State, Power, Freedom.

15 Septembre 2019, 16:01pm

Publié par el-theus

First question perhaps to ask is the existence of the State. What kind of structure is it? And why has the State become such an overwhelming structure that it annihilates human freedom?

The dialectic between Freedom/s and Power.

The State represents Power, the People want freedom. People want to live freely.

Freedom is not the license to do anything, although in it’s essence freedom is freedom of everything. But that's in it’s essence. We are not speaking here of freedom in general, but of human freedom. What can human beings freely do.

It is not possible to do whatever one wishes, for their are limitations to human will, desires, behaviors, especially in interacting with others.

It s said in fact that one’s freedom ends with the freedom of another.

So who is to regulate the behaviors and freedoms among the individuals of a society?

The State, as a structure of Authority and Power, is the structure that humans have constituted to carry out such functions.

In J.J. Rousseau social-contract theory, the State is the outcome of a social contract, a pact, between the individuals of a given society, of a given community, that decide voluntarily to relinquish part of their individual powers, freedoms, and to delegate them to a collective structure, named the State, so as to carry out, put in place a system of ‘peaceful coexistence’. The State is constituted to carry out the functions needed to regulate society, human behaviors.

This is the main predominant theory of the origin of the State. But it is not the only one. There are other theories that explain the origin of the State.

From a more ontological perspective the State is not the product of a choice, a pact, between citizens, community members, but a more fundamental dimension that belongs to existence in a more fundamental way for it pertains to the structure of Life, the ontology of Life, to the fact that people exist because born within families, from the union of people, in a web of Life, that goes beyond choice or convention, and is already there.

The State, as the condition of a People, is more fundamental than the pact of getting together to form an association, for the reason that filiation is more ontological than any kind of pact.

The conception that the State is an outcome of a convention, pact, is a convention in itself.

J.J. Rousseau theory though has imposed itself as the major theory of the State with the French Revolution.

Previous to that the State was conceived differently, as an absolute monarchy of divine right for instance. The authority of the monarch was derived by God. The monarch being a kind of lieutenant of God on Earth.

Spiritual and temporal powers were united, and undistinguished at beginning. At the time of the Pharaohs for example.

Most theories also in non-western societies, non-western cultures, have thought the State, and monarchical power, in the same way. Not as a bureaucratic structure to layout conventional human wills, but as a sacred institution that had to maintain and keep the Order of things.

In these theories the King being the representative of God on Earth in the case of the Church, has its authority-legitimacy, legitimized by divine right, as a successor of God, keeper of God’s law.

This can also be seen in Burkina Faso Moro Naba King for instance.

The implications of these two different visions, conceptions of the State, are big.

For one type of theory implies positive law, contract law, as its main feature, whereas Ontological State theory implies Natural law as its type of law.

These two different types of law do not regulate necessarily in the same way the same things. For Natural law will try to adhere and preserve the nature of things, the physics of Life, Nature and the world as it is given, whereas Positive law, man-made law, will rule by ‘ majority rule’, by convention, more or less as it pleases. This entailing on the long run no law at all, for everyone will feel free to do as it likes and pleases as soon as it achieves a majority.

And the dilemma between what may be legal but not right would re-present itself once again as a legitimate one. For there are things that are wrong in itself, by nature, although they may have become legal at a certain moment in time.