Politikos, politeia & politikè

Politics is a polysemous concept that covers different meanings. In its broadest sense, politics (from the Greek “politikos”, “from the city”) concerns the general framework in which any organized society operates. In this sense, “everything is political” (slogan of May 1968!), in the sense that every citizen is a stakeholder, dominant or dominated, active or passive, representative or not, of the organized society to which he belongs.

In a more restricted sense, in the Greek sense of “politeia” (in Latin “res publica” which is the origin of the word “Republic”), politics is the function whose object is all that relates to the theory and practice of the government of a community or a state, which includes the organization, balance, conquest and the maintenance of powers, the definition of frameworks, rules, standards and laws, the conduct of public affairs, the actions organized with a view to achieving defined objectives.

Finally, in an even more restricted sense, politics, in the Greek sense of “politikè” refers to the practice and management of power as well as the struggles for representativeness between the different actors (individuals and/or parties) with a view to conquering this power individually or collectively.

The power of politics

In the broadest sense and whatever the type of government (chiefdom, royalty, dictatorship, oligarchy or democracy of “right” or of the “left”), the policy is based on the idea and the reality of Representation: there is always one or more individuals or groups, elected or not, who speak, act and decide on behalf of a collective (and in particular on behalf of the largest of them: the “people”) of which they are or consider themselves to be Representatives. This or these individuals or representative groups are in principle the guarantors or promoters of the systems of Representation which are the frameworks, rules, standards and laws which define the permits and prohibitions of life in society. To conquer or maintain their power, they use all its attributes Representative: prestige, appearances, emblems, symbols which distinguish them from those they represent or are supposed to represent. Because politics always induces a hierarchy between citizens: there are those who have power and lead and those who do not have it and are led. Societies based on anarchy, therefore on the absence of hierarchical power, only last as long as the illusion on which they are based.

Representativity, authority and hierarchy are thus structurally linked. Finally, politics involves the search for unit or uniqueness: it is always a question, whatever the regime, of finding the lowest or highest common denominator.

In the narrower sense, the notion of Representation applies in a democracy to individual actors, most often belonging to a party or movement that is the guardian of an ideology, elected within a well-defined institutional and constitutional framework by citizens who appoint them to be their spokespersons, their delegates or their incarnations within a strong organizational structure, the official Parliament. In doing so, they engage in a “voluntary servitude” (La Boétie): they accept by this vote to be led by their Representatives. The representativeness crisis suffered by traditional political parties in the 21st century and the appearance of social networks on the Internet has favored the emergence of new socio-political movements which want to be anti-authoritarian and anti-pyramidal and prefer decisions taken by “apparent consensus” only by vote. However, the reality of the political thing which is power, representation, hierarchy and domination always ends up imposing itself on these groups, from which emerge co-opted or self-proclaimed spokespersons who become symbolic figures, icons and very quickly leaders de facto… which, in most cases, quickly convert to Representatives traditional institutional policies, because it is in the logic of those who hold power to go where they can exercise it most fully.

Chief of a tribe, king, emperor, dictator, president, minister or deputy, the logic of politics is therefore always a Representation logic. The fact of speaking and acting on behalf of a collective necessarily implies the production of rewarding representations of this collective and its Representative, which results in a… “Representation of Representation” (formula of the solar function in the R.E.T. system): images, speeches, stories, stagings, rites, symbolic objects and devices, communication and propaganda allow groups or the multitude of these citizens to forge a real or illusory unity around a party, a movement and /or an individual. Competent or not, to succeed, the woman or the politician must know how to tell and show an interesting story and persuade her constituents or subjects to believe in it and to visualize it. There is therefore always a hiatus between the political, which emerges from the reality of Representation, which can make principals and agents dream or fantasize, and the concrete world, which emerges from the reality of the Existence where dreams and fantasies have no place and where images and discourse dissolve. “A policy that limits itself to brewing dreams deceives them all. A policy that ignores them is mistaken about the nature of those it claims to lead”, wrote François Mitterrand, very fine politician. Ideally, a happy medium should be found between the promises “which engage only those who listen to them” (Henri Queuille, another political artist) and the programs that we can really apply and which are often, rightly or wrongly, unpopular. Mission almost impossible and nevertheless essential… If the man or the woman politician does not manage to carry out this tour de force or sleight of hand, when the “Representation of Representation” is not working as intended or hoped for therefore, the representative is accused of “treason” by the represented.

Because politics being a matter of Representation, it is also a matter of uniqueness and of identification. The principal wants at least to be able to recognize himself a little in the agent, who must thus give of himself a strong, ideal, rewarding, prestigious image to please the principal who cannot identify with a loser At looks deplorable. The Representing must “be up to it”, that is to say, if possible, familiar with the summits. In the worst cases, such an attitude results in idolatry, in the drunkenness of crowds blindly cheering a sole Representative, A “providential man”, A “supreme savior” with which each of the individuals who compose them slavishly identifies. The “multiple mirror” (expression coined by Jean-Pierre Nicola to designate one of the major aspects of the solar function “Representation of Representation”) then acts at full speed… dictatorial in general. To keep a language specific to the history of art, the ideal would be to be able to make these figures disappear “idolatrous” to replace them with figures “iconic” of Representation: identifications “soft” like those that appear in anti-authoritarian and alternative political movements where the leaders that emerge are generally not the object of unreasonable idolatry… most likely because the individuals who make up these movements are generally younger, more cultured and more critical of authoritarian powers than the rest of the population. But whether they are “idolatrous” or “iconic”, these figures always belong to the world of Representation, which is that of politics.

Before tackling the relationship between astrology and politics more directly, it remains to define the relationship between astrology and politics politics with the power. In the common sense of these two concepts, it is customary to confuse them (and I have not deprived myself of this since the beginning of this article): who wants power does politics, who does politics wants power, as if there were no difference between the two. There is, however, one, and it is significant: there are powers other than those of politics and who have their autonomy in relation to him.

The power of economics

Economic power has its own reality, its own field of activity and its own dynamics which converge or diverge from those of political power. These two powers are related and interact in varying proportions depending on whether the political power is liberal or dirigiste: political power can dictate its laws to economic power, and conversely, economic power can assert its interests with political power in order to that he modifies the laws in a direction which is favorable to him. In general, the two powers get along like thieves, economic power being able to allow access to politics if one is one of the big owners, and political power being able to favor the economy when both are followers of capitalist-liberal ideology. The failure of Soviet communism, for its part, demonstrated that the political could not replace the economic without the latter becoming completely ineffective in the production of goods satisfying their consumers.

