Conceptualizing Politics

PART IV
Ethics and politics 
157
  8  Liberty, equality and rights 
159
1  Concepts of liberty  159
2  Equality and egalitarianism  163
3 Rights 168
4  Rights: universal or not?  170
  9  Justice and solidarity 
175
1  Versions of justice  176
2  Distributive justice  177
3 Solidarity 181
10  Ethics, philosophy and politics 
187
1  Ethics and politics  187
2  Which ethics for politicians?  190
3  For and against ideal theory  193
4  Critical Theory  195
 
Epilogue: what drives people to politics 
201
Index 206

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FIGURES
 1.1  Reconstruction of the western pediment of the Parthenon, Athens  
(Source: Courtesy of the photographer Telemahos Efthimiadis, Athens) 
8
 3.1  Persepolis (Source: Photograph taken at the archaeological site of 
Persepolis by Renata Carloni and Furio Cerutti, December 2014) 
49
 5.1  NHS scene at the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony 
(Source: Released by Agenzia Contrasto, Rome on behalf of 
the copyright owner, NYTCREDIT: Doug Mills/The  New York 
Times.  © The  New York Times) 94
 7.1  Levels of greenhouse gases (Source: Courtesy of the 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva.  
It reproduces Figure SPM.1 from Climate Change 2007:  
The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth 
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 
[Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K. B. 
Averyt, M. Tignor and H. L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge and New 
York: Cambridge University Press 2007) 
139
 9.1  Fraternité (Source: Courtesy of the Gallica Collection, 
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, Département Estampes et 
photographie, RESERVE QB-370 (45)-FT. More information at 
http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb40255796v) 183

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PREFACE
This book is devised as a basic tool for all those who, faced with politics, want first 
of all to understand it – to understand what politics is, how it works and how it 
changes or fails to change. In the Western tradition since the ancients (Aristotle and 
Cicero much more than Plato) and down to Immanuel Kant and John Rawls, this 
endeavour to understand politics has been pursued by creating and refining con-
cepts capable of identifying its basic structures, constraints and normative alterna-
tives. Concepts, or more exactly, categories, are the protagonists of this book; they 
require an attitude of abstract thinking capable of providing us with some orienta-
tion in the wide sea of events, processes, conflicting claims. As Max Weber and Nor-
berto Bobbio knew, sticking to conceptual clarity and using an atlas of this region of 
human life make the best starting point for an unbiased inquiry into what politics is 
as well as into the possibility and the limits of change and reform – an inquiry that 
should accompany any attempt at giving politics and policy making one or another 
direction according to one’s own preferences. Politics as a tentatively rational activity 
needs a clear picture of its own architecture in order to keep illusion, self-delusion 
and ideological confusion away from itself – not an easy business indeed.
Concepts, however, are intended here not so much as they develop in the history 
of political ideas, which will appear on the stage only briefly and only where strictly 
necessary, but rather as forms of reflection (‘conceptualization’) on things, that is 
on processes taking place – primarily in our time – in the polities and the societies 
associated with them. Very much unlike in works aimed at devising ideal polities, in 
this book history, political science and anthropology will therefore play a role in the 
description of the stuff – political experiences of groups, peoples and humankind – 
that we are trying to adequately conceptualize. Yet notwithstanding all cross-ferti-
lisation with other disciplines, in particular history, this book’s approach to politics 
remains highly philosophical. It tries – hence the title – to put the world of politics 
in concepts. The final result is expected to be a conceptual lexicon of politics.

