I believe that philosophers should continue to discuss the proper aim of social policy in the light of the experience of the past fifty years. Instead of confining themselves to discussing the ‘nature’ of ethics, of the greatest good, etc. they should think about such fundamental and difficult ethical and political questions as are raised by the fact that political freedom is impossible without some principle of equality before the law; that since absolute freedom is impossible, we must, with Kant, demand in its stead equality with respect to those limitation of freedom which are unavoidable consequences of social life and that on the other hand the pursuit of equality especially in its economic sense, much as it desirable in itself may become a threat to freedom. […] And similarly, they should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle of the Utilitarians can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship, and the proposal that we should replace it by a more modest and realistic principles – the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy while the increase of happiness should be left in the main to private initiative.

The idea that there could exist a state of communication that would allow games of truth to circulate freely, without any constraints or coercive effects, seems utopian to me. This is precisely a failure to see that power relations are not something that is bad in itself, that we have to break free of. I do not think that society can exist without power relations, if by that one means the strategies by which individuals try to direct and control the conduct of others. The problem, then, is not to try to dissolve them in the utopia of completely transparent communication but to acquire the rules of law, the management techniques, and also the morality, the ethos, the practice of the self, that will allow us to play these games of power with as little domination as possible.

True genesis is not at the beginning but at the end, and it starts to begin only when society and existence become radical, i.e. grasp their roots. But the root of history is the working creating human being who reshapes and overhauls the given facts. Once he has grasped himself and established what is his, without expropriation and alienation, in real democracy, there arises in the world something which shines into the childhood of all and in which no-one has yet been: homeland.

One must be careful not to conflate envy and resentment. For resentment is a moral feeling. If we resent our having less than others, it must be because we think that their being better off is the result of unjust institutions, or wrongful conduct on their part. Those who express resentment must be prepared to show why certain institutions are unjust or how others have injured them.

What ‘ought to be’ is therefore concrete; indeed, it is the only realistic and historicist interpretation of reality; it alone is history in the making; it alone is politics.

If we don’t allow free thought in mathematics, why on earth should we allow it in morals and politics?

These specific rights – let me call them primary political rights – are integral to the democratic process. They aren’t ontologically separate from – or prior to, or superior to – the democratic process. To the extent that the democratic process exists in a political system, all the primary political rights must also exist. To the extent that primary political rights are absent from a system, the democratic process does not exist.