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Duties & Rights
Both duties and rights are both fundamental pillars of Mazzinian political thought, but duties play a special ethical role that connects the individual not just to wider society, but to the rest of Humanity as a whole.
We’re used to thinking about duties are stuffy, authoritarian, social imperatives that are attached to all sorts of harmful ideologies. Duties as a husband, as a wife, as a son, as a daughter, all carry traditionalist and reactionary connotations that feel patronizing.
Duties almost seem primitive in the age of maximum liberty for the individual. But for a Mazzinian, duties are the most probably the most revolutionary aspect of the doctrine, and the only way toward effective social action.
Along with nationality and humanity, duties were Mazzini’s own distinctive contribution to political thought. Though by no means the first to discuss duties, which have been the subject of religion and philosophy across cultures and history, he managed to present them in such a way that made distinctly revolutionary and a driver for individual political action.
For Mazzini, duties were part of the divinely endowed missions each individual had to humanity, their family, their country, and to themselves. They were meant to be complementary and not opposed to rights, and were the basis for his entire ethical conception for the individual.
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Key Ideas of Mazzinian Duties:
Rights as Means, Duties as Ends
Rights provide the essential freedom and security needed for an individual to carry out their higher moral mission to society.Duties as the Social Bonds
Duties turn isolated individuals into a voluntary association capable of acting for the common good.Universal but Contextual
Duties are real in all times and places, but what they demand depends on your capacities and situation.Progress over Happiness
Life’s aim is moral and social improvement for Humanity, not maximizing personal happiness or comfort.Basis of Revolutionary Action
Duties supply the motive and discipline for effective change when rights alone produce little practical transformation.
Understanding Mazzinian Duties
For Mazzinianism today, duties are an attempt to respond to the rights-first politics that still dominate most of our social considerations. Particularly in the West, the "doctrine of rights" remain almost the unquestionable contexts for when we discuss political problems.
Whether it is a discussion over protecting our negative rights—those actions we should not do onto others—or arguing for the extension of positive rights—those actions we are owed from society—these arguments remain firmly in the camp of maximizing individual happiness.
This has been an important point to reach in history. With the protection of our negative rights, life, property and liberty of thought and action, have been enshrined in our constitutions and societies, and we have generally excepted that a violent or larcenous behavior is wrong. With the extension of positive rights, we have important protection such as education, healthcare, and other social services, that have reduced human misery.
However, despite the undeniable progress of the doctrine of rights, it has also led society to an insatiable situation in which the never-ending extension of our rights and the maximizing of our own individual happiness as the sole pursuit of life, are having negative effects.
Sole focus on our interests has created a world in which indifference and Hobbesian mistrust is gripping our society in way that is contributing to overall moral decline. We are skeptics of self-sacrifice and are unwilling to devote ourselves to others for the sake of our own desires. In other words, we forsaking our duties is having negative consequences.
Why We Dislike Duties
Unlike rights, duties are that which you owe to others, regardless of reciprocity. Duties are actions that we ought to do for others if we are to be morally good. These are imperatives to do the right thing, even if you are reluctant to do so, and even sacrifice your own happiness for the sake of others’ wellbeing.
These are duties to develop and educate ourselves to their highest possible point, not for the sake of our own health or material gain, but so we are ready to be the most effective to society in order to play our part. Duties are the recognition that we exist for far greater cause in history than our own happiness.
“Your most important duties are positive. It is not enough not to do: you are bound to act. It is not enough to limit yourselves to not acting against the Law: you are bound to act according to the Law.
It is not enough not to do harm to your brethren: you are bound to do good to them.”
This perspective of duties is quite offensive to our modern sensitivities. We are used to believing that our happiness is the ultimate goal of human life and that its pursuit is the most noble, and we react strongly to the idea that we should sublimate ourselves to anything.
In many cases, this offense is fairly taken since throughout almost all histories and societies, guilt has been weaponized in order to induce the obedience of children and other adults to get them to act as society wants them to act, all under the pretext of doing your duty. Wars started by leaders for no real apparent reason force ordinary citizens to fight for them under the guise of doing their duty.
This is all too often the case under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. There have been sectarian incidences too, where individuals feel as if they have a duty to their race or religion, or worse, have used a doctrine of duties to justify unequal treatment between humans. Most of these are also arbitrary and senseless restrictions on our freedom, and the reason why they are considered unfair is not just because it violates our natural rights, but it also denies us our happiness.
Mazzinian Duties: Not a Written List
When we think about duties, we often think of a tedious list of concrete tasks we are expected to complete. The Ten Commandments are the archetypal example of this, where your duties are clearly spelled out. These duties can also be written down in republican constitutions, where citizens have an obligation to vote or serve in some way or another.
Mazzinian duties, on the otherhand, are not as concrete as having a list of demands that you must do. Mazzinian duties are much more abstract and philosophical, and are deeply connected to your individuality and your relationship with God or nature (however you want to define it).
Mazzinian duties are not maxims or axioms that must be obeyed in all contexts without question, but are deeply contextual and your duties will differ from situation to situation, from person to person.
However, they are always an imperative to act for the good when acting socially, and they are to be done without seeking reward. This is why it is not easy to define what exactly one’s duty might look like, though the basic idea can help clarify them to make them easier to understand.
Mazzini’s Duties of Man
Mazzini’s most famous work, The Duties of Man, is the closest we have gotten to receiving a real manifesto of his political thought. While his ideas of nationality are developed elsewhere in other essays, The Duties of Man consolidates his entire ethical philosophy concerning the individual.
The Duties of Man were not written in one go, however, but were published as separate essays throughout his activist life between 1841 to 1860 in his two newspapers Apostolato Popolare and Pensiero ed Azione. A book connecting all this essays was published in Italian in 1860 and an English version in 1862.
Writing the Duties of Man
The Duties of Man is addressed to the Italian working class who, at the time, were drifting away from Mazzini’s form of revolution toward Marx and Bakunin’s revolutionary socialism and their International. Although he struggled against his middle-class background to connect with Italian workers, The Duties of Man does not read as a philosophical treatise, but a summons to duty for work together for the common good and the liberation of Italy from Austrian rule.
