminently a
war of rival δυναστείαι. And those habits and institutions and modes
of feeling in Europe of the present day, which tend to international
conflict, are either survivals from the δυναστείαι of the past, or
arise out of the very incomplete manner in which, as yet, over most
of Europe the πολιτεία has superseded the δυναστεία. Patriotism,
in that special military sense in which it is distinguished from
public spirit, is not the temper of the citizen dealing with
fellow-citizens, or with men who are themselves citizens of their
several states, but that of the follower of the feudal chief, or
of the member of a privileged class conscious of a power, resting
ultimately on force, over an inferior population, or of a nation
holding empire over other nations.
[1] [Greek πολιτεία (politeia) = constitutional government,
particularly a city-state, δυναστεία/ι (dunasteia/i) = narrow
oligarchy/ies Tr]
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