Key aspects Read the following text. Think and talk about which of the statements contained in it seem completely obvious to you and which do not. Study the translations of the words and phrases you don’t know. Imagine talking to one of the people mentioned in the text (e.g. Andrew Heywood, Aristotle, or David Hubert). What would you tell them, and what would you ask them? 9.1 Politics & democracy What is politics? Andrew Heywood has noted that politics “is exciting because people disagree. They disagree about how they should live. Who should get what? How should power and other resources be distributed? Should society be based on cooperation or conflict? And so on. They also disagree about how such matters should be resolved. How should collective decisions be made? Who should have a say? How much influence should each person have? […] For Aristotle, this made politics the ‘master science’: that is, nothing less than the activity through which human beings attempt to improve their lives and create the Good Society.” How else can politics be defined? In “its broadest sense, [it] is the activity through which people make, preserve and amend the general rules under which they live.” There are, however, many different perspectives from which to approach this subject. According to a classic definition, politics is simply another word for “public affairs” or “public life” (as opposed to the private sphere, which was considered to be “non-political”). More specifically, it can also be defined as “the art of government, the exercise of control within society through the making and enforcement of collective decisions. This is perhaps the classical definition of politics, developed from the original meaning of the term in Ancient Greece.” “Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Irish playwright 79 9 Topic Politics Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODE3MDE=