The power of the scientist

Similarly, scientific power also has its own reality, its own scope and its own dynamics which also converge or diverge from those of political power: the discoveries that emerge from fundamental research (whose primary purpose is to reverse the frontiers of the unknown), for example, are most often unpredictable. They do not a priori have economic or political purposes… except when the relations and interactions between the scientific, economic and political powers encourage the latter two to favor and finance research that goes in the direction of predefined objectives for reasons of prestige (political power) or profit (economic power). Conversely, fortuitous scientific discoveries (which are therefore only a matter for scientific power and it alone, independently of the credits that politics and economics have allocated to research) or voluntary (such as those which presided over the birth of Internet) can modify economic activities to a greater or lesser extent and require political power to produce new rules, laws and standards (eg in the field of all new neonatal techniques).

The power of religion

Religious power also has a relative autonomy from political power, even if it tends to merge with it in archaic or traditionalist societies. In short: religions have long been the basis (and still are for some, such as Islam for example) of the socio-political contract, in that they were the source of norms, rules and law. and that Political Representatives have long been elected by divine right or religious leaders. In the modern, secularized societies that developed in the West after the Age of Enlightenment, religious power and political power gradually divorced, until the moment when religious power no longer exercised anything but a distant moral magisterium concerning only those who still believed in a god of totems and taboos, of redemption and comfort. Political power had taken over, secularizing what could be secularized from the biblical and evangelical commandments and relegating the rest to the domain of antiquities and archaic superstitions. Politics was no longer the business of an organizing god, but of men who organized themselves. For a century, the politico-rational European West was thus able to believe that religious power was no more than an epiphenomenon on the way to extinction. This was never the case in other parts of the world, and the revival of Islam came to testify to the fact that religious power was always present and alive.

What exactly is religious power? How is it fundamentally different from political power? Let us first say that religions are very long-lived ideologies, while political ideologies have much shorter lifespans. Temporal primacy obliges, religious ideologies cross millennia without having to evolve in depth when political ideologies have difficulty in persisting for more than a century or two before becoming obsolete and having to reform or disappear. We should also note that all the attempts of political power aimed at eradicating religions to replace them have been failures, whether in Maoist China, Soviet Russia or Kemalist Turkey. Religious power resists.

▶ In China, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism continued to endure and permeate the collective mentalities under the reign in principle materialist of Mao and reappeared in full light as soon as the Chinese political power understood that it could do nothing against these beliefs and, better, that he could use them to establish his power and his grip on his citizens: it was necessary to replace Maoist idolatry with something, and this something had already been there for millennia.

▶ Same in Russia: Marx said that “Criticism (of religion) has stripped the chains of the imaginary flowers that covered them, not for man to wear unimaginative, hopeless chains, but for him to throw off the chains and pluck the living flower. Criticism of religion destroys man’s illusions so that he thinks, acts, shapes his reality like a disillusioned man who has reached the age of reason, so that he gravitates around himself, it is i.e. from its real sun. Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves around man as long as man does not revolve around himself.” However much the Soviet regime tried to root out Orthodox Christianity by razing its churches or converting them into factories or warehouses and sending its priests to the gulag, it failed. And as soon as Communism collapsed, Slavic orthodoxy reappeared, religious power reasserted itself, replacing the idolatrous cult of Stalin and Marxist-Leninist ideology with the blessing of the new Cesaro-Putinian power.

▶ Almost the same pattern in Türkiye: steeped in the philosophy of the Western Enlightenment, the first post-Ottoman leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, an atheist autocrat, tried to limit the harmful influence of Islam in his country by abolishing the caliphate, giving women the right to vote and by establishing French secularism, according to which religion is not contested, but must be strictly limited to the private sphere. Yet he had no words harsh enough against Islam: “For more than five hundred years, […] the rules and theories of an old Arab sheikh, and the abusive interpretations of generations of filthy and ignorant priests have fixed, in Turkey, all the details of civil and criminal law. They regulated the form of the Constitution, the smallest acts and gestures of the life of each citizen, his food, his hours of wakefulness and sleep, the cut of his clothes, what he learns at school, his customs, his habits and even his most intimate thoughts. Islam, this absurd theology of an immoral Bedouin, is a putrefied corpse that poisons our lives.” Atatürk (who was the object of true idolatry!) failed. Islam has remained alive and present in Turkey, which today has once again become an Islamic dictatorship.

Religious power therefore has a hard and long life. It is not only because it is based on a very persistent ideology. It is also because it fulfills a function that political power cannot completely fulfill itself: the archaic and irrational need to believe in a Transcendence divine absolute which escapes the vicissitudes of Existence and the artifices of Representation and at the same time is its creator, to be able to think that the universe and life cannot be reduced to their simple materiality. It is possible, if not probable, that in the very distant future the great religions will end up gradually disappearing, as do other ideologies. But this archaic and irrational need will continue to inhabit the human species and to manifest itself in other forms which will continue to escape the laws of politics, economics, science and reason, because it relates to long time if not to eternity and timelessness.

Religious power therefore has its autonomy, and it is irreducible to other powers… as long as it is content to reign over souls. When it claims to regulate all aspects of politics, economics and spirituality down to the smallest detail as Islam does, then it confuses itself with a dictatorial political regime. But there is not in the Koran or in the Hadith a sentence such as “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s”, which appears in the Christian Gospels, which implies a clear separation of religious power and political power and which led Christianity to become the “religion exit religion” (Marcel Gauchet). Islam is and has always been a political religion. This is what sets it apart from all the others.

In a deeper way, religious power is supposed to be the absolute repository of moral values considered as pure transcendent realities. To understand what this notion of “value”, it must be carefully differentiated from the notion of “standard”. From a religious or spiritual perspective, the “values” are metaphysical entities that pre-exist the “standards”, which are only the political, philosophical or moral translation; there may thus exist “standards” profane who do not rely on any “value” Spiritual. For a profane and rational mind, the moral notions of “good” and of “evil”, for example, are the primary normative product of social interactions based on a well-understood mutual interest aimed at coexistence as peaceful as possible between members of the same community – in this case the primitive tribe. But for a religious mind, the “good” and the “evil” are “values” transcendent, sacred, pre-existing normative pacts between members of this same tribe. It turns out that most members of the human species still need to believe that the “good” and the “evil” are “values” transcendents from the thigh of Jupiter, Muhammad, Buddha, Yahweh or Vishnu. As long as this need to believe in this persists, religious power will last.

