On the Ontological Status of the State
ERIKRINGMAR
London School of Economics
In which sense can we say that a state 'exists'? According to the realist school,
the state is an a priori given; according to the pluralist school, it is nothing hut a
collection of various sub-state actors. As I argue, however, neither solution is sat-
isfactory. If we give the state a transcendental status, it disappears from the
world; if we see it merely as a set of empirical attributes, it disappears in the
world. The way out of this dilemma is to stop talking about what states really are,
and start instead to talk about what things they resemble. We make sense of our
collective selves in the same way as we make sense of our individual selves —
with the help of metaphors that are expanded into narratives. A question of 'be-
ing' is consequently always a question of 'being as', and states are constructed
through the stories told about them.*
According to a time-honoured metaphor, the state can be described in terms of a
body. The state is a *body politic', as it were, with a 'head of state' who governs its
'members' according to the dictates of 'reason', or raison d'etat. When thought of
in this fashion the state is generally taken to exist in the same unproblematic
fashion as other bodies that populate our universe — our individual bodies, say,
or the heavenly bodies in the sky. The state-as-body is regarded as of a natural
kind and an inescapable fact. Recently, however, this natural existence has in-
creasingly come to be questioned. As several writers have pointed out, the state
is much less unified and much less coordinated than bodies generally are sup-
* I am grateful to Terence Ball, Andreas Behnke, Walter Carlsnaes, Martin Hollis, Iver Neu-
mann, Brendan O'Leary, Alexander Wendt and one referee who remains anonymous, for com-
ments on previous versions of this article as well as to the Swedish Institute for International
Affairs, Stockholm, for financial and administrative support.
European Journal of international Relations
volume 2:4, 1996. pp. 439-466.
THIS IS A SCANNED VERSION OF THE ORIGINAL - PLEASE READ, BUT DO NOT
CITE OR REFERENCE.
1
Erik Ringmar
posed to be. Its parts are not only disjointed, but often enough also connected to
other parts which in turn are connected to other bodies. If the state is a body it is
surely very much like the bodies of the Women of Avignon, the prostitutes of
Pablo Picasso's well-known cubist masterpiece.
As naive museum-goers sometimes point out, there is a sense in which the
human beings portrayed by cubist painters look far from healthy. In fact, if one
really looked like a person of Picasso's or Braque's imagination it would be
doubtful whether one — in concrete and physiological terms — would be able to
survive. And if this is the case for an individual, one may wonder what would
happen to a state-as-body that looked the same way. Would such an entity really
have much of a future, or would not interdependence and general dismember-
ment soon bring about its demise?
This is of course a question which has occasioned much recent scholarly de-
bate, and — as so often — the scholars have been deeply divided in their dia-
gnoses. Will the state die? Is the state dying? Is it perhaps already dead? Despite
many arguments back and forth it has been excruciatingly difficult to settle this
issue in a conclusive fashion. Regardless of which position we take there seems
to be ample empirical evidence in our support. Yet — and much as in the famous
Monty Python parrot skit — there is little agreement on which kind of evidence
that finally would settle the matter. Given this somewhat confusing state of af-
fairs, empirical investigations alone do obviously not suffice. What we need is
not more empirical 'facts', but above all a consensus on a conceptual framework
through which an empirical investigation can be carried out. We must define
what we mean when we talk about a 'state' and we must figure out in which
sense notions like 'existence' or 'non-existence' can be applied to this kind of an
entity. Before we can come up with a diagnosis of the medical status of the state,
we must, in other words, investigate its ontological status.
This article is devoted to a few remarks on this subject. I will begin by
briefly reviewing the relevant International Relations literature and then investig-
ate the curious metaphorical language through which the state is talked about in
anthropomorphic terms — as a 'body', a 'person' or an 'actor'. As I will argue, this
terminology was originally a medieval locus communis which in the Renais-
sance came to be applied to the sovereign state ruled by the absolutist prince.
The prince personified the state, as it were, and as a result of this anthropo-
morphic definition a new political vocabulary and a new set of political options
2
On the Ontological Status of the State
were introduced. From the Renaissance onward, states have 'acted in their 'national in-
terests' on the 'world stage'.
Once defined in these terms, however, the state soon became subject to the same
paradoxes which have clouded the modem individual's under standing of his or her
own self. If we accept that the state in some sense can be regarded as a person, the
question becomes what a person might be. As I will try to show, there are fundamental
problems with the answers which modem philosophers have given to this question,
and since I believe it is impossible to solve these problems within the metaphysical
framework traditionally presented by scholars of international politics, we need to put
both the individual and the state on an alternative, and more secure, ontological foot-
ing. What we need, I will argue, is a 'narrative concept of the person' which can corres-
pond to a 'narrative concept of the state'.
Realists and Pluralists
International Relations scholars are no doubt unaccustomed to reflecting on questions
regarding the ontological status of the objects they study. Given the central importance
of the state, however, they have in practice often been forced to consider what the state
'really is', and in what sense it can be said to 'exist'. If we allow for a simplification, we
could say that there are two main sets of answers in the literature, associated with two
very influential scholarly traditions — that of the realist school and that of the plural-
ists. 1
To begin with the realists, their world is exclusively one of states and interstate rela-
tions (Waltz, 1979, 1986: 27-130). According to this perspective, the borders of the
state separate one kind of politics from another — participation, democracy and the
rule of law on the inside, and ever-threatening conflict and war on the outside (Bar-
telson, 1995: 186-236; Walker, 1993: 81-103). World politics is the politics of the out-
side, of life in an anarchic realm where every unit is forced to fend for itself. Here 'na-
tional interests' will come to govern all state actions. It is in the national interest of each
state to gain power, at the very least enough power to assure its own self-preservation
and at the very most enough power to dominate the world. Since there can be only one
utility schedule and one set of interests pertaining to each state, the state can be thought
of as a 'unified, purposive, utility-maximising, actor' (Bueno de Mesquita, 1981: 87-
92).
According to the realists, in other words, the identity of the state and the interests
which govern it are denned prior to the state entering into interaction with other states.
The state is given exogenously to the analysis of it, and hence endowed with
3
On the Ontological Status of the State
something akin to a transcendental ontological status. To the realists the state is the
presupposition of all theorizing — it is the assumption from which all subsequent con-
clusions can be drawn. Occasionally they may perhaps concede that the state is a his-
torically situated institution and that as such it is subject to change, and parenthetically
they may even admit that the state one day will disappear (Gilpin, 1986: 314; Mor-
genthau, 1948/1973: 10). Yet any such concessions will inevitably take the form of
empirical observations and ad hoc additions to the main theoretical model. For the pur-
poses of their theory, the realists have to take the state for granted.
