Description

« As a demarcation between an ‘us’ and a ‘them’, every
identity implies the temptation to turn the other into an
enemy who threatens my own (personal and group)
identity. Therefore, in order to respond to the question
formulated, it is necessary to distinguish the political –
the dimension of hostility and antagonism between
human beings – from politics: the construction of an
order that organizes and facilitates an always-conflictual
human coexistence. The impossibility of conceiving of a
totally conflict-free human order makes the most crucial
challenge facing democracy today one of how to
transform itself into a ‘pluralist democracy’: it must be
capable of taking on the us/them distinction so that
‘they’ are also recognized as legitimate. This, in turn,
implies that the passions are not relegated to the private
sphere but rather kept in play through argument: that is,
by struggles which do not seek to annihilate the other,
since the other also has a right to recognition and,
therefore, to life. »