Finally, the religious power also considers itself the depositary of the eschatology (Greek “eschatos”, “last” and “logos”, “speech”, which can be translated as “the last speech” or, ironically, “Laughs best who laughs last.”) Collective eschatology concerns the discourses that can be held on the end of the world and the ultimate destiny of the human race, while individual eschatology covers everything that relates to our condition as mortals: survival or not of the soul after death, problematic of the afterlife, resurrection of bodies or, reincarnation or transmigration of souls, etc. Eschatology by definition escapes all rationality: it is impossible to know with experimental certainty what happens after death – but also before birth. On the blackboard of this unfathomable unknown, each religion has written with more or less crumbly chalk, but which seems to be drawn with indelible ink for beings who only live a century, its own post-mortem metaphysical score.

Whatever the music, eschatology poses the problem of the ultimate ends and the ultimate value of life and more generally of the ephemeral existence of material things: why is there something rather than nothing?? What is the meaning of a life so short and so dependent on unpredictable events? Philosophy does not answer these questions. Politics, economics and science either. Only religions have certain, unique and definitive answers on these subjects, and they must be take your word for it (it’s etymological!). Here again, the religious power has total autonomy and a profound influence Transcendent. The whole life of a believer (or of a community of believers) can be determined by his eschatological faith, which is a fine example of non-linear causality which escapes the official rationality according to which an effect cannot precede a cause. For the atheist non-believer, all these questions with no possible rational answer are as absurd as he believes existence to be. The agnostic, for his part, prefers to say that he knows nothing and that he cannot therefore judge the absurd and the non-absurd in these matters. But the real atheists and agnostics (i.e. those who are not so by short-sighted materialism) are only a tiny minority. The human species as a whole archaically and irrationally needs answers to these metaphysical questions. And when the hour of his death strikes, no individual can help but be confronted with it, whether he is a believer, atheist or agnostic.

Religious power is also in relation and interaction with other political, economic and scientific powers. The religious can be manipulated by the political, and vice versa. One can, without being a believer, rely on religious power to conquer or strengthen one’s political power (like for example Putin in Russia, or most American politicians) and the reverse is also true (see the case of Erdogan in Turkey for example). Religious moral prescriptions can influence economic life (e.g., theory of capitalism born of protestantism according to Max Weber, or even the problems posed by finance “Islamic”), and economic power acting on religious power when its moral prescriptions prevent profitable business from being done. The relations and interactions between religious power and scientific power are more complex. They are in principle totally antagonistic, one reigning over the sphere of the rational-material while the other has control over the irrational-spiritual. Everything depends on the power of religion in a given society. If he is very strong, he can prevent or delay science on the pretext that it makes discoveries that go against the divine will or “values” sacred. Moderately strong or weak, it tries to intervene in ethics committees to try to impose its standards. For its part, scientific power has only contempt or indifference for religious power, which completely escapes its hobby, material and quantifiable rationality. There are exceptions though, for example when US neurological researchers attach electrodes to the bodies of Buddhist monks to prove that deep meditation has undeniable measurable effects, which proves nothing about Buddhist metaphysics or of the doctrine of reincarnation specific to this religion. And no serious scientific experimentation has ever demonstrated that prayer worked miracles against cancer or that the Shroud of Turin had truly enveloped the body of Christ.

The R.E.T. & the four powers

The presentation of these types of powers was a bit long, especially that of religious power, which is by far the most complex, the most underestimated and the most misunderstood in the European West that has become unbelieving. The brutal and very violent eruption of an Islam that was considered a retrograde archaic-exotic curiosity has just reminded him of the existence of this power… pending, in reaction, the probable resurgence of Christianity in reaction (the 21st century will be really very very religious, and it will not be joy every day). In this, long developments on religious power were essential.

The human being is inseparably governed by these powers: it is at once political, economic, scientific and religious, all of which are inseparably intertwined in it. It is futile to want to reduce it to just one of these dimensions that are at once differentiated, antagonistic and cooperative, and dangerous to want to mutilate it from one of them without being sure of having a spare one to replace it immediately, as its general balance is made of the solidarity of these elements.

If we refer to the broadest sense of the notion of “politics” (from the Greek “politikos”, “from the city”), regardless of setting, time and culture, three key questions arise: “On what kind of knowledge and value is such a society based (Pluto: ‘transcendence of Transcendence’)? On what productive forces and on what relation of production (Mars: ‘existence of Existence’)? On what maintenance of models and standards (Sun: ‘representation of Representation’) ?” (Max Lejbowicz). And if we refer to the more restricted meaning (that of the Greek “politeia” or from Latin “res publica”), the focus is set to level “Representation” to define politics. Level “Existence” then concerns the economic, and the level “Transcendence” the scientific and the religious, to which we can add the power of globality (4th moon function power).

It may seem surprising to bring together scientific power and religious power under the same leadership of “Transcendence”, as everything seems to fundamentally oppose them. A few clarifications are therefore necessary to avoid any confusion.

“Transcendence”, science & religion

The notion of “science” is just as polysemic as that of “politics”. Among the ancient Greeks, the “science” merged with the philosophy, and among them very many were those who considered astrology and astronomy like the twin sciences. It was only around the 12th century, during the creation in Europe of the first universities that science began to be institutionalized as a specific object of knowledge, while remaining hyper-linked to the religious sphere: only the clerics of the Church or almost were intellectually trained, and they are also the ones who ensured the translation and the rediscovery of ancient Greek texts relating to scientific disciplines.

It was only during the Renaissance (15th-16th centuries) that the “science” began to detach himself clearly from religion and philosophy, with which the points of disagreement became more and more numerous. Indeed, while classical philosophy proceeded by intuition and religion was based on unverifiable divine revelations, the English philosopher Francis Bacon developed the premises of an empiricist theory of knowledge according to which the acquisition of knowledge that could be considered as truly scientific had to respect a sequence of four stages: 1) observation, experimentation and verification; 2) theorizing; 3) replication and prediction and 4) results. The foundations of the modern scientific method were thus laid.

