Politics

POLITICS. - Etymology, from the Greek πόλις = city, suggests the first and most general meaning of the term, insofar as it brings into evidence the object to which it refers. Politics concerns the public life of the city or of the State. This relation of its does not, however, by itself manifest its specific nature, since many other human activities and theoretical constructions have the same point of reference and yet cannot be included within its scope, whence arises the difficulty of passing from the nominal definition to the substantial one. As a starting point, nonetheless, the common definition may be accepted, which describes it as the art and science of government and has the merit, at least, of bringing out two principal aspects. In the first, politics is a practical activity, which has as its aim the promotion of public affairs, and in this sense, although less often, it is already found in Aristotle and in the great majority of subsequent theorists.

It is necessary, however, to draw attention to the fact that the noun "art" does not exactly express its essence. It refers only to an element that is certainly not negligible, namely that in the exercise of political activity intuition and genius are necessary, in order to grasp the directives of history, to divine its developments and to take timely measures in favor of the present and future public good, and this brings it close to art, from which it is nonetheless distinguished by the laws of a normative character that guide it, whereas those of art are exclusively indicative. Furthermore, it must be observed that the element that specifies political art and science, in the definition cited, appears at first analysis too narrow to express the broad meaning that is customarily attributed to politics. For not only does he who governs exercise a political activity, but, particularly in democratic regimes, so do the citizens, the people and the parties, so that it is more exact to say that politics, in this first aspect of its, comprises any activity directed toward the advancement of public affairs, with special regard to the 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 employed in Aristotle, St. Thomas and later theorists. The uncertainties, however, that still persist regarding the concept are reflected in scientific speculation, rendering the contours of this science evanescent and its proper object ill-defined. Some identify it with sociology, others with the general theory of the State or with political philosophy, others again with economics or with morality, others finally confuse the practical aspect and the theoretical aspect, dissolving the latter in the former. All these varied attitudes either empty political science of every specific content and deny it, while yet retaining its name, or else nullify it in amoral empiricism.

The two notions mentioned, the practical and the speculative, are not independent of one another. Practical politics, in fact, necessarily presupposes politics as a science, since it is proper to man to pass to action after having acquired a more or less adequate knowledge of the particular or universal ends to which it must be directed, and of the means suitable for attaining them, in a word of the rules that must guide its development. This prior cognition is given by political science, which is then followed by practice, through the application to concrete cases of the norms and directives established by that science. By virtue of this intimate and necessary connection, politics belongs to the number of the practical sciences, which have as their end the guiding of human action. In every practical science, theory and action are correlative, insofar as the speculative knowledge of the laws dominates and directs human conduct, yet in such a way that the ultimate judgment on the path to be followed in concrete cases depends both on theoretical principles and on the evaluation of the factual conditions in which the acting subject finds himself from time to time. Into the process that leads to action there is thus inscribed a variable element, from the consideration of which a different practical solution may arise, without the higher norms of action changing. It is on this variable element that there rests that elasticity universally recognized in politics, often wrongly mistaken for discretionary power, but which, in a sound conception, is nothing other than the effect of prudence, which suggests diversity of practical behavior and flexibility of adaptation to historical circumstances, within the limits marked out by the most universal principles. Politics, as art accompanied by genius-like intuition, is exercised particularly in this field.

In order to attain a more adequate concept, to the elements mentioned there must be added that which specifies it: the end. Every practical science and every human behavior that falls within its scope has a particular purpose, which determines it and permits its classification. Thus, for example, medicine tends either to the prevention or to the cure of disease, architecture to construction, economics to the production and circulation of wealth, pedagogy to education. The same must be said of politics. Both as practical science and as action, it has as its specific end the well-being of the community, which it is its office to promote, choosing the means suited to the time and the circumstances. It is, therefore, essentially a science of ends and of means. The most common current of thought struggles to admit this concept, observing that the ends of politics change incessantly in the becoming of history, or, if it admits one that is fixed and permanent, it assigns it to the affirmation of power. It is easy to perceive, however, how it confuses the provisional and contingent ends, which are never lacking nor can be lacking in the life of States, with the universal end to which they are subordinate. As in individual life, above the many temporary purposes there exists one that is universal and comprehensive, to which those remain subordinate as intermediate steps, so in social life there exists a universal and comprehensive purpose, which, according as the objective study of the deepest human aspirations reveals, consists in the well-being of the community (v. BENE COMUNI). Those, moreover, who, inspired by Machiavelli's conception, assign to politics as its end the affirmation of power, identify it with force and with its use, denying it the character of a normative science and reducing it to a mechanism of coercive means, directed at crushing the human person, abandoned to the caprice of the powers of the State.

Politics is born of man and turns, as to its ultimate term, to man. Its true concept is, therefore, that of an activity and of a science which have as their end respectively the temporal and human good of the community. It does not seem, however, that such an end is specific to it, since it is easy to observe how other practical sciences and other social activities refer to it equally. The difficulty has an objective foundation, and yet it will suffice to push the analysis a little deeper in order to overcome it and to bring out more clearly 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 and financial science, and so on—are limited to a narrow and well-defined sector of public life and for that very reason have a particular end that specifies them. Politics, by contrast, tends toward the realization of a more universal good, encompassing the goods at whose attainment all the others aim, over which it exercises a higher power of coordination and subordination, considering the ends of each as intermediate ends and means ordered to the right functioning of the State and to its prosperity. Politics is an architectonic science and activity, which inserts the individual elements from which the social good results into a general design, and by this office of its own it is essentially distinguished from every other particular activity and science that contributes to it only in a partial way.

