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⁴ Bartelson, Jens, The Critique of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 64.

⁵ See Heller, Agnes, ‘On the Concept of the Political Revisited’ in Held, D. (ed.) Political Theory Today (Oxford: Polity, 1991), 330–44Google Scholar, Mouffe, Chantal, The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 1993)Google Scholar, Honig, Bonnie, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (New York: Cornell University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, O'Sullivan, Noel, ‘Difference and the Concept of the Political in Contemporary Political Philosophy’, Political Studies 45 (1997): 739–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Frazer, Elizabeth, ‘Political theory and the boundaries of politics’, in Leopold, D. and Stears, M. (eds) Political Theory: Methods and Approaches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 171–95Google Scholar. John Dunn in The Cunning of Unreason suggests that hopeful definitions are inadequate. For a rare attempt to offer an inclusive rather than hopeful definition see the nonetheless still unsystematic extension of Weber's definition of politics in Geuss, Raymond, History and Illusion in Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 14–15.Google Scholar

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⁷ Adam Swift, ‘Political Philosophy and Politics’, in ibid., 135–46, at 135.

⁸ Rawls stands at the head of the tradition which writes about political philosophy without mention of politics. For Rawls on the ‘political’ (which means, more or less, the ‘legal’) see Rawls, John, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement ed. Kelly, Erin (London: Belknap Press, 2001)Google Scholar, 182. For works on political philosophy which do not discuss politics see Kymlicka, Will, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)Google Scholar, Plant, Raymond, Modern Political Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991)Google Scholar, Wolff, Jonathan, An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar, and Knowles, Dudley, Political Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹ See Mouffe, Chantal, ‘Rawls: Political Philosophy Without Politics’, in The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 1993), 41–59Google Scholar, and Geuss, Raymond, ‘Neither History Nor Praxis’, in Outside Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).Google Scholar

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¹¹ Laclau, Ernesto in Goodin, R. and Pettit, P. (eds) Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993)Google Scholar, 435. This seems to be the concept of politics which, usually defined negatively against what it is not, was restored to radical thought by Laclau and Mouffe, Chantal in Hegemony and Social Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985).Google Scholar

¹² Mouffe, Chantal, The Return of the Political (Verso, 1993)Google Scholar, 49. Cf. politics as ‘striving for power’ in Max Weber, ‘The Profession and Vocation of Politics’ (1919) in Lassman, P. and Spiers, R. (eds) Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, 311.

¹³ Raphael, D.D., Problems of Political Philosophy (London: Duckworth, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 31.

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¹⁵ The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory (eds). Dryzek, J.S., Honig, B. and Phillips, A. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar, 8.

¹⁶ For others see Wolin, Sheldon, Vision of Politics: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar, 11, and Crick, Bernard, In Defence of Politics 4th ed. (London: Penguin, 1992)Google Scholar, 21.

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¹⁹ See Vincent, Andrew, The Nature of Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 91–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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²² Collingwood, R.G., ‘Political Action’ (1928) in Boucher, D. (ed.) Essays in Political Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 92–109Google Scholar, at 92.

²³ Sidgwick, Henry, The Elements of Politics 4th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1919)Google Scholar, 15.

²⁴ Heywood, Andrew, Politics (London: Palgrave, 2007)Google Scholar, 21.

²⁵ This seems to be the view of certain ‘defences’ of politics written in imitation of Bernard Crick's famous book of 1962. I simply do not think this argument – made in Stoker, Gerry, Why Politics Matters: Making Democracy Work (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)Google Scholar and Flinders, Matthew, Defending Politics: Why Politics Matters in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar – is necessary. These books simply confuse two things they want to distinguish: politics and ‘politicks’. Such books generate their energy through the confusion which follows when we at one and the same use the word politics to mean both the reality of rule and the ideal which complicates it. This confusion is embedded in our everyday language (where ‘distrust of politicians’ becomes ‘dislike of politics’, although it is nothing of the sort: we only distrust politicians because we expect good to come of politics). Nothing philosophical can be gained by simply accepting the confusion.

²⁶ Dunn, op. cit. note 3, 15.

²⁷ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1141b in the Loeb edition, ed. Rackham, H. (Camb. Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934)Google Scholar, 347.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Compare Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics trans. Irwin, Terence (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985)Google Scholar, 159: ‘That [properly] applies to both parts in common’.

³⁰ Aristotle, Politics 1277b & 1254a in op. cit. note 27, 192–3.

³¹ See Arendt, On Revolution (London: Penguin, 1990), 30–31Google Scholar, Oakeshott, Michael, On Human Conduct (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975)Google Scholar, 167 n. 1, and Dunn, op. cit. note 3, 30, for three different interpretations of what ‘ruling and being ruled’ means for the relation of politics and ruling.

