When mankind has achieved social organization, as we have stated, and when civilization in the world has thus become a fact, people need someone to exercise a restraining influence and keep them apart, for aggressiveness and injustice are in the animal nature of man. The weapons made for the defense of human beings against the aggressiveness of dumb animals do not suffice against the aggressiveness of man to man, because all of them possess those weapons. Thus, something else is needed for defense against the aggressiveness of human beings toward each other. It could not come from outside, because all the other animals fall short of human perceptions and inspiration. The person who exercises a restraining influence, therefore, must be one of themselves. He must dominate them and have power and authority over them, so that no one of them will be able to attack another. This is the meaning of royal authority.
It has thus become clear that royal authority is a natural quality of man which is absolutely necessary to mankind. The philosophers mention that it also exists among certain dumb animals, such as the bees and the locusts. One discerns among them the existence of authority and obedience to a leader. They follow the one of them who is distinguished as their leader by his natural characteristics and body. However, outside of human beings, these things exist as the result of natural disposition and divine guidance, and not as the result of an ability to think or to administrate. "He gave everything its natural characteristics, and then guided it." [Qur'an 20.50(52)]
The philosophers go further. They attempt to give logical proof of the existence of prophecy and to show that prophecy is a natural quality of man. In this connection, they carry the argument to its ultimate consequences and' say that human beings absolutely require some authority to exercise a restraining influence. They go on to say that such restraining influence exists through the religious law (that has been) ordained by God and revealed to mankind by a human being. (This human being) is distinguished from the rest of mankind by special qualities of divine guidance that God gave him, in order that he might find the others submissive to him and ready to accept what he says. Eventually, the existence of a (restraining) authority among them and over them becomes a fact that is accepted without the slightest disapproval or dissent.
This proposition of the philosophers is not [necessary],* as one can see. Existence and human life can materialize without (the existence of prophecy) through injunctions a person in authority may devise on his own or with the help of a group feeling that enables him to force the others to follow him wherever he wants to go....This is in contrast with human life in the state of anarchy, with no one to exercise a restraining influence. That would be impossible.--Ibn Khaldun The Muqadimmah (translated by F. Rosenthal), Chapter 1, First Prefatory Discussion, p. 88.
When we first encounter this passage in The Muqadimmah (recall this post), our attention may well be drawn to the curious mixture of familiar Aristotelian tropes (man is by nature political) with proto-Hobbesian tropes inscribed in an equally almost familiar feeling stadial account of history (moving from pre-civilized to civilized stages). Human political life is distinguished from the bestial kinds of political life in that the latter do not involve rational and administrative capacities of the group leader. Curiously, and somewhat slyly, Ibn Khaldun suggests here, too, that God's providence covers animal political life, but is not intrinsic to human political life.
Ibn Khaldun then returns (recall this post) to his running critique of the philosophers (Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Ibn Rushd), who he (somewhat unfairly) presents as holding that prophecy is required for the founding of all cities.* But interestingly enough, even though Ibn Khaldun ignores here (but not elsewhere) much of what these philosophers say about the metaphysics and cognitive apparatus of prophecy, he is not wrong (albeit a bit cynical) to suggest that at bottom the philosophical conception of prophecy-legislation boils to being the kind of person that gets others to submit to one's teaching. It's unfair because the philosophers argue repeatedly that theirs is (what we would call) a normative ideal, and that there are many 'ignorant' and imperfect cities that lack a proper prophetic-legislative foundation.
Ibn Khaldun then introduces one of his central ideas: the significance of group feeling. Earlier, when he had talked about group feeling, he had emphasized the role it plays in mutual cooperation. (Society presupposes the division of labor.) It is a means toward facilitating such cooperation. When you have the group feeling political order will flourish. But crucially, for Ibn Khaldun group feeling can be shaped and controlled by political leaders and it also facilitates their authority and rule. (So a few pages before he had talked of the ruling "men who controlled the group feeling.") It is, thus, a central way in which dynastic power can be kept (or lost). (It does so, in part, by promoting pride in the group.) So, to simplify his discussion: group feeling is a means to regulate the dispositions that facilitate political unity.
Group feeling is co-affectation or mutual sympathy of a particular unity. Elsewhere Ibn Khaldon is quite clear that there are some outer limits to how far it can extend, and how durable it may be. But there is no natural unit (the tribe, the nation, etc.) that group feeling attaches itself to--it is, thus, rather malleable and the group feeling that generates, say, tribal or national identity can be developed in many different ways. (Some other time I return to this.)
Now, one often thinks of the dangers of nationalism in terms of the threat it may pose to internal outsiders or non-national-others. Even those that defend nationalism (recall) in terms of something anchored in common traditional law and religion, tend to think of nationalism as a means toward embracing differences among nations in the service of defending a particular (say) national heritage (or identity, territory, etc.). But Ibn Khaldun notes here that group feeling is a means of control by a leader of his own followers; group feeling will allow the leader to have others do what he wants. That is to say, group-mutual sympathy can easily generate the self-subordination of the (vast majority of the) members of the in-group.**
*Rosenthal has 'logical,' but I think in context it's clear that Ibn Khaldun means what we would call 'necessary.'
**Ibn Khaldun thinks such subordination necessary to the survival of political life--it's not something he is especially critical of (as long as there is also justice in the group). If one wishes to avoid the risks of such self-subordination, one can either find a means for the whole group to be self-governing (Rousseau's solution); or one must find a means toward securing minimal unity without some mutual sympathy (as some Kantians wish to do).
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