J. Antall szerk.: Medical history in Hungary 1972. Presented to the XXIII. International Congress of the History of Medicine / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 6. (Budapest, 1972)
J. Antall: State Interference and the Dilemma of Liberalism in the Field of Medical Training and Public Health
42 Medical History in Hungary 1972 (Comm. Hist. Artis Med. Suppl . 6.) sociology, we are moving from greater to smaller degree of regulation. This he considered to be the line of progress and concluded that the ideal state of affairs is when state interference is entirely lacking. The adherents of the two opposing views, those in favour of increasing or decreasing regulation, tried to support their theses with the evidence of ethnography showing what degree of interference existed in primitive societies, in earlier social formations, and by analysing the history of human society wanted to register how regulations and state interference came to cover the various fields of human life. Now it is beyond any doubt that parallelÿ with scientific and technical progress, with the development of human society state interference is on the increase. In primitive and other earlier formations only a much smaller part of life was regulated than in modern times. Of course, this development was not smooth but was repleted with ups and downs. When the focus of our attention is directed at the life of the individual, at the relation of society and freedom 4, or in other words the problem of individualism and collectivism, 5 much depends on our approach. It is true that in earlier formations the conduct of the individual was often prescribed by strict rules, religious codes, which obliged him to follow a given pattern of behaviour. It would be easy to quote endlessly the various forms of regulations, which today sound all too ridiculuous.º In modern life, however, regulation of state interference has reached such a degree, it penetrated into our consciousness so deeply that we regard it as natural, obvious, necessary, and this interference regulating a very large sphere of life is not felt a burden but it is even demanded. The feeling of burden, "opposition" arises when compulsion is involved or felt. If one has an aversion to washing and is forced to clean himself he regards this interference unpleasant, but if he requires it, then he will feel any obstacle in its performance as unpleasant interference. So it is an indisputable fact that together with the growth of mankind and the spread of civilization regulation, state interference and the much abused bureaucracy is constantly increasing. Sometimes bureaucracy is the consequence of the decrease of force applied, since the settlement of a case needs a large official machinery when there is no bludgeon or pistol to speed up the process of justice. It follows that liberal political philosophy, the idea of individual liberties emerging in the age of enlightenment, represented not simply an extreme reaction to state interference but rather reacted against open and unequivocal, forcible and absolutistic state (or social) interference. It is well known that in defence of extreme liberalism, unbridled individualism, the analogy of Darwinism was evoked. Furthermore it can be observed in the study of any epoch that there is always a tendency to apply the prevailing school of thought of the period to a numberless fields of life, with or without good reason or 4 Ralf Dahrendorf, Gesellschaft und Freiheit. München, 1961. 321. 5 E. Barker, Principles of Social and Political Theory. Oxford, 1963. 268. 6 D. G. Ritchie, The Principles of State Interference. London, 1896.