The book comes as a critique of rights as the basis for a revolutionary doctrine. Though again, he had done this many times in other essays, The Duties of Man managed to combine the moral and economic consequences of the “Doctrine of Rights”. Mazzini asks what have rights, now established in many constitutions across Europe, actually managed to achieve for the working class?
“The Doctrines of all the Revolutionary Schools, preached that man was born for happiness; that he had a right to seek happiness by every means in his power; and that no one had a right to impede him in that search, while he had a right to overthrow whatever obstacles he met in his path towards it.
And all those obstacles were overthrown; liberty was achieved—in many Countries it lasted for years; in some it exists even yet. Has the condition of the people improved? Have the millions who live by the daily labour of their hands acquired any, the smallest amount of the promised and desired well-being?
No; the condition of the people is not improved. On the contrary, in most countries, it has even deteriorated… In almost all Countries the condition of the workman has become more uncertain, more precarious, while those crises, which condemn thousands of workmen to a certain period of inertia, have become more frequent.”
For Mazzini, rights as a revolutionary doctrine were insufficient for achieving the actual development and social change necessary. While he believed that rights were important and real, including the right to both liberty and property, ultimately he saw them as an means that were necessary to recognize so one could carry out their duties more effectively.
His Mother’s Jansenist Influences
Mazzini's passion for duties came, ultimately, from his mother Maria Drago's fervent religious faith, that had deep impact on his early moral education. As a Jansenist, life for Maria was not about seeking pleasure or personal happiness, but instead it is a rigorous struggle for moral perfection, and she raised to believe that human existence is a mission. She emphasized a stern moral code and the gravity of sin.
While Mazzini eventually moved away from orthodox Catholicism toward his own heterodox, providentialist faith, the Jansenist spirit remained. From his mother, he inherited the belief that life is not a search for pleasure, but a series of trials meant to test the character. a belief that the moral law is absolute and that the individual must be prepared to sacrifice everything for the truth as a political duty.
What Are Duties?
Duties are not a long list of dos and don’ts that we can follow but instead are highly contextual, eternal, individual and abstract. Rather than a strict list of things that one must or mustn't do, or a single principle that one must live by (e.g. the Golden Rule), duties are obligations by context and are real, imposed on us by our individual nature and reality.
Duties As the Social Bond
Mazzini’s main innovation when it came to duties was to take a step forward from Cicero and Kant (see below) who had very individual-centric conceptions, and to make them tied to the political. For Mazzini, duties were not just derived from a single principle of how an individual ought to conduct themselves, but a clear sign of our connection to one another in society, in history and into the future.
“To the duties of men towards the Family and Country, were added duties towards Humanity. Man then learned that wheresoever there existed a human being, there existed a Brother; a brother with a soul immortal as his own, destined like himself to ascend towards the Creator, and on whom he was bound to bestow love, a knowledge of the faith, and help and counsel when needed.”
In this way, the recognition of duties is a recognition that society exists and, even more poignantly, that true social action can exist. While recognition of individuals as sovereign and independent beings through their rights have been achieved, positive duties allows us to see that we are not just an “agglomeration of individuals” with competing interests, but bound together in an act of voluntary “association”.
Through recognizing our duties toward one another, are taking this step from merely individual ethics into something greater: that we can act together toward a common goal without destroying our rights in order to do it. Indeed, this is one of the key Mazzinian critiques of communist action that, in order to achieve the individual liberation that holds as a goal, it relies on collective force instead.
Eternal Nature of Duties
Your duties are not defined by constitution or legally obligated but are eternal and defined by reality. You have duties regardless of the context you find yourself in. If you are in a tyrannical regime, we have the duty to fight it to support your fellow citizens. If you are in a democracy, you have a duty to participate in the democratic process, either through the ballot box or as a critic.
Duties are demanded of you by context and you respond to their call when they arise. For instance, if you see an older person fall down outside a store, even though you are tired and want to go home, your duty, at the very least is to make sure they are not hurt. Another way one might think about the eternity of duties is that they are a call to us to help set the balance if it goes wrong: if the scale tip too much toward evil, we must right it, and this is a constant exercise.
“Our first duty is to endeavour to aid the ascent of Humanity upon that stage of education and improvement towards which it has been prepared and matured by Time and the Divinity… In order to know your own duties, you must interrogate the present wants of Humanity.”
Duties are Contextual
As well as eternal (not contingent on constitutions or cultures but universally applicable), duties are also deeply contextual for each individual. As duties are derived from our nature and capacities, what our duties look like to each are fundamentally different, especially when it comes to an individual's faculties. Individuals therefore have a duty to discover their own capacities for themselves and, once discovered, must continue to hone them in and practice them for the benefit of society.
Duties are also dependent on the situation you are in. What you ought to do and by which means are determined by context. You must often suspend what you want to do to help and serve others, and you also have the duty to make that action effective.
The context also determines the means by which you need to take action, either through peaceable means or needing to physically fight. For example, in the ethics of interventionism, Mazzinianism would justify the use of force in order to stop the violation of someone else’s rights.
Duties Are Not Masochism
Given this attitude toward happiness, there is a danger for a Mazzinian to confuse duties with masochism. Self-sacrifice to the point in which an individual essentially erases their own needs and health either from a point of low self-esteem or from some ideological commitment to some ideal would be action from the basis of masochism.
In masochism, one of the principal duties to oneself is abandoned for self-hatred and a disregard for your value in the work of humanity. In Mazzini’s original divine conception of duties, masochism requires the individual to reject the divine spark that each individual has been gifted from God, and would be a refusal to cultivate the best of themselves in both capacity and health. Duties are the direct opposite of masochism and is the ultimate practice of self-love.
There is a difference, however, between modern self-adoration and this form of self-love, as the former is often a mask for masochism whereas the latter works toward something larger than themselves.
