Chronicle Editor
THE elevated vocation of politics has in many ways died. What remains, perhaps, is politics as the proverbial dirty game and a profession where many good for nothing scoundrels of this world have found something to do, and they are doing it so badly.
Boaventura Santos recently made a grim observation that when politics starts producing “cartoon characters” of such leaders as Donald Trump in the United States of America and Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom something deep and down in the body and the soul of the world has died. As a noble vocation and not a dirty game, politics used to produce for leaders noble sons and daughters of the world that were called upon to provide inspired and elevated leadership.
These called and chosen, not just elected, sons and daughters of the world were of elevated morals and cultivated characters and polished personalities.
In Africa, Ayi Kwei Armah of Ghana called them the “beautiful ones” that are “not yet born” as the continent and its countries continues to fall into the hands of some scoundrels and hoodlums of all sorts.
The tragic fact that at a world scale, politics has come to be peopled and populated by scoundrels, hoodlums, hooligans and tricksters compelled Enrique Dussel, the Argentinean philosopher of liberation, to note in perplexity that “politics has suffered an original corruption” that has degenerated from a vocation to a profession and turned it into a nihilist “fetishism of power.”
That corruption of politics and politicians, at a world scale, has made the line very thin between political practice and the dark arts of sorcery where power is sought, found and kept by all means foul and unfair and where blood-letting and the dispensation of pain and suffering are normalised and made the very commonsense of politics.
That politics is and must always be a dirty game is a myth and fiction of modern political science that must be urgently corrected. There is no almighty God that came down and declared that to be political is to lie, steal and kill, no.
The Death of a Science
That political science, politike episteme, was founded by Plato and Aristotle in 4th Century Athens, as Eric Voegelin and other western political theorists allege is pure Eurocentric propaganda.
That puerile propaganda is easily dethroned by reading and understanding what Socrates, the teacher of Plato, says about his own education. In the book, Bucyrus, Socrates writes that “I studied philosophy and medicine in Egypt” that is in Africa.
It is common knowledge that Plato who became the teacher of Aristotle travelled to Egypt for higher education in Philosophy and other disciplines. Political philosophy as a discipline was brought to Athens by those philosophers that had journeyed to Africa for elevated schooling.
So much for that propaganda and the history, for now, the allegation of my reflection today is that before politics was corrupted and before it degenerated to its present death, thinking about politics and the knowledge of politics themselves died.
In other words it is political science that died and then with its disease and death infected the vocation of politics itself. When the method and the theory of thinking about and knowing politics was diseased and died, the death of politics itself was a death foretold.
It is worth recalling that thinking about and understanding politics was previously the domain of political philosophy not political science. Political science proper, as a discipline, began after 1945 when the United States of America assumed the leadership of the world. Political thinking began to be scientific and not philosophical, mathematics and calculation were mobilised and polling and opinion political polls became the commonsense of knowledge production in politics.
The deep thinking about political virtues and values that political philosophy had valorised were pushed into the background and left to theologians, and other moralists. The behaviour of politicians was left to sociologists and psychologists, and journalists, to observe and study.
Political scientists found employment as spin-doctors, propagandists and public relations clerks for politicians and political parties. Metaphorically, they became izisindabiso, glorified toilet cleaners. In that way, political science was born with the seeds of its death, and the death of politics itself.
The “public use of reason” in politics that Immanuel Kant cried about, and the habit of “thinking what we do” in politics that Hannah Arendt advocated were pushed to the back seat as calculation and campaigning became part of political thinking and practice.
Unlike political philosophy that was used to search for “virtue” in politics and politicians, political science was designed to manage public opinion, the hearts and minds of political followers and voters. It was crafted to help politicians and their parties to rule and manage populations.
Fundamentally and in macro terms, political science was designed as a method and strategy to help the USA rule the world after the Second World War. Political philosophy whose heart and soul was always the critique of power and the search for liberation could not be manipulated to help Empire to conquer and dominate the world.
