Adam Chmielewski Chapter 2 Order in Politics https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6001-5309 Abstract The distinction between the private and the public is commonly adopted in many conceptions of the political. I claim that the distinction is marred by the spatial fallacy which stems from an erroneous attempt to confine the political to a separate or autonomous space. Instead, I propose a more fine-grained approach which consists in an alternative, pluralist conception of spaces of human life, constituted by different types of relationships between human individuals. The conception presupposes that those spaces are continuously produced, reproduced, and transformed by humans themselves. In view of the argument, and drawing on the political dimension of the concept of order, the political may be defined as an activity aimed at designing, establishing, criticising, subverting, or overthrowing orders in all spheres of human life. The political thus should not be conceived of as a thing, a space, a domain, or as space of its own, but as an intrinsic property of relationships established in each of the spaces of human life. The definition implies also an agonistic element: establishing and sustaining any political order is a process necessarily involving differences of opinion, disputes, and conflicts, sometimes violent, and even wars as an extreme way of pursuing politics. Order in Political Ideologies The central role of the concept of order has been remarked upon by many thinkers, yet few of them undertook to analyse the role of the concept of order in politics in a general way. Hans Barth, one of the rare exceptions, argued that the concept of order plays a central role in political philosophy. As he wrote, “[t]here can be hardly any doubt that all social structures, large and small, permanent or transitory, have, from the very beginning, some kind of order. Wherever life has meaning, a society is founded among men. The realization and fulfilment of meaning exceeds purely subjective and personal limits; it affects and involves one's fellow man. And since it is a socially constructive force, it necessarily institutes an order” (Barth 1960, 173). Expanding upon and detailing Barth’s intuition, in this chapter I intend to outline a conception of politics in which the concept of order plays the key role. I shall argue that alternative conceptions of social order may be interpreted as diverse ontologies whose purpose is to ground political practices and theories on the purportedly firm foundation. However, such ontologies are meant to provide not only an understanding of the relations between human individuals, but also ways of transforming those relations. The concept of order functions thus not only in various attempts to describe the social and political reality but also, in its normative function, motivates the search for alternative schemes aimed at changing it. In other words, the category of order, constitutive for philosophy, is a driving force not only behind political activity, but also plays a fundamental role in political ideologies. This is because what one person considers an order, may appear as chaos to another; what someone considers a natural, just, or right order, someone else may find artificial, unjust, or inappropriate. What is important is that this obvious statement is equally true when speaking about the political practice as well as the philosophical reflection about politics. For this reason, the study of politics itself is unavoidably political. Several illustrations will help to elucidate this point. For example, conservative ideologies, for which the stability and permanence of social structures are the cornerstones of their political vision, understand the political order as God- given, erected upon the foundation of the natural law, or sanctified and preserved by tradition and as something that may, but should not, be disturbed or undermined. References to God, the natural law, or tradition are typical of conservatism as ways to legitimize the social and political order as something that should be preserved, protected, and defended against changes and