Few things inspire both tempestuous passions and rabid indifference as the practice of politics today, stuck between rampant idealism of the sort that seeks to remove the human from humanity and the kind that seeks to base everything on licentiousness or expediency. There is, however, a third way, that I shall call spezzatura, studied nonchalance, which is essential for any student of political philosophy, and for any deep understanding of the principles of politics. All sorts of dubious ethical and moral reasoning is acceptable today in politics, and has been for a long time, not least since Cleon’s infamous speech that Thucydides recreated for the benefit of the reader, or that of the Athenian envoys later in his book. Expediency and self-interest are the sovereign monarchs of political activity, unfortunately so, but they can never have any sovereign claims in the field of political philosophy, for they are prima facie opposed to anything but a brutish despotism, one where the only state is that of a bellum omnium contra omnes, not one where the possibility of the polis as the highest sovereign association can exist. I do not intend to argue that the student of political philosophy should be ignorant of the history of ideas, or of history in general; nor should this seem to advocate that history is not an integral part of the tout ensemble of political philosophy, but only that a passionate fervour in political activity in the present moment is antithetical to the study of political philosophy, and that one should be cognisant of the present while maintaining a certain nonchalance about it to ensure that one is intent on answering the fundamental questions of political philosophy and their derivatives.
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