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Abstract
In contemporary debates we may distinguish a number of individual conceptions of politics, which, however, can be understood as versions of combinations of two and only two concepts of politics. I will call the two the sphere-concept and the activity-concept. Although they on most occasions are closely intertwined, they refer to two distinct concepts, both of which are regularly evoked but seldom clearly distinguished from each other either in the daily or in the academic debate on politics as a concept. The sphere-concept arose from the need to demarcate politics from other fields or sectors, ‘the political system’ currently serving as the main metaphor. The conceptualization of the activity of politics refers to its qualification as a contingent, controversial and temporal phenomenon from different perspectives, which are here discussed as rhetorical topoi for the activity of politics. In this article I want to discuss the strange character of speaking about politics, to elucidate the opposition between the two concepts of politics by illustrating their internal history, range of variation and then discuss the indirect style of the contemporary debates on the concepts of politics.
