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1 ‘Men and citizens’ in international relations

Since Rousseau political theorists have had frequent recourse to a contrast be- tween the fragmented nature of modern social and political life and the allegedly more communitarian character of the Greek polis. At the heart of this opposition was the belief that the polis represented a condition of unsurpassable harmony in which citizens identified freely and spontaneously with political institutions. Compared with their ancient counterparts, modern citizens exhibited a lower level of identification with the public world and a stronger resolution to advance their separate interests and to pursue private conceptions of the good. Nevertheless, the disintegration of the polis was not depicted in the language of unqualified loss. History had not been an entirely unmitigated fall, because the individual’s claim to scrutinize the law of the polis on rational grounds involved a significant ad- vance in human self-consciousness. The positive aspect of its decline was found in the transcendence of a parochial culture in which neither the right of individual freedom nor the principle of human equality had been recognized. The modern world had lost the spontaneous form of community enjoyed by the ancients but it surpassed that world in its understanding and expression of freedom (Hegel 1956: 252–3 and Hegel 1952: paras 260–1, esp. additions; see also Plant 1973: ch. 1 and Taylor 1975: chs 14–15).

Much is made in the writings of Hegel of the necessity of integrating the ancient ideal of community with the modern principle of individuality. Indeed, for Rousseau, Hegel and the early Marx the modern political problem is how to make good citizens out of modern individuals, out of persons who are no longer spontaneously citizens (O’Malley 1970: introduction, esp. pp. xi–lxiii). This problematic relationship between ‘man’ and ‘citizen’ combines with an equally important, if less discussed, political problem: how should human beings relate the obligations they acquire as humans with the obligations they acquire as citi- zens of bounded political communities? Again, Hegel’s account of the experience of Greece is important. Within the polis, only citizens lived properly human lives; neither slaves nor the citizens of other states were thought to have equal moral worth. Moreover, the citizen’s integration into the life of the polis involved an unquestioning acceptance of the roles and responsibilities of membership. This ‘immediate’ identification dissolved on account of the individual’s claim to

16 The problem of community

criticize the life of the polis in accordance with principles of universal reason. A new type of moral consciousness challenged both the exclusiveness of the polis and the supremacy of its civic obligations. Later, it made possible the claim to belong to two societies: the natural society of one’s birth and the universal society embracing all persons by virtue of reason (Colletti 1973: ch. 12; Taylor 1975: pp. 385, 395–7). The distinction between ‘men’ and ‘citizens’ created an important problem for international political theory: the problem of how to reconcile the actual diversity and division of political communities with the newly discovered belief in the universality of human nature.

The conflict between citizenship and humanity is fundamental to the experi- ence of the modern states-system. This is so because the emergence of moral and religious individualism or universalism divided the Western experience of moral- ity between two dominant perspectives (see Walsh 1972). According to one con- ception of moral life, the individual understands morality as ‘an affair internal to a particular community’ (Walsh 1972: 19); the separate community is the source of concrete ethical life and the main object of political loyalty; the states-system is the inevitable product of the species’ division into a variety of particularistic social moralities; the idea of humanity, lacking expression in the roles and respon- sibilities of a form of life, exerts little or no constraint upon the relations between states. According to the second conception, ‘the moral law binds men as men and not as members of any particular community’ (Walsh 1972: 19); individuals may employ their rational faculties to determine the rights and duties that necessar- ily govern them all; the state, moreover, is an incomplete moral community, too limited to satisfy the individual’s sense of wider moral responsibilities, and the states-system is an obstacle to the institutional expression of the human race.1

The earliest systematic writings on the modern states-system displayed deep tensions between these moral traditions (Pufendorf 1927, 1934a, 1934b; Vattel 1964). In the history of modern international thought these works comprise the first stage in the understanding of the relationship between humanity and citizen- ship. As human beings, it was argued, moral agents have duties to one another that are prior to the formation of separate states; as citizens they acquire specific obli- gations that they share with fellow members of bounded political associations. As political obligations are superimposed on primordial moral ones, individuals have to decide their relative claims on them. For the classical writers of the states-sys- tem ‘the services of humanity’ ought to survive the establishment of any ‘special bond with some particular society’ (Pufendorf 1934a: 242); they claimed that ‘no convention or special agreement can release [men] from the obligation . . . to fulfil the duties of humanity to outsiders’, a responsibility now assumed by the state and its rulers (Vattel 1964: 5–6). The classical writings assumed that states could deftly balance the obligations that individuals incurred as human beings with the obligations they have as the citizens of particular societies.

