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The idea of the political

The question of the nature of political theory presupposes a concept of the political. This has been a central concern for much 20th-century thought, from Weber and Schmitt to Arendt and Oakeshott, in its attempt to make sense of the nature of the modern world. Strong’s book is representative of several trends in contemporary theorizing but, partly because it is based upon a series of lectures, it leaves more unsaid than said. The overall structure of the argument is hard to follow while much of what is presented, such as a brief history of postwar political theory, will be familiar to most of his readers. The basic premiss of Strong’s book is that ’the mode of dealing with human relations that is politics has a particular validity, and that this validity is challenged by much that is characteristic of modernity’. This entails that we must consider the boundaries between politics and other human practices. It is even more crucial to explain what is meant by the term ’politics’. Strong’s definition quoted in full is: