THE MELANCHOLY OF POPULISM

I share with Arditi the fundamental concern that runs through this book. I also appreciate Benjamin’s mode of reasoning. It is uninhibited and direct. It does not linger over speculative virtuosity—something lethal when dealing with political thought. However, when I try to identify what I am most inclined to feel comfortable with in his arguments, I think that sympathy is rooted in the fact that this book inseparably links social science and political thought. When he speaks of politics, I like that touch of candor that I associate with the best classical republican rhetoric. One cannot write about politics without the aspiration of being understood by citizens in general. Benjamin Arditi is not among those who continue writing The Prince (Machiavelli 2001) with its techniques aimed at the few candidates to become founders of new principalities, as is sometimes perceived in Laclau and in some candidates for courtly advisors. Arditi sometimes writes with a direct rhetoric loaded for potential lay readers. He does not speak for those who, as Carl Schmitt would say, are in the antechambers of power, but always from the point of view of those who have to endure it. This spirit has abandoned political thought inspired by Heideggerian ontological difference, the very mention of which perplexes any citizen who wants to intervene in the political arena.