Conceptualizing Politics

passions, to put it again with the words of Hobbes, or emotions – both disrup-
tive and destructive (daughters of Thanatos/Death, such as: hatred, despise for 
other groups, envy and resentment, both very relevant to social dynamics) or 
nourishing and strenghtening the ties among individuals and groups (such as: 
sympathy and empathy, helpfulness, all daughters of Eros/Love, to speak in the 
terms of Sigmund Freud. The first ones are those that in common parlance are 
said to require containment, discipline or outright denial, because they ‘inflame 
the minds’ and have been indeed, as objects of skilful manipulation and propa-
ganda, pillars of the totalitarian regimes in the twentieth century, while they 
now play a large role in the populist movements of the twenty-first. The other 
type of passions is an indispensable element not just of societal bonds, but col-
lective political action as well – how could polities, parties, communities stick 
together without including this emotional cement?
• 
universalistic motivations, inspired by morality or religion or a worldview or by 
‘civil religion’, the set of solidaristic and inspiring beliefs holding a commu-
nity, especially a nation, together – as Rousseau first saw under this formula in 
Book IV, Chapter 8 of The Social Contract. These motivations strive to redefine 
the purpose of politics and the life of the body politic in a less self-centred 
direction, against the disrupting effects that a mere instrumental or strategic 
behaviour and destructive passions have on the polity. A political identity filled 
with ideal motivations of moral or civic nature can be a powerful driver of 
political action, though there are hardly any Kantian or Rawlsian politicians. 

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What drives people to politics  203
The identity of a democratic community with its openness and integrative 
force belongs primarily here. Yet it is also true that a democratic identity can-
not remain an intellectual argument, if it is to drive people, and is best embed-
ded in positive emotions of solidarity and equal respect.
•  remembering Chapter 3, a fourth driving element must be acknowledged: 
institutional (in the sense of institution-driven) action. Individuals, as well as 
groups, (administrative or political bodies, parties and more) do not every sin-
gle day reinvent their course of action driven by strategy, passion or ideal: in 
normal times, a major component of their actions is the conformity to (or the 
endeavour to reinterpret or change) the grid of rules that allow for the exist-
ence and continuity of the polity, which is also the venue in which to enact 
the life plans of individuals and groups. Only in the now seldom revolutionary 
times this type of action loses terrain, but does not disappear, waiting for new 
institutions to start working. Institution-driven behaviour should not be mis-
taken for proneness to apply rules whatever their justification or however based 
one’s own assessment; it only implies the acknowledgement that at the end of 
the day interests, ideals and identities must find expression in rules embodied 
in institutions, both informal and formal. The predominance of the latter bears 
witness to the crucial, though not exclusive role of the law – already seen in 
Chapter 4, §5 and again in Chapter 10 with regard to Habermas – in shaping 
and upholding the old and new arrangements in which we manage the busi-
ness of life.
A major examination of the four-tiered grid, and in particular, of all the inter-
twinements between the four elements would require more space than is given in 
an Epilogue. The grid is little more than a stub, in the hope it is useful to put some 
order to hints found all across the book. It also has the task to stress the distinc-
tive nature of the four driving moments, which become very much intermingled 
within the concrete actors’ behaviour, but must be mentally kept from each other. 
Any attempt to explain an event or process on the basis of just one of these driv-
ers must fail, given the mix of high and low, reasonable and murky of which our 
behaviour as individuals and groups consist. Against all reductionism, for example, 
it would be wrong to subsume acting on universalistic, principle-driven moti-
vations under strategic, self-centred behaviour, as the less refined realist writers, 
modern followers of the Sophist Trasimachos remembered in Chapter 9, §1, do 
with the pretension to unmask the hoax – as they say – perpetrated by idealistic 
actors who claim to act for the sake of humanity or the law while pursuing their 
own interest. This attitude does not have more truth than the conventional wis-
dom heeded by the people for whom ‘all politics is a dirty business’. The truth 
regarding such a multilayered being as a human and such a contradictory business 
as politics is more articulated than what can be unveiled by simplifications and 
alleged ‘cynical lucidity’.
Twin cases of reductionism can also be found with regard to passions. The older 
one wants passions to be altogether a factor of corruption for politics, leading to 

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204 Epilogue
irrational and destructive results, and calls for having them chastised by reason. 
We have already argued that even the best political life does not develop without 
an emotional component, while passions do not build a compact bunch and a 
differentiation must be drawn between them. The younger step into reduction-
ism goes in the opposite direction: politics was always icy and dull, far from the 
hearts of the people, women in particular, and should finally be put in the flow of 
positive,  community-building emotions. This proposal forgets about the obstacle 
represented by the fact that, left alone, without the company of reason (both as 
calculus and moral reason), emotions cannot be easily discerned into positive or 
negative and can wreak havoc; while, along with motivation and purpose, politics 
also includes policy making and controlling public administration, all tasks in which 
emotions can replace reasoning and bargaining as little as, say, the much praised 
‘gift economy’ can replace the market and the money in advanced societies – the 
problem being rather how far the two economies can coexist.
* * *
This book ends with a warning that is at the same time an invitation.
Politics as represented here is politics looked at through the lenses of concepts, an 
irreplaceable instrument – a political philosopher tends to believe – to understand it 
and also to find a firmer ground to orient oneself in political action. Yet it’s a long 
way from the concept to the understanding, let alone the handling of any concrete 
political situation in which we can get involved as participants or observers. On this 
long path it is not political philosophy that can provide food for thought, though 
expansion and refinement of the concepts explained here would help. Armed with 
the tools offered in this book, the reader is rather invited to plunge into a wealth 
of documents that are closer to the flesh and blood of real politics: history books 
primarily, about general history as well as, say, social or military history. Then come 
biographies and autobiographies: the well-written ones give a vivid picture of 
how policy making and consensus seeking, the two main components of concrete 
politics, come about or end in failure and omission. They also give the reader the 
advantage of getting the sense of a dimension that has not been discussed in this 
book because it is highly elusive and almost impossible to conceptualize: the role 
of personality in politics, once a popular theme among ancient writers of politics, 
first of all Plutarch.
Another invitation is to read sociological (first of all from economic sociology) 
and anthropological literature that can give a fresh and well-documented image of 
how things are evolving in society and politics, thus helping readapt or discard con-
cepts that have lost currency in a changing reality. A further fascinating source, dull 
that their language may sound, are sentences issued by high courts – national such 
as the US Supreme Court or the German Bundesverfassungsgericht as well as inter-
national such as the European Court of Human Rights – in cases of political and 
ethical relevance. This kind of attention must now extend to the books based on 
hard science concerned with the events in nature (or rather in the human handling 

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What drives people to politics  205
of it) that challenge the responsibility of politics (in the sense of Democracy Two, 
as explained in Chapter 7, §6). Climate change, energy resources, human and non-
human biotechnologies and neuroscience are among the present cases.
Political philosophy deals with categories, both reconstructive and normative. 
Yet categories are better investigated and with more intellectual fun if we keep in 
our sights the lifeforms they are supposed to help understand, while also providing 
actors with some reasoned practical orientation in political life.

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