In a [conception of] politics that obeys the postulate of [original] sin, the struggle against evil and the realization of a relative degree of perfection is the task of the individual, and thus is a struggle that can, indeed, minimize evil, …
… which is beatable in that precise moment and at that precise point, but cannot extinguish it at its root; and the politician’s ministerial, and not dominative, task is that of establishing the best conditions to facilitate this struggle. What evil? The definition can change.
In a society characterized by unity of faith, evil will be identified above all with any attack on what is thought to be the objective truth; in a society characterized by a plurality of spiritual families evil will be identified above all with the forced imposition of the truth.
In the first type of society, the politician will put might at the service of the truth; in the second, his concern will be instead to prevent that the method of persuasion be replaced by that of violence. However, this distinction must not be changed into opposition:
because in this conception the idea of truth and the idea of freedom are correlative terms, so that their negation is complementary … [and] would reduce truth to force in the hands of the politician, the guardian of the city; … religion would be debased to closed religion.
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