Duties As Motivator Over Resentment
Duties also avoid deriving social action from a place of resentment and revenge. One of the chief Mazzinian critiques of Marxism is, in its complete rejection of the religious in favor of pure materialism, Marxist rhetoric relies heavily on raw human emotions to motivate political action. In particular, Marxism often utilizes feelings of working-class resentment toward the bourgeoisie in order to inspire mobilization.
Resentment, rage and revenge are the gutter of human emotions and are the chief instigators in many human atrocities, but fills that gap that Marxism always lacked between its morals and push for social transformation. Using these emotions are tempting since they ultimately allow us to free ourselves of responsibility and exact vengeance on those who have wronged us. However, as we have sadly witnessed both in the previous century and today’s, this often leads to the worst crimes imaginable.
For Mazzini, duties as a motivator was not about whipping up crowds with angry fiery rhetoric (he was not a demagogue), but in hoping that they would understand—through education—that the path forward was to act out of resolve and love:
“I love you too well either to flatter your passions, or caress the golden dreams by which others seek to win your favour. My voice may sound to you harsh, and I may too severely insist on proclaiming the necessity of virtue and sacrifice; but I know, and you too, - untainted by false doctrine, and unspoiled by wealth, - will soon know also, that the sole origin of every Right, is in a Duty fulfilled.
Duties Are a Higher Form of Society
Duties, for Mazzinians, do not represent an idea of the past or of tradition but as the next step up from the doctrines of rights toward progress. While rights have achieved much, duties provide rights with a function beyond just their mere exercise. Duties represent a higher form of social existence where, in their recognition, individuals can truly work in association for the common good and historical improvement, since rights alone cannot do this.
Mazzini saw education as the engine for this change. By education, we he did not mean instruction (practical or scientific knowledge) but a system of moral education that promoted the ethical and moral value of duties for each individual in a society and, by extension, a government that pursued policies to help them achieve them:
“We have therefore to seek a Principle of Education superior to any such theory, and capable of guiding mankind onwards towards their own improvement, of teaching them constancy and self-sacrifice, and of uniting them with their fellow men, without making them dependent either on the idea of a single man, or the force of the majority.
This Principle is DUTY. We must convince men that they are all sons of one sole God, and bound to fulfil and execute one sole law here on earth:-that each of them is bound to live, not for himself, but for others:-that the aim of existence is not to be more or less happy, but to make themselves and others more virtuous:- that to struggle against injustice and error, where ever they exist, in the name and for the benefit of their brothers, is not only a right, but a Duty: -a duty which may not be neglected without sin:-the duty of their whole life.”
The Passion of Solemn Resolve
In terms of rhetoric and inspiration for social action, Mazzinian duties do not rely on passionate calls for the recognition of positive rights or retribution. While these are very persuasive and effective for inspiring political action, Mazzinian duties are to inspire instead a steady solemn resolve in confronting the bad by doing good.
It is not that one should gain anything from doing the right thing, it is just the determination to do the right thing regardless of fear or social pressure. In this way, duties represent a kind of romantic realism and courage in the face of evil, knowing that you should act, even if you don't want to or believing it will do any good.
Duties, Ethics and Philosophy
How can we prove that we have duties? This is perhaps the most vital question for the modern Mazzinian since we are existing in a world where philosophy and morality have advanced enormously from Mazzini’s time. Mazzini regarded the proof of duties as in the divinity of God, but today to argue for any standard of objective morality is a complicated business.
Duties and Ethical Consequentialism
A possible proof for the fact that we do have duties toward one another is in the negative consequences of not attending to them. When, as an individual, we shun responsibility and we do not attend to duties, the consequences of this negligence ripples through society.
When one fully-abled workman decides to put down his spade, everyone else has to do more work as a consequence. If you choose to engage in socially destructive behaviors, quite often an unneeded financial and emotional burden is placed on others. You if you choose not to develop yourself to your best capacity and to your abilities, you are denying the rest of us the good you could do.
The reason why this ethical consequentialism is a powerful proof for our duties is because it can—to a certain degree—permit their objective measurement. Duties therefore are analogous to the building of a house. The house must meet certain minimum specifications in order for it to stand and even one calculation error means either it cannot be fully built or that it might collapse. And while there are many ways in which these minimum specifications can be met, each way is mathematically precise, and no matter how much you might want it to be otherwise, it is a hard fact.
It is similar with duties and their impact on society: not attending to them means undeniable negative consequences that can be resolved by doing them.
Ultimately, the claim is not that one ought to help a fallen stranger in a moral sense, but that attending to such situations is a necessary condition for the stranger to receive timely medical assistance. This perhaps is the modern reformulation of Mazzini’s idea that duty is an expression of divine law.
This consequentialist perspective, however, should not be confused with the actual ontological origin of duties. In other words, Mazzinian duties are not derived from Pragmatism’s view that ethics are in the consequences, as it were. Instead, the consequences are to be seen as evidence for duties as deontological (this is clarified below).
Duties and Free Will
Duties seem to clash with the concept of free will and particularly when it comes to comparing duties with rights. Duties as a doctrine seem to supersede free will and deny us of our capacity to make our own decisions and follow our own paths toward our own happiness. However, this is not actually the case since duties require will to be free in order for people to attend to them.
Duties are approached from voluntarism and there can be no physical force that can make you do your duties to humanity by violating your will, for to do so would be the violation of duties on the part of the forcer. Brute force, compulsion, and coercion violate the means for duties which are rights, and therefore break with the progress made with doctrine of rights.
However, although you are free to choose whether you follow your duties or not, that doesn’t mean that you escape the reality of them. You are free to take on your duties or not, but you are not free of the negative consequences of not doing so.
You are also not free to choose what your duties are since they are determined by your nature and context rather than your whim. In attending to your duties, you embark on a journey over which you have no control as to eventual destination or character. Your duties in your individual context will be revealed to you and cannot be altered with sheer desire.
Mazzinian duties, when it comes to free will, could be argued as a form of compatibilism where it is your choice whether you decide to follow your duties, but the outcome is ultimately determined beyond your will.
Are Mazzinian Duties Divine or Natural?