They brought, in the 17th century (that of the “Enlightenment” of reason), to the complete divorce between science and religion, the first, arrogant and ungrateful, now claiming the absolute hegemony of knowledge to the detriment of the second, whose own knowledge was henceforth taxed with superstitions and obscurantism. Therefore, the “science” gave itself a new purpose: to purely and simply replace religion to ensure its control and absolute power in the repository “Transcendence”. It thus became a new kind of religion, scientism, with its materialistic and rationalistic mysticism claiming to explain everything, and its marabouts, saints, martyrs and prophets as it should.

When we talk about the concept of “science” Since then, there has been a tendency to confuse techno-science and fundamental scientific research. Techno-science has a purely utilitarian vocation and concerns only the technological applications of scientific discoveries to the world of physical objects (in this, it falls under the reference “Existence”), while the purpose of fundamental scientific research is to push back the frontiers of the unknown in the physical world (which comes under the “Transcendence”). Admittedly, techno-science and fundamental research are united by multiple relationships and interactions (the first feeds on the advances of the second, which can use the technical tools developed by the first to advance in its discoveries).

It is therefore science in its dimension of fundamental research of knowledge that comes under the reference “Transcendence” of R.E.T. system. The points in common with religion thus appear more precisely: both refer to the mysterious, to the invisible, to the hidden structures of the universe and refer to ultimate knowledge, concealed or diffracted by the deceptive appearances, of which they claim to be the one and only legitimate trustees, in the physical real for science and in the metaphysical real for religion. We thus better understand the struggle at loggerheads in which they engage in the field of “Transcendence”, like that of two crocodiles in the same backwater. Note however that a fundamental characteristic differentiates the crocodiles in question: science is limited to trying to push back the frontiers of the unknown without claiming (since the 20th century only) to access the unknowable, while religion claims not only to cover the field of the unknown, but also that of the unknowable.

A little light S.O.R.I. for lighting

To show otherwise, and by a specifically conditionalist way, that science and religion are not put in the same bag, even Transcendent, it is advisable to use the S.O.R.I. system. (initials of “Subject”, “Object”, “Relationship” and “Integration”). These four standards define as many fields of application of the R.E.T. system. Since the purpose of this article is not to review them all, we will simply specify that science operates in the frame of reference “Transcendence of the Object” (the mysteries of measurable and quantifiable things) while religion is the “Transcendence of Integration” (the unmeasurable and unquantifiable mysteries of belonging to the universe), which is not the same thing at all. Science and religion work on the same floor “Transcendence”, yes, but not at all in the same areas. Their respective originality and integrity are therefore clearly delimited and preserved. Phew.

In the same register, the pure economy belongs to “Object Existence” (technical universe of material production and production relations), and politics in the restricted sense of “politeia” to the “Representation of the Relationship”: society being a being of Relation(s), politics is its normative, organized, hierarchical side… which differentiates it from “the Existence of the Relationship” (the direct, informal relationships and interactions experienced at close range between citizens) and “Relationship Transcendence” (the subtle, complex and/or secret relationships and interactions that are woven between citizens, which by definition escape politics… except that it is in this discreet and seditious still that new political powers are forged, but it is a another story).

R.E.T. system & policy

To be completely complete and return to R.E.T., we should also specify that the “Representation” concerns simple signals of high intensity (immediately perceptible, they are immediately obvious) and of the short term, “the Existence” the signals composed of medium intensity (their perception is slower) and of the medium term and the “Transcendence” Complex signals of low intensity (almost imperceptible at the risk of being overlooked) and long term. You will thus better understand why politics finds it difficult not to be short-termist and why it primarily excites the greatest number of people, while the economy is more in the medium term (it takes longer to produce and have returns on investment than to make a great speech) and why it provokes much less massive interest than politics, and finally why a real knowledge of science and religions, which are in the long term, generally does not motivate crowds.

In the political registers that the macroscope R.E.T. makes it possible to decode, let us point out the three powers theory defined by Locke and then Montesquieu: the legislature dictates the standards and laws (level “Representation”), the executive implements them (level “Existence”) and the judiciary “judge of crimes and disputes between individuals”, in other words, is responsible for adapting the laws to the multitude (level “Transcendence”). In another, the level “Representation” is of the monarchical or despotic type (maintenance of the power of the unique), the level “Existence” of aristocratic or oligarchic type (maintenance of the power of a group) and the level “Transcendence” of a democratic or anarchic type (maintenance of the power of the collective). And it’s not just theory or fantasy.

The three purposes of politics

In his book Qu’est-ce que la politique (ed. Points-Seuil), Julien Freund summarizes well (without having intended it of course: it has nothing to do with astrology) the relationship between the R.E.T. system and the three levels of politics in the broad sense of this term. All quotations that follow are taken from this book, unless otherwise stated. First of all, in all rigor, Julien Freund defines the reference framework for the application of the policy which is neither a philosophy, nor a morality, nor a science, “that is to say that the goal of politics cannot be knowledge. It remains what it always was: action. It is as such that it must be understood […] politics is an art and not just a profession.” This being specified, Julien Freund distinguishes, in the purpose of the “thing” policy, three different levels:

“1. the strictly teleological level which determines the specific goal of the political; 2. the level that could be called technological, characterized by the achievement of concrete, limited and constantly repeating objectives; 3. the eschatological level of the kingdom of ends.”

It is not difficult to spot, in order, the levels “Representation”, “Existence” and “Transcendence” from the R.E.T.

The “Representation” level

Freund evokes a “teleological level” of politics. Teleology, an ‘R’ discipline, is the “theory that applies purpose to the study of a particular problem” (Dictionnaire de philosophie, Bordas). Purpose is an ambiguous word, which should only be used with maximum precision and caution; indeed, eschatology (level 3 of politics in Freund) is also a “belief or doctrine concerning the ultimate ends of the world and of mankind” (ibid.). Decidedly, the ‘R’ and the ‘T’ are dialectical, “endlessly”, one concerning the obvious meaning, the known meaning, (‘R’) and the other the discreet meaning… or even the non-sense (‘T’).

