section_path: Approaches/Moralism and realism
section_name: Moralism and realism
paragraph_text: Moralism and realism
  
  Some perspectives on politics view it empirically as an exercise of power, while others see it as a social function with a normative basis. This distinction has been called the difference between political moralism and political realism. For moralists, politics is closely linked to ethics, and is at its extreme in utopian thinking. For example, according to Hannah Arendt, the view of Aristotle was that "to be political…meant that everything was decided through words and persuasion and not through violence;" while according to Bernard Crick "politics is the way in which free societies are governed. Politics is politics, and other forms of rule are something else." In contrast, for realists, represented by those such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Harold Lasswell, politics is based on the use of power, irrespective of the ends being pursued.