Past and Present

During the nineteenth century, and even today, the expression raison d’état is very seldom used. ¹ In many ways it only has a meaning which is narrowly restricted from a historical point of view, and it is used to describe the particular spirit of seventeenth-century power politics. It is least used by the very science which stands most in need of the central concept of raison d’état—namely, the general theory of the State. Nevertheless the thing itself has by no means died out, and has continued to live on in another terminology, both in a practical and a theoretical manner. The problem of power, power politics, the idea of the power-State—these are the expressions used today instead; and these expressions are acceptable, although they do not succeed in bringing out so clearly the innermost essence of the thing, that vital artery of the State, simultaneously rational and natural, and progressing always from the natural to the spiritual. It was with the reservation that one must always remain conscious of this essence, that we too have made use of the expression, the idea of the power-State.