A second stage in the history of international thought highlighted an endemic weakness in these proposed solutions to the problem of relating two types of mor- al experience. Classical theory itself conceded that the processes of establishing

‘Men and citizens’ in international relations 17

special bonds within states were concluded without contractors conforming with their natural duties.2 Rousseau and Kant made the important claim that universal ethical obligations were compromised by forms of competition and conflict that were inherent in a world of sovereign states. The species’ condition was trans- formed totally by the experience of living in and among states. It was necessary now for individuals to behave merely as citizens and to ignore the ties of human- ity. Thus, for Rousseau each one of us is ‘in the civil state as regards our fellow citizens, but in the state of nature as regards the rest of the world; we have taken all kinds of precautions against private wars only to kindle national wars a thou- sand times more terrible; and . . . in joining a particular group of men, we have really declared ourselves the enemy of the human race’ (Rousseau 1970: 132). The states of Europe exhibited ‘glaring contradictions’ between ‘our fair speeches and our abominable acts, the boundless humanity of our maxims and the bound- less cruelty of our deeds’ (Rousseau 1970: 135–6). Extending this theme, Kant wrote that ‘the same unsociableness which forced men into (a Commonwealth) becomes again the cause of each Commonwealth assuming the attitude of uncon- trolled freedom in its external relations’; citizenship provided individuals with the security that facilitated the development of a kingdom of ends within the state while jeopardizing the goal of a kingdom of ends at the global level (Kant 1970a: 183). In this way, the contradiction between citizenship and humanity came to be regarded as the key ethical problem of international relations.

Insofar as there has been an impetus for Western political theorists to reflect upon the relations between states, it has been provided by this dichotomy. Theo- rists have confronted not a world of politics the ‘recurrence and repetition’ of which is alien to a discourse concerned with order and progress but a world of moral tensions, and their first business has been to discover a means of understand- ing and overcoming them. This ambition underwent a radically new development when, building on ideas that originated in the late eighteenth century, theorists inaugurated a new phase in the history of international thought. Underlying this departure was the historicist assault upon both the supposed uniformity of human nature and the alleged timelessness of universal ethical principles. The focus upon the diversity and incommensurability of moral systems was combined with a cri- tique of that realm of human obligation that had been presumed to be in conflict with the ties that bind national citizens (Berlin 1976: xxiii; see also ‘Herder and the Enlightenment’ in the same volume; and Stern 1962: ch. 6).

Whether defensive or critical of the ‘man–citizen’ dichotomy, it is unsurprising that theorists of international relations made it their principal concern. Its pre- eminence corresponds with the view that ‘the need for philosophy arises when the unifying power has disappeared from the life of man’ (Marcuse 1969: 36). However, what must be at issue since the emergence of historicism, and relativ- ism, is the validity of arguments that seek to defend the claim that the experience of living in and among modern states exhibits unresolved tensions. To consider this problem further, and to specify what turns upon it, I propose to analyse three conceptions of the ‘man–citizen’ dichotomy. Two of these perspectives have been

18 The problem of community

mentioned – modern natural law and historicism. To these shall be added a third perspective that focuses on the historical development of the species’ capacity for self-determination.

The rights and duties of citizens

The dichotomy between citizenship and humanity appears in the earliest theories of the modern states-system. These writings reflected a broader movement in Eu- ropean culture, the rise of individualism, and its particular expression in political theory, the substitution of an ‘ascending’ for a ‘descending’ conception of govern- ment (see Ullman 1961: 24). Contractarianism was incorporated into these theo- ries to account for political obligations and to justify the primacy of obligations to fellow citizens. Civil society was conceived as the outcome of individual negotia- tion. Individuals surrendered their inherent, absolute rights to obtain a condition of civility conducive to their ‘utility’ (Pufendorf 1934a: 103; Vattel 1964: 9a– 10a). Because of their natural equality and liberty, society could be constructed only through free, individual exchanges of equivalent benefits; reciprocity made social life possible and consent gave force to obligation. As a society of individu- als was more necessary than a society of states, and since a universal political association was unobtainable anyway, contracts were concluded not by the whole of humanity collectively but separately within emergent political groups (Pufen- dorf 1934a: 274; Vattel 1964: 5–6). Individuals left the state of nature by granting each other determinate rights and duties, the rights and duties of citizens. Between their respective political associations, however, the state of nature continued to exist. As individuals were not parties to contracts with outsiders they were free from specific international moral responsibilities. States, moreover, had binding or ‘perfect’ obligations to those who had consented to their establishment, but not to other persons. By such compacts, individuals specified the ultimate obligations of citizenship within associations, the sovereignty of which expressed the neces- sarily bounded character of moral and political life.

