Aspects of the Concept of the State

Abstract

A theory of the state presumes the existence of a concept of the state. However, construction of such a concept is a matter of no small difficulty, a difficulty inherent in the nature of the state itself. Every attempt to define “the State” runs up against the question of whether such a constantly changing, abstract and complex structure can be reduced to one clear concept. When Weber states that “the question of the logical structure of the concept of the state” is by far the “most complex and interesting case”¹ of the problem of concept formation, he touches on a theme that runs like a red thread through all discourse on the state in modernity. Herder thought that the state was “something abstract, that one neither saw nor heard.”² Kant came to the conclusion that the state was beyond “direct intuition.”³ For Joseph von Held the state was “an abstract entity”,⁴ and even for Fichte it is no more than “an abstract concept”.⁵ Adam Müller tears his hair over the fact that “together with the defunct concept ‘state’ a thousand inconsequentialities enter into science”, adding that “since concepts cannot shake themselves, it cannot rid itself of these inconsequentialities.”⁶ Constantin Franz not only mocks the “sheer variety of definitions of the state” but adds that “one still seeks the true definition, and will never find it”.⁷

It would be important to investigate in some detail the influence of unclear terminology upon the history of human thought and action.

(Georg Jellinek, Allgemeine Staatslehre, 1900)