20 / CHRONICLESnadvantage of their position; on the contrary, they wilHnglynsurrender their own happiness for the good of the wholencommunity. And yet in both cases, the result is a humanndisaster. For, as Tocqueville puts it, such governmentn”every day renders the exercise of the free agency of mannless useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will with annarrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses ofnhimself . . , Such a power does not destroy, but it preventsnexistence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates,nextinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nationnis reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid andnindustrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”nIt is enough to make one glad for the guaranteednsupply of corrupt politicians in perpetuity.nAgain, to expose the use of public power for private gainnas an injustice is relatively easy. But in order to refute thenlegitimacy of artful means in what is perceived as annecessary defense of national interest, general welfare, andnuniversal happiness, nothing less will do than a clearndistinction between art and politics. Recent historical trendsndo not suggest that Tocqueville’s fears for democracy werenunfounded. But really to appreciate the dreadful menacenhidden in politics conceived as an art, we must turn to anmodern philosopher who cares more about art than aboutnpolitics. For it is only when consciously approached from anradically aesthetic point of view that the inhumanity ofnpolitics conceived as a work of art is most plainly revealed.nEven though in The Republic Plato includes a theory ofnart as well as a discussion on the immortality of the soul, hisnmain goal is still human justice. By contrast, all Nietzschencares about is art, and he arrives at politics only by pursuingnthe ultimate in the aspiration of the human artist. In doingnso, however, he also reveals for us the ultimate and the leastntractable excuse for treating human beings as means, whichnis neither the greed of the strong nor the reason of State.nNietzsche’s Zarathustra says that he strives not for happiness,nhis or anyone else’s; he strives for his work. But what isnthe greatest work available to man? It is politics, whose rawnmaterial are beings made in the image of God: “The finestnclay, the most precious marble—man—is here kneadednand hewn.” The would-be superman—lurking in many anhuman heart—looks at politics as a work of art, that is, asnsomething extraneous to man, and he will find beautynwhen it gives him pleasure without stirring compassion.nBut politics can never be extraneous to man, a symbol ofnsome “higher” reality. The good of the city pursued bynpolitics is not something to be made, which could then bencontemplated in its “otherness.” Politics is forever what thenancients called an immanent activity, meaning that itncannot be judged apart from whoever is involved in it. Thencook and the painter or composer or writer may all benrascals, or worse, and their work could still be beautiful. Butnthat privilege is not afforded to either the statesmen or thencitizens. Politics always asks, What is to be done? And thenanswer given, whichever way it turns out, shapes not sonmuch the external reality as the character of the participatingnactors.nRecall how Lincoln explained his monumental decisionnto try to save the Union: “I do the very best I know how, thenvery best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end. Ifnthe end brings me out all right, what is said against mennnwon’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong,nten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”nThese immanent actions constitute what Hannah Arendtnhas called vita activa, the public life conducted by speechnand judged not according to aesthetic but according tonmoral standards. To distinguish political decisions fromnwhat goes on in the world of art, we may also borrow fromnGabriel Marcel. In making of things, we inevitably encountern”problems”; but in acting we are also confronted byn”mystery,” that is, “a problem which encroaches upon itsnown data.” In other words, as we have already suggested,nthe aloofness which is required, in one way or another, fornour art to be successful, has no place in either doing ornevaluating politics.nUnfortunately, because it often pays off, artful pseudopoliticsnwill never lack either practitioners or admirers.nThere will always be greedy politicians and others who willnuse politics to impose their own ideas of what is good for thenpeople. Moreover, these rulers will always have defendersnwho will excuse or praise them, because they confusenpolitics with art. But right now, the efforts of influentialnthinkers seem to be in the opposite direction. While just anfew years ago B. F. Skinner could write Beyond Freedom andnDignity in defense of allegedly scientific political techniquesnand receive a respectful, albeit mostly critical,nresponse, social scientists today think nothing of publishingntheir research under such tides as Social Science as MoralnInquiry and Habits of the Heart.nReaders of the work of Jurgen Habermas, AlasdairnMaclntyre, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Richard Rorty, WilliamnM. Sullivan, and others may easily conclude that all ofnthem are trying in their different ways to revive or reinterpretnor reinvent Aristotle’s crucial distinction betweennphronesis (prudence) and techne (art), precisely in order tonsave politics from evaluation by standards proper only to art.nTo the extent that these writers and others succeed in theirnefforts, our understanding of politics is bound to improve.nWe shall come to see more clearly that politics is aboutnpeople as persons and that any transcendent aspirationsnrather than elevating reduces it rather to artificial manipulationnof human beings as means and things. We shallnunderstand better that good intentions and even goodnresults of manipulative politics are, as Tocqueville warned,ndeadly to humane living, and we shall try to change ournpractices accordingly.nIn neither of these endeavors must we expect more thanngradual and modest improvement. But we shall be helpednin both if we remember that for a community to remain freenit must not only keep politics out of the arts but also keep allnart out of politics. In a free state, the leaders will not try tonbe political “artists,” and the citizens will not have to judgentheir actions as they would judge a theatrical performance.nToday it is still possible to describe a particularly clevernmove by an accomplished politician as “beautiful,” evennthough everyone understands that the adjective describes annact that falls short of ordinary standards of human decency.nWe shall know that we have made progress when “ugly” andn”beautiful” applied to politics do not mean the same as whatnthey mean in art. For in the pursuit of the good life inncommon, artful actions are ugly; the beautiful—and thenonly truly decent kind—is totally arfless politics.n