It is further distinguished from one of the most important practical sciences, morality, which has a higher and more universal end than politics; for it does not order only public conduct and civil life, for the attainment of the honest good, but refers first of all to the private life of man; in order to orient it through its precepts toward the end of life, to be attained beyond the limits of time. Although morality enters in part into the field reserved to politics, it is not possible to identify it with the latter, by virtue of its own end, which transcends the temporal, and of the greater breadth of its application. One must, therefore, recognize in political science its own unmistakable physiognomy and a relative autonomy. It is not economics, nor law, nor social philosophy, nor general theory of the State, nor any other practical science, although it makes use of all of them to attain its own specific end, the best organization of public life, the human and temporal good in all its aspects.

The concept of politics has progressively followed the changes that have taken place in its material object. At its origin it was bound to the Greek polis and to its organization, from which the theorists of Hellenic philosophy drew their immediate inspiration. Since, however, the movement of association expanded, so as to make the small independent human nuclei flow together into more complex aggregates, the concept has been referred to this new social reality and, while maintaining its fundamental meaning, has extended its range, following the breadth and complexity of public life. The movement of unification that led to the formation of States did not stop at this step, but, driven by the associative forces grafted into human nature, has linked peoples and nations in a higher, international society, greatly broadening the horizons of politics.

From the social evolution described, the three branches of politics have successively been born, which concern the life of the community, of the State, and of the society of nations. The last two usually take the name of internal politics and international politics. The internal, in turn, has been divided into as many sectors as there are branches of activity of the modern State: social, economic, educational, financial, labor, and so on. The divisions tend to grow as the need increases for a more active intervention of the State in the various aspects of public life. Improper is the application of the concept to the activity of the Church. Undoubtedly the latter is a visible society, but both the principle of union and the ends to whose attainment it is essentially ordered transcend the sphere of the human and the temporal, and therefore the use of the term, to indicate the activity carried out for its government and for its good, can have only an analogical value, while it retains its propriety if it denotes the attitude of the State regarding religion. Just as there is an economic politics, so there is a religious politics.

From what has been set forth, it may appear what the solution should be to the much-debated question concerning the relations between politics and morality, but it is fitting to devote a particular mention to it. With regard to it, theories divide into a threefold current: some identify them, others separate them with an unbridgeable gulf, others finally take an intermediate position. The author of the first current was Plato, who, in the De republica, maintained the full convertibility between politics and morality, 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, ethicality itself, in which morality dissolves. Morality is still sacrificed on the altar of politics by communist ideology, according to which the concepts of justice, honesty, and virtue, as a projection of the capitalist regime, would be destined to disappear in a new ordering of wealth. Meanwhile the political ideal of class struggle must be held 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 by the attempt to infuse political ideals with a religious breath, raising them to the rank of a surrogate for religion. To the second current named above belong all those realistic theorists or politicians who, following in the footsteps of Machiavelli, conceive politics as an exclusively empirical cognition, which draws its precepts from the study of history and teaches by what means power must be maintained. Politics would not concern itself with what ought to be or with the better order to be established in society, but with the state of fact or with the order already established, for whose maintenance and strengthening it employs the means that seem to it most suitable, without any restraint of a higher law. If anything, its law derives from a super-morality, which permits the statesman to overcome ordinary moralistic prejudices for the affirmation of his power. The criticism of these theories springs spontaneously from the tyranny that they render legitimate. The human person does not become part of the social aggregate in order to be absorbed and annulled within it, but in order to attain its own transcendent ends, to which life in common remains subordinate as a necessary means, and, consequently, it not only preserves an irrepressible sphere of autonomy, which cannot be sacrificed to any temporal end, but also its own substantial dignity, which forbids lowering it to the rank of a means or an instrument. The empiricist current, moreover, after having deformed the concept of science with a boundless relativism contrary to the demands of reason, sacrifices the rights of the person to reason of State, wrapping social life in a funeral pall, abandoned to the caprice of force.

The true solution to the problem can be reached if one keeps in mind the two aspects of politics, the practical and the theoretical. In the practical aspect, politics, while not identifying itself with morality, remains subordinate to it. Morality has, in fact, as its specific objective the free activity necessarily directed toward the good; that is, it must guide human conduct to the attainment of the ultimate end. Wherever this conduct is exercised, within the sphere of private life or of public life, within the boundaries of the State or outside them, in the broad international circuit, morality finds its place of command. Politics too has as its object a good, and precisely the social good, and as such, being included in the moral order, it does not escape the ethical imperative. The same conclusion is reached by another path. The purpose of the political organism can only be a human good, and it cannot be such unless it is directed toward or is opposed to man's proper end. The particular end, toward which political action tends, cannot reasonably dissent from the supreme end of man, which is pursued by morality. All special ends are intermediary, that is, means in relation to the general and ultimate end of man. As, therefore, the peculiar purposes of tactical actions cannot prescind from the general strategic purposes, so the ends of politics must be coordinated in conformity with the end of ethics. In the theoretical aspect, politics is distinguished from morality. As a science it has its own objective and its own purpose. This distinction, however, is not adequate, since among the supreme principles, which it must necessarily posit as its foundation, there figure norms of morality and justice, which emanate from the objective order of social values and are immanent in every human association.

Antonio Messineo