³² About actual politics, it is perhaps relevant to say that I am no admirer of political science as such, agreeing more or less with what Oakeshott wrote about Lasswell in 1948 (‘laboured analysis’, ‘childish examples’, ‘obscuring abstractions’). See Oakeshott, Michael's review of The Analysis of Political Behaviour in The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence: Essays and Reviews 1926–1951 (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2007), 220–1Google Scholar. As far as I know, the closest study of political events ever written is Cowling's historical trilogy about British politics in the late nineteenth and early to mid twentieth century (where there was sufficient archival material to sustain the closest possible analysis). See, for instance, the first of these: Cowling, Maurice, 1867: Disraeli, Gladstone and Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³³ Arendt, Hannah, The Promise of Politics ed. Kohn, Jerome (New York: Schocken, 2005)Google Scholar. This book, written in the 1950s but not published then, was the initial sketch for The Human Condition, but it is a clearer statement of the thesis, even if sometimes less consistent about the separation of ruling and politics.

³⁴ Ibid., 117.

³⁵ Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1958), 26–7.Google Scholar

³⁶ Arendt, Hannah, ‘Truth and Politics’, in Laslett, P. and Runciman, W.G. (eds) Politics, Philosophy and Society: Third Series (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967)Google Scholar, 133.

³⁷ It has received much criticism. See Parekh, Bhikhu, Hannah Arendt and the Search for a New Political Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 52. See also Dunn, op. cit. note 3, 36.

³⁸ Arendt, The Promise of Politics, op. cit. note 33, 135. Cf. The Human Condition, op. cit. note 35, 229–30.

³⁹ Ibid., 222.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 230.

⁴¹ Arendt, Hannah, On Revolution (London: Penguin, 1990), 30–31Google Scholar, citing Herodotus, Histories, 3.83.

⁴² Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, op. cit. note 31, 167 n. 1.

⁴³ Ibid., 167 n. 1.

⁴⁴ Oakeshott, Lectures in the History of Political Thought (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2006)Google Scholar, 107.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 35.

⁴⁶ Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, op. cit. note 31, 159.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 161. Compare ‘a concern with the conditions of an association in respect of their desirability or cogency’, in Oakeshott, Michael, ‘The Vocabulary of a Modern European State’ (1975), in O'Sullivan, L. (ed.) The Vocabulary of a Modern European State (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2008)Google Scholar, 261

⁴⁸ Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, op. cit. note 31, 162.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 166. C.f. Oakeshott, ‘The Vocabulary of a Modern European State’, op. cit. note 47, 261: ‘Rulers may deliberate desirabilities, they may make “political” utterances recommending what they have done or about to do in terms of its desirability, and they may babble; but none of this is “ruling”.’

⁵⁰ Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, op. cit, note 31, 164.

⁵¹ Ibid., 163.

⁵² R.G. Collingwood, ‘Politics’ (1933), in Collingwood, op. cit. note 22, 118–123, at 119.

⁵³ Collingwood, ‘Political Action’ (1928–29), in ibid., 92–109, at 96 & 100.

⁵⁴ Collingwood, ‘Politics’, in ibid., 119–20.

⁵⁵ Collingwood, ‘Political Action’, in ibid., 100 & 103.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 106.

⁵⁷ Collingwood, ‘Politics’ (1929), in ibid., 110–17 at 114.

⁵⁸ Collingwood, R.G., The New Leviathan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1943), 138–40.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Ibid., 177–80.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 180.

⁶¹ Ibid., 183.

⁶² Ibid., 189.

⁶³ Ibid., 190.

⁶⁴ Schmitt, Carl, The Concept of the Political (1932) trans. Schwab, George (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)Google Scholar, 20.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 26.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 27.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 66.

⁶⁸ Ibid., 32.

⁶⁹ Ibid., 30.

⁷⁰ Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty trans. Schwab, George (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 5.

⁷¹ Rancière, Jacques, ‘Ten Theses on Politics’, Dissensus: On Politics And Aesthetics, trans. Corcoran, Steven (Continuum, 2010), 27–44Google Scholar, at 27. This summarises the argument developed first in Rancière, Jacques, Dis-agreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans. Rose, Julie (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).Google Scholar

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⁷³ Ibid., 32.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 33.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 35.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 36.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 40.

⁷⁸ Badiou, Alain, Metapolitics, trans. Barker, Jason (London: Verso, 2005)Google Scholar, 15.

⁷⁹ Ibid., 24.

⁸⁰ Zizek, Slavoj, ‘The Lesson of Rancière’ in The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. Rockhill, Gabriel (London: Continuum, 2004)Google Scholar, 70.

⁸¹ Badiou, op. cit. note 78, 46.