Organising the Chapter on Politics (4) — Gliederung Emerging

Image credit. I felt rather inspired this morning to continue with the work on my chapter on "politics" — I take the above painting to be capturing the experience of being hit by inspiration. Are we even seeing the Holy Ghost? It was a far more moderate affair with me this morning, needless to say.

1.       What Is Politics?

1.1     Politics — Wider Sense

1.2     Politics — Narrower Sense

1.3     Politics in General - Part of the Human Condition

2.       Politics under Conditions of Freedom

2.1     Freedom — Adapting to the Individualistic Age

2.2     Rise of Individualism

2.3     Politics and the State — Adaptations to the Individualistic Age

2.3.1  The New Social Persona - The Autonomous Individual as a State-provided Public Good

3.       The Politics of Public Goods

3.1     Political Participation - Organising the Permanent Redrafting of the Social Contract

3.2     Privatising Law and Life — The Individualistic State as Radical Privatiser

3.3     Disencumbering Justice by Auxilliary Forms of Legitimacy

Politics in a free society is a vast, subtle, and multidimensional cultural network that only as a whole gives meaning, effectiveness, and strength to its more visible institutions such as elections, parlamentarianism, and majority rule.

4.  Political Culture in a Free Society

4.1     Epistemological Functions of Freedom and Politics - Politics as a Discovery Process

4.2     Science and Freedom — "Moral Images" à la Putnam - Open-ended, Incomplete and Changing

4.3     Culture-Questioning and Culture-Shaping in Civil Society

4.4     Politics as Part of the Division of Labour in a Free Society

4.5     Politics and Poppers World 3

4.6     The Long Road from Anthropocentric Freedom to Sociogenic Freedom

4.7     The System of Sociogenic Freedom — Politics - Improving State Technologies

 

We may look at freedom as the extension of man's tendency to diminish natural risks by increasing and adequately controlling social risks — freedom creates more open conflict but attenuates the level of aggression by sublimating it commensurably.

5. Dynamic Conditions of Politics in a Free Society

5.1      Myths Denigrating Politics

5.2      The SO of Rationally Adapting to SO - The Evolution of Skills of Interference

The ability of man to adapt to evolutionary order (= SO = spontaneous order) is itself subject to evolutionary advancement. It is not at all "unnatural" for man to interfere with the natural evolutionary order, in fact, he has evolved to be able to interfere with it successfully. He is even cultivating an evolutionary tool of his own making: cultural evolution, which is far more "rapid-acting" than genetic evolution is.

5.3      Politics a Means of Economising on Vice and Detriment (especially Predation)

5.4      Politics — Leveraging 'The Ultimate Resource'

5.5      'The Political Habitus' — It Is Natural for Modular Man to Act Politically

One of the adaptations to the historical fait accompli of individualism is that individuals seek to accommodate one another so as to maximise their personal advantage. In other words: they endeavour to influence one another in ways that are mutually/generally accepted as fair. A culture of challenging-and-accommodating one another begins to spread throughout everyday life. This creates a double link between individual lives and politics: firstly, people extend the 'political habitus' (the propensity to take influence on others) from their private Lebenswelt into fields of broader public impact. Secondly, the "political habitus" exhibited by man in civil society, that is, the ubiquitous and incessant exercise of taking influence on others to guard and advance personal interests, weaves a dense texture of relationships that are sensitive to effects imposed upon it by politics proper, and vice versa. In a word: politics (as pursued within the political infrastructure of a country) tends to emulate and seeks to humour 'the political habitus' practised millionfold in civil society, while 'the political habitus' will tend to protest against, resist, and correct unwelcome developments in higher level public politics. Both processes, inspiration and resistance devolving from civil society upon formal politics, work through a vast and intricate network of institutions, not all of which being part of the political infrastructure or only marginally so, while nevertheless bringing considerable impact to bear on the decision makers or the atmosphere in which their preferences are formed.

That's enough for today.

To be continued here.