Throughout The Duties of Man, Mazzini invokes God as the source of our duties as individuals and as nationalities. For Mazzini, each human being has been given a divine mission to complete during their time on earth and believed it was was divinely ordained for each individual to do so:
"The source of your Duties is in God. The definition of your duties is found in His Law. The progressive discovery and application of this law is the mission of Humanity.
God exists, because we exist. God lives in our conscience, in the conscience of Humanity. Our conscience invokes Him in our most solemn moments of grief or joy. Humanity has been able to transform, to disfigure, never to suppress His holy name. The Universe bears witness to Him, in the order, harmony, and intelligence of its movements, and its laws."
But while this highly religious characterization of duties is unmistakable, Mazzini makes room for another interpretation: that duties are derived from nature. In his chapter on the Law, Mazzini appeals to the ancient’s philosophical idea of the difference between natural law and conventional law. For him, the law of God (in essence, the universe) was the highest source of all human moral conduct.
There is, to some extent, an Aristotelian notion in Mazzini’s conception of how duties are derived from our nature. By the essence of our living nature, we naturally have duties that we should respond to. As the laws of physics or animal instincts, Mazzini understands our duties as part of our natural being and this is why they are obligated onto us:
"You live. Therefore you have a Law of life. There is no life without its law. Whatever thing exists, exists in a certain method, according to certain conditions, and is governed by a certain law.
The mineral world is governed by a law of aggregation; the vegetable by a law of development; the stars are ruled by a law of motion.
Your life is governed by a law higher and nobler than these, even as you are superior to all other created earthly things. To develope yourselves, and act and live according to your law, is your first, or rather your sole Duty.
God gave you life: God therefore gave you the Law."
Despite the theological language, it is also clear that there is a natural and non-divine point from which Mazzinian duties may be understood. Therefore, while it is certainly not an incompatibility to believe that duties are derived from both God and that God is nature, simply believing in nature is as analogous to God is also permissible.
Progress Over Happiness
The most polemical aspect of duties is the idea that happiness ought not to be the main goal of an individual’s existence and they should play their part, regardless of whether it benefits them personally. We are used to the pursuit of happiness as our guiding principle, allowing each individual the right to find what makes them successful. However the implications of this mindset are often negative for both the individual and society.
For the individual, the pursuit of happiness can quickly turn into a life of enduring misery. In constantly seeking your own hypothetical happiness, more often than not it turns into an insatiable black hole. This is particularly the case when things start going badly for us and our mental health is negatively affected by reality not meeting without expectations. It is ultimately unfulfilling.
By making the fulfillment of duties the aim of life, it is more sobering. In doing what it is right for the service of the good, anxiety of wants and whims vanishes. The best example for this is probably parenthood since—as any parent will attest—the purpose of sacrificing for your children is not for your benefit but for theirs, while necessarily making you happy, is a nobler existence that comes with less regrets.
In his chapter on the Family, Mazzini puts it as:
“I know not whether you will be happy if you act thus; but I do know that even in the midst of adversity you will find that serene peace of the heart, that repose of the tranquil conscience, which will give you strength in every trial, and cheer your souls with a glimpse of heavenly azure, even in the darkest storm.”
Are Mazzini's Duties Deontological or Teleological?
Mazzini's conception of duties sits weirdly between the deontological vs. teleological divides when it comes to ethics. On the one hand, they are unmistakably deontological in character: duty binds regardless of inclination, reward, or personal happiness. To act morally is to act from obligation rather than advantage. In that respect, Mazzini stands closer to Kant.
However Mazzinian duties is not deontology in the strict Kantian sense either, because they have a teleological horizon in the context of progress. There exists a goal toward moral and political improvement, and each individual has a mission within that movement. Duties, therefore, are not only ethical in themselves but also oriented toward a higher end: Humanity.
Given this, it could be helpful to think of Mazzinian duties as teleological in orientation but deontological in authority. Duties bind because they are demanded by our nature and context, and they aim toward the moral development of individual, nations, and humanity, according to that nature.
Mazzinian Duties in History
As mentioned in the introduction, duties are not an original concept that Mazzini discovered in his The Duties of Man, but have long been the subject of philosophical and religious discussion for millennia. There are, however, a select few thinkers and their ideas that are in tune with what duties are in the Mazzinian sense, and some of which have been indirectly referenced by Mazzini in his own writings.
Parities with Hindu Dharma
Given the divine nature of Mazzini’s conception of duties, there are some overlaps with Hinduism’s cosmic principle of dharma. While both are separated by a civilization, both dharma and Mazzinian duties share the same belief that there is a profound spiritual connection between the individual and society by nature of their cosmic existence.
Both indicate that an individual has a role to play in the story of human existence, in the case of Hinduism, according to the cosmos, and for Mazzinians, in accordance with Humanity. However, the central divergence is that while dharma is primarily a religious concept and (and in some contexts justifies unequal treatment e.g. the caste system), Mazzini duties are strictly egalitarian and primarily political.
Tikkun Olam and Hillel the Elder
Another religious example where Mazzinian duties are well represented—beyond that of the Christian idea—is in the Jewish concept of tikkun olam (repairing the world). As an obligation for Jews to contribute to the moral healing of a broken world, as well as its connotation with social justice, has great resonance with the Mazzinian idea of working toward humanity with a duty to pursue progress.
Another case of Mazzinian duties in Judaism is represented in Hillel the Elder’s most famous maxim:
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
—Pirkei Avot 1:14
One of the reasons why this particular saying has a lot of resonance with Mazzinian ethics is because of its sobering implication for the individual.
Mazzinian duties should be carried out for their own sake, there is no expecting that anyone will be for you besides your own self, but in spite of that fact, you must be for everyone else for then you would be an incomplete individual (i.e. without society). And in questioning the time, Hillel underlines the entire Mazzinian orientation toward direct and immediate action.
Indeed, Hillel’s quote perhaps sums up neatly the entirety of the Mazzinian doctrine of duties in its most practical formulation.
Cicero’s On Moral Duties
The similarities between Marcus Tullius Cicero’s De Officiis (On Moral Duties) and Mazzini’s The Duties of Man are quite stark given the almost two millennia that separates them.