The scholars associated with the pluralist camp are, however, highly sceptical both
of this way of reasoning and of the conclusions reached (Hollis and Smith, 1991: 38-
9). As they point out, the realists' description of the world is not only empirically incor-
rect, but also based on a flawed view of science. An honest scientist cannot simply
'posit' the existence of a certain entity in an a priori fashion since it is the very exist-
ence of this entity that should be investigated. As scientists we must look at world
politics without any particular prejudices as to which kinds of objects it contains. Our
concept of the state should emerge as a result of such an empirical investigation, not
be a precondition for it.
As the pluralists go on to show, an empirical investigation will soon reveal the
realists' view of the world to be very far from realistic. While the state indeed may be
an important actor in world politics, it is not the only such actor and it is always com-
peting with a host of others. In fact, contemporary world politics is populated with in-
numerable trans-, supra- and sub-national actors that form links and alliances without
much regard for state borders. As a result, states have become increasingly interde-
pendent and in the process the very distinction between domestic and foreign policy
has become blurred (Keohane and Nye, 1977).
This conclusion is reinforced if we rum to a study of the internal life of the state
(Allison, 1971; Steinbruner, 1974). As pluralist scholars have pointed out, the state is
very far from a united, purposive, rational actor, but instead is made up of a multitude
of different sub-national bureaucracies and organizations, each with its own agenda, its
own set of goals and its own traditional ways of doing things. Under these circum-
stances, foreign policy will not be the result of rational calculations undertaken at a
unified state level, but instead the product of a multitude of bargains struck at various
sub-levels. That which we call 'the state' is only a loose set of ordered preferences, an
enormous aggregation of individual preference schedules which always will be contin-
gent upon day-to-day politicking.
How, then, should we arbitrate between these two descriptions? Is the state a tran-
scendental, atomistic unit with a unified and pre-socially given set of interests, or is it a
4
On the Ontological Status of the State
mere bundle of sub-state actors and an aggregation of their preferences? Impressionist-
ically we may perhaps feel that there is something to both pictures. Or rather — the
two pictures seem to portray the same thing, only at different distances. When viewed
from afar — either in time or in space — the state appears unified and purposive, yet
when viewed close up it somehow loses both its unity and its sense of purpose. Yet if
this is the case we have surely hit upon an entity of a very strange kind. It seems we
need to take the state for granted in order to be able to analyse whatever goes on in
world politics, yet the very same state mysteriously disappears once we start looking
for it. The state simply vanishes somewhere in between the moment when we posited
it as necessary and the moment in which we started investigating it. But if our view of
the state depends on our perspective in this way, how can we ever hope to give an ac-
curate, and final, description of it? Where, and what, is it? Does the state, or does it
not, exist?
In order to explore this question let us turn to an investigation of the curious meta-
phorical language through which the state is talked about in terms appropriate to indi-
vidual human beings. If the state, just like a person, is a 'subject', then in what sense
can subjects be said to 'exist'? And what is in fact the connection between an individual
and a collective self?
Man and State
Although the state can be described in many different ways, when viewed from the
outside — as one entity among others in world politics — it is almost invariably talked
about in anthropomorphic terms. It is seen as an 'actor' or a 'person'; it is a 'someone' or
a 'subject' to whom intentions, memories, rights and obligations are attached. Yet it is
far from clear in what sense states can be thought of in analogy with human beings.
This fact is also often acknowledged by International Relations scholars who invoke
the anthropomorphic vocabulary only after making a standard apology. The comparis-
on between the state and a person is a 'mere metaphor', we are told, which 'should not
be taken literally' (Buzan et al, 1993: 112; Gilpin, 1986: 318-19). Having prefaced
their analyses in this fashion, the same scholars then go on to rely on the same vocabu-
lary as one of the most fundamental — and in practice irreplaceable — assumptions of
their research.
There is something very odd about this way of proceeding. If the metaphor in
question indeed was purely arbitrary we would not expect it to be so difficult to avoid.
If it is indeed the case that the anthropomorphic terminology consists of nothing but
'mere' metaphors, we would expect scholars to switch metaphors from time to time
5
On the Ontological Status of the State
and occasionally talk about the state in some other set of terms. Or — to be true to the
purported tenets of science — to drop the reliance on metaphorical language altogether
and instead talk about the state as it really is. Yet realists and pluralists alike seem
neither willing nor able to take any of these steps, and this reluctance, or inability,
seems to indicate that the connection between man and state is much stronger than is
commonly presupposed. What, then, is the nature of this connection? Why can states
be thought of as 'subjects' and why are they so easily compared with human beings?
One way of addressing this question is to undertake a philosophical investigation
of the similarities which obtain between individuals and collective entities of various
kinds (Carr, 1986: 122-52; Vincent, 1989: 687-715). Another way to address the same
question is to treat it in historical terms. We could, that is, rephrase the philosophical
question regarding the ontological status of the state as a genealogical question regard-
ing how it came to be that the state came to be talked about in this set of terms rather
than some other. In general, a genealogical approach is to be preferred if we doubt
whether there is an intrinsic, 'real', connection between two entities and if we instead
understand our task as being that of investigating the origin of a certain way of talking
(Foucault, 1985: 139-64).
A promising point of departure for such a genealogy is provided by Jacob Burck-
hardt's seminal study of the Italian Renaissance (Burckhardt, 1860/1958). As Burck-
hardt points out, the Renaissance was the period in which man and state for the first
time came to be thought of as independent and self-directing entities (Burckhardt,
1860/1958, vol. II: 279-302). At the same time it was far from clear what it meant to
be a 'man' or what it meant to govern, or live in, a 'state'. Soon the status, role and pur-
pose of both man and state became fashionable subjects worthy of many learned treat-
ises and long intellectual debates.
Nowhere were these issues more prominent than at the courts of the new sover-
eign princes. The court was the pre-eminent cultural, intellectual and political centre of
each country, and also the one social arena where young men and women had to ap-
pear in order to make a name for themselves. The Renaissance court differed markedly
from the courts of the feudal lords of the previous era. During the Renaissance the up-
per class grew both in absolute terms and in relation to other social classes, and as a
result the people who gathered at the courts of the princes were often of very diverse,
and often quite humble, origins (Elias, 1985; von Martin, 1944). 2 Consequently, they
often thought of themselves as free from the customs and traditional social roles which
had governed the lives of their fathers. The men and women of the Renaissance re-
garded themselves as 'creations' and as 'works of art'; they believed they were able to
'fashion' themselves, to rum themselves into persons of their own free choice (Green-
6
On the Ontological Status of the State
blatt, 1980). A very similar process of 'fashioning' took place also in the case of the
state. Here new rulers of often very dubious credentials, and often with a very tenuous
hold on power, sought to buttress their claim to legitimacy and power by making new
selves for themselves. Much archaeological and philological effort went into the cre-
ation of a credible past, preferably filled with illustrious warriors, biblical characters
and other assorted classical paraphernalia (Machiavelli, 1532/1980: 33; Ringmar,
1996; Shennan, 1974).
