Between Past and Future: A Rant

Description

These essays are exercises in political thought as it emerges from the reality of political events (although these events are mentioned only incidentally), and the author assumes in these essays that thinking itself arises from the facts of lived experience and remains tied to them as the sole landmarks by which it can perceive its position and direction. Since these exercises revolve around past and future, they combine critique and experience; yet the experiences do not attempt to design a utopian future, nor does the critique of the past and traditional opinions aim at overthrowing them. Moreover, the elements of critique and experience in the following essays are not clearly separated from one another, although some chapters lean more toward critique than toward experience, while others lean more toward experience than toward critique. This gradual shift from concern with experience to concern with critique did not occur arbitrarily, for the element of experience is present in the interpretation and critique of the past—a reinterpretation aimed primarily at uncovering the true sources of traditional opinions, in order to reclaim their authentic spirit anew after it has evaporated and, alas, disappeared from the key words of political language—such as freedom, justice, authority, reason, responsibility, virtue, power, and glory—leaving behind only the hollow shells of expression for almost everything, heedless of the dangerous truth lying beneath.