# The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: Taylor - The Right of the State to Be

This is a thesis for the Doctor's degree, and a thesis of unusual excellence. It is a striking and a welcome proof of the increasing thoroughness of the philosophical work done in our universities.
The thesis falls into three parts, of which the first formulates the problem, the second gives a critique of previous solutions, and the third states and defends the theory of the author. The author at the outset ​assigns a central position to personality, asserts the reality of an absolute jural order, and then considers the state as an instrumentality for coercively maintaining a particular version of that jural order. His problem therefore is, "By what right does the state exist, and exercise restraint over the individual will?" That this question, which is nowadays seldom raised, cannot be rationally avoided, the author shows by proving (1) that "the continued existence of the state depends on the free and so responsible action of human beings," and (2) that "under the absolute jural order, the right of the individual to free self-determination is so evidently original, primordial, essential, that every act limiting that right demands special justification." This vindication of the reality of the problem, which I consider the most acute and original part of the thesis, is a fine example of clear and resolute thinking upon a subject in the treatment of which such thinking has come to be very uncommon. Writers on ethics, politics, and social science, are fond of describing society as an organism; nor is this unnatural, for biology is the dominant science of the day, as physics was in the eighteenth century. But the metaphor of the organism, though juster, is scarcely less misleading than the metaphor of the machine; and Dr. Taylor goes to the root of the matter when he asserts that "the essence of a state is to be a community which is formally, consciously, freely organized, — which therefore has passed beyond the stage of a mere organism into that of an organization; that is, it has become a free, conscious, rational working together of men for a common end." The person, therefore, being the metaphysical and ethical prius of the state, by what right does the state coercively impose an alien law upon him ? This was the question which the social contract theory endeavored to answer, not as is often supposed the very different question of the historical origin of the state.
The second part of the thesis gives a highly condensed exposition, a minute logical classification, and a somewhat too brief and summary criticism of the various theories of the ultimate prerogative on which the authority of the state rests. Even if some of the criticisms are prejudicial to the theory which the author afterwards advances, they serve to make these twenty pages a useful conspectus of the cons as well as the pros of what has been thought and written upon the subject.
The author's own theory, which is sketched in Part III (pp. 79-105), is contained essentially in the following proposition: "To every person as such belongs the prerogative of rule, i.e., the prerogative of coercively interfering with the liberty of other persons in order to maintain the first person's version of the jural idea." To this must be added that among any number of persons the prerogative of exercising final authority belongs to the fittest, and therefore also to persons acting collectively rather than to persons acting individually, and above all to the whole ​community, or man in general, rather than to any particular associations of men.
It may, however, be asked if this theory answers the query which Dr. Taylor raises in an earlier part of the thesis: "You have a good thing, but whence your authority to impose it on me?" It may be perfectly true that it is because man is "a living incarnation of absolute reason . . . that he is fitted to be the middle term between that absolute order and the concrete order of right"; but does this provide any warrant or authority (force apart) for the majority of that incarnated reason imposing their will upon the minority? If, on the other hand, the minority acquiesce, because they recognize that the law corresponds to an eternal order of right, would not the notion of authority be explained, simply by abandoning it altogether? The author's "direct argument" for his theory is not convincing. He argues that authority has been committed to the individual man on the ground of "society's evident and imperative need of a ruler, the absence of every other possible candidate than man, taken individually, and the high degree of fitness which he can bring to the office." Or, to express the same thought epigrammatically, "His [man's] capacity to rule is his commission to rule: he needs no other." I consider a more weighty argument for the theory the "indirect" confirmation it receives in our estimate of revolutionary leaders like Cromwell. Such an one, as the author justly observes, — with a touch of that technical language he rather too much affects, — "needs no commission from society or the community, from any man or set of men, for, as a rational being, a true concrete universal, he has ample commission in himself."
J. G. S.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1924, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 99 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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