SEBASTIAN DE

GRAZIA
THE POLITICAL COMMUNITY

BIOGRAPHY

(August 1917), a political philosopher and

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, died on
Sunday in Princeton, N.J. in 2000 when he was
83.
He was born in Chicago and received a
bachelor's degree and a doctorate in political
science from the University of Chicago. During
World War II he served in the Office of Strategic
Services in Washington.

A. The Community and Belief System

What is it that makes a group of

people of Community?
Religious and Political beliefs.

Without commonness of belief

system, No political community
can be said to exist.

The concept of Anomie (Emile Durkheim)

When no body of common

values and sentiments exists, a
person feels isolates or lost,
without standards. (Confusion,
Loss of Orientation)

 Ruler
used to denote the entity, tangible or intangible, which
members of a community believe able to control those
aspects of the environment most necessary for the
commonweal.
Directives
like the term ruler, refers to peoples beliefs. this
directives embody the communitys ideas of good and
bad.

B. Anxiety and Belief

System of beliefs acquires major psychological
function for the child only after he experiences
certain shocks.
4 Important Situations of Anxiety in the early
history of the human organism (clues left by
Durkheim Anomie)
1.
2.
3.
4.

Absence of attendants
Withdrawal of affection by attendants
Discovery of the limitations of the attendants
Partial abandonment by attendants

The relationship of Anomie to Separationanxiety

-with the deterioration of childs system of beliefs
about the world and terminates with acquisition of
a new or revised set of beliefs.
Belief system serve as protection against the
anxiety of separation provoked by such situations.

C. THE GENESIS OF POLITICAL

BELIEF SYSTEMS
For good or evil, anthropomorphic
beliefs cannot be stifled in the
child. Outside the home, parental
information finds support in the
schools.

It is more understandable
to the child that the king or
congress of the president
makes the law; and if
people are not good in
thought and deed, they are
-

The political world of the child under 5

years of age is people with awe-inspiring
chief executive, fantastic policemen,
soldiers, firemen (for firemen control fires
and save people), together with good
people (law abiding citizens), who are
happy and content, and bad (law breaking
persons), who are jailed or hanged.

D. The Political Void in Adolescence

The age of maturity

21 years of age- the age of
voting, brings the equivalence
of the status-giving customs of
the simple societies.

E. Anomie and Obligations

Two types of Anomie:
1.Moderate form called Simple anomie
- Its influence is persuasive; insidious, one might say it. It
affords a clear example of the interconnection of all aspects
of the life of man as political animal.

2.a severe called Acute anomie

- Is when traditional institutions such as religion and
government fail to exercise the moral restraints on a
capitalist society.

F. Mass Movement

When men find their present and future painful to behold, they search for
new ideologies, and oftentimes, like the man with a toothache who
believed the time when he had no toothache his happiest, they glanced
backward toward a golden age.
Belief system deteriorate when members are convinced of one or the
other two things- that their ruler is either unable or unwilling to provide
for them in the manner prescribed in the ideology.
Once the vast mass of people feel that the ruler cannot carry out his
obligations, a belief system that offers a new order, yet in which the old
will be revived, spreads like a fire through dry brush.

References
The Great Political Theories by Michael Curtis
Google Picture