What does it mean to come to a resolution that is genuinely beneficial for all parties at the table?
Is that easy or a challenge to the human psyche, the human ego, and our capacity to regulate ourselves? To lead ourselves and remain open to the widest lens — maintaining the vision of governance determined by a benefit to the many.
In her 1996 paper Public Philosophy and International Philosophy, political philosopher Martha Nussbaum stated, “Economists and political scientists are all the time talking about preference, choice, and desire. But it is the special job of philosophy to provide a perspicuous investigation of these foundational concepts, distinguishing desire from intention, emotion, impulse, and other psychological items, asking questions about the relationship of each of these to belief and learning.”
John Rawls, philosopher and poet from the 18th century, was a founding mind of our current concept of democratic law, but not in the present state we find ourselves in — rather the visioning of the political, philosophical concept of democracy, or democratic law and justice. Herein lies the secret: when discussing politics in its ideal form, it is dangerous to mix what ‘is’ with what could be. And although philosophers have the bad rap of being somewhat absent-minded professors lost among dusty books, scrolls (or in Dene terms, perhaps, the moon, sun, berries and stars), to practice philosophy as a profession, as one would medicine, or anthropology, or dentistry perhaps, is a much stricter process.
Political sciences, or poli-sci as many social science majors would know it, was, to me, a study of what is what is the current definition of ‘state’ or ‘economy’ or ‘legislature’ or ‘who is the prime minister and what is the PM’s function in the current state of Canada.’
But in my darling faculty of political theory, the winding coordinates of the philosophy department was where I met my ancestors, and where I visioned a future for unborn generations. It is not about politics as ‘this IS politics’ but what is this political life we live, what does it mean to be a citizen, or to hold a position of leadership and how does leadership take place. How do we citizens demand accountability from our political leaders and how, if and when needed, do we hold justice in our own citizen hands.
The study of political theory is the ‘why’ and ‘how’ to poli sci’s ‘what’ — and in this faculty we were, in an organized, methodical manner, encouraged to courageously dream. To dream of what politics could be, how things have been, how they got to be how they are and how they may be better. To dream beyond our limited notions of what it meant to be a citizen. We were taught to see the strength, beauty and terror that is the political imagination — a space we collectively inhabit and, depending on leadership and community energy, can build such good will and focused change that evolution (revolution) occurs.
It can also be clouded by negativity, the oppression of coercive governments. And finally, it is not the government’s job to hold itself accountable to remaining just, to be clear — that is the responsibility of the citizen. Because we must, as author Adrienne Marie Brown reminds us, “Dream beyond fear.”