In short, the ‘R’ level of the policy concerns the “common good” or even the “good public”, whose content and definitions are highly variable according to places, times and socio-cultures. A world of ideal representations that arbitrarily judge the fair or the unfair, the licit and the illicit, the socially normal and the abnormal. The gentlest of democrats as well as the most bloodthirsty of dictators work identically, each in their own way, for the “common good”, this shimmering image with which it is rewarding to identify, with one or more, in an ethical narcissism that is reminiscent of the solar function. Values enter very little, and not directly into account at this level: the important thing is to guarantee external security (by peace, diplomacy or war) and internal order (by the same means).). Order, whatever it is, is required; he is “the elementary condition of the unity and stability of a collectivity. As such it naturally aspires to be a community (a nation for example) forming a common self and having a common interest on the basis of language, race, historical tradition or simple common will.” A language of unity, of very solar identification, a “multiple mirror” (J.-P. Nicola). And no matter the mirror (meaning: the contents, in terms of values, of the “common good”), provided that we have the intoxication of this collective identification, of a clear and distinct guideline, of a reassuring compass for the collective social Self which fears above all the lack of reference points and the demons of anarchy.

In “Extensive representation” (Sun-Venus-Mercury), the “specific purpose” politics imposes itself from the outset as an absolute evidence that is self-sustaining and radiates by assaulting seduction and communication to ensure the propagation of key ideas, slogans and images: it is the reign of propaganda, relaxed and attractive persuasion, the streaming of watchwords from the top of the social pyramid to its lower floors.

In “Intensive representation” (Sun-Jupiter-Uranus), the “specific purpose” of the political is elaborated in the technological matrices (the economic hierarchies) and eschatological (the hierarchies of values) from which it emerges to forge one of the unifying norms which self-maintain their perimeter by the affirmation of their authority which wants to be indisputable, indisputable, unbreakable from top to bottom of the floors of the social pyramid.

At the intersection of the extensive and the intensive is the solar function “Representation of Representation” which represents the power in principle absolute of a single individual, monarchical or despotic.

The “Existence” level

Whatever the goal ‘R’ of politics, it cannot do without means ‘E’ (Existing) to achieve it concretely, “by determined economic means which may have been those of domestic economy, pillage, simple mercantilism, colonialism, capitalism and which may be those of socialism or any other economic-social formula yet to come.” For Freund, the ‘E’ level of the political is that of objectives: “we call ‘objective’ the material substance of an empirical action aimed at realizing the specific goal of politics in concreto. It is therefore each time a limited, particular, contingent and empirical action, such as a monetary devaluation, a treaty of alliance, a salary increase, etc. one cannot act with possible or eventual instruments, but only with those which are given materially.” A description that closely resembles that of the marsian function and the ‘E’ level. The tangible real imposes its own constraints, resistant to teleological watchwords and the voluntarism of the ‘r’ level of politics, “so a political program is only a set of preferences: the choice is elsewhere, and it sometimes happens that it intervenes against the program”. the Existence and the inevitable choices that the duo-duel entails are often rebellious to the ideal preferences implied by our Representations, and choose, at the bottom, “it is not simply to give oneself reasons or motives or to prefer, but it is to bring one’s will to an object, to resolve or rather try to resolve an embarrassment, it is strictly speaking to act”. No comments…

Within “theExtensive Existence” (Mars-Jupiter-Saturn), politics in the restricted sense is above all concerned with the jupiterian function “Representation of Existence”, in that it defines the norms, rules and laws that regulate the concrete activities of material production and the relations of production. Political power, therefore representative, stemming from the level “Existence” is of an aristocratic or oligarchic type (political power exercised by a group or the representative of a group holding sufficient economic power to “play in the big leagues”).

The “Transcendence” level

It is the reign of “ultimate values that man proposes to accomplish through his individual activity or through the action of communities and groups, with a view to giving meaning to life and history… to aspire to pure freedom, to Pure equality, justice, and peace, regardless of contingent historical and social conditions, is the pursuit of ends.” It looks like ‘R’, it tastes like ‘R’… but it’s not ‘R’ yet, even if, as we have seen, ‘R’ and ‘T’ cannot be understood that “endlessly”, dialectically linked. The unknown of a place or of a time is the known of another place and another time. Julien Freund has perfectly grasped the subtle and mysterious dimension of the ‘T’ of politics. The expectation of these ends, as ideal as they are obvious, poses quite plutonian problems: “Is there one final ending or many? What is it in the first case? And if there is a plurality, what is the relationship between them? Are they all on the same plane or is there an order of subordination? […] The discussion of these questions is, independently of metaphysical reflection, at the origin of the diversity of philosophies, conceptions of the world and political ideologies. There is little hope of finding a positive and definitive solution to them, since they are absolutely transcendent notions that go beyond the possibilities and limits of human experience and action, which always remain conditional.” As we can see, the multiple and the uncertainty reign and, of course, ‘T’ level obliges, Freund underlines how much these “last ends” are the object of irrational impulses or with a strange rationality (faith, bet, belief, prophetism). Even better, he talks about their usefulness: even if “they are never realized as such in a phenomenal and empirical work, they order activity, orient it and give it meaning”. A deep meaning could be added, since these ends “by their very nature presuppose transcendent though indeterminate values”. The spitting image of “flawless blur” plutonian. It does not matter at this level what definitions of these obscure eternal truths, intuitively formulated and subjectively perceived, one inscribes with crumbly chalk on the blackboard of the unknowable, “without faith, without belief in eternal truths or ultimate ends, activity would be nothing but the labor of Sisyphus. It is therefore wrong to see in faith only a consolation, it is the leaven of all creation.” In astrological terms, and to get closer to the plutonian reality beyond any spiritualism, we could speak of “faith in the fruitfulness and transformative power of the still unknown and the forever unknowable”. Spiritual values, whatever they are, are part of it, and occultly, powerfully and irrationally frame the political thing. Ideologies integrating spiritual values, no offense to the current singers of their death, are not about to disappear. They draw their meaning from an indecipherable and random eternity from which politics, whether we are aware of it, convinced or not, also feeds.

