POLITICS. – The etymology, from Gr. *polis* = city, suggests the first and most general meaning of the term, inasmuch as it highlights the object to which it refers. Politics concerns the public life of the city or the State. This relation does not reveal a single specific nature for it, since many other human activities and theoretical constructions share the same point of reference and yet cannot be included within its scope, whence arises the difficulty of moving from a nominal definition to a substantive one. As a starting point, however, one may accept the common definition, which describes it as the art and science of government and has the merit, at least, of highlighting two principal aspects. In the first, politics is a practical activity aimed at promoting public affairs, and in this sense—though less frequently—it is already found in Aristotle and in most subsequent theorists.
It must nevertheless be noted that the noun “art” does not precisely express its nature. It refers only to one centrally important element, namely that in the exercise of political activity intuition and ingenuity are necessary to grasp the directives of history, foresee developments, and take timely measures for the present and future public good; in this it resembles art, from which it is nonetheless distinguished by the normative laws that guide it, whereas those of art are exclusively indicative. Moreover, it must be observed that the element which specifies political art and science, in the definition given, appears at first analysis too narrow to express the broad meaning commonly attributed to politics. For it is not only those who govern who engage in political activity; particularly in democratic regimes, citizens, the people, and parties do so as well. Thus it is more accurate to say that, in this first aspect, politics encompasses any activity directed toward the advancement of public affairs, with special regard to government and the organization of the State.
In its second aspect, politics is a science, and this is the sense in which the term is most frequently used by Aristotle, St. Thomas, and later theorists. The uncertainties that still persist regarding the concept, however, are reflected in scientific speculation, rendering the contours of this science vague and its proper object ill-defined. Some identify it with sociology, others with general theory of the State or with political philosophy, still others with economics or with moral philosophy; finally, some conflate the practical and theoretical aspects, dissolving the latter into the former. All these varied approaches either strip political science of any specific content and deny it—while retaining its name—or else dissolve it into amorally empirical practice.
The two notions mentioned—the practical and the speculative—are not independent of one another. Practical politics necessarily presupposes politics as a science, for it is characteristic of man to act after acquiring a more or less adequate knowledge of the particular or universal ends toward which his action must be directed, as well as of the means suitable to achieve them—in short, of the rules that must guide its development. This prior knowledge is provided by political science, which is then followed by practice through the application of its norms and directives to concrete cases. By virtue of this intimate and necessary connection, politics belongs to the number of practical sciences, whose end is to guide human action. In every practical science, theory and action are correlated, inasmuch as speculative knowledge of the laws governs and directs human conduct, though the ultimate judgment about the path to follow in concrete cases depends both on theoretical principles and on an assessment of the factual conditions in which the agent finds himself from time to time. In the process that leads to action, a variable element is thus introduced, from whose consideration different practical solutions may arise without altering the higher norms of action. It is upon this variable element that the elasticity recognized by all in politics rests—often mistakenly equated with discretion—but which, in a sound conception, is nothing other than the effect of prudence, suggesting variations in practical conduct and adaptability to historical circumstances within the limits set by the most universal principles. It is particularly in this domain that politics, as an art accompanied by ingenious intuition, is exercised.
To arrive at a more adequate concept, to the elements mentioned must be added the specifying element of the end. Every practical science and every human activity falling within its scope has a particular purpose that determines it and allows for its classification. Thus, for example, medicine aims at providing for the cure of disease, architecture at construction, economics at the production and circulation of wealth, pedagogy at education. The same must be said of politics. Both as a practical science and as an activity, its specific end is the well-being of the community, which it is its office to promote by choosing means suited to the time and circumstances. It is, therefore, essentially a science of ends and means. The most common current of thought hesitates to admit this concept, observing that the ends of politics incessantly change in the course of history, or, if a fixed and abiding end is admitted, it is assigned to the affirmation of power. It is easy, however, to see how this confuses the provisional and contingent ends that are ever present and cannot but be present in the life of States with the universal end to which they are subordinate. Just as in individual life, above the manifold temporal purposes there exists one universal and comprehensive end to which they remain subordinate as intermediate steps, so too in social life there exists a universal and comprehensive end, which, as objective study of the deepest aspirations of humanity reveals, consists in the well-being of the community (v. COMMON GOOD). Those who, inspired by Machiavelli’s conception, assign to politics as its end the affirmation of power identify it with force and its use, denying it the character of normative science and reducing it to a mechanism of constructive means directed toward crushing the human person, abandoned to the caprice of State power.
Politics arises from man and is directed, as its ultimate term, to man. Its true concept is thus that of an activity and a science whose end is, respectively, the temporal and human good of the community. Yet this end does not appear to be specific to it, since it is easy to observe how other practical sciences and social activities equally refer to II. The difficulty has an objective basis; yet it will suffice to push the analysis a little deeper to overcome it and bring into clearer relief the essential character of politics.
Some of the practical sciences that contribute to promoting the common good—such as, for example, economics, law, pedagogy, agricultural science, and finance—are confined to a narrow and well-defined sector of public life and thus have a particular purpose that distinguishes them. Politics (*p.*), on the other hand, aims at achieving a more universal good, encompassing the goods to which all other sciences aspire. It exercises a superior power of coordination and subordination over them, regarding the ends of each as intermediate means ordered toward the proper functioning of the State and its prosperity. Politics is an architectural science and activity that integrates the individual elements constituting social good into a general design; by virtue of this role, it is essentially distinct from every other particular activity and science that contributes to it only partially.
