Qu’est-ce que le politique ?

Abstract

The question “What is politics?”, considered not from a particular philosophical tradition, but from our common experience of twenty-first century individuals, leads us to recognize in politics a specific way of being, evidently rooted in natural human sociality, but nevertheless distinct from all forms of natural existence. It rises with the awareness that social order is the result of a positive will, brought forth by some human collectivity. This does not imply democracy, but it does imply the capacity of that collectivity to turn back and reflect on itself, that is to dissociate from itself. This reflexive capacity claims ever more explicitly its abstract and universal quality. We shall have to ask whether this should be understood as a new and specifically modern turn, or if it has always been a fundamental trait of political agency, raised to a new intensity in the modern context. From the answer to this question depends the issue of a possible “overstretching” of human consciousness by politics: My argument being that politics as such drive human groups beyond any form of nature-guaranteed identity. The mere existence of a “city” is already the result of an overwhelming abstraction, that the individual can never completely assimilate. The more universal forms of being-together nation, European Community or world government only take this abstractness one or several steps further. A tremendous political skill is certainly required to make sure these steps, too hastily taken, do not lead to Terror or Tyranny. But their ultimate goal, unity of mankind, is essentially implied in any political association.