Since Julien Freund explicitly mentions the “values” about the eschatological aspect, and therefore “Transcendent” of the political thing, it seems necessary to define very precisely the relationship between values and temporality. We have already noted that the “Transcendence” was characterized by the reign of the long term, and that long durations are related to the ideologies, religious or not, which structure in depth and for a long time, human societies, but we have not yet approached another aspect of the temporality of the “Transcendence”: its relationship with the past and the future. The temporality of the “Representation” is that of the hyper-short term and therefore of the moment that wants to be eternal; that of “the Existence” of the medium term and therefore of the chronological present; finally, that of “Transcendence” is that of simultaneous time which stirs up both the past and the future, which are always longer durations than the present. There “Transcendence” is thus the living memory of the long term that has already happened (the past) and that of the long term that has not yet happened (the future), which precede and frame the present time of “the Existence” and the instantaneous time of the “Representation”.

These correlations require some clarification about these various temporal notions:

- Short term: this notion designates a short interval of time which has no precisely defined duration. The common usage is to attribute to it, from the present moment (that of the immediate action-perception) a temporal horizon (a future carrying projects, fears or hopes) of approximately one year, i.e. the time of a rotation of the Earth around the Sun. In a spirit of symmetry absent from common use but dear to astrology, this temporal horizon can be extended to the year preceding the present moment, this period covering the recent past bearing memory (recent memories bearing nostalgia, remorse or regret). Note that in economics, a field where temporality gives the “the” in the “fight against scarcity” (Raymond Barre), the short temporal term is defined by constrained choices and decisions which “operate within a field of activity, characterized by a technical-social framework that cannot be changed” (Wikipedia). Translation: in the short term, we don’t have time to have a lot of nostalgia, but some regrets and sometimes remorse when remembering the year that has just passed. And if we project ourselves into the near future, it seems drawn in advance as it will probably be the foreseeable continuation of what is happening at the moment when we envisage it, unless an unforeseeable event totally independent of the present situation does not quickly modify or interrupt the course of things. The acme of the short term is “the instant”, i.e. the shortest abstract unit of time.

▶ Middle term: this notion covers the “present time”, in its current meaning “of current times” characterized by its concrete circumstances. The medium term also has no precisely defined duration. Economists estimate that the medium-term temporality covers a future period of approximately 1 to 5 years during which, “in a specific activity, the technical and social framework can be amended. Possibility opened up mainly by the periodic renewal of the technical-social complex represented by its products, its technologies, its equipment or infrastructures considered as major. In some activities (so-called ‘heavy’ activities, e.g. steel, oil, etc.), the medium-term revival is expressed in decades, in others (so-called ‘emerging’ or ‘organic’ activities, electronic components, biology, etc.), the medium-term revival is expressed more in months” (Wikipedia). As we are not in the field of economics (which is not an exact science), prisoner of the decimal world defined by the 5 fingers of a prehistoric man’s hand beginning to count, we will keep a maximum average duration of 5 years which we will extend to 6 years, that is to say approximately half a cycle of Jupiter. And still in a spirit of symmetry, we will extend the period concerning the past to the medium term to 1 to 6 years, which gives us a past-present-future horizon of the medium term of a maximum of 12 years, which is almost that of a jupiterian cycle. Translation: in the medium term, we already have enough time to cultivate a certain nostalgia, and to feel remorse and regret, but also for a longer memory to learn to take advantage of positive or negative experiences by remembering the six years that have just passed. And if we project ourselves into the moderately distant future, it appears to be more open, richer in varied perspectives that we have enough time to foresee and develop with patience and method, without being too much a prisoner of immediate contingencies, adapting to the inevitable progressive changes in the situation with which we are confronted. This always, as for the short term, on the assumption that no unforeseeable event totally independent of the present situation would unexpectedly modify or interrupt the course of things.

- Long term: this notion designates a time interval whose duration is also indefinable. If we always refer to the temporalities valued by economists, the “long term” would start from a future horizon of about 5 years on average. From an economist’s perspective indeed, “the long term rather refers to the evolution of a field of activity or the overall economy. It is indeed observed over a long period that the choices and the achievements of the short or medium term “wrap around” around tendencies which characterize an evolution, a “longer” vision of the analyzed reality. The long-term dimension — given the natural uncertainty attached to the future — is relatively little taken into account (‘in the long term, we are all dead…’, John Maynard Keynes), except by forecasters and/or a few politicians” (Wikipedia). This definition of the long term has the advantage of emphasizing — essential from an astrological point of view — on “windings” and therefore on the retroactive effects of long cyclical time and its complex causalities on the seemingly more linear time of the medium and short term, and on the unpredictability that characterizes long durations in which anything can happen, even and especially the unthought and the unthinkable. Always in a spirit of symmetry, we will extend the long term to the past: it thus covers all of the time that has passed and the time to come. Translation: in the long term, for example in the evening of an individual existence after the average age of professional retirement, there is ample time to get a fairly precise idea, dismayed or serene, of what it is is only one life and what we have made of it. As for the long-term future prospects, they appear to be singularly constrained by the exhaustion of physical resources and the proximity of death. The very long term therefore concerns the laws of the species in its past, present and future. When we refer to the long term, we are therefore referring both to History, which is the known and retrospectively reconstituted sum of the long-term past and memory, and to the future, which is nothing other than a future History which will exist and which remains to be written.

The “values” which found ideologies (long-term phenomena) are generally products of the History of a more or less distant past. They are therefore most often conservative (it is then a question of constantly reinscribing in the present a very old collective memory); but if the present time has made itself forgetful of these “values” by replacing them with others, better, different or simply in tune with the times, the return of the old ones “values” can take on a revolutionary-reactionary aspect. There are also “values” not yet happened because they belong to a future that only those who have or believe they have a flair for the future can foresee or fantasize about. These new values are obviously always more debatable than the old ones, since we do not know them nor have we experienced them during the long past periods necessary for their development and anchoring in the reality of the species. For those who embody and convey them, they then take the form of a prophetism which is nothing in the past and which is all the more surprising and disturbing.

These clarifications on the different types of temporality were necessary to fully understand the effects of “Transcendence” and “values” that she carries in politics.

With the “Transcendence”, the expression of the type of power concerned by this level of reality obviously becomes more complex. In principle, at its base, plutonian power “Transcendence of Transcendence” is of a democratic type (in the Greek sense of “power of the people” or of the collective on itself) if it is organized (“one man, one voice”) and anarchic if not regulated by any authority. In order not to make an anachronism, let us recall that in ancient Greece from the 5th century B.C., democracy as we understand it today was a political system reserved for “free men”, the immense population reduced to slavery being excluded from it, and that the vote was of the censitaire type (suffrage in which only citizens whose total direct taxes exceed a certain threshold are voters), which means that in reality, only the very wealthy propertied classes could access supreme political powers. It was therefore not a question of a democratic power, but of an oligarchic and/or aristocratic power regulated by the property tax vote.