Politics is further distinguished from one of the most important practical sciences, namely, moral philosophy, which has a higher and more universal purpose than politics. For moral philosophy does not merely order public conduct and civil life for the attainment of honest good but first and foremost concerns itself with the private life of man, guiding it through its precepts toward the end of life to be achieved beyond the limits of time. Although moral philosophy enters in part into the domain reserved for politics, it cannot be identified with it, by virtue of its proper end, which transcends the temporal, and the greater breadth of its application. Therefore, politics must be recognized as having its own unmistakable character and a relative autonomy. It is neither economics, nor law, nor social philosophy, nor a general theory of the State, nor any other practical science, though it employs all of these to achieve its specific end: the best organization of public life, human and temporal good in all its aspects.
The concept of politics has progressively followed the changes occurring in its material object. At its origin, it was tied to the Greek *polis* and its organization, from which the theorists of Hellenic philosophy drew their immediate inspiration. However, as the movement of association expanded, merging small independent human nuclei into more complex aggregates, politics was applied to this new social reality and, while retaining its fundamental meaning, broadened its scope in accordance with the breadth and complexity of public life. The unifying movement that led to the formation of States did not stop at this stage but, driven by the associative forces inherent in human nature, linked peoples and nations into a higher, international society, vastly expanding the horizons of politics.
From this described social evolution, three branches of politics emerged concerning the life of the community, the State, and the society of nations. The latter two are commonly referred to as domestic politics (*p. interna*) and international politics (*p. internazionale*). Domestic politics, in turn, has been divided into as many sectors as there are branches of activity in the modern State—social, economic, educational, financial, labor, and so on. These divisions tend to increase as the demand grows for more active State intervention in various aspects of public life. The application of the concept to the activity of the Church is improper. Undoubtedly, the Church is a visible society, but both the principle of union and the ends to which it is essentially ordered transcend the sphere of man and the temporal. Therefore, the use of the term to indicate the activity undertaken for its governance and well-being can only have an analogical value, whereas it retains its propriety when denoting the attitude of the State toward religion. Just as there is an economic politics, so too there is a religious politics.
From what has been set forth, it may appear what the solution to the much-debated question of the relations between politics and moral philosophy should be, but it is fitting to devote a particular mention to II. Regarding this issue, theories divide into three currents: some identify the two, others separate them by an unbridgeable divide, while yet others adopt an intermediate position. The first current was championed by Plato, who, in the *Republic*, argued for the complete convertibility of politics and moral philosophy, even to the point of totally absorbing the latter into the former. An equal identification is achieved by idealist immanentism, which configures the State as the concrete reality of the ethical idea, ethics itself, in which moral philosophy dissolves. The ideology of communism also sacrifices moral philosophy on the altar of politics, according to which concepts of justice, honesty, and virtue, as projections of the capitalist regime, are destined to disappear in a new order of wealth. Thus, the political ideal of class struggle must be regarded as the supreme measure of good and evil. The so-called modern mystiques of class, race, or nation are founded on the same ideological confusion, manifested in the attempt to infuse political ideals with a wholly religious character, elevating them to the status of substitutes for religion.
To the second current belong all those realistic theorists or politicians who, following the footsteps of Machiavelli, conceive of politics as an exclusively empirical knowledge that, among its precepts, studies history and teaches by what means power is to be maintained. Politics would not concern itself with the *ought* or the better order to be established in society but with the *is* or the order already constituted, whose maintenance and strengthening it pursues through whatever means it deems suitable, without any regard for a higher law. If ever its law derives from a super-morality, it permits the statesman to transcend ordinary moral prejudices for the affirmation of his power. The critique of these theories arises spontaneously from the tyranny they render legitimate. The human person does not enter into the social aggregate to be absorbed and annihilated within it but to achieve transcendent ends to which communal life is subordinated as a necessary means. Consequently, the person not only retains an inalienable sphere of autonomy that cannot be sacrificed to any temporal end but also possesses an intrinsic dignity that forbids reducing the person to the status of a mere means or instrument. The empiricist current, moreover, after deforming the concept of science with a boundless relativism contrary to the demands of reason, sacrifices the rights of the person to raison d'état, shrouding social life in a funereal veil and abandoning it to the caprice of force.
The true solution to the problem can be achieved if both aspects of politics—the practical and the theoretical—are kept in mind. In its practical dimension, politics, while not identical to morality, remains subordinate to II. Indeed, morality has as its specific aim the free activity necessarily directed toward the good; that is, it must guide human conduct toward the attainment of the ultimate end. Wherever this conduct unfolds—in the realm of private life or public life, within the boundaries of the State or beyond them, in the broad sphere of international relations—morality holds its commanding place. Politics, too, has as its object a good, namely the social good, and as such, being included within the moral order, does not escape the ethical imperative. The same conclusion is reached by another path. The end of the political organism cannot be anything other than a human good, and it can be such only if it is directed toward or does not oppose the proper end of man. The particular end toward which political action tends cannot reasonably differ from the supreme end of man, which is pursued by morality. All special ends are intermediary.