ŠTA JE TO REALPOLITIKA?
WHAT IS REALPOLITIK?

Summary/Abstract: Since the term realpolitik is routinely employed in political jargon as self-explanatory, the author raises the issue of a common-sense understanding of the phenomenon of realpolitik. After presenting the term realpolitik in its correlation with ethical and moral practice and in political theory, in particular as this concerns international relations, the author sets out his central preoccupation – that which he categorizes as the relevant predications, the essential, conceptual determinants of realpolitik. These determinants are intended to capture the quintessence of realpolitik, regardless of the level and form it takes. With these determinants – and bearing in mind that the essence of realpolitik includes the sacrifice of any moral ethos – the author ascribes negative attributes to realpolitik, and thereby treats it as one of the features of the perversion of contemporary politics. In so doing he highlights the way in which politics as realpolitik takes various shapes, how it is actualized to a greater or lesser extent by fanciful strategies, pragmatic methods, and seductive techniques and means, and how its social actors are as heterogeneous as the subjects of its operations are fluidly diverse.

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