A common line of rhetoric, at least for as long as participatory democracy has pervaded the West, is that politics is a nasty and cruel thing and so engagement in politics inevitably makes us nasty and cruel people. This view is so commonplace that I imagine each and every one of us, particularly those who study or work in politics, hear it at least a couple of times a week – from our friends, relatives, and neighbors. For how divided our country is, one unifying theme is a shared hatred of politics.
Yet, perhaps shockingly to our modern sensibilities, this distaste for politics is a rather novel phenomenon. The ancient Greeks and Romans saw politics as a wonderful, communal activity for the polis to share in – a chance for citizens to leave the confines of their homes and struggle together for the good of their fellow man. So how did we go from that to this? It’s a long and sad story, but one worth knowing if we have any chance of improving the deeply fallen state of our politics.
In the ancient view of the world, humans are naturally selfish. Given the choice, we prefer to do only what is good for us to the exclusion of others. The genius of classical philosophy was to tell us that this does not have to be the case – that politics doesn’t have to be defined by the caprice of one despot or another, but can instead entail the communal pursuit of the highest good. The blessing of Christian divine revelation, in turn, was showing us that the pursuit of the highest good must be to the exclusion of none because all are made in the image of God.
Bearing in mind the lessons of classical philosophy and Christianity, though it be true that we are fallen, sinful creatures, we may yet still be drawn to love what is noble and good. Thus, our souls are locked in a constant conflict between evil and justice. As the Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn once put it: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.” The best life available to us, then, is one that tries ceaselessly to tip the balance of our internal civil war in favor of the good.
On a more practical level, this means surrounding ourselves with things that draw us away from our selfish instincts and towards the love of our fellow man. Family is the most obvious example of this since, by nature, family life demands that we learn to love our parents, children, siblings, and other relatives with an affection that at least mirrors that which we feel for ourselves. This is not meant to imply that family always exists in this idyllic form; in fact, family members can be some of the most difficult people to love And yet, by learning to love those closest to us, we are trained to love our broader communities and humanity as a whole. Other such institutions that give us a chance at self-improvement include the church, the workplace, clubs, charitable organizations, and, most shocking to our modern minds, politics.
In a democracy such as ours, politics requires coming together and debating so that we might ultimately reach an agreement. Luke Bretherton, Regus Professor in Moral Theology at Oxford University, describes our options when we disagree with our fellow citizens as follows: we can eliminate them through violence, force them to leave, otherwise exclude them from the political process, or, we can engage in politics, which entails finding a solution to our disagreements without relying on the first three options. Politics, at its very best, inspires us to grow in virtue by thinking more deeply about our fellow man – to contemplate the problems they confront and do our level best to resolve them. This is just like family in that it pulls us away from ourselves and towards some higher, more selfless collective endeavor.
This being said, only a fool would argue that politics always takes such an idealized form. Just as the rearing of children can become an exercise in vainglory, so too can politics be transformed from a noble quest for human improvement into a bitter war between competing egos for greater personal well-being. This has in many ways become the current state of our own politics. The obsession with close-minded ideologies and the lack of metaphysical foundations regarding what humans are and what they require has made it simply impossible for many of our politicians to talk in a way that elevates debate beyond disputes of mere self-interest.
Yet the current political outlook cannot be entirely blamed on entrenched ideologies and bad politicians. We the everyday voter perpetuate this cycle by weaving every political event into the most cynical narrative possible. To put this another way, because we expect politics to be bad, we struggle to see it any other light. We look for selfishness and gloom in our politics and because that is all we look for that is all we find
So how do we make politics a good thing? How do we live up to the aspirations of the ancient conception of politics as a noble enterprise? We should certainly aim to elect thoughtful, thorough, and principled politicians, but the real work of improving our politics starts with us. When we think of politics as something good, something that elevates humanity and resolves our problems, that is the first step in restoring politics to something resembling its classical conception. Politics in the ancient world was not noble because people used to be better, but because they they saw politics as something magnificent – the arena for the greatest men of the greatest age. It can be that again, if we just start to believe.