Recovering Politics, Civilization, and the Soul

There is no more fundamental task that lies before us than a self-conscious effort to recover the meaning of politics, civilization, and the soul for this (or any other) time. Not politics as a diabolical realm of power-seeking and “domination” rooted in will-to-power, but the “ruling and being ruled in turn,” as Aristotle called it, made possible by the uniquely human capacity to speak and reason about “the advantageous and the just.” If politics is unthinkable without conflict, it is defined above all by the enduring and humanizing imperative to “put reason and actions in common.”