Naturally, Mazzini studied Cicero in his early education and referenced republican Rome frequently as a model for his own Italian patriotism, so it is unsurprising their focuses on moral duties are linked.
Cicero’s approach to duties was somewhat eclectic, influenced from both Stoic philosophy and the New Academy, but ultimately were closer to that of the Peripatetics in practice. Duties for Cicero were the practical application of virtues and the ability to do that which is right in spite of desire or personal advantage.
For Cicero, duties were derived from natural law and the human capacity for reason, and that the abandonment of our duties were a violation of nature:
"Man... because he is possessed of reason, by which he discerns consequences, sees the causes of things... Nature too, by virtue of reason, brings man into relations of mutual intercourse and society... From these elements the right, which is the object of our inquiry, is composed and created."
On Moral Duties, p. 4
At the heart of Ciceronian duties were his four virtues that he proposed ought to be sought by all Roman statesmen. The pursuit and practice of these virtues were to undertaken in the face of that which was expedient or profitable to ourselves:
Prudence: Our natural desire for knowledge and the investigation of truth.
Justice: Originating from an innate gregariousness and the necessity of social bonds.
Fortitude: Our natural craving for preeminence and a desire to rise above earthly fortunes.
Decorum: Arising from the innate human sense of order, proportion, and harmony
While these duties are important to the development of Mazzinian duties, they fall short from the true definition in that they are not inspired but are rather obligations we have to each other in order to maintain stability, rather than a call for social action and moral improvement. They are conservative in nature, rather than revolutionary or progressive.
Kant’s Categorical Imperative
As mentioned above, Immanuel Kant’s influence on Mazzini’s political thought is profound in almost all its aspects, and in The Duties of Man Mazzini paraphrases the German idealist philosopher’s categorical imperative, albeit in his own context:
“Love Humanity. Ask yourselves, as to every act you commit within the circle of family or country: If what I now do were done by and for all men, would it be beneficial or injurious to Humanity, and if your conscience tell you it would be injurious, desist: desist, even though it seem that an immediate advantage to your country or family would be the result.”
Much of their convergence lies in regarding duty as primary over material interest. Just as Cicero rejected expediency, for Kant a moral act is only virtuous when performed for its own sake, independent of personal advantage. This parities well with the Mazzinian demand that individual inclinations be subordinated to a universal law—one derived from Kantian reason and the other from Mazzini’s "Law of God"—insisting that morality is a non-arbitrary obligation binding all rational beings beyond the narrow confines of the self. In other words, Kant and Mazzini share a deontological view of ethics.
However, Kant and Mazzinian duties also diverge particularly when looking at the scope of moral action. While Kant relied solely on the individual for his cosmopolitan universalism, Mazzini added the nation as an intermediary between the individual and humanity. In the Mazzinian conception of duties, the individual is a soldier in a collective mission, finding purpose only through association, and does not produce good merely on their own.
Kant’s reliance on the non-divine for a source of duties, however, as we have explored above, is compatible with modern Mazzinianism.
Simone Weil on Obligations
Simone Weil in her The Need for Roots comes closest to what might be considered to be Mazzinian duties. Her notion that rights, without proper recognition by anyone, are not worth very much, fits well with the constitutional nature of rights over the eternal nature of duties. These obligations, according to Weil, are part of a “higher realm” and exist whether an individual is alone in the universe or not:
“The notion of rights, being of an objective order, is inseparable from the notions of existence and reality. This becomes apparent when the obligation descends to the realm of fact; consequently, it always involves to a certain extent the taking into account of actual given states and particular situations. Rights are always found to be related to certain conditions. Obligations alone remain independent of conditions. They belong to a realm situated above all conditions, because it is situated above this world.”
Weil also considers the intensely individual character of obligations. The difference between her view and, say Cicero’s or Kant’s, for example, is that Weil recognizes an ideal of destiny (derived from her own Platonism) applicable for all human beings as an external force to them, rather than a principle to guide and individual’s choices, tying in with Mazzini’s idea of the individual divine missions:
“This obligation is an eternal one. It is coextensive with the eternal destiny of human beings. Only human beings have an eternal destiny. Human collectivities have not got one. Nor are there, in regard to the latter, any direct obligations of an eternal nature. Duty towards the human being as such—that alone is eternal.”
Mazzini, of course, would dispute Weil’s highly individualistic take with his idea that nations also have duties.
She also, to some degree, coincides with the modern Mazzinian ethical consequentialist proof of duties, albeit in a less structural sense. For Weil, the nature of our obligations are to prevent harm if we have the capacity to do so and from which she is able to derive the rest of our duties:
“It is an eternal obligation towards the human being not to let him suffer from hunger when one has the chance of coming to his assistance. This obligation being the most obvious of all, it can serve as a model on which to draw up the list of eternal duties towards each human being. In order to be absolutely correctly made out, this list ought to proceed from the example just given by way of analogy.”
After her introduction, Weil goes on to give us a long list of obligations that we have to perform, but it is also here that her ideas fall short of the Mazzinian concept in becoming slightly arbitrary in defining a clear list. For Mazzinians, duties are contextual, positive actions, and are not specific behaviors or based necessarily on specific human needs.
That being said, Weil’s duties can exist within the spectrum of what a Mazzinian could argue as duties.
Why Duties Before Rights?
It has become a common misconception in discussions about Mazzini’s take on duties that he was opposed to rights. While Mazzini regarded rights as insufficient for social action, he was unequivocally a supporter of and believer in natural rights and applied them when he was in the position to do so.
The Importance of Rights
Rights exist and are profoundly important to Mazzinianism. Mazzini recognized that rights were sacred and existed, and his brief time as Triumvir of the Roman Republic saw perhaps the greatest implementation of rights there had been up until that time. Civil liberties, from freedom of association to the freedom of the press, were enshrined in the Republic's constitution as well as protected while Mazzini was in office.
Mazzini defended rights as natural and God-given, as he defended duties. The inviolable nature of our individual sovereignty represented bounds of human action that should not be crossed and he also adopted Jon Locke's definition of property rights, and defended them.