There were, however, strict limits to the Renaissance man's ability to fashion his
own self, and neither individuals nor states could in practice be whatever they wanted
to be. As soon became obvious, the freedom of each individual was strictly limited by
the power which the state exerted upon him or her, and the power of each state was in
turn strictly limited by the power of other states. Perhaps we could say that the identity
of both man and state were formed through a process of subjectification — man be-
came a subject and aware of the unity of his self as he was subject to the techniques of
power employed by the state, and the state became a subject and aware of the unity of
its self as it was subject to the techniques of power of other states. 3
The direct metaphorical connection between man and state was, however, forged
through the person of the prince. Throughout die Renaissance the prince and die prin-
cipality he or she ruled were very intimately related, and the one could not be con-
ceived without the other. A state was not a state without a prince and a prince was not a
prince without a state (Skinner, 1989: 90-102). 4 In order to talk about this intimate
connection, the metaphor of the "body' seemed particularly apt (Kantorowitz, 1957;
Nederman and Langdon Forhan, 1993). In domestic political rhetoric the body meta-
phor was highly useful since it managed to reflect two of the most cherished notions of
the contemporary ruling classes — mutual dependence between constituent parts and a
hierarchical principle of organization. Just as all parts of the body were intrinsically
linked, one subject depended on another, yet at the same time some parts — the head
— were unquestionably more important than some others — the fingers, say, or the
toes (Arendt, 1958: 53-4; Walzer, 1965: 171-83).
As far as relations between states were concerned, the body metaphor connected
very nicely to the classical locus communis through which the world had been de-
scribed in terms of a 'stage' (Frye, 1990: 196-211; Jacquot, 1957; Magistretti, 1971). In
antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages, die stage metaphor had often been invoked
in order to describe the vanity of human beings and the emptiness of human life, and
while this usage continued in the Renaissance, the metaphor was also given a very
much more concrete content. As it turned out, die world as it had been explored
through die great geographical discoveries was easily compared to the stage of a
7
On the Ontological Status of the State
theatre (Orgel, 1975; Strong, 1984: 65-74). Once the earth was fully encompassed it
became, just like a Renaissance theatre, a closed, graspable and circular space; and just
as an earth overlaid with grid-lines allowed for the precise calculations of relative
movements, the stage allowed for relative movements between actors and things. Per-
haps even more strikingly, the new art of perspective, introduced in the theatre in 1605,
required the construction of a system of grids just like that of the longitudes and latit-
udes on the maps. 5 It should consequently not surprise us that the term ' theatrum
soon came to be applied also to collections of maps. Thus the first adas of the world,
printed in 1570, appeared as the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum and it was soon followed
by national 'theatres' in one country after another — Le Theatre Franfois in 1594 and
The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine in 1611 (Brown, 1949/1977: 162). Simil-
arly, it made sense for William Shakespeare to call his famous London theatre 'the
Globe' (Schoenbaum, 1979).
If the world was a stage, then the state was the actor who acted upon it. Or to be
more precise, it was the "body' of the state which was inserted upon the stage of the
world. As the head of this body, the prince was its natural governor; the movements of
the state were the prince's movements; and the reason which guided it — the raison
d'etat — was the prince's reason. Consequently, relations between states soon also
came to be seen as relations between actors in a play (Anderson, 1983: 37). Interstate
politics became interpersonal politics and world affairs became a drama, often of a tra-
gic, absurd or even a Commedia dell'Arte kind. 6
Atomism and Empiricism
Given the close metaphorical connection between man and state it is hardly surprising
that the discussions regarding the ontological status of the one soon came to be intim-
ately connected to the discussions regarding the ontological status of the other. The
'concept of the person' as it was developed by the philosophers of the early modem era
soon came to determine, and to be determined by, the 'concept of the state'.
This connection is explicit in the writings of authors as different as Thomas Hobbes
and David Hume. According to Hobbes, the state could be thought of as a 'Feigned' or
Artificiair person, and as already the cover-page of his most famous work made clear,
Leviathan was a superman who, with sword and sceptre in hand, brought peace to the
individual men out of whom he was composed (Hobbes, 1651/1968: 220; Meinecke,
1924/1984: 213). Yet also Hume found a deep affinity between the state and the indi-
vidual, although for him the relationship worked the other way around. According to
Hume, the individual was 'united' and 'one' not by virtue of some inherent pre-social
8
On the Ontological Status of the State
components, but simply because the individual could be ordered and organized in the
same manner as a state. The unity which our imagination imposes upon our selves,
Hume said, is the same kind of unity which 'the reciprocal ties of government and sub-
ordination' impose on the different members of a 'common-wealth' (Hume, 1739-
40/1969: 309). While Hobbes thus regarded man as a metaphor for the state, Hume re-
garded the state as a metaphor for man.
Although many similar examples could be adduced from the works of contempor-
ary and subsequent philosophers, the writings of Hobbes and Hume are of particular
interest in the context of our discussion since they have come to provide the bases for
the two most influential modem accounts of the self. Perhaps we could call them
atomism and empiricism, respectively (Hollis, 1985: 217-33).
For Hobbes man was a pre-social atom, an entity which was fully formed prior to
entering into interaction with other men. 7 Man thus understood consisted of two main
parts — desires, first of all, but also a reasoning capacity which could be compared to
that of a calculating device. Since desire and reason were natural, pre-social, features
of the constitution of man, Hobbes believed they could serve as the foundation on
which a theory of society could be built. Man, he said, had a desire for 'power after
power' and the 'warre of every man against every man' which this quest produced
could only come to an end through the intervention of the almighty Leviathan who or-
ganized the passions of men, pacified social interaction and brought order to society.
If we simplify a complex line of development, we could perhaps say that sub-
sequent philosophers who built on Hobbes came to focus on ways in which the extern-
al coercive authority of Leviathan could be internalized, moved into man himself.
Here, reason was given an increasingly important role as it was upgraded from a mere
calculating device to a faculty vested also with the powers of judgement. John Locke,
for one, agreed that men are pre-social creatures of both passion and reason, but reason
according to him allows us not only to deduce given conclusions from given premises,
but more importantly also to reflect upon ourselves and upon our passions. As a result
of this reflection we can strengthen some of our passions, weaken some others, and in
this way mould, remake and discipline ourselves (Taylor, 1989: 161-6).