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xii Preface
As to normative categories, besides giving an account of the general debate on 
them, they will be introduced mainly in the specific configuration in which they 
arise from new evolutionary achievements and challenges (the uncertain future 
of liberal democracy; globalisation malaise; lethal threats such as the existence of 
nuclear weapons and the worsening of climate change). The search for an overarch-
ing formula of justice or freedom has in its generality little significance for the real 
politics addressing and afflicting real human beings. In the same line of thinking, 
fictional examples of moral dilemmas or behavioural prescriptions regarding the 
insulated individual – so frequent in writings somehow influenced by the analytic 
tradition – will not be discussed here, since people act in politics as associated 
individuals, or as citizens congregated in groups, movements, parties, nations under 
political or social rather than moral premises.
Is this a book just for philosophers? Hardly so. For readers with some background 
in philosophy and political science it will obviously be an easier read; but a good 
level of general culture and an ability to follow a formal, though not mathematized 
argument is indeed sufficient. What is then the point of reading this book? The fol-
lowing, I would think: if you want to achieve some unconventional understanding 
or practical orientation in front of the questions you feel to be confronted with 
while watching the news or going to the polls, a measure of abstract and overarch-
ing, hence philosophical, reconsideration of the issues at stake is a necessary help.
This textbook has the ambition to be possibly readable to not only a Western 
readership. I am fully aware that my underlying knowledge of the history and 
politics of non-European peoples does not match this ambition often enough; on 
the other hand a truly worldwide view on politics and history is still a fledgling. 
Besides, this book does not conceal its strong, though critically reconsidered roots 
in Western, especially European, culture and politics. Politics, and the thinking of 
it, does not exist without what I understand as political identity. Yet this is not 
irreconcilable, I like to think, with the scholarly attitude to give representation to 
all the relevant notions and opinions out of not just of tolerance, but curiosity as 
well. These used to be leading virtues of European modernity on its sunny side and 
should not stop before the multifarious and puzzling life-forms of politics.
* * *
What follows is a summary of the book, presented in a narrative style.
Politics in its reality allocates resources and settles conflicts by the use of a type 
of power that is guaranteed by force, but in order to achieve acceptance and sta-
bility, political power must be able to legitimate itself, drawing on the values and 
principles that lie at the core of political group identity. Only legitimate power can 
generate a sense of political obligation and keep the polity together, thus allowing 
for peaceful conflict resolution and prevention – on the other hand, sooner or later 
the resource operated by political power is bound to generate new conflicts (Part I).
Politics, whatever the actors’ goals, generates on the whole some kind of order, 
which is underpinned by institutions. In political philosophy, several models of 

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Preface  xiii
order – descriptive accounts of the origins of the polity and/or prescriptive designs 
of the ‘best polity’ – can be (and are here summarily) identified. With all of this in 
mind, the core political institution, the state, can be now defined, also in its rela-
tionship to society, the nation, the law and more in general to values. How can the 
state be ruled? This is the thorny subject matter of the chapter on government and 
democracy; on the latter a demythologizing view is proposed (Part II).
Next step: the state, and in particular the modern state, since the Peace of West-
phalia of 1648 cannot be understood without widening our vision to the states 
or the international system. War, peace and the widening web of international 
 institutions – what can be called the ‘anarchical society’ – are described, especially 
with an eye on the European Union as an example of non-imperial pacification. 
The evolution of war towards nuclear war makes it, at the same time, unavailable 
as a Clausewitzian instrument of politics and suicidal for humankind and its civi-
lisation. This is seen as the original global (and lethal) challenge, which can only 
be addressed if politics will be able to go beyond its classical definition mentioned 
above and will also (a problematic coexistence of different tasks!) become able to 
take care of the global commons and the survival of civilisation – this is the turn 
from modern to post-modern politics (nothing to do with the postmodernists’ 
views!). The specific features of the second global challenge – climate change – are 
discussed with regard to our attitude towards future generations (Part III).
In the end (Part IV), the relationship between morality and politics is examined, 
along with the main categories of normative political philosophy: liberty, equality, 
justice and – unlike in other accounts – solidarity. The main positions and the open 
problems in these fields – including those concerning human and fundamental 
rights – will be presented, along with the difficulties raised by any temptation to 
see moral and political philosophy as identical. A brief look at Critical Theory 
concludes this Part. But the volume also contains an Epilogue recapitulating all that 
drives us to political action as well as two Excurses: the first deals with the nature 
and limits of political philosophy, the second, with the philosophically significant 
relationship of politics and death.
Lastly, this book does not contain a chapter on gender because I prefer giving 
this fundamental and transversal issue the appropriate relevance wherever it comes 
into an interplay with other political categories.