Classical theorists did not presume that the states-system consisted solely of insulated moral enclaves, however. Had they done so the individual would have possessed a unified moral experience. On this assumption the state would have been the sole moral constituency and the states-system would have been an un- problematic form of world political organization. That these conclusions were avoided was a function of the belief that states were artefacts superimposed upon a primordial moral community coextensive with humankind. Classical theorists sought the theoretical integration of contractarianism and moral universalism. They developed that tradition of thought that originated in one of ‘the most deci- sive change[s] in political thinking’, a change that ‘came some time between the days of Aristotle and Cicero, and proclaimed the moral equality of men’ (Carlyle 1930: 7–11). The doctrine that human reason was endowed with the capacity to apprehend non-contractual, immutable moral principles inherent in the nature of things became part of the dualistic foundations of modern international theory. Thus, ‘the universal society of the human race’ arose as a ‘necessary result of

‘Men and citizens’ in international relations 19

man’s nature’ (Vattel 1964: 5–6). There was an obligation upon ‘the race of men’ to cultivate ‘a friendly society’ because of ‘nature’s will’ that all persons are ‘kins- men’ (Pufendorf 1934b: 212). On account of this primordial and universal moral community, obligations to citizens could not constitute the outer parameter of the individual’s moral experience; and vertical divisions between states, correspond- ingly, could not be the sole, defining characteristics of the states-system.

The attempt to mediate between two distinct philosophical traditions made it impossible for those early theories to develop a coherent account of the modern system of states. Their failure is manifest in their discussion of the character of sovereign rights and the principles of statecraft. Ascertained within contractari- anism, the constitutive principles of the states-system are rough reproductions of the principles of conduct observed by individuals within the original state of nature (Pufendorf 1927: 90; Vattel 1964: 7). The sovereign’s right to promote the interests of his association, by force if necessary, is analogous to the right of self-help that existed prior to the creation of society. States must possess these rights until and unless they consent to their amendment or surrender. But, from a perspective inclined to highlight the unifying capacity of human reason, the attempt to endorse these absolute, vertical divisions between communities is un- justified. It commits the error of forming ‘a plan of geographical morality, by which the duties of men in public and private situations are not governed by their relation to the great Governor of the Universe or by their relations to humankind, but by climates, degrees of longitude, parallels not of life, but of latitudes’ (Burke, cited in Bredvold and Ross 1970: 17). Such a ‘plan of geographical morality’ violates the existence of a universal moral constituency upholding the rights and duties that bind all persons together in a world society. The ethical state cannot regard its rights and responsibilities as constituted by the transactions between its individual members alone; the former cannot emanate from a pact that excludes all but future citizens, and the rights and duties of insiders and outsiders must be harmonized. Indeed, as Fichte observed, to avoid being ‘in contradiction with the concept of right, a commonwealth . . . must embrace the whole globe, or at least, must contain the possibility of uniting the whole of mankind’ (Fichte 1869: 215). The dual foundations of classical theory advanced competing ways of ascertain- ing the scope of the individual’s moral sensibilities and their implications for the organization of international society.

Sharply opposed accounts of the morality of statecraft emerge from these di- verse philosophical bases. Here, a familiar dichotomy between private and public ethics arises alongside the ‘man–citizen’ division. On the contractarian account, the principle of reciprocity facilitates the emergence of a society of states, but the reason for states is a constraint upon the level of sociability that can be exhibited in their external relations. Because of the structure of political obligation, states cannot allow that international obligations are permanently binding nor can they dismiss out of hand any act of duplicity or violence outlawed within domestic so- ciety. Because duties between human beings cannot be extended indefinitely into the space between states, moral and political experience is bifurcated into the dis- tinct realms of private and public ethics. This bifurcation is an inevitable product

20 The problem of community

of the compact that the sovereign, as trustee for the welfare of the community, must sometimes deny the validity of principles that are normally observed in the conduct of purely private relations. This dichotomy is not objectively given in the anarchic nature of the states-system but depends on the prior decision to confine the principal moral constituency to the boundaries of the political association. On account of the apparent rationality of this decision, morality can be neatly divided into two realms without disturbing the unity of citizens’ moral lives.

