Notes: The Tradition of Political Thought

The Tradition of Political Thought — Comprehensive Notes

The End of Tradition and Forebodings in Modern Times

The phrase “end of tradition” refers to a shift in which tradition becomes silent when confronted with modern questions, even as many people still live by traditional standards. What matters is the silence of tradition since the 19th century in the face of modern questions, while political life in modernizing, industrializing, and egalitarian contexts has continually overruled traditional standards.
Historical pessimists sensed this breakdown, most prominently Burckhardt; Montesquieu and Goethe offered early warnings about a coming break in traditional continuity, well before the French Revolution.
- Montesquieu, in L’Esprit des lois, warned that if despotism establishes itself, then there would be neither customs nor climate to resist it: "The majority of the nations of Europe are still ruled by customs. But if through a long abuse of power, if through some large conquest, despotism should establish itself at a given point, there would be neither customs nor climate to resist it." $150$ years later, the subterranean world rose to surface in politics.
- Goethe wrote to Lavater about a moral and political world undermined by subterranean roads, cellars, and sewers, where the earth crumbles and strange voices are heard; these passages prefigure the modern era’s upheavals.
The modern age, beginning in the seventeenth century, actually brought forward the modern world we live in today. Tradition tends to be absorbed by common sense, fitting diverse data into a shared world; common sense operates most clearly in the public realm of politics and morals.
The idea of common sense is both rooted in tradition and Roman in origin: with the Romans, remembering the past became a matter of tradition, and common sense became the highest criterion in public-political affairs. When traditional standards cease to make sense and fail to subsume new cases, common sense atrophies. The past becomes endangered by oblivion; what is not conceptualized by tradition and remains unreflected in philosophy risks remaining inarticulate in the tradition.
The end of tradition does not equal the end of history or the past. History and tradition are not identical; history has many ends and beginnings, while tradition is a stable framework that can erode over time. Modern historical consciousness began when the common practice of numbering centuries from a definite starting point (e.g., the foundation of Rome or the year of Christ’s birth) was abandoned in favor of numbering time from year one, creating a double infinity of time where both past and future lead into an endless present. This implies a potential earthly immortality for mankind. The modern age thus conceptualizes only part of history within its tradition; anything outside its prescribing categories risks oblivion.
The defectiveness of our tradition is especially pronounced in political thought, where many political experiences remain homeless within traditional categories. Example: the early pre-polis Greek experience (Homeric world) with the greatness of human deeds and enterprises, which Greek historiography sought to preserve and praise (Herodotus, Thucydides). The Greek tradition of political thought could not fully integrate these experiences into the polis framework, thereby shaping our vocabulary of politics around the polis.

Tradition, Common Sense, and the Public Realm

The public realm of politics and morals is where common sense operates; when common sense is the unreflective, habitual set of judgments in the political sphere, its collapse signals a crisis of tradition.
The Romans developed common sense as a practice anchored in tradition; over time, if traditional standards cease to apply, common sense withers. The past’s remembrance depended on a shared inheritance, often stored in the tradition and literature (poetry, history) that preserved deeds worthy of memory and praise. The loss of such remembrance leads to shallowness and meaninglessness in modern life.
The tradition’s atrophy creates a danger: the past can be identified with tradition itself, making it seem as if “the tradition” equals the past rather than a living, binding social force. The consistency and comprehensiveness of traditional categories persist despite radical changes, which makes the modern revolution seem to challenge only surface forms while not fully addressing the underlying traditional framework.

