Power, Rule & Politics

The author of this article takes issue with the view of modern political theorists that politics is power. He contends that the proponents of this position violate common sense and common language and, in effect, dissolve politics altogether. Moreover, in view of the frequent recalcitrance of political experience to quantitative measurement, they all acknowledge, explicitly or implicitly, the need to differentiate political power from pure force. Wilson contends that a proper understanding of political relations can be gained by tracing the development of the political community from more rudimentary types of human associations as Aristotle does in the Politics. What emerges is that relationships of power and force are nonpolitical and that political rule is based on the natural differences between more complete and less complete human beings. It is these relationships that pose the fundamental questions for political philosophy as distinct from political science

American political science · Biology and political science · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · International political economy · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Systems theory in political science · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

• Aristotle's Four Conceptions of Politics

  Patrick Coby•The Western Political Quarterly•1986

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