The Psychology of Self Does Not Belong in Politics: On the Limits of Political Enlightenment and the Sophistication of Academia and Religion
Ervin Hoxha
Abstract
This article argues that the psychology of the self is improperly situated within politics and should instead be pursued discreetly, under the guidance of sophisticated disciplines such as academia and religion. Political appeals to self-reflection — including the recurring phrase "to see oneself" — function rhetorically to deflect accountability rather than to cultivate genuine self-understanding. Mass enlightenment, as proposed by opposing political formations, risks reproducing the failures of earlier collective projects. Enlightenment, properly understood, is an individual responsibility, and its competent custodians are not legislative bodies but the sophisticated traditions of scholarship and religion. The article concludes that the confusion of messages surrounding self-reflection is not a failure of comprehension on the part of the critic, but a category error on the part of politics itself.
Keywords: psychology of self, political enlightenment, mass enlightenment, individual responsibility, academia, religion, Rilindja, self-reflection
1. Introduction
It has been pointed out by politicians that people should reflect on themselves, while those same politicians fail completely to understand the meaning of understanding one's own being. This article takes that failure as its starting point. The problem is not that self-reflection is unimportant; it is that the political domain is structurally unsuited to it. When politics appropriates the language of the self, it does not elevate the self — it degrades the language.
The argument proceeds in five movements. First, it examines the political misappropriation of self-reflection. Second, it identifies the phrase "to see oneself" as a rhetorical evasion of historical accountability. Third, it defends self-discovery as a private and professional matter. Fourth, it critiques mass enlightenment as a project destined to fail the majority. Fifth, it proposes that academia and religion — both sophisticated — are the proper custodians of the question of the self. The article closes by clarifying that its position is one of disagreement, not antagonism.
2. The Political Misappropriation of Self-Reflection
It has been asserted by political actors that people ought to reflect upon themselves, while those same actors fail to understand what understanding one's own being actually means. This is not a trivial inconsistency. It is a structural one. The politician speaks of the self in the register of the collective, the electoral, and the immediate — registers in which the self cannot appear as it is.
If politicians on all sides feel enlightened, let them first speak with certainty about their own parents. That would demonstrate normality — a prior condition — before they presume to teach others how to discover their beings. The test is simple and undemanding: certainty about one's own origins is the minimum evidence of a stable self. Where that certainty is absent, the pedagogy of self-discovery is premature.
3. "To See Oneself" as Rhetorical Evasion
My suspicion is that the phrase "to see oneself" is repeated in order to avoid settling a 36-year "bill" owed to Western influence and to the politicians who invited these failed leaders. This is my own understanding, not borrowed.
The phrase functions as a displacement. It redirects scrutiny from institutional and historical accountability toward the interior of the individual. The citizen is invited to look inward so that the ledger is not examined outward. The "bill" — thirty-six years in the making, incurred through external influence and the decisions of those who invited failed leaders — remains unpaid precisely because the language of self-reflection keeps the conversation at the level of the personal.
This is not to deny that self-examination has value. It is to insist that the value is being instrumentalized. A phrase repeated often enough acquires the appearance of a policy.
4. Self-Discovery as a Private and Professional Matter
Those who wish to discover themselves in private should be permitted to do so. That process contains many errors in its beginning and is properly suggested by a psychologist — not by political and legislative bodies.
Two claims are at work here. The first is procedural: self-discovery is a discrete undertaking, not a public campaign. The second is disciplinary: it belongs to the competence of psychology, not to the mandate of legislatures. The early stages of self-examination are characterized by error, misrecognition, and regression. Such stages require a trained guide, not a political platform. To legislate the process is to corrupt it at its most fragile point.
5. Mass Enlightenment and the Confusion of Messages
The opposition proposes a reflection of its own, offering a contrasting form of mass enlightenment: the already failed "Rilindja" set against "riperteritja." Mass enlightenment leads to the failure of the majority. Enlightenment should be a responsibility of the individual alone. Hence the confusion of messages.
The pairing of "Rilindja" and "riperteritja" is instructive. Both promise collective illumination; both presuppose that the many can be enlightened together. But enlightenment is not a condition that can be administered to a population. It is an achievement of persons. When it is promised en masse, what is delivered is not light but uniformity — and uniformity, historically, has been the prelude to the failure of the majority.
The confusion of messages, then, is not accidental. It is the inevitable consequence of two political formations competing for ownership of a concept — enlightenment — that cannot be owned.
6. Academia and Religion as Sophisticated Custodians
Here the argument turns on a distinction too often collapsed: politics is not the only — nor the most competent — domain for the question of the self. Academia and religion are both sophisticated.
Each has developed, over centuries, the languages, disciplines, and interpretive depth required to address self-knowledge with care. Academia offers method: the discipline of doubt, the requirement of evidence, the patience of the long argument. Religion offers depth: the vocabulary of conscience, guilt, repentance, and meaning — categories that politics either ignores or flattens. Both are sophisticated in the precise sense that they have learned to tolerate complexity. Politics has not.
To hand the psychology of the self to political and legislative bodies is therefore to mistake a sophisticated question for a crude one. The appropriate response is not to democratize self-discovery but to entrust it to those traditions that have earned the right to speak about it.
7. Conclusion
It is not that I fail to grasp their point. I simply disagree — and I am not antagonist to any political party.
The psychology of the self does not belong in politics. It should be done discreetly, and where it is guided at all, it should be guided by the sophisticated traditions — academic and religious — that are equipped for it. Until that distinction is restored, the phrase "to see oneself" will continue to serve as a substitute for seeing clearly, and the 36-year bill will remain, as it has remained, unpaid.
References
[Bergson, H. — on interior duration and the self][Foucault, M. — on governmentality and the care of the self][Hadot, P. — on philosophy as a way of life][James, W. — on the varieties of religious experience][Jung, C. G. — on individuation][Kierkegaard, S. — on the self as a relation][Taylor, C. — on the sources of the self][Weber, M. — on disenchantment and the vocation of scholarship]
[Placeholders — replace with the sources you actually engage.]
Notes on the Text
The term "36-year bill" is retained as the author's own formulation and is used to denote an accumulated historical and political debt.
"Rilindja" and "riperteritja" are retained in the original and treated as competing projects of mass enlightenment.
The phrase "to see oneself" is analyzed as a rhetorical device rather than a philosophical proposition.
The claim that academia and religion are "both sophisticated" is foundational to the argument and is not merely ornamental.
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