Fusing Ancient with Modern Tradition

A minimal level of social complexity, institutions in particular, are presupposed to realize one's personal good. Social complexity, we shall see, presupposes a state because enough institutions must have enforceable rules.

The first of these two claims continues an ancient train of thought, while the second is an early modern claim. Together, they make up the core thesis of this book: Realization of one's personal good presupposes social complexity, therefore enforceable rules, therefore the state, and these presuppositions entail significantly more than instrumental provisions. This is why being a flourishing animal the human way, that is, being happy is possible only by living as a political animal. In that sense, the state is constitutive of your personal good.

Aristotle and other ancient authors see the state as a necessary component of the full realization of human nature. Hobbes and other early modern authors see it as enabling human beings to live together in large, anonymous groups. These two ideas are compatible, I suggest. The modern idea can be cast in such a way as to form part of the more encompassing ancient idea my book attempts to recover.

The moderns point out that many activities—for example, most economic activities, such as trade—are impossible unless there is public security, which means nothing but that there must be enforceable rules of conduct, especially protection from violence by other individuals. The ancients claim that said activities as well as the further things they enable, such as art or science, are core aspects of what it means to live well.

Together, this yields the following picture of the connection between the state and the good life: The state is that social group which enforces basic rules of conduct, thereby enabling activities and goods that are indispensable to a happy life. Even more, these activities and goods are characteristic of being human and therefore the state is. Human beings are political animals.

Social complexity, we saw in Chapter 3, is required for all sorts of goods and activities. Some are instrumental; others have to do with identity.