Commonalty, Communities, and the Crisis of the Modern State

Abstract

The theory of the modern state considers that freedom consists in the absolute autonomy of the individual. This consideration of politics and law as a relationship between "absolute equals" - with revolutionary roots - besides being metaphysically contradictory, is one of the causes of the current intellectual confusion, whose main symptoms are relativism, skepticism and ethical indifferentism. Now, since a society cannot function without there being something "in common" among its citizens, - and all reference to human nature, also to its sociability, has been renounced - this task is entrusted to the State, which establishes relationships of an external type that are sustained by means of power. This presents numerous dangers such as possible arbitrariness of the ruler, lack of social stability, permanent threats of conflicts, lawlessness, etc., which prevent people from attaining the level of freedom, security and peace they need. When any idea of "the common" is rejected, the relationships between citizens are weakened to the point that they can only exist through the ties that each one of them establishes with the State, which becomes the only mediating and determining instance of social life. There is thus the paradox that, in the face of the revolutionary desire for absolute freedom, there follows a socio-political life that limits the possible, limited freedom of the human being. On the contrary, to really achieve the end of freedom, according to its own way of being, requires strengthening the main mediating institutions and the sources of identity itself: the family, education and religion. Only in these can each person be "who he is" and become "who he is called" to be, which are the principal manifestations of human freedom and the deepest sources of the peace and security that human beings need.