The phrase “Vox populi, vox Dei” could make believe that in Christendom, “the voice of the people was the voice of God”, which would be the expression of an authentic and fundamental democracy within the community of believers of this religion. It is however a false proverb, an expression taken from a letter written in the 8th century by the English theologian Alcuin to Charlemagne, a letter in which he denounced the dangers of the election of the saints by acclamation of the people: “And those people who continue to say that the voice of the people is the voice of God should not be listened to, because the turbulent nature of the crowd is always very close to madness.”

Probably ill-informed, the Italian political theorist Machiavelli took up this expression in the 16th century by stating that “It is not without reason that the voice of the people is said to be the voice of God. We see public opinion predicting events in such a marvelous way, that one would say that the people are endowed with the occult faculty of foreseeing both good and evil.” A century later, the English political party of the Whigs, which denounced royal absolutism and campaigned for a strong parliamentary regime, entitled one of its tracts “Vox populi, vox Dei”… and this is how this expression, diverted from its original meaning, became a false proverb meaning the opposite of what it was supposed to mean at the start: the refusal of the ecclesiastical caste to leave any power to the people in designation of saints.

The “voice of the people”, egalitarian (“one man, one voice”), would it nevertheless still be the “voice of transcendence” and therefore the perfect expression of “values” ultimate, as Machiavelli seemed to think, disregarding the emotional, irrational and volatile character of the public opinions of crowds? Nothing is less sure. Pure Democracy “Transcendent”, from which all hierarchical authority is absent, always ends in dangerous anarchy. No complex and organized society can function without hierarchical authority.

Within the “Extensive Transcendence” (Uranus-Neptune-Pluto, planets whose cycles & intercycles are very long), politics in the restricted sense is above all concerned with the uranian function “Representation of Transcendence”, in that it defines the norms, rules and laws that regulate the knowledge and values belonging to the community of a given society. In religious societies, theologians and clerics perform this function; and in secularized societies, it is politicians who emphasize the pre-eminence of spiritual values rather than economics who embody it. On the side of scientific power, this role is devolved to the self-proclaimed marabouts of official science, who decide sovereignly what is real (read: measurable and quantifiable) or not.

The homo politicus and politics

From all this it follows that the politician (in the sense of cleric of politics) is structurally, just like the actor, a being polarized by the target level “Intensive representation”, which means that its functional ambition is to unify, legislate and impose an overt regulatory authority. Depending on the source level to which it refers, it can be classified into three subtypes:

Solar type: the source level politician “Representation”. He wants power for power’s sake, authority for authority’s sake, domination for domination’s sake.

Jupiterian type: the source level politician “Existence”. He wants power to have the means to exercise authority over economic activities, whether to ensure the greatest possible freedom if he is on the right, or to regulate them to ensure a fairer distribution of the fruits of production and trade if left.

Uranian type: the source level politician “Transcendence”. He wants power to have the means to exercise authority over the sustainability of “values” spiritual, religious or secularized, which are for him the fundamental bases which organize life in society.

Of course, in the same politician can be associated two or three of these types, according to variable proportions in each individual.

The politician, in the sense that he must not only convince (target level “Intensive representation”), but also to seduce, to make his message and his character attractive and interesting, is also (always like the actor) a being who must comply with the rules of “Extensive representation”, which leads to the definition of three other subtypes from the source level “Representation”:

Solar type: the target level politician “Representation”. He wants power for power’s sake, authority for authority’s sake, domination for domination’s sake, but also and above all to stage his character, to play the role expected of him and/or that he has chosen, “doing are interesting”.

Venusian type: the target level politician “Existence”. He wants power for the pleasures and favors that are linked to him and that he can grant and share his affects with as many people as possible, which touches him, seduces him, moves him, shakes him.

Mercurian type: the target level politician “Transcendence”. He wants power for the absolute pleasure of communicating with the total freedom that it provides and which allows him to fully use his talents as an all-out propagandist.

Of course, in the same politician can be associated two or three of these types, according to variable proportions in each individual. Let’s add that the types of “Intensive representation” and of “Extensive representation” can cohabit with the same politician, which produces an even greater variety of mixed types.

Is the function of politician reserved for individuals in whom the planetary functions of “Representation” intensive and/or extensive are dominant and which therefore correspond almost perfectly to one or other of these types or combination of types? The answer to this question is of course negative. Even if the astrological statistics produced by Michel Gauquelin have revealed an over-representation of the angularities of Jupiter among the most prominent parliamentarians (the same is also true among the most famous actors), the fact remains that the homo politicus is not a standard product. An individual can become a politician for many reasons. One can gain or want to gain political power out of personal and/or collective ambition, out of a taste for adventure or family heritage, to enrich oneself materially or to give a public sounding board to one’s ideas or values, to make a revolution or to prevent it from happening, to change social power relations or to maintain them, to become famous or to be able to pull the strings in the shadows of power, etc.

By retaining this time the “non-R” planetary functions of the R.E.T. we end up with other types of politicians whose primary vocation, psychological, is not the “Representation”:

Marsian type: the level politician-goal and source “Existence”. He wants power, power, which for him means having the concrete means to act directly and concretely on the course of things. He has an antagonistic, conflictual relationship with any official political authority whose mediation he refuses.

Saturnian type: the target level politician “Transcendence” and source level “Existence”. He wants power in order to try to impose on it his spirit of seriousness in economics, the rigor of his analyzes based on the in-depth study of the concrete conditions of existence, which can lead him to be very critical or restive vis-à-vis live the most ostentatious aspects of political games.

Neptunian type: the target level politician “Existence” and source level “Transcendence”. He wants the power to try to embody carnally his sense of the collective values that he intends to promote by being outside the normative frameworks that he considers too narrow for his broad visions.

Plutonian type: the level politician-goal and source “Transcendence”. He wants power for power’s sake, which for him means being in a position to control the discreet networks that allow power to remain in the shadows if he is a man of the system; if he is outside the system, he wants power to overthrow or pervert it insidiously.