According to Hume and all subsequent empiricists, however, all such transcendent-
alist talk was nonsense. Scientists should investigate the world empirically, not simply
posit the existence of various objects in an a priori fashion. What we 'are' should not
be settled by definitional fiat, but instead studied through the evidence provided by our
senses. For a self to exist, Hume believed, there must be an impression which corres-
ponds to this idea, and since we take ourselves to exist continuously, there must be an
impression that remains the same throughout the whole course of our lives (Hume,
9
On the Ontological Status of the State
1739^0/1969: 299-300). But since there are no such constant and invariable impres-
sions, no idea of a self can be derived from them. Ergo, there can be no self and no
personal identity which is extended over time. While other people perhaps may 'per-
ceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself, Hume argued, 'I am cer-
tain there is no such principle in me' (Hume, 1739-40/1969: 300). As an illustration of
this point he turned towards himself:
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, / always stumble on some
particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I
never natch myself si any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but
the perception. (Hume, 1739-40/1969:300)
If there is no empirical evidence for the self, in what sense can we be said to exist?
Hume's answer followed directly from his empiricist convictions. Man, he said, is
'nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed each other
with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement' (Hume,
1739-40/1969:300).
The 'Two-way Vanishing Trick'
The connection between these early modem discussions regarding the ontological
status of the person and our contemporary International Relations scholars' discussions
regarding die ontological status of the state should be obvious. The realists' state is the
Hobbesian man, the irreducible atom from which social life is constructed; the unified,
integrated, rational actor constantly threatened through the helium omnium contra
omnes. Similarly, the pluralists' state is the Humean man, a bundle of ever-changing
wills, desires and preferences, lacking any real coherence or persistence over time.
As I pointed out above, it is difficult to make a choice between these two different
pictures of the state, and it now seems evident that we face the same difficulty in the
case of the two pictures of man. Should we be satisfied with a state which is a precon-
dition of world politics, or should we grant that the state simply does not exist? Should
we accept diat man has an irreducible transcendental status, or should we reject all talk
of transcendence and thus die very notion of a permanent self? Surely both alternatives
are equally unappealing. If we are left with a choice between a pre-social and tran-
scendental self a la Hobbes or a self which is a mere bundle of perceptions and prefer-
ences a la Hume the question of existence can never be conclusively answered. In
either case the self simply vanishes. As Martin Hollis has pointed out, the modem self
... is threatened in two directions. If it reduces to a Humean bundle of prefer-
10
On the Ontological Status of the State
ences, which are then traced to socialisation and hence to the system itself, it
vanishes into the system which it was meant to explain. If it is a Hobbesian core,
so private and so much at a distance from its public, legitimating masks that the
real man is impenetrable, it vanishes from scientific inquiry. The puzzle is how
to avoid this two-way vanishing trick. (Hollis, 1985: 227)
For Hobbes, man was a presupposition of all theorizing, but since that which a theory
presupposes cannot be studied by that very theory, man himself could never be prop-
erly analysed. As far as the realists' view of the state is concerned this metaphysics res-
ulted in a static and state-centric view of the world (Ruggie, 1986: 141; Wendt, 1987:
34(Mr). The origin and formation of the realists' state can never be properly studied
since a time without a state and without a state system has been ruled out by definition.
Similarly, nothing particularly enlightening can be said regarding a possible future in
which the state no longer will remain the most important political unit.
The Humean self, on the other hand, is simply too empty and too indeterminate. If
a person can be reduced to a bundle of perceptions or preferences, then there is sud-
denly no one left to whom these perceptions and preferences can be said to belong. As
a consequence, all notions of choice disappear from the analysis. Since there is no self,
there is no longer anyone around who can assess and choose between different altern-
atives, and what a person does or does not do will instead have to be ascribed to cus-
tom, habit or material necessity (Hume, 1739^0/1969: 447-60). As heirs to this empiri-
cist tradition, the pluralists have always tried to reduce the state to what they claim are
its composite units. Or rather, since it in practice is next to impossible to talk about
world politics without talking about states, the pluralists have been forced to adopt the
traditional language, but always, as it were, in mauvaise foi. Their studies have been
replete with anthropomorphic metaphors which they have had no way of understand-
ing, and for which they have always felt the need to apologise.
The fundamental mistake committed by both atomists and empiricists is that they
have looked for something which quite simply cannot be found. The question of exist-
ence has been formulated in such a way that the only acceptable answers have been
those phrased in terms of that which 'really' exists. As a result of this move the ontolo-
gical debate has turned into a referendum on the possibility of transcendence. If we
with the Hobbesians accept transcendence, then we can agree that there is a location
— otherworldly though it may be — which the self can inhabit; if we with the
Humeans reject transcendence, then we must reject the entire notion of a self. Either
way, however, the self vanishes — from the world with Hobbes and the realists, and in
the world with Hume and the pluralists.
Yet, as I have stressed, both solutions are equally unsatisfactory. We all certainly
11
On the Ontological Status of the State
take our selves to exist — both as individuals and as collectives — but by 'existence'
here we refer neither to something mysterious and transcendental nor to something
fully reducible to empirical sense data. What we are as individuals and as states is not
something metaphysical, yet at the same time it is not something merely physical.
What, or who, then, is this non-metaphysical, yet not-merely-physical being? In con-
cluding this article I will suggest a possible interpretation which, I believe, is able to
put both the individual and the state on a more acceptable, and more secure, ontologic-
al footing. We could call it a 'narrative concept of the self.
A Narrative Concept of the Self
Perhaps we should begin by reminding ourselves how difficult it is in fact to determ-
ine in what sense something really exists. If by 'real existence' we mean what sub-
stance a certain object is composed of, we will often be at a loss for an answer. There
are many things which we take to exist which are neither metaphysical entities nor re-
ducible to physical matter. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, is not a tran-
scendental entity, but neither can it straightforwardly be reduced to pitches of sounds
of varying lengths; Cervantes' Don Quixote surely exists but it is not other-worldly and
not merely a collection of printed squiggles on paper (Dennett, 198 1 : 6-7). On the oth-
er hand, if by 'real existence' we mean how something really should be defined, we
will often find that a conclusive definition is difficult to construct. No matter how we
define a word, there are always some things which we would like to include under the
definition that are excluded by it, and conversely, some things that we would like to
exclude that are included (Taylor, 1970: 155-8). Is 'love', for example, really 'an in-
tense affection for another person based on familial or personal ties'? Is 'God' really 'a
being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the uni-
verse'? (American Heritage Dictionary, 1976). Yes perhaps, we may agree, but
something certainly seems to be missing from these definitions. It would be odd to say
that this is what these notions 'really are' and that they cannot be anything else. Obvi-
ously definitions vary between cultures, different times and different places.
