RELIGION, DEMOCRACY, AND CITIZENSHIPPolitics, therefore, can be envisaged as the terrain where competing interpretations of
shared principles struggle in order to define the ‘‘common sense’’ and establish their
hegemony. For instance, a social democratic conception of citizenship will put forward a
specific understanding of liberty, of equality, and of who belongs to the ‘‘all,’’ which
will enter into contestation with conservative and neoliberal interpretations of the same
principles. In this way, the common good is ‘‘pluralized,’’ and it becomes an object of
contestation. This type of dissent about the common good, far from being negative for
democracy, is, in my view, the very condition of a vibrant democratic life. This is, indeed,
what the agonistic debate should be about.
In order to render intelligible the agonistic perspective that I am putting forward, I must
say something about the distinction that I have proposed between ‘‘the political’’ and
‘‘politics.’’^2 By ‘‘the political,’’ I refer to the dimension of hostility and antagonism that is
an ever-present possibility in all human society, antagonism that can take many different
forms and emerge in diverse social relations. ‘‘Politics,’’ by contrast, refers to the ensemble
of practices, discourses, and institutions that seek to establish a certain order and to
organize human coexistence under conditions that are always potentially conflictual be-
cause they are affected by the dimension of the political. This conception, which attempts
to keep together the two meanings ofpolemosandpolispresent in the idea of politics, is,
I believe, crucial for democratic politics.
Politics aims at the creation of unity in a context of conflict and diversity. It is con-
cerned with the formation of a ‘‘we’’ as opposed to a ‘‘them.’’ The novelty of democratic
politics is not overcoming the we/them distinction but the different way in which it is
established. Once this dimension of ‘‘the political’’ is acknowledged, we can envisage
‘‘politics’’ as the attempt to tame hostility and to defuse the potential antagonism that
exists in human relations. According to such an approach, the fundamental question for
democratic politics is not, pace the rationalists, how to arrive at a rational consensus
reached without exclusion. This, in other words, would imply the construction of an ‘‘us’’
that would not have a corresponding ‘‘them.’’ This is impossible because the very condi-
tion of constituting an ‘‘us’’ is the demarcation of a ‘‘them.’’ The real issue at stake in
democratic politics is how to establish the us/them distinction in a way that is compatible
with pluralist democracy.
A pluralistic democratic order supposes that the opponent is not seen as an enemy
to be destroyed but as an adversary whose existence is legitimate and must be tolerated.
We will fight against his/her ideas, but we will not put into question his/her right to
defend them. This category of the adversary does not eliminate antagonism, however.
And it should be distinguished from the liberal notion of the competitor, with which it is
sometimes identified. An adversary is a legitimate enemy, an enemy with whom we have
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