ABOUT THE STATE | Muchamad Ali Safa'at ABOUT THE STATE1

ABOUT THE STATE
AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

ANCIENT GREEK
• CONDITION:
– A city state (polis)
– Society:
• Citizens (based on heredity)
• Slaves
• Foreign or Metic

– Struture of state:
• Assembly or Ecclesia
• Magistrate
• Council of fivehundred and popular juries

ANCIENT GREEK THINKER
SOCRATES
• The duty of the state was to teach
people the virtue for the great
happiness and the higest soul.

• There are law and justice in the heart
of every human. The law and justice
shall be state guidance for the calm
and pleasure.

PLATO
• The republic :
• idea world and reality world  norm
• Idea world:
– Truth  logic
– Beautyness  Aesthetic
– Morality  ethica

• The goal of the state was to teach the
people what is and how to reach the idea
world.
• The State should lead by the philosopher
(the Philosopher King).

The statesman and the law

• 4 types of state: Timocracy, oligarchy,
democracy, tyrani, monarchy.
• Mixed Stated : Democracy - Monarchy

ARISTOTELES
• The Purpose of the state:
– Fullfil the people interest
– to enforce the good life

• Ideal form: Monarchy, democracy,
aristocracy.
• Corruption form: tyrani/despoty,
oligarchy/plutocracy, mobocracy.
• Mixed= Polity (the second best) 
Rechtstaats, Rule of Law, Constitutional
Democracy.

HELEN – ROMANA
EPICURUS
• All men are essentially selfish and seek

only their own good. The existence of
Society because the need of human.
There is no interest of society but the
interest of every individual within the
society.
• Materialism. There is no morality of
virtue but happiness.
• Law and state exist to maintain security.

ZENO
• Law is the product from the
reasonableness of human as part of the
God will’s.
• God is eternal, so the Will’s is eternal.
Law is eternal in every time and place.
There is no ius-constituendum and iusconstitutum.
• State is part of the pantheistic God.
• The begining of the Stoicism.

THE CYNICS (Anarchism)

• Develop by Antisthenes
• The wise man have to fullfil all the
need by himself (self-sufficing) and
cosmopolitan.

POLYBIOS
• The cyclish verlop
Oclocracy

Monarchy

Democracy

Tyrani

Oligarchy

Aristocracy

The Roman

Cicero and Ulpianus
• Cicero (natural law)
– State as bond of law (vinculum juris)
– Law is not the state product, but an
antecendent. The state is the creation of
the law.

• Ulpianus
– Tractat between people with the Caesar
as civil law (lex regina). The Caesar
absorb the power of the people.

The state of Roman
• Kingdom
• Republic (by the consul)
• Principat (the caesarismus)
– solus publica suprema lex
– princep legibus solutus est

• Dominat

MIDDLE AGE
• Agustinus: Civitas dei – Civitas Terena
• Thomas Aquinas: lex aeterna, lex
duvina, lex naturalis, positive law.
• Marsiglio di Padua: People
souveregnity.

RENAISSANCE
• Niccolo Machiavelli
“A prince being thus obliged to know well how to
act as a best must imitate the fox and the lion,
for the lion cannot protect himself from traps and
the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One
must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a
lion to frighten wolves”
• Jean Bodin
• JJ Rouseau
• Montesqeiu
• John Locke

• Paul Laband
• George Jellinek

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• THE NATURE OF STATE