Since in practice it is impossible to talk about what something 'really is' what we
do instead is to talk about the things that this something resembles. We see things as
other things and talk about what they are like; we give a thing 'a name that belongs to
something else' (Aristotle, 1968: 1457b). This process of 'seeing as' is a fundamental
process of the mind which underlies all attempts to understand and explain the world.
That is, the world can be labelled, understood and given meaning with the help of
metaphor (Black, 1955/1981: 63-82; Lakoff and Johnson, 1979; Ricceur, 1975). 8
12
On the Ontological Status of the State
Hence metaphor is not only a feature of poetry, political rhetoric and eloquent dinner
speeches, but it is also indispensable for the most exact and matter-of-fact of our dis-
courses. Consequently, it is not coincidental, and not the result of sloppy linguistic
habits, that physicists talk about "black holes' or atomic 'nuclei'; that biologists talk
about genetic 'codes' or ecological 'systems'; that economists discuss economic 'mar-
kets' that are 'in balance' (Bicchieri, 1988; Black, 1962; Hesse, 1966: 157-77; Rigotti,
1989; Saccaro-Battisti, 1983; White, 1973: 30-1).
Metaphor, I would like to suggest, provides us with a way to escape the philosoph-
ical cul-de-sac where Hobbes and Hume left us. If we cannot think of something 'in it-
self, but only in terms of other things, then 'existence' is not 'absolute existence', but al-
ways instead existence under a certain description (Goodman, 1984: 29-53). If mean-
ing is made with the help of metaphor, then nothing can ever be 'in itself, and
everything must derive whatever existence we give it from a comparison with other
things. Putting the same point epigramatically we could say that all questions concern-
ing 'being' really are questions concerning 'being as' (Ricceur, 1975: 323-99).
If this point is accepted we understand why the international relations theorists we
reviewed above had difficulties talking about the state in other than metaphorical
terms. They had to rely on metaphor since no other — no literal — language was
available to them. Since they were unable to say anything at all about what the state
really is they were forced to talk about whatever they took the state to resemble. But if
that is the case, there is of course no reason to be apologetic about this choice of
vocabulary. These are not 'mere' metaphors and not 'short-hands' for anything else.
Metaphor is rock-bottom. To ask for something more fundamental is to ask for too
much, but also to ask for more than we need.
Yet metaphor alone does not suffice. A metaphor provides a single picture of life —
a Still-leben — but it cannot deal with life as it unfolds over time. Before we can make
proper sense of things we need to rum the many single images into a 'movie' which
can run parallel to the movements of which we take our lives to exist. We do this as we
tell stories about the metaphors we have come to embrace. First we see something as
some-thing, in other words, and then we construct a narrative about this something. In
this way narrative becomes the process through which human beings make sense of
the unfolding of their lives. When we wonder what happened, we tell a story that
provides an answer; when we wonder what something is, we tell a story of how this
something came to be; when we wonder who we are ourselves, we tell a story which
locates us in the context of a past, a present and a future.
As theorists of narrative point out, all stories share a number of features (Brooks,
1992; Danto, 1965/1985; Martin, 1986). Most conspicuously perhaps they unfold
13
On the Ontological Status of the State
between a beginning and an end connected by means of a plot. The plot is characterist-
ically structured around a couple of metaphors which tell us what the main characters
are like, on what terms they interact, and what kinds of situations they are facing. The
plot has a tension which typically is due to the scarcity of some vital resource — per-
haps talent, time, knowledge or money. The main character wants to do something, but
she lacks a crucial piece of information; her time is running out; she is too poor or too
short-sighted. The tension requires release and release can only come about through
the actions which the main character undertakes. 9 She quits her job, her husband or her
parents' village; dies in her nineties, in abject poverty, or in Italy. As readers we under-
stand the story as we respond to it with expectations regarding its completion. Al-
though we do not want the story to end, we must constantly envision an ending for the
story to make sense to us (Kermode, 1966).
Also when we make sense of our individual or collective selves we do so with the
help of narrative. What we 'are' is thus neither a question of what essences constitute us
nor a question of how we conclusively should be denned, but instead a question of
how we are seen and a question of which stories are told about us. 'The actions and
sufferings of life', as David Carr puts it, 'can be viewed as a process of telling ourselves
stories, listening to those stories, and acting them out or living them through' (Carr,
1986: 61). '[M]an', according to Alasdaire Maclntyre, 'is in his actions and practice, as
well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal' (Maclntyre, 1985: 216). A
man', as Jean-Paul Sartre concurs,
is always a story-teller, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees
everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his life as though he
were recounting it. (Sartre, 1938/1972: 64) 10
Following these authors and many others perhaps we could talk about a 'narrative
concept of the self (Schafter, 1981: 25-9; Somers, 1994; Ricoeur, 1990: 170). 11
What we are as subjects, I would like to suggest, is thus neither more nor less than
the total collection of stories that we tell and that are told about us. Our selves thus un-
derstood are neither the shadowy denizens of some metaphysical non-space, nor
merely the physical attributes of our bodies. This is of course not to deny that our bod-
ies are genetically programmed in various ways and that we have physiological needs
which do not depend on consciousness. The point is simply that we as persons are
more than physical matter and that this 'more' is what comes into being through the
stories that we tell. 12 Similarly, while a state may consist of all kinds of bureaucratic
structures, institutional mechanisms and other body-like organs, it is — as an entity
endowed with an identity — necessarily at the mercy of the interpretations given to it
14
On the Ontological Status of the State
through the stories in which it features.
The Self Reappears
If this argument is accepted, we are now in a position to return to our discussion
above and to solve the mystery of the vanishing self. As we shall see, although neither
the atomists/realists nor the empiricists/pluralists had the theoretical means to realize it,
they did themselves chance upon a solution. The self that constantly seemed to be dis-
appearing was in fact there all along.
Consider first Hume and the pluralists. As we are now able to see, the self that they
failed to locate appeared as soon as they let go of their empiricist dogmatism and
simply started telling the self s story. The language in which Hume delivered his refut-
ation is highly revealing — 'For my part, ' he explained, 'when / enter most intimately
into what / call myself; fl always stumble'; T never catch myself at any time without a
perception,' etc. 13 Although Hume was thus trying to reject the very notion of a self, he
could only do so as someone who 'entered', 'stumbled', 'failed to catch', etc. (Ricoeur,
1990: 154). There he is, clearly visible to all readers, in the story he tells us about him-
self! Similarly the state which the pluralists rejected reappeared as soon as they
stopped searching for it and instead started discussing concrete events and actual world
politics. While the pluralists may have deconstructed the state in the theoretical sec-
tions of their books, they very quickly re-constructed it in the narrative sections. Their
studies are replete with references to 'Russian interventions', 'American reactions', and
'Cuban military installations' (Allison, 1971: 101-43).
