Philippine E-Journals

REALISM AND IDEALISM IN THE DEMONIC NATURE OF POLITICAL POWER

Nicolae Rambu

Discipline: Philosophy, Political Science

 

Abstract:

Power demonism—or the demonic nature of power—is a phenomenon found everywhere and there, one can identify a political power center. Niccolo Machiavelli is the person who revealed clearly for the first time the nature of power demonism. Paradoxically, far from being himself a demonic being—a description which Goethe ascribed to the meaning of this term—the author of The prince was just a realistic theoretician of his time. Power demonism is the ability of the politician to create the general conditions to achieve political power from the dark side of the individual. This phenomenon evidently has a destructive potential.