Fallacies of Political Philosophy

Fallacies of Political Philosophy Madhu Prabakaran The consistent question of human thought is mostly about the border they draw between the self and the other and the power they assume thereof. The other is the extension of the self and distinct from the self as well; the relation is ambiguous hence, there are attempts to draw borderlines or encompass the other through strategies of identity. Sharpening the lines for asserting the privileges of difference is political, and blurring them is social. Politics at different vantage points draw or blur the lines by claims of the state, society, conservation of individuality, polity, and progressive rupture. Politics of vantage point operate through choosing a mesh of differentiation and identities, conveniently smudging inherent contradictions of such choices. Keeping away from the other and preserving the identity borderlines are taken to be liberal and conservative perspectives, respectively. Practically, the choice is made from vantage mesh of mixing both. Conservation and liberty are pragmatically used as the alibi for dominance and indifference, respectively. The political philosophy of conservatives, liberals, and pragmatists hence, could be understood as word games of drawing or smudging borderlines and using their mesh by vantages. Political philosophies when cloistered by their separate identities and discussed thereof are empty reductions bereft of sense expected from them. Philosophers praise or pull down one or the other perspective merely as analytical entertainment without any substantial contribution towards the betterment of life politics. This is indeed an unacademic conundrum of total futility. Hence, it is necessary to problematize where the self-other, identity-distinction meet and how they are used by ‘pragmatic’ vantage points of self-interests by the intriguing mesh of identity games and their philosophical justifications thereof. Such a demand draws us closer to asking noumenal and ontological questions of the self and its split from the other. Such an attempt is important to recognize the atomous and heteronomous fallacies of political philosophy and its pragmatic futility. 1