A similar argument can be made for Hobbes and the realists. Although their self
was supposed to be defined in an a priori fashion, it could really only be grasped when
talked about in narrative terms. In fact, historical narrative features prominently in both
Hobbes' and the realists' analyses. This is never actual history to be sure, since any ac-
tual history inevitably would reveal the contingent and constructed character of both
the individual and the collective self. Instead it is a story where the self is featured in a
standardized and utterly predictable role; it is the self as a cartoon figure. According to
Hobbes' version of this simplistic script, man escaped from the state of nature and
turned himself into a civilized member of society. His account has a happy ending and
— much as the Christian accounts it was designed to supplement — it is a moral story
of self-overcoming. Thus while Hobbes indeed took man to be transcendentally given,
it was only through this story of redemption that man became real. The pre-socially
given man comes to appear through the story told about his entry into society.
Story-telling has been an important preoccupation also of the members of the real-
15
On the Ontological Status of the State
ist camp. Inherently sceptical regarding the possibility of ever constructing a 'science'
of international politics, many realists have instead turned their attention to a study of
history (Morgenthau, 1946/1974: 37-40). 14 History, they have argued, can illustrate
principles which cannot straight-forwardly be put into scientific models or perhaps
even explicitly into words. The statesmen of the present can derive the wisdom they
need only by studying the 'lessons' provided by the statesmen of the past. As a result of
such exercises, we will gradually come to understand the true nature of the state. Thus
while the state may be transcendental, and hence hidden, the 'spirit of the nation' does
leave its trace in time. In this form the state may not be directly empirically verifiable,
but it is nevertheless present and this presence can be felt by anyone who seriously en-
gages in historical research.
Yet, and in sharp contrast to Hobbes, the realists' story is not a secular theodicy. It is
not a happy story of redemption, but instead a pessimistic account of constant insecur-
ity and perpetual threats. As a story it is of a peculiarly monotonous and repetitive
kind. It is, we could say, a story of an eternal return (Kundera, 1987: 3-6; Nietzsche,
1882/1974: 229-30, 273-4; Nietzsche, 1885/1968: 267-72). As such it will always be
very unsatisfactory, perhaps even somewhat uncanny. Human beings are not prepared
to accept that there are conditions — a 'state of nature' — which does not end, and for
this reason alone the realist teachings will necessarily appear immoral. Since it has no
proper ending, the realists' story has no readily graspable sense morale and no morally
edifying conclusion can be drawn from it. Not surprisingly, the being — the state —
which appears in, and through, this account will at the same time seem unbearably
heavy and unbearably light. 15
The Politics of Story-telling
If stories give meaning to our lives; if we as subjects are nothing more and nothing less
than the stories we tell and that are told about us, then our stories will come to have
very immediate political significance. This must be the case since the realm of mean-
ing is where values, privileges, rights and obligations, are allocated. Meaning has
value as such, we like to believe, and thus that which we have made sense of will ne-
cessarily appear as valid, and since valid also as legitimate and true. In this way, by
telling the story of how the past came to produce the present, an individual or a group
is able to back up his, her or its claim on economic, social and political resources. Our
narratives will support, or undermine, a certain perspective on the world and hence
also a certain distribution of power.
But stories will also have political significance since they determine which actions
16
On the Ontological Status of the State
we undertake. The tension of a plot needs to be released, I pointed out above, and re-
lease can only come about through the actions that the characters of the story perform.
From the perspective of these characters, the 'directedness' of the story — its move-
ment from 'once-upon-a-time' to 'happily-ever-after' — thus comes to correspond to
the intentional quality of action. To have an intention to do something is always to loc-
ate a possible future action in the context of the plot of a narrative (von Wright, 1971:
115). In this way stories come to indicate which actions are, or are not, worth under-
taking. This is also the case for the stories we tell about our collective selves. The nar-
ratives we construct about our state will specify who we are and what role we play in
the world; how our 'national interests' are to be defined, or which foreign policy to pur-
sue.
Given the political significance of narrative we should not be surprised that stories
often are contested, doubted and rejected. Yet the political salience — the degree of
'politicization' — of a certain narrative necessarily depends on how many, and which,
features of a story that the different audiences of a society are willing to accept. Most
of the time, of course, we simply take our selves for granted and go about pursuing the
kinds of goals that people, or groups, like ourselves are wont to pursue. Most of the
time, that is, our stories concern our interests, not our identities; while there may be
disagreement about what we want, we usually do agree on who we are (Ringmar,
1996: Chap 1-3). If this was not the case we would not be able to talk about an integ-
rated and coherent 'person' or an integrated and coherent 'state'.
Social stability, the ability to predict the future, satisfaction with one's life, all pre-
suppose the existence of a culture where there is a wide agreement on shared social
meanings. The fundamental metaphors of a society must 'grow old' and 'die', as it
were, and the stories told about these metaphors must become entrenched in social in-
stitutions and reflected in people's unreflective, everyday, actions (Ricceur, 1988a: 165-
81; Shelley, 1821/1966: 418). This is also indeed the case for a wide variety of social
settings — for 'traditional' societies described by anthropologists, 'communitarian' so-
cieties described by social philosophers and for contemporary Western, 'post-ideolo-
gical', societies. Naturally this description also fits a totalitarian society such as
Czechoslovakia discussed by Vaclav Havel. Under the Communist regime, Havel tells
us, only one official set of metaphors and one official story were allowed. Czechoslov-
akia was a 'workers' state', a 'dictatorship of the proletariat', that was "building social-
ism' and a 'classless society'; the plot was constructed with the help of Marxist 'laws of
history' which gave a scientific, and hence objective and complete, explanation of the
past, the present, as well as the future (Havel, 1991 : 335-6).
