Ostalo
THE MEANING OF POLITICS
Hannah Arendt
Sažetak
As opposed to philosophy, theology and natural sciences, for which only the
singular Man exists, for political theory the decisive fact is the plurality of
men. Politics is preoccupied with common and mutual being of different men.
It is created among men and established as their connectedness. Freedom exists
only in the authentic interspace of politics. We are saved from that freedom
in the “necessity of history”, which is a revolting absurdity. When one
wishes in our time to speak about politics, one must start with the prejudice towards
it. The prejudice accurately reflect the truly existing contemporary situation
precisely in its political aspects, and suggest that we have ended up in a
situation in which we do not quite or do not yet know how to move politically.
The prejudice towards politics are manifest in the notion that national politics
is made up of lies and deception by corrupt interests and corrupt ideology,
while foreign politics hovers between hollow propaganda and brute force.
This causes a flight into powerlessness, a desperate desire for men in general
to be deprived of the freedom to act. Politics is, always and everywhere, preoccupied
with illuminating and dissolving prejudice. If one wishes to dissolve
prejudice, one must first discover the past judgment contained therein, i.e. actually
show their contents of truth. This is the task of the faculty of judgment,
but not as mere capability to subject the individual regularly and adequately to
the general that corresponds to it and regarding which there is agreement, but
as judgment directly and with no standard. The loss of standard, which truly
determines the modern world in its facticity and cannot be annulled by any
return to the good, old tradition or any arbitrary setting up of new values and
standards, is therefore a catastrophe of the moral world only if one presupposes
that men would in fact be completely unable to judge things in and of themselves,
and that their faculty of judgment is insufficient for original judgment.
Politics is always centered on care for the world organized in this or some
different way, without which those who care and who are political, think that
life is not worth living. Where men come together, the world always breaks
through between them, and all human actions take place in this interspace.
Ključne riječi
politics; men; plurality; world; prejudice; faculty of judgment
Hrčak ID:
97876
URI
Datum izdavanja:
14.2.2013.
Posjeta: 2.564 *