The Political Animal

1
The Political Animal
Aristotle (384 BC 322 BC)
Jeremy Paxman (1950-)

• Politika
• man is by nature a political animal
• more of a political animal than bees
• the only animal endowed with the gift of speech
• mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or
  pain
• the power of speech is intended to set forth the
  expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise
  the just and the unjust.
• man alone has any sense of good and evil, of just
  and unjust
• the association of living beings who have this
  sense makes a family and a state

• The Political Animal An Anatomy
• Politicians they're either untrustworthy,
  power-hungry, hypocritical misfits or hopeless
  idealists doomed to languish forever on the
  backbenches.
• In a perfect world, of course, we wouldn't have
  politicians.

2
Greek conception of politics

• No separation between politics and society
• Social a Latin word
• Inserted by medieval translators into Aristotles
  works
• Zoon politikon
• Complete, fully self-realised human being
• Symbiosis of man with his polis (political
  community)
• Politics not an aspect of life, but its essence
  and totality
• Idion
• Nonpolitical man, isolated from his community
• Deficient, defective, inferior

3
Roman depolitization

• Political (Greek) ? Civil (Roman)
• Political animal ? social animal
• From self-governed city-state (Athens)
• To large-scale jurisdiction (Rome)
• Based on consensus concerning the law
• But lacking active involvement
• Separation of (civil) society from state

4
Politics and power

• Ancient conception of politics was horizontal
• Platos Republic ? Res publica (affair of the
  community)
• Instead of a form of government (republic vs.
  monarchy)
• Plato had a vertical conception of social
  structure
• Sophocracy (power of wisdom)
• Discovery of politics as an autonomous sphere
• Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)
• Il Principe
• Politics as different, independent,
  self-sufficient, a first cause
• Morality and religion are instrumental to
  politics
• If a prince wants to maintain the state, he is
  often forced to do evil, to act against faith,
  against charity, against humanity, and against
  religion
• Asserting a political imperative

5
What is politics?

• What differentiates the political from the
  economic, ethical, social animal?
• Criterion of economic behaviour utility, benefit
• Criterion of ethical behaviour the good
• Only ethical behaviour is independent of
  structure
• Economic behaviour is behaviour in economics
• Social behaviour is behaviour in society
• Political behaviour, like any other nonmoral
  behaviour, characterised by its context, in the
  political system

6
Politics, power, and the state

• Max Weber (1864-1920)
• Politics
• the leadership, or the influencing of the
  leadership, of a political association
• State
• human community that (successfully) claims the
  monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force
  within a given territory
• compulsory association that organizes
  domination
• Power and authority
• Power ability to impose ones will
• Authority belief in legitimacy of power
• Legitimations of domination
• Traditional
• Charismatic
• Legal

7
Politics as a vocation (Weber 1919)

• Either one lives for politics or off politics
• Living for politics
• Enjoying possession of power
• Giving life meaning in the service of a cause
• Wealth is a precondition to be able to live for
  politics
• Decisive qualities for the politician
• Passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense
  of proportion
• The final result of political action
  regularly stands in completely inadequate and
  often even paradoxical relation to its original
  meaning
• Politics and ethics
• Ethic of absolute ends
• Ethic of responsibility

8
The detached sphere of politics

• Politics as leadership
• Based on enchantment and belief
• Reduces public to non-rational, enchanted
  followers
• Politics as management
• Based on competence and pragmatism
• Disengages and depoliticizes public
• Political behaviour
• Belief or calculation?