The difference between a traditional, a communitarian, a post-ideological and a
17
On the Ontological Status of the State
post-totalitarian society, I would like to suggest, lies not in the fact that the available
set of meanings is restricted in the one case but not in the other — meanings are al-
ways restricted — but rather in the degree to which a taken-for-granted story is able to
grab, and hold, the attention of its audience; the degree to which we are still willing to
listen to the official story and to tell, and retell, it in our turn. What made Czechoslov-
akia under the Communists into a totalitarian society — or a 'post-totalitarian' society
in Havel's vocabulary — was quite simply that no one any longer believed in the only
story that was allowed to be told. And the reason for this cynicism was in rum that the
official story was so utterly lacking in everything which we identified above as re-
quirements of a successful narrative — individual, believable, characters who make
real choices under conditions of uncertainty in a plot where the end is concealed and
thus open to the future. 'Where everything is known ahead of time, the story has noth-
ing to grow out of. Obviously, the totalitarian system is in essence (and in principle)
directed against the story' (Havel, 1991: 333). 16
Yet, no political or social order can last for ever. This must be the case since the
world which a particular story has helped us make sense of will be only one meaning-
ful world among others. There is, in other words, always a difference between the total
number of interpretations which could be constructed and the particular subset of these
which we happen to embrace. As a result there will always be unacknowledged facts
to discover, and there will be more such facts the more thoroughly entrenched a partic-
ular narrative is. 17 The discrepancy between the 'actual' and the 'potential' opens up a
space of cultural and political opportunity that can be seized upon by any individual or
group that is able to present an alternative account of the world. To the extent that this
alternative story is accepted, the taken-for-granted narratives will be undermined and
public confidence in political leaders and social institutions that depend upon them
will weaken accordingly. The result is an occasion when not only our interests, but
also our identities are called into question; when we suddenly will be presented to
ourselves as a new kind of character participating in a different kind of plot. In the case
of an individual, perhaps we could call such a time an 'identity crisis'; in the case of a
society, perhaps we could call it a 'formative moment'. 18
Since so much is at stake, formative moments will always be characterized by in-
tense rhetorical battles fought between different groups each advocating their own in-
terpretation of the world. In these battles, traditional power-holders will try to reaffirm,
or reinterpret, the old narratives which have kept them in power, while challengers will
try to recode the established metaphors to suit their new purposes. One example of
such a formative moment we have already discussed — the political battles through
which the state came to be established as the dominant political entity in the early
18
On the Ontological Status of the State
modern era. Here princes, who called themselves 'sovereign', fashioned collective
selves for themselves and their 'subjects' through stories which retraced the glorious
history of the common-wealth to biblical or classical origins. Yet few of these stories
were left unopposed, and alternative genealogies were soon proposed by traditional
feudal lords, independent communities of peasants, or by the Catholic church in
Rome. 19
A similar rhetorical battle was fought at the time of the French Revolution as the
deeply entrenched narratives of the anciens regimes came to be abruptly replaced by
stories organized around the metaphors of liberie, egalite et fraternite (Chartier, 1990;
Furet, 1978; Hunt, 1984; Ringmar, 1993). Since the whole point of the Revolution was
to make a clean break with the past, however, the story which established the identity
of the revolutionary state — and the story which buttressed the revolutionaries' claim
to power — was not told as a genealogy, but instead as a story which connected the
present to an imaginary future. It was the coming glories of la patrie which would
make up for all the sacrifices of the present (Becker, 1932: 1 19-68). As we might ex-
pect, the past was instead the territory explored by the rival accounts through which
conservative forces all over Europe sought to reclaim their lost privileges (Baker,
1990: 59-85; Pocock, 1989: 202-32).
Another formative moment took place at the rum of the 20 th century when a grow-
ing labour movement began to question the story through which the state had been in-
terpreted during the preceding one hundred years. What the workers demanded was an
eight hour work-day, but also access to the political and social institutions through
which the state was governed. The new stories concerned 'democracy' and 'universal
suffrage', and the state they described was a 'state of the people' and later also 'a wel-
fare state'. Naturally these radical demands were opposed by members of the bour-
geois ruling elite who sought to buttress their traditional position by inventing tradi-
tions of different kinds and by constructing a 'national history' filled with founding
fathers, heroic kings and all sorts of other nationalistic paraphernalia (Furet, 1978: 19-
22, 138ff; Hobsbawm, 1983: 263-307; Ringmar, 1993: 237-8).
In several places in the Third World, most notably in Islamic countries, a similar
rhetorical battle is today raging between modernizing 'nation-builders' and fundament-
alist groups. 20 According to the modernizers' story — and according to the many West-
em scholars and aid agencies who help ghost-write it — these states are 'backward' or
'underdeveloped and must 'catch up' with the 'developed' countries; move from 'dark-
ness' and 'obscurantism' to 'enlightenment' and 'reason', that is, to embrace democracy
and a capitalist economic system. The fundamentalist's story, on the other hand, places
the state in a religiously sanctioned ontological order. There is only one God, accord-
19
On the Ontological Status of the State
ing to this account, and the state must be brought into conformity with the laws which
this God has made known through his Prophet. No progress or development outside of
the law is possible since Islam is the last religion, the last dispensation. To submit to its
stipulations is to gain contact with the eternal; to be safe in that which never changes.
Yet as soon as people start to act in terms of this fundamentalist account change may
be very rapid indeed. 'We will make a revolution', as the Imam proclaims in Salman
Rushdie's The Satanic Verses,
that is a revolt not only against a tyrant, but against history.' . . . History is the blood-wine
that must no longer be drunk. History the intoxicant, the creation and possession of the
Devil, of the great Shaitan, the greatest of the lies — progress, science, rights — against
which the Imam has set his face. History is a deviation from the Path, knowledge is a de-
lusion, because the sum of knowledge was complete on the day AlLah finished his revela-
tion to Mahound. 'We will unmake the veil of History . . . and when it is unravelled we
will see Paradise standing there, in all its glory and light. (Rushdie, 1988/1992: 210-1)
Thus began the 'untime of the Imam' (Rushdie, 1988/1992: 215).
The End of the Story
At the beginning of this article I made a brief reference to current debates regarding
the future of the state, and in order for this article to come to a proper conclusion let us
return to this theme. There are, we should note, a number of different versions of the
'end-of-the-state' thesis. In a liberal version, the state is bound to become increasingly
irrelevant due to the impact of economic, political and social interdependence. In a
classical Marxist version, the state will 'wither away' once the fundamental contra-
dictions of society have been resolved. In a recently much touted, post-Hegelian ver-
sion, history — or rather 'History' — has itself come to an end and as a result there is
no longer a distinct place either for man or for the state as traditionally understood
(Fukuyama, 1992: 287-339). In what we perhaps could call a 'post-Nietzschean' ver-
sion, finally, we are informed regarding the imminent 'death of the subject' (Foucault,
1966/1973: 387; Rorty, 1989: 23-69). According to the proponents of this last thesis,
'humanism' was the ideology of the modem era, but we are now entering a 'postmod-
ern' era in which the obsessive concern with man and his place and presence in the
world soon will be forgotten. 'La mort de 1 'homme' will accompany, and be accom-
panied by, 'la mortde Vetaf (Bartelson, 1995: 237-48).