Nevertheless, if the states-system is an artefact superimposed upon a pre-exist- ent world morality then the legitimacy of this division must be questioned. Con- sidered alongside the belief in universal reason, the separation between private and public ethics is a reflection of the incomplete, one-sided nature of moral life. Artificial boundaries between states create an indefensible tension at the heart of the individual’s moral experience, whether apprehended or not. What is at is- sue, therefore, is the existence of particularistic social moralities that centre the individual’s moral sensibilities on the immediate, political group. Against this practice, moral universalism asserts that a person should be concerned with ‘the all-encompassing sphere of cosmopolitan sentiment’ (Kant 1964: 140); moreover, the moral self-consciousness of individuals and societies ought to develop to the point at which ‘a violation of right in one place of the earth is felt all over it’ (Kant, cited in Forsyth et al. 1970: 216). The sovereign should not be party to a division between the principles of domestic and international political life; and, as moral agents, sovereigns should honour obligations to collaborate to control the states- system so that ‘it may be brought into conformity with natural right’ (Kant 1970b: 228–9). On this account, the attempt to weave universal moral principles into the affairs of states holds the key to overcoming the tension between the obligations of men and citizens.

Two conceptions of moral obligation were embedded in the classical reflections on the Western states-system. But the corresponding visions of world political or- ganization were not made explicit and the internal contradictions of the argument were suppressed. Typical of these writings was the tendency to relax the force of obligations to humanity. Pufendorf and Vattel both relied on the argument that these obligations possess an essentially indeterminate status. Pufendorf (1927: 48) argued that it is only within civil societies that human beings have ascertained the precise composition of the rights and duties that should bind them together; the social contract established what they could not be certain of on the basis of the natural law alone. Vattel (1964: 7–8) stated that the content of the natural law is imprecise, that it lends itself to varying interpretations, and that states should therefore generally refrain from judging each other’s conduct. Obligations to citizens are determinate; obligations to other human beings are not. However, neither Pufendorf nor Vattel wished to deny the realm of human obligation with its supposedly civilizing effects on the relations between states. Perhaps the im- plication to draw is that the states-system is as rational a form of world political organization as human beings can establish prior to making obligations to human- ity more concrete at some (improbable) future point. But, in neither writer’s work is there a suggestion that the states-system exhibits only an imperfect or qualified

‘Men and citizens’ in international relations 21

form of rationality. Indeed, the roles and responsibilities of members of sovereign states appear to pre-suppose the absolute rationality of the state and the finality of the states-system. Although ‘the services of humanity’ survived the formation of special political arrangements, citizens were urged to hold ‘nothing dearer’ than the ‘welfare and safety’ of the state; similarly, sovereigns were required to comply with the imperative that ‘the welfare of the people is the supreme law’ (Pufendorf 1927: 121, 144). ‘No convention or special agreement’ could cancel ‘the duties of humanity’, but a constitutive principle of the state-system declared that ‘the liberty of a Nation would remain incomplete if other Nations presumed to inspect and control its conduct’ (Vattel 1964: 5). The attempt to legitimize these proposi- tions reveals that, at best, classical theory equivocated between contractarianism and universalism.

The principal merit of Kant’s political philosophy was its attempt to overcome the inadequacies of earlier international relations theory. In contrast to ‘the miser- able comforters’ (Grotius, Pufendorf and Vattel), Kant aimed to take the principle of equality seriously as a principle of international relations (Kant 1970b: 211; Gallie 1978: ch. 2). The main features of his conception of world politics are sufficiently well known to make recapitulation unnecessary here. In short, the ap- proach sought to establish the absoluteness of reason and to overcome the division between contractarianism and universalism (Murphy 1970: 110–1). Nevertheless, the dominant trends in social and political thought did not coincide with Kant’s individualistic foundation for a world ethic; they ran counter to doctrines that supposed there was a distinction to be made between the norms of particular times and places and the values supplied by an overarching reason. Romanticism, for instance, criticized two key elements in the traditional contractarian theories of society and politics as exemplified in the writings of Pufendorf and Vattel: first, the belief that human arrangements were artefacts through which humans sought to satisfy pre-social needs; and, second, the belief that individuals possessed, ir- respective of their cultural or temporal location, the same set of rational capacities (Lovejoy 1941). The second of these criticisms was presumed by later writers to undercut Kant’s critique of the states-system.3 Irrespective of the accuracy of this point, the impact of romanticism was to transform the basis on which traditional international relations theories had rested.

The historicist theory of international relations

Employing the romanticist critique of individualism and rationalism, historicism claimed that human capacities were inseparable from the forms of life in which they developed. By claiming that ethical capabilities were similarly dependent, it was thought possible to subvert the belief in a universal moral constituency required by transcendent reason. The latter worldview was predicated upon the wrongful abstraction of individuals from their social and historical contexts. Individuals, it was argued, were not human beings first and French or German afterwards (Treitschke 1915: 127–8). Only in the West had thinkers become pre- occupied with analysing the human condition as it might have been prior to the

22 The problem of community

appearance of different social and political practices (Treitschke 1915). The dis- course that aimed to depict the natural characteristics of early humans simply underlined its cultural limitations; invariably, present day social categories were projected on to the thought and action of ‘natural man’. Culture’s unavoidable and irreducible qualities were no more evident than in the theorist’s ambition to transcend them.

