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16 Thus, history moves, it is not stationary. ”17 But this movement is neither progressive nor regressive, it is obscure; and, if it is not known, it is also because of the forces with which this book deals. These forces shape the practical results of empirical politics. The peripeteia, or twist in the tale, is crucial; that course of action which is aimed at achieving predetermined purposes but which in the end flows into something different. It is a process through which the irony in politics becomes manifest, a deformation imposed by the historical context to the intention of those who act.

The only emotion we can feel about the threat of atomic destruction as an instrument for peace is self-pity, and this is not a tragic emotion: it is notoriously the most unpurifying and impure of all emotions, the very opposite of self-recognition as part of universal humanity. 6 This reflection takes place through the language of need. The need for vital answers to questions that are not just about knowledge. The Essence of Political Realism ● 37 It is a reflection that flows from the strategically elaborated thinking of someone who writes out of a true mandate of duty, someone who reads politics as a definition of a common destiny rather than as an attempt to confer meaning upon history, defeating or destroying enemies.

Politics, of course, is determined by causes that are in principle ascertainable. But the belief that historical material could ever satisfy the nomothetic ambitions of a social science or a scientific politics is opposed to Wight’s view. Contrary to the idea, he argues that the occurrence of social phenomena can not be determined following variously formulated political schemes; he is opposed to the idea that such infallible schemes are detectable thanks to knowledge and its advancement. He is therefore a critic of those linear conceptions of progress or regress of politics.