If we analyse these eschatologies in the light of our own discussion, a first thing to
notice is how the debate regarding the future of the state is directly linked to a debate
on the future of man. As I argued, man and state were bom at the same time, they grew
20
On the Ontological Status of the State
up together, and hence it is not unreasonable to expect them to die a simultaneous
death. Or more distinctly put: what we are discussing here is not only the future of the
state or the future of man, but rather the future of subjectivity tout court. A second
thing to notice is how closely subjectivity is connected to our ability to construct stor-
ies about our selves. This conclusion fits well with a point I made above — if we, as
subjects, are nothing more and nothing less than the total collection of stories we tell
about our selves, then the end of subjectivity will come when no stories can any longer
be told about us. Man will disappear when we have come to the end, not of our own
personal narratives, but to the end of narrative as such. Similarly, the state will disap-
pear when the traditional 'meta-narratives' of our culture, including the Enlightenment
idea of a 'universal history', are no longer passed on to new generations of audiences
(Koselleck, 1985: 33-8).
Are we, then, approaching this end? In support of this thesis some writers have
pointed to our contemporary scepticism towards stories and storytelling (Lyotard,
1979: 98-108). While the 19 th century was the golden age of the narrative — as
demonstrated, for example, by the rise of the novel, by the importance attached to the
historical discipline or by the impact of nationalism — stories can, at the end of the
20 th century, no longer seduce us in quite the same way. During the last 50 years we
have become accustomed to playing games not only with our novels and with our his-
tory books, but also with our selves.
Such loose apocalyptic talk is, however, not in itself evidence of the end of sub-
jectivity. In fact the very opposite conclusion could be drawn. It should, after all, not
surprise us that an ontology based on narratives will be profoundly preoccupied with
endings (Kermode, 1966: 93-124). The end is, after all, what makes the story possible
in the first place, and by envisioning this end we make stories make sense. This kind of
envisioning is, I would argue, precisely what the discussion regarding 'the end of sub-
jectivity' is all about. There is, in other words, a fundamental, yet highly ambiguous re-
lationship between the end of the stories we tell about our selves — death — and the
meanings we attach to our lives. On the one hand, death means the destruction of our
selves. When our story is over we will no longer be, and for this reason death con-
stantly threatens to make every moment of the story leading up to it lose its meaning.
Death may terrify us for the simple reason that we never will be in a position to tell the
story of what it was like to go through it. Death cannot be emasculated through narrat-
ive since death is the end of the narrative.
On the other hand, however, death is also a prerequisite of all stories. The story
would not be if it did not end somewhere, and thus we — the subjects who appear in,
and through, it — would not be either. This does not mean that death is the meaning of
21
On the Ontological Status of the State
life, but it does mean that death makes a meaningful life possible. We constantly need
to envision the end of our story since only the end can make sense of, and give legit-
imacy to, the present. This is true not only for our individual but also for our collective
selves, and it explains why politics needs its Utopias and why intellectuals constantly
prophesy the end of this, that or the other.
Will subjectivity, then, ever come to a final end? Will individual and collective
selves one day no longer be? Perhaps, perhaps not. What is certain, however, is that
while the content that we give to our selves — the plots that we construct about our
lives — will change dramatically in the future just as they have changed dramatically
in the past, a self will exist as long as stories are told about it. To envision an end to
these stories is a crucial part of what it means to understand a story and as such a pre-
requisite of subjectivity which in fact has very little to do with its eventual demise.
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1 This simplification can be justified in either of two ways. First of all I take it to be a fact
that most practising scholars belong to either of these two camps. Secondly, I believe
that these two positions exhaust the analytical options as they are presented today, i.e. all
other potential positions could be reduced to one or the other of the positions I discuss.
2 The most famous such court is of course the one at Urbino (see
Castiglione, 1528/1959).
3 The noun 'subject' is derived from the Latin subjectus meaning 'lying under or near',
'adjacent', 'exposed' or 'inferior', and is in turn derived from the past participle of the
Latin subicere, 'to place under'. See 'Subject', The Ba.rnhart Dictionary of Etymology,
1988, or 'Subject', in Johnson, 1755/1968, Vol. II.
4 In the Renaissance 'common-wealth' was of course the preferred
terminology.
5 On the use of perspective in theatre, see Orgel, 1 975 : 10-11.
6 For an illustration see, for example, Machiavelli's description of the world
scene as he had observed it during his career as a diplomat (Machiavelli,
1961: 133).
7 As Hobbes made clear, the life of man in this pre-social state was not only
'poor, nasty, brutish and short', but also 'solitary' (Hobbes, 1651/1968: 186;
compare Taylor, 1989: 143-76; 187-210).
8 Throughout this article I use 'metaphor' as synonymous with 'analogy'. For
a justification, see Lakoff and Turner (1989: 133).
9 Plot, as Aristotle suggested, is the mimesis of action. For a discussion see Ricoeur.
(1988b: xi, 32-42).
10 'Un homme, c'est toujours un conteur d'histoires, il vit entoure, de ses
histoires et des histoires d'autrui, il voit tout de ce qui lui arrive a travers
elles; et il cherche a vivre sa vie comme s'il la racontait.' (My own
translation.)
1 1 For an analogous discussion regarding the state, see the contributions to
Bhabha. (1990).
12 On the distinction between 'persons' and 'bodies' see, for example,
Oksenberg Rorty (1988: 61-77).
13 See above, p. 448. Emphasis added.
14 This is the case for the classical form of realism and not the more recent,
Waltzian, variety.
1 5 The precise ontological import of the myth of an eternal return is debated.
To Nietzsche and Kundera eternal return signifies heaviness — das
grosste Schwergewicht; (Nietzsche, 1882/1974: 273) — but constant
repetition could also gradually efface an entity and thus make it lighter.
The cosmological basis of the myth is of course rejected by modern
science. For a discussion, see Eliade (1949).
1 6 Control of the official story was of course precisely what kept the
bureaucrats of Oceania busy. Also in Oceania only one, completely
meaningless, story was permitted. Official story without meaning is
totalitarianism without purpose, that is, terror. 'The object of persecution is
persecution. The object of torture is
torture. The object of power is power' (Orwell, 1949/1989: 276).
1 7 This fact accounts for the peculiar fragility of a totalitarian society.
Compare Arendt (1977: 177).
18 The notion of an 'identity crisis' is discussed in Erikson (1958/1993: 41-2,
261-2) compare Ringmar, 1996: Chap. 3; Scott, 1990: 202-7.
19 Battles of this kind are a main theme of Skinner (1978). The case of England is
discussed in Walzer (1965), and the case of Sweden in Ringmar (1996, Chap. 6).
20 On the Islamic countries see, for example, Gellner (1992). More generally on the
rhetoric of nation-building, see, for example, Apter (1963: 57-104).
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