I claim, that we deal with the political (and politics: a stricter division of these terms seems to me merely academic) when some people, in the name of a given worldview, (try to) impose, dictate, promote, and/or persuade—with different scale of intensification—values, norms, and ways of thinking upon other people. Most effectively, this imposition (and dictation,  promotion,  and/or  persuasion)  takes  place  by  means  of  the institutionalized forms of socio-political life: the cultural policy, the education system, the mass media, religion, moralities, the policies practiced by particular governments, and  many others, and this does  not take place exclusively in democratic countries. Most probably any socio-political system, be it democratic or theocratic, old or modern, Western or Eastern must philosophically justify—by its most vocal institutions, authority figures, and specific agendas—its basic axiological assumptions about what is good, true, and beautiful, if we want to use the vocabulary of classic thought in this case. In this way, we deal with different types of impositions, the dictation, the promotion, and/or the persuasion of a given way, or ways, of thinking upon others, as regards ethics, public affairs, the role of the individual in social life, liberties, and a great variety of other problems. [Read more…]