Restoring the Distinctiveness of Politics: On the Political and the Forms of Rule

• Authors: Clifford Angell Bates , Trevor Shelley

Abstracts

EN

We argue that the current understanding of politics is caught in a tug of war between “economistic” and “postmodern” views, neither of which captures the distinctiveness of political rule and consequently instills confusion among citizens and misplaced expectations from leaders. Drawing largely on Aristotle, who warned precisely against this error, we consider the logic of mastery and contrast it to paternal rule. Then we discuss the voluntary nature of economic activity to distinguish it from the involuntary nature of mastery, before turning to discuss the political proper, which is a combination or mixture of these two that nevertheless makes it qualitatively distinct. These distinctions help us to better appreciate what is a likeness between political and economic, on the one hand, and between political and paternal, on the other while realising that political rule is not exhausted by either economic or paternal alone. The paper seeks to show that political rule finds itself as an in-between condition that balances itself against despotic, mastery, and the kind of care that paternal rule points to.

Keywords

EN

the political; Aristotle; forms; the economic; ruling

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek
• Journal: Polish Political Science Yearbook
• Year: 2023
• Issue: 1(52)
• Pages: 7-28

Dates

published

2023

Contributors

author

Clifford Angell Bates

• Warsaw University (Poland)

• https://orcid.org/0000000264540925

author

Trevor Shelley

• Arizona State University (United States)

• https://orcid.org/0000000225291647

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Identifiers

DOI

10.15804/ppsy202265

Biblioteka Nauki

2197896