The sad reality of today's democracy, as merely the rule of the masses and their needs, necessitates a rethinking of politics. In the form of ten concise theses and in explicit rejection of the fashionable formulas of an "end" or a "return of politics," Jacques Rancière inquires into the specific, the essence of politics. Clearly distinguishable from the category of economics as well as that of statehood, the essence of politics is rather to be sought in a relationship between two terms that contradictorily define the subject. Politics thus appears as a fundamentally paradoxical action, determined by the existence of a subject that is defined by its participation in oppositions. This becomes evident even at the origins of democracy.