The family as a model for the organization of the state is a theory in political philosophy. It either explains the structure of certain kinds of state in terms of the structure of the family (as a model or as a claim about the historical growth of the state), or it attempts to justify certain types of state by appeal to the structure of the family. The first writer to use it (certainly in any clear and developed way) was Aristotle, who argued that the natural progression of human beings was from the family via small communities to the polis. A family in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in 1997 A family consists of a domestic group of people (or a number of domestic groups), typically affiliated by birth or marriage, or by analogous or comparable relationships — including domestic partnership, cohabitation, adoption, surname and (in some cases) ownership (as occurred in the... A state is a set of institutions that possess the authority to make the rules that govern the people in one or more societies, having internal and external sovereignty over a definite territory. ... The Politics series Politics Portal This box:      Political philosophy is the study of fundamental questions about the state, government, politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why (or even if) they are needed, what makes a government legitimate, what... Aristotle (Greek: AristotélÄ“s) (384 BC – March 7, 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ... A polis (πόλις, pronunciation pol-is) — plural: poleis (πόλεις) — is a city, or a city-state. ...

Many writers from ancient times to the present have seen parallels between the family and the forms of the state. In particular, monarchists have argued that the state mirrors the patriarchal family, with the people obeying the king as children obey their father. Forms of government Part of the Politics series Politics Portal This box:      A monarchy, from the Greek μονος, one, and αρχειν, to rule, is a form of government that has a monarch as head of state(KING)In most monarchies the monarch usually reigns as head of state for life; this is... Patriarchy For other uses, see Patriarchy (disambiguation). ... A monarch (see sovereignty) is a type of ruler or head of state. ...

Ancient thought

The family–state model was first expressed in ancient times, often as a form of justification for aristocratic rule. The Ancient Greek term aristocracy originally meant a system of government with rule by the best. The word is derived from two words, aristos meaning the best and kratein to rule. Aristocracies have most often been hereditary plutocracies (see below), where a sense of historical gravitas and noblesse oblige demands...

Confucius believed the child should be subordinate to the parent, younger brother to the older, wife to husband, and subject to the sovereign who is to be regarded as the father of the nation. The state as the family writ large was the most harmonious, orderly, and natural form of government. This was later expanded to cover international relations(i.e. the emperor of China is treated as the older brother of the Korean king). Confucian family theory is still espoused in North Korea to justify their method of leadership succession. Confucius (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Kung-fu-tzu, lit. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... International relations (IR), a branch of political science, is the study of foreign affairs of and relations among states within the international system, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations (IGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and multinational corporations (MNCs). ... For the volcano in Indonesia, see Emperor of China (volcano). ... Korean dynasties are listed in the order of their fall. ...

Plutarch records a laconic saying of the Dorians attributed to Lycurgus. Asked why he didn't establish a democracy in the Lacedæmon, Lycurgus responded: “Begin, friend, and set it up in your family”. The Dorians of Crete and Sparta seemed to mirror the family institution and organization in their form of government. (see Plutarch's The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans — Lycurgus, p.65) Mestrius Plutarchus (Greek: Πλούταρχος; 46 - 127), better known in English as Plutarch, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist. ... This article or section should include material from Dorian invasion The Dorians were one of the ancient Hellenic (Greek) races. ... In Ancient Greece and/or Greek mythology, the name Lycurgus/Lykurgus can refer to: An alternate name for Lycomedes. ...

Aristotle often describes personal and domestic relationships in terms of different forms of government. He gives examples such as men and their domestic animals, wives, slaves, and children. He says, for example: “the government of a household is a monarchy, since every house is governed by a single ruler”.(2) Later in the same text he says that husbands exercise a republican government over their wives and monarchical government over their children, and that they exhibit political office over slaves and royal office over the family in general. (Politics Bk I, §v, 1–2; 1259a 35–1259b 1) Aristotle (Greek: AristotélÄ“s) (384 BC – March 7, 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ... Forms of government Part of the Politics series Politics Portal This box:      For other uses, see Republic (disambiguation). ...

However, while he is prepared to use political terms as metaphors for domestic relationships, he is equally clear that such metaphors are limited:

“Some thinkers, however, suppose that statesman, king, estate manager, and master of a family have a common character. This is a mistake; they think that the distinction between them is not a difference in kind, but a simple, numerical difference.” (Politics Bk I, §i)

After discussing the various domestic relationships, he concludes: “mastership and statesmanship are not identical, nor are all forms of power the same, as some thinkers suppose.” (Politics Bk I, §vi)

Aristotle's main notion is that the ancient Greek polis or city-state is the natural end of human beings; they start in family groups, progress naturally to forming villages, and finally come together in cities. Thus the family forms the root of human relationships, but the city is the flower.

Arius Didymus in Stobaeus, 1st century CE, writes: “A primary kind of association (politeia) is the legal union of a man and woman for begetting children and for sharing life.” From the collection of households a village is formed and from villages a city, “[s]o just as the household yields for the city the seeds of its formation, thus it yields the constitution (politeia)”. Further, he claims: “Connected with the house is a pattern of monarchy, of aristocracy and of democracy. The relationship of parents to children is monarchic, of husbands to wives aristocratic, of children to one another democratic.” (Hellenistic Commentary to the New Testament, edd Boring, Berger, & Colpe)

Of course, the structure of the family in ancient times was generally far more hierarchical – and patriarchal – than today.

