On the 'Meaning' of Politics

ISBN-13: 9781032493145 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023 / 94 str.

Christos Yannaras

Opis

This book offers a concise, yet provocative, summation of Christos Yannaras’ long reflection on the meaning of politics. It provides vital clarification on Yannaras’ conception and understanding of politics and his interpretation of its historical development in the Western and Eastern theological/civilisational traditions. The book critiques the Western (Christian) tradition of political thought and praxis, namely its individualistic epistemology, its utilitarian political organisation, its obsession with rationalistic efficiency, and its religionized Christianity with all the destructive ideologies flowing therefrom. It aims to recover and counterpose a Greco-Christian conception and practice of politics based on communion, the ecclesia, truth as a collective and common contest or struggle to discover, reveal and manifest cosmic reality and an ontological vision of humans living in harmony with the ornamental order of the universe. With a foreword by Rowan Williams, this is a highly original and significant meditation on the meaning of politics that will be of interest to both political theologians and political philosophers.

This book offers a concise, yet provocative, summation of Christos Yannaras’ long reflection on the meaning of politics.

Spis treści

Foreword

Introduction

Translator’s note

Acknowledgements

1. Reverence and justice

2. Necessity and freedom

3. Forms of organized co-existence

4. Cohesion through coercion

5. Leitourgima’s degeneration into office

6. Ratio dethrones authority

7. The desire for “salvation” dethrones ratio

8. The Ecclesia and religion: incompatible modes of existence

9. When truth becomes the priority

10. Politics: contest or art?

11. Shared need as shared truth

12. The pre-political character of freedom

13. The alignment of the ecclesia of the demos and the ecclesia of the believers

14. The exercise of authority as responsible service

15. The common roots of democracy, community, and the parish

16. The political consequences of the Ecclesia’s religionization

17. Religious totalitarianism

18. Ideology: the alienation of truth into accuracy

19. Societas: the alienation of communion into a partnership

20. Religious “salvation” and political individualism

21. Materialistic and idealistic utilitarianism

22. Politics is not the aim of the Ecclesia; The Ecclesia itself is the aim of politics

23. Augustine is Europe

24. Political forms of religious individualism

25. The Ecclesia’s alienation in confessionalism

26. A Trinitarian archetype of politics

27. Comprehension is not knowledge

O autorze

Christos Yannaras is Professor Emeritus at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens, Greece.

Jonathan Cole is Assistant Director of the Centre for Religion, Ethics and Society at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, Australia.