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- Title
Is There a Political Pathology?
- Authors
DRAGODAN, ANA-MARIA
- Abstract
Political pathology, as a recently born branch of political science, seems to be devoted to those negative aspects that alienate politics from its fundamental meaning, namely that of serving the collective interests, either of whole nations or of restrained human communities or, in other words, to serving the common good, as Aristotle himself defined it. Moreover, the extreme pathological manifestations taking place in the main fields of politics may determine the annihilation of their basic meaning, triggering real catastrophes for human communities. Yet, to the contrary, if considered in its benefic sense, politics does not divide or set apart, but represents that specific level of human conscience that facilitates a common and coherent behavior for the widest of human groups. Politics lies at the basis of human cohesive communities. There is a consensual infrastructure achieved precisely through politics that made possible the survival of human communities and their development through centuries and millennia. Ensuring through politics the elementary cohesion of human groups does not exclude differences, but on the contrary presupposes them, otherwise the area of politics would become empty and void of meaning. Under communism, the destruction of the elementary solidarity at the basis of society coupled with the presence at the top of a leader with Ego-cratic powers, has emptied quite rapidly the political field, threatening the survival of the community itself. This trait is common to all totalitarian regimes, constituting the climax of political pathology Even after the dismantling of political systems based on the single party, in certain post-communist societies there existed tendencies of certain parties to assert themselves as "the one and only" party. The perverse effect is so strong that politicians themselves finally speak of politics in the most pejorative meaning and tend to confuse politization with parrisanship. Pathology means, as it is well known, the systematic study of diseases, their diagnosis, the prescription of remedies, and, which is more important, their prevention. A systematic study of political pathology, entailing proposals of strategies and of therapeutic and prevention methodologies still fails to exist. The present study wishes to constitute only part of a more comprehensive book comprising the study of the main different forms of political pathology and it is worth emphasizing that the working hypotheses of said book may very well form starting points for a much wider area of interest covering the therapy of contemporary politics.
- Subjects
COMMON good; POLITICAL philosophy; CONSCIENCE; SOCIAL cohesion; PARTISANSHIP
- Publication
Transylvanian Review, 2013, Vol 21, p165
- ISSN
1221-1249
- Publication type
Article