Modern thought

Louis de Bonald wrote as if the family were a miniature state. In his analysis of the family relationships of father, mother and child, De Bonald related these to the functions of a state: the father is the power, the mother is the minister and the child as subject. As the father is “active and strong” and the child is “passive or weak”, the mother is the “median term between the two extremes of this continuous proportion”. De Bonald justified his analysis by quoting and interpreting passages from the Bible: Louis Gabriel Ambroise, vicomte de Bonald (October 2, 1754 - November 23, 1840), French philosopher and politician, was born at Le Monna, near Millau in Aveyron. ... This Gutenberg Bible is displayed by the United States Library of Congress. ...

“[It] calls man the reason, the head, the power of woman: Vir caput est mulieris {man is head of woman} says St Paul. It calls woman the helper or minister of man: ‘Let us make man,’ says Genesis, ‘a helper similar to him.’ It calls the child a subject, since it tells it, in a thousand places, to obey its parents”. (On Divorce pp 44–46)

De Bonald also sees divorce as the first stage of disorder in the state (the principle of macrocosm/microcosm). He insists that the deconstitution of the family brings about the deconstitution of state, with “The Kyklos” not far behind. (On Divorce, pp 88–89; 149.) Macrocosm and microcosm is an ancient Greek schema of seeing the same patterns reproduced in all levels of reality. ... The Kyklos is a term used by some classical Greek authors to describe what they saw as the political cycle of governments in a society. ...

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn draws a connection between the family and monarchy: Erik Maria Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (July 31, 1909–May 26, 1999) was an Austrian Catholic aristocrat intellectual. ...

“Due to its inherent patriarchalism, monarchy fits organically into the ecclesiastic and familistic pattern of a Christian society. (Compare the teaching of Pope Leo XIII: 'Likewise the powers of fathers of families preseves expressly a certain image and form of the authority which is in God, from which all paternity in heaven and earth receives its name — Eph 3.15') The relationship between the King as 'father of the fatherland' and the people is one of mutual love”. (Liberty or Equality, p.155)

Pope Leo XIII Supreme Pontiff (1878-1903) Leo XIII, né Gioacchino Pecci (March 2, 1810 - July 20, 1903) was Pope from 1878 to 1903. ...

Politics and the family

In her book, Delacroix, Art and Patrimony in Post-Revolutionary France, Elisabeth Fraser analyses Eugène Delacroix's famous “Massacres of Chios” (1824), which helped galvanise philo-Hellenism in France. Delacroix's symbol for the oppressed Greek nation as a family employed as conceptual and visual structuring device. A reviewer encapsulated Fraser's argument: Eugène Delacroix (portrait by Nadar) Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (April 26, 1798 – August 13, 1863) was the most important of the French Romantic painters. ...

“Equating patriarchal family metaphor with government paternalism and imperialist protectionism, the chapter argues that such familial intimations, heightened by acute emotionalism and hints of a Western culture soiled by Eastern penetration, corresponded to and reflected a paternalistic government urge to protect the victimized Greeks, a thinly veiled justification for French colonial intervention in the Mediterranean.” Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer

More recently, George Lakoff has claimed that the left/right distinction in politics comes from a difference between ideals of the family in the mind of the person in question; for right-wing people, the ideal is a patriarchical and moralistic family; for left-wing people, the ideal is an unconditionally loving family. As a result, Lakoff argues, both sides find each other's views not only immoral, but incomprehensible, since they appear to violate each side's deeply held beliefs about personal morality in the sphere of the family.[1]. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... In politics, right-wing, the political right, or simply the right, are terms which refer, with no particular precision, to the segment of the political spectrum in opposition to left-wing politics. ... In politics, left-wing, political left, leftism, or simply the left, are terms which refer (with no particular precision) to the segment of the political spectrum typically associated with any of several strains of socialism, social democracy, or liberalism (especially in the American sense of the word), or with opposition...

Such a model is not a recent addition to modern discourse; J. Vernon Jenson discussed “British Voices on the Eve of the American Revolution: Trapped by the Family Metaphor” in the Quarterly Journal of Speech 63 (1977), pp 43–50.

The idea of the commonwealth as a family is close to cliché; it permeates political discourse at every level: The English noun Commonwealth dates originally from the fifteenth century. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

“There is an historic American National Family metaphor .. That American National Family frame is like any real extended family-fractious but in the end functional. There are people in it who aren't just like you, but they are still family and we still have to try to solve our problems together, despite our differences.” — Susan C. Strong, Our 'One Big Family' Frame

See also

• Paternalism
• Pater patriae
• Fatherland
• Family dictatorship

Image of traditional cultural paternalism: Father Junipero Serra in a modern portrayal at Mission San Juan Capistrano, California Paternalism refers usually to an attitude or a policy stemming from the hierarchic pattern of a family based on patriarchy, that is, there is a figurehead (the father, pater in Latin) that... Pater Patriae (plural Patres Patriae), also seen as Parens Patriae, is a Latin honorific title meaning Father of the Fatherland. ... Fatherland is the nation of ones fathers or forefathers. ... A family dictatorship, in political science terms a personalistic regime, is a form of dictatorship that operates much like an absolute monarchy, yet occurs in a nominally republican state. ...

References

• Aristotle Politics (Loeb Classical Library)
• Louis de Bonald On Divorce trans. Nicholas Davidson (1993, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers)
• M. Eugene Boring, Klaus Berger, & Carsten Colpe [edd] Hellenistic Commentary to the New Testament (1995, Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press)
• Elisabeth Fraser Delacroix, Art and Patrimony in Post-Revolutionary France (2004, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
• von Kuehnelt-Leddihn Liberty or Equality
• George Lakoff What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don't ISBN 0-226-46796-1
• Plutarch The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans trans. John Dryden and revised by Arthur Hugh Clough (The Modern Library: div. of Random House)