Biologisches und politisches Leben

Biological and political life. If we think about politics in Ancient Greece, we find a distinction between the political and the biological life: the domains of polis and oikos. Compared to the present, there is an obvious difference in the overlapping of these two once clearly separated domains. Therefore, the question has to be raised why this difference emerged and how the relation between political and biological life in modern society can be described. Seeing the relation between these life forms as a development, Hobbes is a turning point: by transferring power to a sovereign, the functions of politics change – from the distribution of power to the preservation of the citizens’ life, who henceforth are not bare resources of the state, but respectable individuals with particular interests. In addition, biology in the 18th and 19th century (e. g. Bichat) develops a new understanding of homo sapiens: the animal rationale, which was able to forge and lead institutions based upon pure reason, suddenly discovers itself as an emotional individual. In response, politics has to take the human being as a whole (his bios) into account. Darwin’s theory furthermore provoked two reactions: affirmative and negative biopolitics. As a consequence of negative biopolitics, so called „zoopolitics“ emerged, which divided mankind into a superior and an inferior group – the basis for the later „thanatopolitics“ among the national socialists in Germany. Since the Third Reich, politics has not lost its focus on the citizens’ bios – thus it is time to establish a positive biopolitics that is able to deal with the problems of our globalized world and thereby to lay the foundation for future generations.