However, more fundamentally, rights for Mazzini were seen as a means through which an individual could achieve their duties to the fullest. While duties are, as described above, eternal and not dependent on constitutional protection for them to be effective, the recognition of rights is vital for an individual to properly engage with their duties.
You need the liberty to act as an individual for you to discover which are your duties and to pursue them properly, without being impeded by an authority or another individuals. Only with the recognition of rights could one be truly free to act for the good in one’s fullest capacity. In other words, the lack of constitutional recognition of rights is not an excuse not to attend to your duties, but an indication that your duties are defined by the context of bringing about that recognition for others.
Insufficiency of Rights
So, while Mazzini did not criticize the validity of rights, he questioned their practicality. It is not that rights were unimportant or not sacred, but that that they were insufficient for the pursuit of true progress. The problem emerges when political rights are achieved, recognized and protected. After many revolutions had enshrined liberal rights for the working class in Europe, many still lived in the same material and moral conditions that had before had:
"And all those obstacles were overthrown; liberty was achieved—in many Countries it lasted for years; in some it exists even yet.
Has the condition of the people improved?"
"Have the millions who live by the daily labour of their hands acquired any, the smallest amount of the promised and desired well-being?
No; the condition of the people is not improved. On the contrary, in most countries, it has even deteriorated, and here especially, whence I write, the price of the necessaries of life has continually augmented, the wages of working men in many branches of industry have progressively diminished, while the population has increased.
In almost all Countries the condition of the workman has become more uncertain, more precarious, while those crises, which condemn thousands of workmen to a certain period of inertia, have become more frequent."
The reality that Mazzini was drawing attention to was that rights in and of themselves don’t actually fix anything practically. You may have the constitutional right to speak and associate with whomever you want and have that right respected, but if you’re in a position where you can’t actually use it effectively, it is entirely meaningless. For instance, if you are free to start your own business, that’s good, but it would be a lot more useful to you if you had the capital to do it:
"But of what use were Rights when acquired by men who had not the means of exercising them? Of what use was mere liberty of education to men who had neither time nor means to profit by it? Of what use was mere liberty of commerce to those who possessed neither merchandise, capital, nor credit?"
This practical flaw within the doctrine of right is inherent as, by making the sole goal in life the individual’s pursuit of happiness and their own well-being, the well-being of others falls to charity or neglect because why would the individual do otherwise?
"Why should they diminish their own enjoyments in favour of others? Let those help themselves who can.When Society has once secured to each individual the free exercise of those Rights which are inherent in human nature, it has done all it is bound to do. If there be any one who from some fatality of his own position is unable to exercise any of these rights,—let him resign himself to his fate, and not blame others.
It was natural they should speak thus, and thus in fact they spoke. And this mode of regarding the poor by the privileged classes, soon became the mode in which individuals regarded one another. Each man occupied himself with his own rights, and the amelioration of his own position, without seeking to provide for others; and when those rights clashed with the rights of others, the result was a state of war; a war, not of blood, but of gold and craft; less manly than the other, but equally fatal; a relentless war in which those who possessed means, inexorably crushed the weak and inexpert."
This was ultimately what Mazzini's critique of cosmopolitan liberalism was about. While liberalism maintained the goal of wanting to achieve universal human rights for all, it was stuck without a method or mechanism for doing so that did not rely solely on the individual. For Mazzini, the enormity of this task would lead to inaction.
Constitutional Dependence of Rights
While rights exist, their protect and enforcement ultimately depends on a state that is willing to protect them. So while we can argue strongly, effectively and convincingly that rights are real, there is no force or real consequence that occurs if they are violated. Without law enforcement to protect rights, someone may steal or murder without any real implications, besides some abstract violation of nature.
Duties, as we described above, are not constitutionally dependent as their consequences have a real social effect whether they are attended to or not. Duties therefore have a greater reality over rights when it comes to moral action since they can led to serious situations that can be altered, not through legislation, but through actual social action.
The character of rights is also dependent on legislation. Which rights are granted and to what extent is almost entirely a legal discussion and you are limited by what the state defines them as. Rights, both positive and negative, cannot be effective without an external enforcer, such as a government, whereas duties are enforced by real consequences to which we are all bound.
What Duties Do We Have?
While there is no defined list of specific duties that an individual has, they are common points of derivation for everyone when it comes to what our duties might look like. In the Duties of Man, Mazzini takes the individual through each aspect of individual life and what duties we have in each context.
Duties Toward Yourself
It might seem odd, after explicitly stating how duties are about our positive obligations toward others, to start with our duties toward ourselves. As mentioned above, there is a danger (and particularly when it comes to Mazzini's own rhetoric concerning martyrdom) to look at duties as a form of masochism. An assumption could be made that an individual ought to reduce themselves to the point of self-erasure to serve the rest of the community, but this is direct contradiction to the idea of duties.
The duties you have toward yourself are perhaps the most important in practical terms. Socrates' "Know thyself" is probably the first of all philosophical imperatives and is still a good starting point today. Since you are born with latent faculties and skills, it is imperative on you to first discover what they are and then develop them so you can use them to contribute to humanity. These are not necessarily set as concrete roles, since a capacity for mathematics can be turned into anything from physicist to electrician, but they are indicators of the skills you ought to hone in order to better society.
Beyond skills, you also have a duty to look after yourself when it comes to health and physicality. If you are physically in good shape, you can carry out your duties better and also be more adaptable to emergency situations. This also extends to psychological health and you have a duty to make sure you're in a fit state mentally in order to ensure your duties can be done.
On the flip side of course, there are many instances where duties may call on one to sacrifice their own health for the sake of producing progress. There are many instances of individuals doing just that to achieve great feats. This is always up to the individual and their relationship with nature (or God).
For Mazzini, the need to be dutiful to yourself was the paramount purpose for liberty. It is not for anyone but yourself to tell you what your duties are or fulfill them for you. In a journey of self-discovery, liberty is the most important guarantee for being able to finding out what exactly your role ought to be in Humanity.