The Classical Foundations: Greek, Roman, and Their Political Vocabulary

The early political vocabulary derives from the pre-polis experience; Thucydides presents the Peloponnesian War as a major historical movement, illustrating the Greek sense of political action, greatness, and memory. Homer and the Greek poets fuel the sense that great deeds deserve praise and remembrance.
The political vocabulary, which includes terms like archein (beginning, rule) and prattein (to do, to act), originates in the Greek world but is interpreted through the polis; this interpretation centers on the idea of ruling and being ruled, ends and means, a system of ends and means that becomes central to political philosophy.
Aristotle’s praxis (practice) emphasizes that actions differ in ends depending on the ends chosen: ``with respect to the beautiful and the non-beautiful actions differ not so much in themselves as in the end for the sake of which they are undertaken’’ (Politics, vii 1333a9–10). This teleology places human deeds within a framework of ends that are not immortal, unlike nature.
The Greek historians (Thucydides and Herodotus) link human greatness to doing and suffering; poetry and history share a concern with human actions that determine life outcomes (in this sense both strive to preserve memory.
The political philosophy anchored in the Greek tradition could not easily account for acts of starting an enterprise or the hero’s cape of founding a city; the later political tradition shifts toward the statesman as lawgiver who imposes enduring rules on changing circumstances, a move that marginalizes the heroic, founding impulse.
The Roman tradition took up Greek political ideas but deepened the sanctity of foundation: the foundation and preservation of civitas; Rome’s foundation is the basis of its political community and its religion. The Aeneid frames Rome’s foundation as the ultimate telos: dum conderet urbem, tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem. The Romans learned Greek history and the alphabet but preserved the sacred nature of home, family, and the hearth (pietas). Rome’s foundation is unique and not repeatable by Greek colonization; its offshoots remained under Roman jurisdiction.
Roman religion, with its emphasis on the gods dwelling within Rome (unlike Greek gods who live on Olympus), sanctified its political life. The triad of religion, authority, and tradition becomes inseparable, especially as Rome’s political framework survives the Republic and becomes central to Western civilization’s formation ( pax Romana )
The Christian Church emerges as the Roman trinity’s new bearer in the Christian era, carrying the sacred foundation into a new historical form: the foundation of Rome is replaced by the foundation of the Catholic Church, with the concept of tradition transmitted (tradere) through generations. The Church, as inheritor of Roman political life, could offer citizenship and legitimacy in a manner that neither Rome nor municipal governance could.
The break of the Reformation did not abolish the triad of religion, authority, and tradition; it fractured the unity into multiple churches but did not eliminate the underlying structure. The breakdown of any one of the three components weakens the others.

The Modern Break: Transformation of Action into Ruling and the Role of Private Life

The transformation of action into ruling and obedience arises when political thinking borrows its model from household life and transposes it to public politics; public action becomes the execution of orders, and the distinction between rulers and ruled shapes political theory.
The philosopher’s private experience—despite its urge to rule (Plato’s utopian desire to rule) or to exercise command over slaves—provides two sources of the concept of rule: (1) the master-slave dynamic in which rule is exercised over others; (2) the philosopher’s desire to impose ideas that cannot be conveyed through ordinary persuasion.
The eighteenth-century revolutions in France and America revived the Roman contribution to Western history and the political foundation of modernity; revolutions symbolized a new foundation, yet the enthusiasm for revolution drew from the ancient sense of foundation's grandeur.
The Roman notion of tradition remained potent, but it could not fully integrate with the post-classical world; Greek philosophy’s categories loomed large as an eternal foundation of philosophy, while Rome’s political experience remained without a fully developed political philosophy of its own.
The combination of Greek philosophy and Roman tradition produced a tension within Western thought: philosophy is generally anti-traditional, whereas political thought becomes highly traditional. This mismatch becomes a defining feature of the Western tradition: philosophy tends to break with tradition, but political thought remains bound to it.

Three Experiences Outside the Tradition (Constantly Bypassed by Political Thought)

The pre-polis experience of action in early Greece (the founding impulse of enterprise) where starting and sustaining a new venture was central.
The Roman experience of foundation, civitas, and the sacred home; the foundation’s sanctity and its connection to religion and tradition.
The Christian experience of acting and forgiving as a constitutive element of political life: forgiveness is a political action that unlocks new beginnings, especially given the uncertainty and potential consequences of acting. Jesus’ emphasis on forgiveness (Luke 23:34; Luke 17:3–4; Matthew 6:14–15) highlights the need to forgive as a political act that sustains the community’s capacity to begin anew. Forgiveness as a political remedy is the central difference between religious and political life—the political sphere lacks a corresponding auto-forgiving mechanism, leaving only the heads of state with the negative right to pardon as a limited political instrument.

Action, Forgiveness, and the Political Realm

Action is the beginning of something new; it carries the risk of unpredictable consequences that bind the actor through time. This is the phenomenon the ancient world called fate, while Christianity called providence; moderns tend to call it chance, but forgiveness releases us from the chain of consequences and preserves the capacity for action in every person.
Forgiveness is the key to continuity in action; it allows new beginnings even when prior actions have produced unintended consequences. Forgiving is not merely a religious duty but a political act that sustains the political community’s ability to begin anew. The only purely political expression of forgiveness in contemporary states is the right to pardon, albeit a negative prerogative.
The interplay of doing and forgiving remains central to political life; this dynamic is what made the ancient political enterprise possible and meaningful. The absence of this forgiving dimension in modern political thought marks a fundamental loss.
The modern era’s emphasis on fabrication, building, and “making the future” tends to obscure the action-forgiving relationship; the era of modern technology and industrial progress risks forgetting the essential ethical-political balance between starting new actions and forgiving past actions.

