Abstract
Metaphors do not only describe reality; in some cases they even create it.
Western social theories – inspiring political scientists – promoted a peculiar
Decalogue of specific metaphors: the society as a biological system, a machine,
a market, a battlefield, a legal order, a game, a theatre, a discourse, an established
hierarchy and a race for life. Contrasting policy with ethics occurs with
particular strength when one begins to treat the very concept of politics as
a metaphor. The theory of international relations in its foundations is based on
a relatively small number of categories that are by their very nature metaphors.
Politics as a purposeful activity, the search for a compromise, the mechanism
that maintains society as a whole, does not exist in the modern world.