Duties Toward Your Family
Having duties toward your family is controversial, especially in the light of tyrannical and oppressive family structures. In many of these contexts, it is your duty to defy these structures in order to carry out your other duties. However, Mazzini emphasized your duties toward your family not as an absolute but as a practical way to actually practice them. The family for him was a microcosm of the nation like the nation was a microcosm of humanity.
The family is, for every member, the opportunity to practice some aspect of self-sacrifice for another. Whether it is as a parent sacrificing time to work and spend time with their child, or a child learning to listen to the wisdom of their grandparent (and the grandparent willing to give it), all are expression of duties being performed for people that you love.
Duties Toward Your Nation
In today’s political climate, to argue that we have duties toward our nation is even more controversial than arguing for those toward our families. With the memory of Fascist totalitarianism still on the minds of many, extreme devotion to country is more symptomatic than it is virtuous, sullied by its connotation with forced obedience.
However, from a Mazzinian perspective, this reaction confuses the enforced loyalty to the state with the love and responsibility to the nation. In Mazzinianism, the nation is not some arbitrary state, royal family, or abstract concept. Instead, the nation is synonymous with the association of all individuals that make up a community, defined by a common principle. The duties you have to the nation, therefore, are your duties toward society and everyone who forms a part of it:
Country is not a mere zone of territory. The true Country is the Idea to which it gives birth; it is the Thought of Love, the sense of communion which unites in one all the sons of that territory.
So long as a single one amongst your brothers has no vote to represent him in the development of the National life-so long as there be one left to vegetate in ignorance where others are educated: so long as a single man, able and willing to work, languishes in poverty through want of work to do, you have no Country in the sense in which Country ought to exist, the Country of all and for all.
Combining individual duties with his concept of the nation, Mazzini promoted a pragmatic solution to the problem of liberal cosmopolitanism. The nation is a “lever” or “fulcrum” that allows the individual to connect to the rest of humanity in a way that would have been impossible on their own. But the nation to Mazzini was also more than the ability for social action: it was also his radical answer to the question of equality.
For Mazzini, the nation was the ultimate equalizer and the eliminator of privilege. While he saw Liberalism’s equality before the law as important, it was not enough for individuals to turn from their self-interest and subordinate their privilege for the equality of the nation. Duties to the nation, therefore, are the ultimate Mazzinian expression of anti-racism, anti-casteism, and anti-discrimination as the nation could never be truly realized unless the principle of equality had been applied:
There is therefore no true Country without an [sic] uniform Right. There is no true Country where the uniformity of that Right is violated by the existence of Castes, privilege, and inequality. Where the activity of a portion of the powers and faculties of the individual is either cancelled, or dormant; where there is not a common Principle, recognized, accepted, and developed by all, there is no true Nation, no People, but only a multitude, a fortuitous agglomeration of men whom circumstances have called together, and whom circumstances may again divide. In the name of the love you bear your Country you must peacefully, but untiringly combat the existence of privilege and inequality in the land that gave you life.
Duties toward your nation formalizes the anti-sectarianism that is fundamental to Mazzini’s political thought. If you as an individual believe in and carry out your duties to your nation as a means toward connecting to humanity, you avoid the disaster of a Hobbesian reality or Marxist class conflict.
Duties Toward Humanity
At the beginning of the Duties of Man, Mazzini highlights that our first duties are toward Humanity, in accordance with God’s (natural) law and importance. The humanitarian nature of duties is a vital part of Mazzinianism because, as noted in the section above, it is one of the key ideas that helps avoid the problem of nationalism and extreme patriotism. Mazzini explicitly points out that without this humanitarian element, all the duties to the above would be rendered morally mute:
You have duties as Citizens, as sons, as husbands, and as fathers; duties sacred and inviolable, and of which I shall shortly speak to you in detail, but that which constitutes the sacredness and inviolability of these Duties, is the mission, the Duty springing from your Human nature…
They who pretend to teach you morality while limiting your duties to those you owe to your family and to your Country, do but teach you a more or less enlarged egotism.
Mazzini’s notion of duties to Humanity connects to his wider view of historical progress and the natural role each individual and national constitution in its development. For him, Humanity was the “medium” through which individuals realized God’s plan on Earth, for which each person had a special role with their given capacities:
In your terrestrial existence, limited both in education and capacity, the realisation of this Divine Idea, can only be most imperfect and momentary. Humanity alone, continuous in existence through the passing Generations, continuous in intellect through the contributions of all its members, is capable of gradually evolving, applying, and glorifying the Divine Idea.
The idea is that each nation throughout human existence has contributed something toward the development of our moral and material improvement. Despite not being connected directly with the Greeks, the ancient Chinese, the Sumerians, and all other extinct people, their contributions have lived on as part of Humanity:
Those Greeks passed away, but their deeds remained; and were it not for them, you would not have reached your present degree of moral and intellectual development. Those populations consecrate with their blood an idea of national liberty, for which you too would combat. That martyr proclaimed by his death that man is bound to sacrifice all things, and, if need be, life itself, for that which he believes to be Truth. What matters it that he, and all of those who thus seal their faith with their blood cut short their individual progress on Earth? God will provide for them elsewhere.
But it is of import that the coming generation, taught by your struggles, and your sacrifice, may arise stronger and nobler than you have been, in fuller comprehension of the Law, in greater adoration of the Truth. It is of import that human nature, fortified by these examples, may improve, develop, and realise still further the Design of God on earth. And wheresoever human nature shall improve or develop, wheresoever a new truth be discovered, wheresoever a step be taken on the path of education, progress, and morality;— that step taken, and that truth discovered, will, sooner or later, benefit all Humanity.
This combination of duties with the gradual development of Humanity was Mazzini’s innovation on Herder’s thought. While Herder regarded each nationality has the organic expression of each people’s creative contribution to humanity, Mazzini made it moral and political. That each nationality contributes to the wider historical development, to progress, had some aim or goal in the full realization of the good, was the part that Mazzini clarified when it came to Herder’s own view of Humanität, and who was moderately apolitical in his conception of the nation.
