Suštinska spornost i politički pojmovi
The Essential Contestedness and Political Concept

Summary/Abstract: This paper explores one part of the changes that political theory underwent in the second half of the 20th century. The topic of the paper is the somewhat neglected, yet epistemologically very significant, essential contestability thesis. The author's basic assumption is that the thesis reflects the view of the ontological relativism of politics, from which it follows that political concepts are essentially contestable, i.e. that it is impossible to select one adequate general approach that could serve as a basis for determining which of the possible understandings of a particular concept is uncontestably the best. The dominant thesis in the middle decades of the 20th century was the thesis of the eath of political philosophy. It was believed that the subject of the classical political philosophy was a delusive (re)shaping of the mental objects, which usually does not correspond to the state of affairs in the world. Set in the context of the Second World War mass destruction and the outset of the Cold War, this argument was detrimental to the vitality of political philosophy. The thesis of essential contestability of political concepts created in such context was considered to be one more attempt to discredit the basic vales of normative theories. This text challenges this belief by claiming that it was the essential contestability that offered a different understanding of the ontological status of politics, placing it into the sphere of ontological relativism and pluralism of values. Only after these ontological and epistemological conditions were met was the basis set for what we now call modern political theory.

• Details
• Contents