Polis against man

O’Donovan again: “By what right is the term ‘political’ claimed exclusively for the defense of social structures which refuse the deeper spiritual and cosmic aspirations of mankind? The price to be paid by classical republicanism is that of pitting political order against human fulfillment, of making the polis constitutionally hostile to philosophy, theology and artistic vision. It confines the social good to something that would satisfy an assembly of slave-holding landowners . . . . If political order must be conceived in that way, it would be well, perhaps, that theology should be anti-political.”