Contemporary political philosophy tends to depict politics as an activity involving rational individuals. For instance, the image of politics that emerges from John Rawls' Theory of Justice or Habermas' Between Facts and Norms, perhaps the two major works of political philosophy of the last fifty years, is that of a sphere of human life in which one can count on the rationality of the actors involved. However rationality is conceived, either as rationality with regard to ends and values, or as communicative rationality, the image of politics resulting from these works is that of an activity which can and should be guided by rational procedures.

Nevertheless, when one looks at the everyday activity that goes under the heading of “politics”, one is confronted with quite a different picture. People involved in this activity are not so easily persuaded to adopt rational procedures of communication and decision. Therefore, a purely rational model of society risks being a model for a world that does not exist.

Indeed, quite often, people seem to act on the basis of arational elements, some other kinds of powerful symbols and images of the world, which are not taken into account by a purely rational image of politics. The twentieth century, with the rise of totalitarianism and its two world wars, contains countless examples. While the grandiose parades of totalitarian regimes exhibited the power of arational elements, such as myths and symbols, in a patent way, there seems to be reason to suspect that these elements still manoeuvre among us.