François Mitterrand
President of the French Republic of 1981 to 1995.
The tradition inaugurated by Aristote and recovery by Thomas d' Aquin affirms, on the contrary, the rooting of the policy in the social one and the nature of the man. Social animal with the political animal (Aristote)
For Aristote, the man is a political animal (zoon politikon) which is however not the only one which lives in group: there exists many gregarious species. But the man is the only animal which, always living groups some, is also able, if necessary, to live in a politically organized company, polishes, a civil society (koinonia politikê).
The man can live without political organization, but its life is then of a lower quality. There exist people (European West too impetuous or Asian missing energy) of which psychological qualities, undoubtedly related to the climate, always according to Aristote, prohibit to them to live in cities. If the Barbarians never live in city, all Hellènes do not live in civil society, but only a part of them, eminently the Athenians: they form a community of citizens (politeai) according to the principle of the equality in the law (isonomy) and where the reports of being able are reversible, since the citizen who is ordered can order from his turn, as a magistrate. There exist communities, companies or associations, which aim at particular goals: crew of boat, army, religious brotherhood, guild of merchants propose a specific end, and it corresponds to them of precise sciences, for example the art of navigation, the strategy or the art of warfare.
But the political association is higher than all the others in two directions: it includes all other associations, which of it are the constituent parts, and it proposes a higher goal, namely the community property. And this is why the science of the civil society - political science - is the best science among the nonspeculative disciplines.
Thus, Aristote, while underlining the nonuniversal character of the policy, i.e. while supporting that the men can live apart from the political bond, affirms - the tradition augustienne or hobbesienne will differ on this point - the natural character of the policy: the political life is registered in the human gasoline, which it achieves, realizes completely; but the passage of the social animal man to the political animal man supposes that certain conditions are met. In other words, the political community is undoubtedly best communities: it is it which ensures civilization, while the life in associations, whatever they are, is a constant property of the mankind. Art (or science) political prolongs nature, but it is about a technique which can be various methods and different successes.
The research of the community property (Thomas d' Aquin)
Thomas d' Aquin will take again the prospects for Aristote and the idea of the natural character of the community. The Thomism, in spite of its initial difficulties with the Church, will become one of the central doctrines and will deeply mark about it the social doctrines of the parties and catholic trade unions: it makes it possible to feed a criticism of the individualism, criticizes whose theories of the social contract represent one of the forms. Insistence on the natural character of the life of the man in company clarifies the similarity between the various forms of community: it is the same word of societas that holy Thomas uses for the marriage - “company” between the man, the woman and their children - and political community.
The political gasoline of humanity then seems an aspect of its Community gasoline, and although the policy is thought like a place of conflicts, its goal would be the research of the community property, which can result in legitimating authoritative political institutions, supporters of corporatism or organicists, who make pass the rights of the individual to the second plan… after the duties that it must fill in the community.
The State like effective morality (Hegel)
Contrary, Hegel, while presenting the State like an organized totality, affirms the need for the modern State for getting to the individuals the conditions of the search for their own interest and the right to subjective freedom. Without the State, the social life would be limited or threatened, at least in the modern world, characterized by the rise of industry, the division of the labor and the aggravation of the difference between rich person and the poor. Hegel calls “civil society” the sphere of the satisfaction of the needs by work. But this company cannot exist by the simple play of the economic mechanisms: it requires an internal regulation by institutions juridico-policies, and an external regulation by the State.
Thus the policy, without occupying all the human existence, since it ensures a private life, it is not limited to a zone of the company: apart from the State itself, it is present in the economic life, with the mechanism of the corporations, but also in that of the family, via the right. Without this regulation by the right and the policy, which anticipates the theory of the Rule of law of the contemporary theorists of liberalism, such Friedrich von Hayek, the civil society would transform itself into a place of acute confrontation between individuals with the opposed interests, in other words it would be the theater of a war of all against all which characterizes the state of nature at Hobbes. Thus, the policy has for Hegel a function founder of the social life to ensure the existence of the community and to make it possible to the individual to exist as such: it is what founds, at the German philosopher, the positive vision of the State like effective morality and achievement of rationality.