Organising the Chapter on Politics (3) — Towards a Gliederung (Structure)

Image credit. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of browsing the library of the gentleman depicted by Picasso in the above painting: Henry-Daniel Kahnweiler. I wish I could read any book in half a second and still retain and understand everything of it.

Continued from here.

This is not yet a Gliederung, really. I am just feeling my way towards it. But hope to come up with a Gliederung in the next post. The material that I have accumulated during the course of my research is simply overwhelming. I suppose, each of the below headings contains material enough for an entire book.

Anyhow, the below are very basic introductory aspects of politics. "Basic" meaning "important", or "overlooked at great cost". The significance of these basic features is that they facilitate understanding

• the invariance of politics in human history, 

• the elements underlying the inalterable anthropological character of politics, 

• the necessary presence of politics in a free society, and 

• the reason why freedom actually intensifies politics.

As for the last point mentioned, personal freedom for all citizens implies the need to improve conditions under which every individual is entitled to exert influence on their social environment to seek acceptance or compliance with their personal concerns—which is the essence of politics in a free society.

Democratised Politics and the Christian Soul

Politics assumes an entirely different nature once the right to practice it, i.e. to influence the social environment according to one's personal preferences, is equally distributed among the population rather than being available only to some members of society. This novelty redefines the set of admissible political acts and their consequences compared to the ancient model of natural inequalities among the social actors. The ancient paradigm, still fully dominant in Greece and Rome, was fatally punctuated with the emergence of Christianity, which gave relief to the individual by positing the possibility of a personal relationship between every human being and God, and an attendant private sphere of conscience and free will entailing accountable choices and responsibilities uniquely tied to man as the bearer of an individuating soul. It took almost 2000 years for the implications of Christian individualism to work out in the shape that we are accustomed to, and the free individual came into her own most fully only after the Christian prefiguration of modern liberalism had reached the stage of culturally dominant secularisation. (Damn it, this virtually forces me to add a section on that long-winded story.)  

★★★

Definitions and the Political Preconditions of the Release of Human Knowledge

Definitions of the subject matter as offered here and here, and in this post with its intriguing emphasis on the epistemological foundations of political behaviour. As for the last thought, it might be worth following up the conjecture that the epistemological potential of humans may require specific political circumstances to be more fully taken advantage of.

Politics and Socially Enforceable Behaviour

Here I introduce a basic aspect of politics — its role in organising enforceable behaviour in a community. While politics does involve layers of non-coercive activity, they are ultimately supported by and collapse without a fundamental layer of coercion. The state — being the monopolist of coercive power — is the ultimate enforcer of politics. 

Political Scarcity Creating Demand for Politics

From insights offered here, we may conclude that political scarcity — ubiquitous in all human communities —  necessitates (politics as) the management of discord, a task that may involve means of persuasion and compromise to a smaller or larger extent but will always require the reassurance of a system of enforcement. 

Any system of social order is sustained by power. Politics organises the system of power. Therefore freedom too depends on politics.

Politics — A Dimension of Cultural Evolution

Due to his superior intelligence and his ability to develop higher forms of self-conciousness,  man's political horizon is open-ended; man experiments with political possibilities; politics becomes integral part of cultural evolution which is the turbo engine of evolution compared to far more pedestrian genetic evolution. There is a natural evolutionary pressure in human communities to advance social technologies embedded in politics. Politics therefore is part and parcel of man's anthropological makeup. To be human is to practice politics. Freedom is a new stage in this continuous feature of the human condition. To actualise himself, man needs to do be politically active.

That is true in an instrumental sense, but also in a philosophical sense.

The Ontological Function of Politics

Politics is a way for humans to define themselves and their environment. Politics is a reality-building activity for human beings. Being active participants in constructing what counts as reality, humans inevitably revert to political means in order to make sense of the world in which they live.

Incidentally, the presence of voluntaristic and constructivistic elements in human efforts at dealing with what they perceive to be the real world does not at all entail that reality is altogether relative and a matter of arbitrary human construction.

To be continued.