Politics Essays

The best understanding of politics rarely comes from committed writers. Political correspondents and columnists, for instance, may often know more about politics and have better political judgement than the politicians. Spectators do see more of the play than the players: critical judgement (as Kant argued) begins with empathy but must end with distancing.

To make such a sharp distinction between the political and the anti-political, certainly to see the political simply in terms of party allegiance, must once again raise the worry that the concept is defined too narrowly. Not all anti-politics was totalitarian; most of it, in fact, was a Right-wing protest at "bad" or liberal politics, not a rejection of all politics.

Political writing (which should be both good politics and good writing) is too important to be left to craft-conscious academic disciplines, and when it is so left, as we have seen, a restrictive view of the political emerges. Political philosophers should talk less to themselves and more to the public using examples from what is left of our common literary culture. Only after considering many actual literary texts is it sensible to consider academic critical writings about the general relationship of politics to literature.

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