Civl society

Theoretical, historical, and philosophical contributions can be found here, as well as various case studies from practice. The diversity and pluralism of ideas of the contributions make it clear that the permanent voice and participation of an active public can enrich the political discourse and policy formulation of our country.

Wolfgang Mazal Bettina Rausch

Simon Varga

Summary: This contribution focuses on the differences and evolution from the ancient community of citizens to the modern civil society. The question about the necessity and significance of political participation in antiquity and modern times forms the central point of this study. From the present socio-political perspective, it can be seen that the core of today’s civil society still incorporates a large section of the community of citizens. In the final analysis, this awareness calls for community-political empathy – understood as civil rights and obligations.

At first sight, linking antiquity and the present day in political affairs might awaken suspicions of anachronism, especially seeing that political practice has already undergone many metamorphoses over the course of history, and will obviously also experience even more changes in the future. However, at second sight, a project of this kind seems to be not only historically, but also systematically, logical. Already present in the early stages of Greek political thought in its classical tradition, a question – that is still unavoidable for life in a union or community and that many modern states still struggle with – was asked and attempted to be answered, in theory and practice: that of the level and significance of the political participation of the individual in the political community.

Although it is not possible to provide a comprehensive portrayal of the many historical developments leading from the community of citizens of ancient times to today’s civil society in all its nuances, even sketching these developments leads to the – in no way surprising – conclusion that, then and now, citizen participation was and is an essential necessity for the organisation of political coexistence – and will continue to be so. However, as already indicated, this is something of a truism. The two central questions deal much more with the intensity of political participation the citizens can demand and where the fundamental differences between the ancient community of citizens and modern civil society can actually be discerned.

This essay begins with a brief depiction of the immediate ancient political practice of the so-called community of citizens, connected with a historical-political overview of political life in the classical Greek period (1). This was followed by a change in the political theory of antiquity. In it, the fundamentals of the politico-anthropological philosophy of Aristotle and his concept of political participation in the course of the “best imaginable state” developed by him are discussed (2). The transformation from the ancient community of citizens to the modern civil society – especially based on sociological observations – will, at least, be touched on in the next step (3). Taking the current global socio-political developments into consideration, the next section handles the current importance of the civil society that, in my opinion, can still be regarded to a large degree as a community of citizens – and maybe even increasingly so – without questioning the modern developments and achievements such as human rights, democracy, and civil liberties in any way (4). Finally, the last point leads to an investigation of the foundation of community policy empathy as a civic right and duty (5).

There can be no doubt that ancient Greece occupies an important place in connection with the development and fundamental understanding of the political in Europe and even beyond its borders. This pertains particularly to the so-called Greek classical period beginning with the military conflicts between the Greeks and the Persians to the coronation of the soon-to-be Macedonian King Alexander the Great – the time from around 500 to 336 BC. In this classical period, the Greek city states (Old Greek: polis (sing.); poleis (pl.)), including Athens, Sparta, and Thebes, achieved their uniquely great historical, political, and cultural importance of global significance, which would have been impossible in this fashion without the political organisation of the polis . And that occured – surprising as it may seem – in spite of many internal political conflicts within the city states themselves, as well as those among the city states, and external military threats from other regions of the Mediterranean.

In the classical period, there were likely more than 800 settlements that could be classified as a polis ; their physical appearance differed greatly although, “in principle, the inner structure of the settlement space was the same.” 1This usually consisted of an urban centre with a political, economic, and cultural infrastructure with the economic and/or political agora, the meeting place for trade and politics in the centre, bordering on administration and cult buildings, as well as the land surrounding the urban centre that was necessary for agricultural purposes. For example, all of Attica belonged to the polis of Athens and citizens living anywhere in Attica referred to themselves as Athenians even if they lived in a village far away from the main city itself. 2It seems that Athens, the most influential polis , had a population of between 200,000 and 300,000 during the classical period with the majority of the inhabitants living in rural areas. 3

The ideal of the “political self-administration and government by the citizens and striving for internal and external independence” was a characteristic of the political self-image of the city states. 4This shows that the goals of political autarchy and autonomy, which were inseparable from the striving for permanent economic stability to be able to provide the citizens with the goods that were necessary and desirable for life at the time, stood at the forefront of the endeavours of the city states. This suggests that there was active economic exchange among many city states. However, most poleis had their own army, their own legal system as well as their own calendar, and different priorities were even set in connection with the mythical cult within the individual city states.

The political self-image of the ancient city state of the classical era was founded on two historical-categorical facts of political practice (and, to a large extent, also of political theory) that have to be dealt with in any examination of the subject of political participation in antiquity: the division of the polis into free and unfree people as well as the paradigm of the free (male) citizen within the polis . In spite of “the great variety of social and state manifestations in ancient Greece”, the separation into free and unfree must be considered “a fundamental characteristic of any ancient political system”, 5and the same also applies to the limitation of civic rights and duties to the free (male) citizens of the polis .