To envisage politics as a rational process of negotiation among
individuals is to obliterate the whole dimension of power and
antagonism - what I call 'the political' - and thereby completely miss it
nature. It is also to neglect the predominant role of passions as moving
forces of human conduct. Furthermore, in the field of politics, it is
groups and collective identities that we encounter, not isolated
individuals, and its dynamics cannot be apprehended by reducing it to
individual calculations. This has devastating consequences for the
liberal approach since, as Freud has taught us, while self-advantage
may in certain circumstances be an important motivation for the
isolated individual, it very seldom determines the conduct of groups. It
is not necessary to endorse entirely Schmitf s conception of the
political in order to concede the strength of his point when he exposes
the shortcomings of a view that presents politics as a neutral domain
insulated from all the divisive issues that exist in the private realm. The
liberal claim that a universal rational consensus could be produced by
an undistorted dialogue, and that free public reason could guarantee
the impartiality of the state, is only possible at the cost of denying the
irreducible antagonistic element present in social relations, and this
can have disastrous consequences for the defence of democratic
institutions. To negate the political does not make it disappear, it only
leads to bewilderment in the face of its manifestations and to
impotence in dealing with them.