It was therefore argued that the primordial fact about humanity is the exist- ence of cultural individualities. Individuals are not undifferentiated members of a humanity that might one day attain political unification but participants in the diverse communities of ‘intellect and spirit’ which have developed in history (Sterling 1958; Aron 1966: 585–91). The function of states was not to maximize the pre-social requirements of their members but to preserve and enhance the cultures for which they were responsible. Human existence involved cultural pluralism and the necessity of recognizing divisions between sovereign states. But, if there is no moral law that is transcultural, on what basis can international political theory be developed and what possibilities are there for reasoning about the relations between states? Historicists believed that they had established that a theory of obligations to humanity was problematic; the aspiration to specify universal moral duties immediately privileged values that were dominant within a few cultures. But the rejection of transcultural or suprahistorical values was not a denial, it was supposed, of a genuinely international political theory. Historicism took humanity to be neither an essence shared by all persons nor a set of innate natural tendencies but the totality of diverse and often incommensurable cultural configurations.4 Humanity was revealed in the various forms of life that had de- veloped in radically different cultural contexts. No single culture could manifest the totality of human possibilities; and since every state had a significant role to play in preserving and unfolding human capacities, separate states did not detract from, but enhanced, humanity.

A unique discussion of the presuppositions of a states-system emerged along- side this account of humanity. Each culture had the right of access to its own political form under the rubric that institutional differentiation was required by cultural pluralism. For the historicist, the state has obligations to enhance its variant on humanity, and moral consciousness need not appear in the form of a tension between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ ethical requirements. Horizontal moral ties between individual members of world society are deemed illusory; what is objectively necessary is the division of the species between bounded political communities (Sterling 1958; Aron 1966). Unlike classical theory, however, these propositions could be advanced without being vulnerable to Kant’s charge of fail- ing inexcusably to apply principles of natural right to the ‘wasteland’ between states. Historicism had sought to overcome that dichotomy between the state and humanity which had produced internal contradictions in rationalist theories of international relations. By reducing individualism and cosmopolitanism to mere abstractions, historicism sought to overcome the age-old separation between man and citizen.

The historicist critique of modern natural law theory may appear to be un-

‘Men and citizens’ in international relations 23

answerable, but historicism cannot avoid generating its own set of internal contra- dictions. Rather then dwell on the familiar argument that historicist reasoning is self-refuting,5 it is important to identify some problems in its attempt to character- ize the relationship between culture and humanity.

In order to do this, I shall assume the existence of two cultures that are founded on mutually exclusive principles of international relations. While one culture ac- cepts the historicist’s claim that all cultural configurations help to manifest human- ity, and acknowledges obligations to other states on this basis, the other confines obligations simply to relations between members of its own, allegedly superior cultural formation. The historicist argument is that each culture is necessary in order to manifest the diverse range of human possibilities. This observation has a highly specific meaning in the circumstances described because these cultures negate rather than complement one another: they reveal the species’ capacity to express itself in wholly antagonistic forms of life. To make a different assertion it would be necessary to choose between these cultures on the grounds that one expressed human potentialities more adequately than the other.

Although this point resurrects that very dichotomy that historicism was sum- moned to deny, it is a division that historicists cannot avoid. For if we consider the relations between these cultures, on what basis can the first assert that the other should recognize its contribution to human capabilities, and on what basis can it claim that the other should recognize its rightful existence as a sovereign state? It is not possible for the first society to appeal to the presumed equal valid- ity of cultures. For on that very basis its opponent may claim that its denial of obligations to outsiders is a legitimate expression of cultural difference. While historicist reasoning appeared to believe that a principle of the equal validity of cultures was coincidental with a principle that cultures should treat each other as moral equals, it is evident that these propositions are not logically connected. At this point the historicist argument is confronted with a clear choice: either the first principle is advocated with the consequence that there is no longer a defence for the states-system; or the latter principle is advocated at the expense of regarding various cultural systems as equally valid. As the historicists made the decision to advocate the second principle, they reintroduced the dichotomy that was found in classical theory. In brief, to assert the value of the principle of the equal treatment of cultures in the face of a claim to reject it is to resurrect a division between concrete cultures and the moral principles that transcend them and to invite con- sideration of what is best for humanity.

