On the 'Meaning' of Politics

Christos Yannaras is Professor Emeritus at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens, Greece. Jonathan Cole is Assistant Director of the Centre for Religion, Ethics and Society at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, Australia.

Foreword

Introduction

Translator’s note

Acknowledgements

1. Reverence and justice

2. Necessity and freedom

3. Forms of organized co-existence

4. Cohesion through coercion

5. Leitourgima’s degeneration into office

6. Ratio dethrones authority

7. The desire for “salvation” dethrones ratio

8. The Ecclesia and religion: incompatible modes of existence

9. When truth becomes the priority

10. Politics: contest or art?

11. Shared need as shared truth

12. The pre-political character of freedom

13. The alignment of the ecclesia of the demos and the ecclesia of the believers

14. The exercise of authority as responsible service

15. The common roots of democracy, community, and the parish

16. The political consequences of the Ecclesia’s religionization

17. Religious totalitarianism

18. Ideology: the alienation of truth into accuracy

19. Societas: the alienation of communion into a partnership

20. Religious “salvation” and political individualism

21. Materialistic and idealistic utilitarianism

22. Politics is not the aim of the Ecclesia; The Ecclesia itself is the aim of politics

23. Augustine is Europe

24. Political forms of religious individualism

25. The Ecclesia’s alienation in confessionalism

26. A Trinitarian archetype of politics

27. Comprehension is not knowledge