Plurality, Equality, and the Political Realm

The plurality of men, as opposed to the unity of God (whether conceived as an abstract idea or as monotheistic deity), is the defining feature of politics. Because no human being exists in isolation, action and speech have political significance only within a plural human community.
The political realm depends on three interrelated conditions: distinctness (the individuality of each person) and equality (the equal standing of all persons); together these define the political body as a community of diverse individuals who share a common human condition.
The Genesis framing, “male and female created He them,” signals the political basis for the public realm: no single person can represent all; the political sphere arises from the plurality of persons who must act together.
Plato’s Laws (v, 739) expresses concerns about private ownership of parts of the human body and how private private interests must not prevent incorporation into a political body that acts together as one. Yet the public sphere requires dynamic interaction among distinct individuals who are equal in political status.

Foundational Trinitarian Structure and Modern Break

The Roman triumvirate of religion, authority, and tradition forms a foundation for political life; when one component weakens, the others tend to falter as well.
The Christian Church becomes Rome’s heir, transplanting the triad into the Christian era and offering a sense of citizenship within the Church that surpassed what Rome or municipal structures could provide (Barrow’s interpretation emphasizes the Church’s role as a public institution inheriting the Roman political conception).
The Reformation breaks the unity of the Catholic Church but does not abolish the triad; rather, it reconfigures religious authority and tradition into multiple branches. The breakdown of any one component jeopardizes the others, illustrating the interdependence of religion, authority, and tradition.

Philosophy, Tradition, and the Anti-Traditional Challenge

Philosophy, unlike politics, tends toward anti-tradition: Plato acknowledges tradition’s binding authority but modern philosophers (Leibniz, Schelling, Heidegger) challenge tradition by asking why there is anything at all rather than nothing. Philosophy’s task is often to resist blindly following inherited categories, yet political thought remains more tradition-bound than other branches of Western metaphysics.
Augustine and Aquinas adopt Christian dichotomies ( civitas terrena vs civitas Dei; vita activa vs vita contemplativa) that eventually marginalize political experiences that do not fit into these dichotomies, allowing them to be subsumed under religious life rather than political action. The political significance of action outside these dichotomies is often neglected, leaving many experiences outside traditional political theory.
The rise of secularism and the separation of religion from political life intensify this tension: the search for a political remedy becomes critical in the face of action’s uncertainty, and Christian forgiveness remains a largely religious rather than political concept. The political realm has historically sought to preserve the possibility of action even as religious and philosophical frameworks shift.

The Promise of Politics: Foundation, Forgiveness, and the Future

The great political experiences outside tradition—action as beginning in pre-polis Greece, foundation in Rome, and the Christian notion of forgiving as a form of action—remain relevant even if bypassed by political thought. They illuminate why politics remains necessary: to manage plurality, begin anew, and sustain human beings’ capacity to act.
The modern age’s endorsement of progress and external control of nature risks erasing the moral economy of action and forgetting the necessity of forgiveness as a constitutive element of political life.
The concept of action’s starting capacity (the ability to begin anew) and the need to forgive (to allow new beginnings) form a core ethical-political principle that should inform contemporary political theory and practice.

Key Terms and Concepts to Remember

Tradition: The enduring framework that stabilizes social life; its breakdown leads to a creeping shallowness.
Common sense: The practical judgments that guide public life; Roman origin and its dependence on tradition.
Praxis: Aristotle’s concept of action; emphasis on ends and the teleology of human deeds.
Archē and prattein: Beginning/rule and doing; two ancient meanings that shape political thought.
Civitas: The Roman concept of community and foundation; foundation as a binding obligation for future generations.
Pietas: Reverence for family, home, and the city; central in Roman religious-political life.
Pax Romana: The Roman peace and its expansion of Western civilization.
Foundation: A binding, sacred beginning that unites religion, authority, and tradition.
Tradition’s sanctification: The sanctification of political life through tradition and religion.
Forgiveness: A constitutive political action that allows the community to begin anew; a remedy to the uncertainties of action.
Plurality: The political realm rests on the existence of many distinct persons who are equal in political standing.
Modern revolution: A revival of foundation through revolutions, yet still grounded in the old Roman sense of foundation.
The three experiences outside tradition: action as starting a new enterprise (pre-polis Greece), foundation (Rome), and forgiveness (Christianity).
The difference between history and tradition: history has multiple ends/beginnings; tradition is a binding framework that can erode over time.

Connections to Real-World Relevance

The critique of progress without ethical grounding resonates with contemporary debates about technocracy, political institutions, and the limits of human rationality in the face of complex social dynamics.
The emphasis on plurality and forgiveness encourages political practice that prioritizes dialogue, reconciliation, and the preservation of the possibility to begin anew after conflicts or mistakes.
The risk of equating tradition with the past highlights the need to preserve meaningful traditions while adapting them to new political realities, rather than discarding them altogether in the name of modernity.
The interplay between religious authority, political authority, and tradition remains central to understanding contemporary governance, pluralism, and the limits of state power.