Rather than claim that an ethnocentric culture should acknowledge that all cultures possess equal moral status, the historicist might move to a relativist po- sition. This development would involve affirming the equal validity of all cul- tural systems, including their different conceptions of international relations. It is assumed that one ‘can turn to history as an indefinitely rich compendia of life styles, all of which stand in external relation to one another so that in choosing or rejecting any one I make no comment on the others’ (O’Brien 1975: 68). Here, the relativist wishes to endorse two incompatible propositions: first, that there are no transcultural criteria that facilitate the rational ordering of cultures; and,

24 The problem of community

second, that a society that takes a relativist position has reasonable grounds for rejecting cultures predicated on principles that are antagonistic to relativism. Ac- cordingly, neither historicism nor relativism can bridge the gap between humanity and citizenship without self-contradiction. But if these doctrines are inconsistent, and if natural law doctrine succumbs to the criticism that its account of humanity ignores cultural diversity and historical change, what is to be made of the division between ‘men’ and ‘citizens’?

The philosophers of history

Let us return to the historicist position and begin with the observation that his- toricism may be made the object of a critique similar to the one it directed at the theory of natural law. If the latter abstracted individuals from historically evolving cultures, the former abstracted cultures from the wider forms of human experi- ence (including, for example, social interaction with nature) through which the evolution of human capacities takes place (Colletti 1972: 39). To take this further, it is important to consider the philosophers of history with their focus upon the formation and development of the human species itself. What relativism and his- toricism omitted was consideration of the manner in which unique human powers were developed through the multidimensional aspects of the social world. Within the theory of history there was an attempt to establish a hierarchy of human ca- pacities through a consideration of humanity’s place in the worlds of society and nature. This endeavour has major implications for understanding the nature of the dichotomy between ‘man’ and ‘citizen’.

Philosophical historians sought to give an account of the nature and potentiali- ties of historical subjects. Their principal contention was that history was made possible by the existence of creatures that were free. To be free, on this account, was not to be beyond the jurisdiction of the law, to be unconstrained as in the state of nature of the modern natural lawyers, but to have the capacity to initiate action. The human species was unique by participating in a historical dimension made possible by the capacity for freedom and agency. Uniqueness stemmed not just from this power but also from the related potentiality for collective learning and development. The species was not static but underwent radical transformation in the course of positing and acting on freely determined ends. Philosophers of history wished to highlight the evolution of species-powers and parallel forms of collective self-consciousness. In brief, they sought to understand the histori- cal processes that made it possible for individuals to transcend their locales by identifying and sympathizing with all members of the human race.

The a priori of history was the existence of a being that was capable of tran- scending, at least in part, the world of natural determination. What had to be dis- cerned were those characteristics that explained the emergence of a non-natural being. Unsurprisingly, this ambition was realized by analysing humanity’s early immersion in, or interaction with, nature. Theorists of history followed Rous- seau’s conjecture that early humans were natural beings with the latent capacity for free action and self-advancement. Kant regarded humanity as that unique part

‘Men and citizens’ in international relations 25

of nature in an earlier age which possessed the latent faculties of reason and im- agination that allowed the establishment of non-natural ends; Hegel emphasized the distinctive capacity for self-consciousness and for expressing the dominant forms of social self-consciousness in a world of increasing freedom; Marx re- garded labour as the instrument whereby non-natural ends and the self-creation of the species were made possible (Hegel 1952: para. 4, addition; Kant 1963: 55–6; Marx 1977c: 39; Rousseau 1968: 170). What history revealed and developed was the species’ ability to enlarge these distinctive powers. It showed human beings in a world of their own making, ‘a second nature’, in which gradual expression was given to unique potentialities (Hegel 1952: para. 4).

This understanding of humans as dynamic, self-constituting beings took issue with natural law doctrines and historicism alike. The former were wrong to assume that the right ends for humans were fixed independently of history, given in nature or pre-determined by a divine being.6 The belief in the immutability of human nature and in unchanging rational faculties, which was revealed in the natural law discussion of individuals in their original state, overlooked processes of historical transformation. Natural law doctrines abstracted human beings from the forma- tive role of concrete ensembles of changing social relations (Hegel 1952: para. 145; Marx 1977a). Medieval natural law theories, with their conception of the universe as a system of interdependent parts, each possessing its distinctive telos, had confused natural and normative orders. Laws of nature derived their validity from their existence alone, whereas laws of social conduct depended for their validity upon some level of human endorsement. The focus upon long-term his- torical processes gave rise to a division between the repetitive physical world and the potentially progressive world of history (Hegel 1952: addition to the preface; Hegel 1956: 54). Historicists, moreover, might be accused of having failed to give an account of the formation and development of unique species-powers, including the capacity for identification with, and concern for, all other human beings.

