Original scientific paper

The Will to Rule as Ethics and Democracy

Milan Polić

Abstract

Irrespective of the fact that ultimately all authority is based upon forceful threats or the use of force itself, nevertheless, the permanence and continuity of authority cannot be accomplished by coercion alone, but rather only by the consent - however restrained - of the majority ruled over. Hence, authority is, first and foremost, accomplished by ideology, and, as long as the latter is sufficiently effective, force stays in its background, and bursts to the fore only when ideology fails. In other words, the task of ideology - as a system or at least as a cluster of more-or-less linked ideas - is to present a particular interest as a common social interest, and thus to procure support for the authorities sufficient for their stable functioning and legitimate use of force.
However, in order that an ideology be effective, it must conceal not only the difference between this particular interest, on the one hand, and the common interest, on the other, but also itself as an ideology. Thus, even though any ideology is, in fact, a half-truth, an untruth or even a lie, it, as a rule, acts as the Truth. It is in this sense that the will to rule - of either individuals or groups - is most readily veiled in democracy on the level of a political community, and in ethics on a personal level. At the same time, this will to rule is built upon and strongly supports the prejudice that democracy and ethics are something unquestionably good, particularly when in mutual association. However, it is exactly this illusionary universality – through which one of the possible minds ideologically acts as the only possible mind, i.e. with which a particular will to rule is disclosed in a certain ethics or democracy - which distances both ethics and democracy as from the truth so from the good, too. History offers an abundance of examples supporting the above.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

202942

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/202942

Publication date:

2.3.2004.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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