The importance of understanding your duties toward Humanity is also in the humbling of the individual in their knowledge of their role in the greater picture. Instead of dedicating our lives to our “happiness”, you look to fulfilling your mission on Earth for the benefit of all humankind, past, present and future. It is not, as some might interpret, that you are merely a cog in the wheels of human existence. It is rather you have a vital position and protagonism in the building a better world, without the delusional arrogance of ever reaching it in your lifetime.
Duties and Politics
Duties begin with the individual and their bond to society, but their aim is to achieve social action. Duties are a call to political action and are not just imposed on citizens, but also on institutions.
Duties of the State
In the time in which Mazzini was writing, the relationship between the individual and the state was certainly not as social as it is today in most countries. The idea that the state had duties to the individual citizens was not something that had been acted upon in his day. For him, the state had duties to aid the citizen in the fulfillment of their own duties with both the protection of rights and the expansion of education. Today, some of this is a reality, but all too often the state falls short of their duties.
The main duty of the state is this facilitation of an individual's capacity to perform their duties. This is quite distinct from a purely liberal, laissez-faire state as well as from a socialist state. The principle is that the state could protect the liberty of the individual and provide the material access (to capital and to educational development) so that they can best carry out their duties.
This should neither be confused with a paternalistic state for example, which still operates under the view of maximizing individual happiness, or even the social contract view of the state, which seeks the trading off of interests. The duties of the state are born of its context and monopoly over violence, the monetary system and education and therefore is in the place to help, rather than hinder the individual, and therefore should do so.
Duties in Social Policy
As has already been stated, protecting the liberty of the individual is the primary duty of the state. However, the state also has positive duties when it comes to social policy in letting citizens fulfill their own duties. The protection of negative liberty is the vital first step for allowing for the process of self-discovery, but the state also has the capacity to widen the opportunities for individual as well assume the responsibility of tasks that a too big for the individual (or even a group of individuals) to handle alone.
General duties the state should provide are:
Liberty: The protection of negative liberty is the highest duty of the state. This does not just include respecting the rights of the individual, but also maintaining a fair justice system and law enforcement to help protect those rights.
Defense: The state has the duty to maintain a strong armed forces to protect the country from attack.
Education: Mazzini believed that education (not merely instruction, though this is important too) should be provided by the state. Education in values as well as instruction in skills ought to help guide the individual in pursuing their duties.
Healthcare: Providing reasonable access to healthcare is also a duty of the state.
More specific tasks that the state should take on to unburden the individual in their pursuit of their duties:
Transport: As transport is a large and infrastructural policy, it ought to be the duty of the state to provide a comprehensive transport system within a country in order to aid individuals in their duties.
Environment: Given that environmental concerns are a broad and tough challenge, the state has a duty to take care of environmental solutions itself as well as provide for conservation efforts for both flora and fauna.
Energy: Generally speaking, the state should invest and maintain the energy infrastructure from the generation and transmission.
Duties in Economics
The Duties of Man contains one of the few references that Mazzini makes to economics and clearly highlights an early form of social democracy, as opposed to the laissez-faire status quo on one side or the totalizing communist solution on the other. Mazzini in fact, despite not being an economic thinker, did lay some foundation on which Keynesianism could be justified almost 80 years later. The principle that the state has an economic duty to its citizens, without necessarily meaning the expropriation of property, was Mazzini’s solution for the time.
The Mazzinian view is that the state has duty toward maintaining macroeconomic stability. While individuals have a duty toward making the best of themselves, the state has the duty to provide the certainty and investment to make that possible. In general, the state ought to provide:
Employment: The state has a duty either to provide employment or to make employment more accessible to individuals, whether they create their own business or in infrastructure projects.
Infrastructure: Infrastructure requires significant coordination, capital and resources that are best organized, planned and implemented by the state and ought to be regularly updated.
Monetary stability: The state should help regulate and maintain monetary stability to support the payment system.
Fair fiscal policy: The fiscal burden, though on individuals and businesses, ought to be structured in a way that is fair and easy to interpret.
Property rights: Protection for private property and the extension of property rights are a core part of Mazzini’s own philosophy toward the economy.
Economic democracy: As far as it is possible, the state should pursue as democratic approach to the economy as possible. This could be from promoting workplace democracy to encouraging small businesses to flourish.
Many of these duties for the state in society and economy look very similar to what is argued by modern social democrats and, by and large, the responsibilities argued here for the state to take on are more or less the same.
However, in the Mazzinian perspective, the goal is not the maximization of positive rights nor allowing for the individual to pursue happiness by the state removing barriers and responsibility. The goal is for the state to assume burdens within its capacity and therefore allow for the individual to better assume theirs.
Duties Are for the World To Come
Perhaps the most powerful argument, but also the least understood, is the case that Mazzinian duties will play a role not in the current rights-dominated politics of today, but of the politics of tomorrow that is slowly emerging.
The collapse of both the liberal international order and the reality that rights-based doctrines are incapable of addressing many of our economic and social problems today, is a sign that some other doctrine needs to step up with new ideas.
Given the consequences of what rights-based doctrines have had on our societies and the consequential evidence of neglecting our responsibilities, it is reasonable to propose Mazzinian duties as the response for the world to come after this rights-based paradigm fully collapses.
The reason why this might be strange is because we continue to consider duties as a relic of the past, but in fact, as Mazzini also professed even in his time, they are the character of the future.
Mazzini believed that a doctrine of duties was the step after rights because, after individual liberation, the natural step toward progress was the social action, which was better than mere voluntary “almsgiving” that liberalism promoted:
“Charity is not the watchword of the Faith of the Future. The watchword of the Faith of the Future is association and fraternal co-operation of all towards a common aim, and this is as far superior to all charity, as the edifice which all of you should unite to raise, would be superior to the humble hut each one of you might build alone, or with the mere assistance of lending and borrowing stone, mortar, and tools.”
To sum up, duties are the foundational pillar, along with nationality and humanity, onto which the entirety of modern Mazzinianism is built. Duties provide the individual with their plan of ethical action and the bond that they have, not just with the other individuals around them, but with all throughout history and those generations to come.