The species’ capacity for rational self-determination was held to be capable of extension in two respects. First, human societies could expand their rational powers and, second, they could enlarge the sphere of their operation. What was open to humans as historical beings was the ability to enlarge freedom through ever-increasing rational control of the self and its environment. Through the medium of history, human beings could come to grasp the higher purposes and possibilities of free beings along with a more refined awareness of the conditions that were necessary for their realization. Gradually, they could gain a form of self- knowledge that was always theirs potentially but that was actualized only within the more advanced social and political arrangements. As the creation of a world of self-determining beings was a gradual historical process it was inconceivable that all cultures could be conceived to be equally valid. They could be judged by the extent to which their members understood and expressed the potentiality for collective self-determination – for making more of their history under conditions of their own choosing (see Marx 1977b: 300) and for making world history in accordance with stronger cosmopolitan attachments.

Philosophical historians proposed, therefore, a theory of ‘historical

26 The problem of community

periodization’, which would reveal the main stages in the movement to higher levels of ethical and political self-consciousness. The urge to place different societies on a scale of ascending types is exhibited both in Hegel’s analysis of world historical peoples and in Marx’s consideration of various forms of socially organized production (Hobsbawm 1964: introduction; Evans 1975: 72–9). It was this aspect of philosophical history that Kant commended to the theorists of in- ternational society. A ‘minor motive’ for constructing a universal history was the issue of what various societies had contributed to the growth of world citizenship (Kant 1970a: 191). In brief, the possibility arose of placing different political associations, or systems of states, on a hierarchy of forms in accordance with their proximity to a condition in which the idea of rational self-determination is extended into the world of international relations. The execution of this purpose suffered on account of the general disrepute that came to surround philosophical history in the English-speaking world at the beginning of the last century. In the writings of T.H. Green (1916: ch. IIIb), however, there was an insightful attempt to integrate philosophical history and the study of the relations between states. What requires attention, moreover, in the context of the present discussion, is the manner in which the division between ‘man’ and ‘citizen’ can be located in a theory of the historical formation of distinctive human powers and capabilities.

Following Kant, Green maintained that in the course of their history human beings refined their moral capacities. The deepening and broadening of moral obligations revealed the growth of the potentiality for (collective) rational self- determination. In early societies, rights and duties were attached to persons only as members. A common good was recognized within such societies ‘while beyond the particular community the range of obligation [was] not understood to extend’ (Green: 1916: 238). The nature of human development was revealed in the ability to recognize ‘an ever-widening conception of the range of persons between whom the common good is common’ (Green 1916: 237). The culmination of this growth of freedom was contained in the understanding that fundamental obligations were not confined simply to relations between citizens, or to relations between sover- eigns and subjects, but ought to extend to all relations between human beings as equal persons. The highest forms of moral consciousness involved identification with ‘a universal society co-extensive with mankind itself’ – the highest level of social integration the institutions of which could regulate the relations between humanity’s constituent parts (Green 1916: 239–40).

For Kant and Green, the ideal political environment would reflect the unique capacity to live in a world governed by moral principles that all persons freely imposed on themselves. The species would transcend nature and express its capacity for self-determination most perfectly when it managed the totality of political relations with recourse to self-imposed, universal moral obligations. To use Kantian terminology, the species would realize its potentiality for combining individuality and cosmopolitanism only in a condition in which all persons were equal co-legislators in a universal kingdom of ends. Accordingly, a cosmopolitan culture occupied a higher place on a scale of social types than one in which moral sensibilities were concentrated exclusively on insiders. A states-system in which

‘Men and citizens’ in international relations 27

societies aim to establish institutions which express their belief that human be- ings have ‘a claim upon human society as a whole’ (Green 1966: 157–8) was more adequate than one in which particularistic social moralities were thought to have absolute validity. On this basis, philosophical historians sought to criti- cize plans of ‘geographical morality’ without succumbing to the objection that they superimposed an abstracted, static morality on diverse societies. While they acknowledged the historical importance of cultural individualities, they did not draw back from positing the existence of transcultural criteria for evaluating hu- man conduct. They sought to derive ethical criteria from long-term processes of change. In so doing, they thought it possible to regard particularistic moralities as forms of human understanding that would be transcended as humans grasped the nature of their capacity for collective self-determination.7

Philosophical historians implicitly rejected the options of ethical absolutism and relativism; immanent within their writings was the belief that these are sides of a false antinomy. What is true of general social and political principles may be taken to be true of the division between humanity and citizenship. This dichotomy is not a feature of an idiosyncratic and relative moral code, nor is it a conflict between a particularistic social morality and the requirements of an immutable ahistorical ethic. Although the dichotomy may arise only within particular cul- tures at specific points in their evolution, its significance is much deeper. However cast, it expresses a conflict within the experience of the states-system. But, when characterized adequately, the conflict reveals dissatisfaction of a specific kind, namely with the impediments upon human freedom that issue from the character of sovereign states and the constitutive principles of the international system.

