From Politology to Political Practice: The Ontology of the Relation between Politics and the Political

Politics as a philosophy in traditional understanding and as a science in modern understanding of it, takes for granted the possibility of obtaining objective knowledge of the political as its subject matter. But contemporarily, reflective thinking about the relation between theory and practice in politics, has been concluded that thinking about the political corresponds with acting politically, i.e. intending to power. Thus, the main question of this article is that how our understanding of relation between politics and the political with regard to the relation between the ontological and the political has been transformed? Our hypotheses is that in the analysis of political ontology, politics and the political are entangled in a mutual relation in which politology and political practice act as a two sides of a coin. This relation has been analyzed in two dimensions, first: from traditional and modern perspective of the political as particular entity or something to be and second from the perspective of the political ontologically as a being in itself in the context of contemporary critical thought from existential phenomenology to post-structuralism. In analyzing the political as an entity, issues concerning the differences between political and other social entities gets importance. In contrast, the political in its ontological rendition, deals with fundamental problems about the constitution of political life through transformation in theory and practice. Therefore, concentrating on the analysis of political ontology reflectively as a method concerning the analysis of theoretical issues on the second order or meta-theoretical level that itself defines our theoretical framework, the effect of transformation in understanding the relation between politics and the political on the transformation of our subjectivity in respect to the manner of representing the political, has been studied. Thinking critically about the “self” as a conclusion of implementing reflective method in analyzing political ontology, renders critical consciousness about the transformative nature of self/other relationship as a signifier of the political and also beside detecting the negative dimension of the political as a domination and antagonism, focuses on searching new possibilities of political being positively that denotes to co-understanding, reconciliation and emancipation.