Lunar type: the Politician of Globality. He wants the power to smooth out the corners of the collective as much as possible, to prevent the occurrence of conflicting situations as much as possible and to ensure its organic cohesion, the homogeneity and the natural solidarity of the elements that compose it.

The compensation policy

An individual can also become a politician out of a need to compensate for the conception or perception he may have of himself for his shortcomings, lacks, insufficiencies, dissatisfactions, weaknesses or real or supposed psychological or physical incompetences, in the field of “Representation”. These compensations can be of two types:

▶ pure compensation. The planetary functions of “Representation” are not dominant in the Natal chart of the individual, and this one perceives or conceives this fact as a personal deficiency which it is necessary for him to compensate by playing a public role also “Representative” as possible. This role is supposed to allow him to overcome a problem of self-confidence, even an inferiority complex, in any case of difficulty of personal affirmation. Positively, pure compensation is then signaled in him by a moderate use of media coverage, the artifices of representation and authority. Negatively, the same mechanism can result in pure overcompensation: it then overplays this representative role over which it no longer has a hold in bouts of impotent or counterproductive authoritarianism or outrageous media coverage where the public figure it has created escapes him. For this type of politician, pure compensation or overcompensation is sometimes followed by strong phases of decompensation which can manifest themselves in a diminished will to succeed, a loss of motivation and courage which results in more or less voluntary “mistakes”, and sometimes accompanied by depression.

▶ compensatory reinforcement. The planetary functions of “Representation” are dominant in the Birth chart of the individual, but this one perceives or conceives this fact, for example because of dissonances (squares, oppositions) of “non-R” planets to his “R” planets, as insufficient. The esteem of those close to him and the authority he manifests vis-à-vis them are not enough to satisfy his narcissism, his self-satisfaction and his need for domination: he must extend it to public esteem and at the command of the greatest number. Positively and if he has the skills to play his role as a politician, he is then excessively authoritarian, directive and spectacular. Negatively, he too is subject to overcompensation: he is then ripe for despotism and tyranny out of a desire to permanently display his superiority at the risk of thus ruining his authentic skills. Decompensation is reflected in this type of politician by a total collapse of being when circumstances and his own excesses end up depriving him of the only thing that matters to him: his absolute power.

Pure clearing and compensatory reinforcement can of course coexist in the same individual according to valid modalities and proportions according to the configuration of his birth sky… and the planetary transits to which he is regularly subjected.

The central problem that arises for the politician is therefore to bring his personal functioning into a minimum adequacy “natural” with the one required by his function. For one who has a majority of planetary dominants “Representative”, this does not pose a major problem: there is no solution of continuity between his personal functioning and his role as a politician. On the other hand, for those who are in average or strong deficiency of planets “Representative”, there is a hiatus between “non-R” personal functioning and “R” political function, which requires the individual to constantly readjust his conduct, and the main danger that lies in wait for him resides in the interactions between public figure and private figure, especially if he indulges in overcompensation which widens the gap that already exists between the two. We observe identical mechanisms in actors and certain types of artists, too, by virtue of their representative function, subject to media overcompensation, which Julien Freund clearly understood when he wrote that “politics is an art and not just a job.”

From all these considerations the following consequences follow from the point of view of the techniques and methods of interpreting Natal Charts of Politicians:

▶ assessment of the relative power of the planets of “Intensive representation” (Sun-Jupiter-Uranus) and “Extensive representation” (Sun-Venus-Mercury). The consonant or dissonant Aspects which reciprocally unite them provide information on the innate aptitude or not to mold oneself easily in the political function. The dissonant Aspects received by the planets of “Representation” indicate where pure compensations and compensatory reinforcements can come from, as well as possible overcompensations.

- in the case of the Charts of politicians whose dominant planets are entirely “non-R” (Mars, Saturn, Neptune & Pluto) or in those where the R.E.T. dominant are “non-R” (Venus, Mars, Neptune for the “Small e” family and Mercury, Saturn, Pluto for the “Small t” family), identify how the “Small r” planets (Sun-Jupiter- Uranus) and “Big R” (Sun-Venus-Mercury), and what Aspects they form with each other and with the ruling planets. If the “small r” is of medium strength, that the planets which compose it are linked together by consonant Aspects and form equally consonant Aspects to the dominant “non-R” planets, it is probable that the pure compensation happens without in a harmonious and balanced way, while it will be more problematic if the same Aspects are dissonant; If the “small r” or the “Big R” are of medium strength, that the planets which compose them are linked to each other by dissonant Aspects and form consonant Aspects to the dominant “non-R” planets, it is probable that the pure compensation does not occur without jolts and dysfunctions from the point of view of overt authority for the “Petit R” and spontaneous sociability for the “Grand R”, whereas these will become very problematic if the same Aspects are dissonant (high risks of pure overcompensation); If the “small r” or the “Big R” are weak, whether the planets that compose them are linked together by consonant or dissonant Aspects, it is likely that pure compensation will be extremely difficult to implement. The risks of pure overcompensation are then at their maximum if the individual has not managed to build a public figure not too far from what he really is.

Note a key point: the fact that a politician is preferentially sensitized to the “Representation”, to “the Existence” or the “Transcendence” does not imply that he is particularly competent in the fields concerned. If awareness is astrological, competence is extra-astrological. One can, for example, feel hyper-concerned with economics and be a poor manager or economist. Conversely, one may have acquired very great skills in economics as a result of one’s studies and experiences, without feeling primarily and especially motivated by the economic thing in itself, or even by putting spiritual values, for example, above from her. In this perspective and keeping this same example, it is even possible that the economic thing is transformed into pure ideology, as is the case for Marxism or liberalism, which reduce all societal mechanisms to the production of objects and relations of production.

To conclude, we can ask one last question: the fact that politics is essentially an activity “Representative” does it mean that the best politicians are those in whom the planets of “Representation” are dominant? The answer should in principle be positive, since there is an adequacy between the functioning of the individual and the social function that he occupies. But it is far from obvious: the challenges (environmental problems, energy change, social change made necessary by the exponential robotization of activities prelude to an imminent end to work, African demographic explosion, terrorism without borders, etc.) with which our modern societies are confronted are becoming more and more complex and, in order to be able to be addressed, require a long-term vision that is foreign to the short-term vision of traditional politics. Without going that far, one can simply think like Georges Clémenceau that “War is too serious a thing to entrust to the military”, and that politics are issues that are too important to entrust to politicians.

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