Conceptualizing Politics

particular culture or country.
6
More will become clear after reading Chapter 3 and the last three ‘normative’ 
chapters of the volume, but here we are already watching the development in 
which ideas and ideals, or the passions ideas can ignite in the human mind, arise 
from the activity dedicated to finding acceptable general representations of how 
conflicts should be regulated or prevented. On this path, even dying for one’s own 
ideas becomes possible: Socrates (BCE 470–399), the first major Greek philosopher, 
accepts the death penalty to which the Athenian jury has unjustly sentenced him 
for ‘corrupting the youth with his ideas’ and rejects all proposals of escaping from 
prison out of loyalty to his polis.
From Socrates or the idealised (by William Shakespeare) figures of Brutus and 
Cassius to our present, a not-so-thin red line of men and women who suffered and 
died on behalf of their political ideas intersects the history of politics. We do not 
need to change or give up its original definition in order to grasp the concept that 
organising our conflict-laden communal life in one way or another can be per-
ceived as a task in its own right, capable of justifying the sacrifice of something or 
even our entire life, in order not to give up the values and the vision that we attach 
to that task – prosaic that ordinary political life may be.
7
Notes
1  Nowadays, only the Holy See or rather Vatican City State, the Islamic Republic of Iran, 
Art. 2 of the Constitution, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Art.1, 9 and 11, make 
explicit reference to this source.
2  Cf. Chapter 7 and Cerutti 2011.
3  Available at https://archive.org/stream/MaxWeberEconomyAndSociety/MaxWeberEco 
nomyAndSociety_djvu.txt, 112–301.
4  A petrified image of (racist) wall-identity is in the known photograph of the two segregated 
water-fountains for white and coloured, see https://pro.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=

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The subjective side of politics  35
SearchResult&VBID=2K1HZOL1TCEO7N&SMLS=1&RW=1600&RH=775#/Search
Result&VBID=2K1HZO6G1TLFV6&SMLS=1&RW=1600&RH=775.
5  Friedrich W. I. Schelling (1775–1854) was, along with Hegel and Johann Gottlieb Fichte 
(1762–1814), one of the main thinkers of philosophical idealism.
6  It would be of the highest interest to compare these Western, but also Islamic develop-
ments, with what has happened in other civilisations and religions.
7  Democracy, notwithstanding all its prosaic aspects to be examined in Chapter 5, is one of 
such ideas. An eminent example was given on 11 September 1973 by President Salvador 
Allende of Chile, who died in the armed defence of the democratic institutions of his 
country against the military coup backed by the USA. See the iconic photo taken at the 
presidential palace shortly before Allende took his life while rejecting any offer to go into 
exile at https://iconicphotos.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/017.jpg?w=700&h=468.