Posted on 05/18/2005 10:23:12 PM PDT by SAMWolf
"Politik ist das Öffentliche: die zielgerichteten Handlungen und Ordnungen, die allgemein verbindliche Regeln sozialer Gemeinschaften oder eines oder mehrerer Staaten bestimmen. Der Begriff wird aus dem griechischen Begriff 'Polis' für 'Stadt' oder 'Gemeinschaft' abgeleitet." Wikipedia.
Google translates, "Politics are the public: the purposeful actions and orders, which determine generally obligatory rules of social communities or one or several states. The term is derived from the Greek term ' Polis ' for ' city ' or ' community '."
Sounds to me like they are talking about social organization. "Politics are the public" sounds like "Politics are people taken as a group." War can exist even with only small groups of people involved. We call 'em bandits, usually.
Certainly here we talk about the quest for power, since "generally obligatory rules of social communities" have to be set by someone and enforced by some faction.
I would include "myth" within politics, "a traditional story accepted as history; serves to explain (more "embody", IMHO) the world view of a people." Or, more to my liking, "For some myth is seen as a device to cloak or conceal a knowable reality (ie facts evaporate into myth). For others, it is the way the unknowable can be understood. Claude Levi-Strauss wrote that a myth is a device to think with -- a way in which reality is classified and organized. Roland Barthes stated that a myth is a type of speech, so that everything can be a myth provided it is conveyed by a discourse. For Barthes, this historically-produced, depoliticized speech gives meaning and form to reality. Thus, instead of cloaking reality, a myth is used to both control and explain it."
I like the second definition better. PoliSci site, natch.
Thanks for the MacArthur info, darned if I could find anything like that quote, and figured it was because I am not a Plato scholar.
Speaking of Clausewitz, when I first read Sun Tsu I was totally floored by "The Art of War"s explanatory power. The Viet Nam war unfolded like a book into lucidity. "Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State."
Sure, war is what the State is all about.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could all get along?
IMHO, it's just not nature, human or any other, no matter how much the Libs would like it to be otherwise. Utopia will not exist in life.
Flatlander! ;-)
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