Here there is a parallel with the division between ‘man’ and ‘citizen’ that was so important within Hegel’s account of the character of ancient and modern politics. The emergence of individualism within Greek society represented dissatisfaction with the parochial nature of social and political life. The Greek’s challenge to a traditional and customary morality expressed the aspiration to live in a social world that embodied individual reason (Hegel 1956: 251–3). Social and political morality was not simply ‘an affair internal to a particular community’, it had to express the subject’s particular sense of the nature of rational conduct. If this freer social world was to exist, Hegel argued, the individual’s estrangement from the customary morality of the polis was essential.8 It was necessary to realize a higher understanding of self-determination than was found in those cultures in which members thought their social relations rested on natural sanctions or obeyed moral obligations blindly and spontaneously. It was this demand for a higher level of self-determination, expressed in the contrast between ‘man’ and ‘citizen’, that was subversive of Greek political life. Nevertheless, individualism itself could not provide, on Hegel’s account, a sufficient condition for the exist- ence of a free social world. Individualism, especially when it was the rationale for the pursuit of private interests, became an obstacle to the development of a social environment subject to collective control. The product of individualism was a condition in which individuals were subjected increasingly to impersonal laws operating within their societies (Hegel 1956: 317–18). To reach a higher level of

28 The problem of community

self-determination, it was necessary to allow agents to pursue their separate objec- tives while being integrated within an ethical state that expressed the capacity for collective self-determination. In this way the reconciliation of the opposition between humanity and citizenship, which had been necessary to progress beyond the parochialism of Greece, could be effected.

Philosophical history provides the resources for characterizing the division be- tween ‘man’ and ‘citizen’ in international relations in a similar way. The modern state may offer its citizens freedoms unavailable to members of earlier forms of association; it may make available greater opportunities for individual self-deter- mination and for taking part in the process of controlling the immediate social and political environment. Nevertheless, states separately only imperfectly realize the human capacity for collective self-determination. The possession of citizenship alone is not sufficient to enable the individual to participate in the control of the wider political environment. As Rousseau observed, the citizen’s ability to live an autonomous life within states is limited severely by the disruptive power of international events. Refuge from a form of heteronomy, which had its source outside the state, could be found only in autarchic states (Hoffmann 1965: 63). Furthermore, as Kant also observed, the world of sovereign states appears to be a world of necessary conflict and competition. Accordingly, theorists have claimed that, compared with domestic politics, international politics are ‘less suscepti- ble of a progressivist interpretation’; the anarchic nature of the states-system is presumed to subject states to impersonal laws and to limit their ability to engage in moral conduct (Wight 1966a: 26). However, it is important not to locate resist- ance to change only in the states-system, thus imputing the character of bounded political communities to their supposedly natural environment. As the discussion of contractarianism sought to show, the fact that states pursue their particularistic interests and insist upon their sovereign rights, and the fact that they conduct their external affairs on the basis of a separation between the principles of domestic and international political life, is a function of the nature of the state as a particular ensemble of rights and obligations. Those patterns of behaviour are implicit in the character of the sovereign state itself, implicit in forms of political community that assume the priority of obligations to fellow citizens.

As a result of this phenomenon the conflict between citizenship and humanity acquires fundamental importance in both the theory and the practice of interna- tional relations. For, as we have seen, what the existence of a realm of human obligation does is challenge the state as a particularistic moral community that generates heteronomous relations in its external affairs. It may be suggested that the form of estrangement that is exhibited in the division between human beings and citizens is as necessary in the experience of the world of states as it was in the life of the Greek polis. It may be regarded as a division that is integral to the movement from attempting to realize autonomy in the relations within states to attempting to realize autonomy in the relations between them.

The actualization of a higher form of international political life requires that radical critique of the state that historicism was unable to supply and modern natural law theory was unwilling to undertake. We have raised the possibility

‘Men and citizens’ in international relations 29

that the idea of humanity may provide this function if it is reconstituted within a theory of history which is able to avoid the inadequacies that were endemic in traditional and modern theories of natural law. It may well be that the existence of a moral community more inclusive than the state can be defended only on the basis of the species’ capacity for collective self-determination. If this is indeed so, it may be contended that only within an international political association, which aims at maximizing human freedom, can the species express its unique capabili- ties while recapturing morally integrated lives.