In that way, political science and political scientists did not come to existence for the happiness of men and women but for their domination and rule. Political science and political scientists contributed to the corruption of politics and the decay of political values.
Morality was removed from political thinking and practice when scientific calculation, scheming and plotting became part of the method of doing politics at a world scale. When citizens were reduced to voters and populations to constituencies something died about politics. Politics became a business and nations and their populations were reduced to markets and consumers that buy politicians and their ideas in every lottery of men and women that is politely called elections.
Vita Activa and Vita Contemplativa
I am frequently sold to and totally bought by the political theorisation of Hannah Arendt, perhaps because she thought as an underdog, a Jew in Nazi German, an exile, a refugee and also a woman in the world of men.
Vita Activa, which is the title of one of Arendt’s essays of 1958, refers to political activism, and action of political philosophers such as Socrates himself who died challenging the regime in Athens using his political philosophy of questioning power that he learnt from African griots and wisemen and women. Philosophical political activism involved not jostling for political positions and power, no.
It entailed what Edward Said called “speaking truth to power,” questioning and critiquing power and authority, calling leaders to account. Protecting truth and justice as political values, virtue, was its job description. It was a thankless job.
It led the political philosopher to the cross of crucifixion much like Socrates himself that was forced to drink Hemlock for defending the values of truth and justice in Athens.
The political philosopher in Athens or in Africa did not think and speak for the comfort of powerful men and women or did he reflect in response to the jingle of coins in the pockets of slippery and corrupt politicians, no.
That is the dirty job of later day political scientists and other pretenders. The political philosopher had virtue, and some deep political values, truth and social justice to defend. For that he feared no man and no woman.
The political philosopher as an activist that participated in public affairs did not engage in thoughtless action but he also lived a life of reflection, Vita Contemplativa. He contemplated on public affairs, truth and justice. He looked at society and felt the anguish to call for action against decay and decline. The stock in trade of the political philosopher was ideas and not ideologies.
He flew above the enchantments and temptations of power and so was he able to see through the lies, injustices and crimes of power and the powerful.
In the life and person of the political philosopher were combined Vita Contemplativa and Vita Activa, actionless thought, quietism, and thoughtless action were not part of the assortment of his qualities.
The Death of Politics
In 1972 two titanic philosophers locked horns over a contentious subject that is, human nature, and its truth or falsehood. Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault debated whether there were any qualities or quality that can be called human and was natural.
Earlier in 1958 Arendt had advanced the idea of the human condition. Human beings, otherwise, she thought are conditioned by the world and nature itself. They are shaped and formed by their surroundings. And they go on to condition the world, that is, they also shape the circumstances and the world around them.
Human beings are political and social animals in that they shape nature as much as they are shaped by it, they are capable of changing the world for the better or the worst. And all forms of change begin with the thoughts and ideas of human beings that are then activated and enacted.
As a system and a method of thinking political science changed politics. During his time Socrates complained about sophists that were charlatans that practiced the philosophy of convenience and opportunity, flatterers and sycophants that thought and spoke to please the powerful for rewards and promotions.
They stood for nothing but profit and gain. Sound was more important to them than sense. Plato, in his time noted the evil work of philodoxas. These were “philosophers” that did not love and respect wisdom but dabbled in doxa.
Doxa being untried and untested opinions that the philodoxas circulated as truth, misleading society and leaders with comforting myths and false good news that led to the decay of politics.
The day doxa was mistaken for truth and wisdom, which is the day ideology, was mistaken for philosophy, politics was fatally wounded. What allows the cartoon characters that Santos talks about to achieve popular support and gain power like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson is not their political philosophy but their political passions, jingoism, ideology and doxa, attractive but toxic ideas.
Thanks to doxa, politics in the world exists and circulates as a mistaken, lost and even dead occupation that needs to be recovered and restored to its truth and its peace as a noble vocation. Politics, worldwide, needs to be rescued, recovered, rehabilitated and restored to its place as the search for liberation and not the practice of domination.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from Gezina, Pretoria, in South Africa. Mail to: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>.
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