It's Greece versus Rome, and Rome rules

We need to take the role of active citizenship more seriously, argues philosopher Stephen Rainey.

Being a citizen in ancient Greece meant taking part in matters of the city. This meant proposing, debating, opposing, supporting measures or initiatives for the good of the state. If you chose to not be an citizen in this full-blooded sense, you were considered a kind of pariah. One antonym for 'citizen' was barbarian.

Another antonym for citizen was ‘idiotes.’ If you were not an active citizen, you were an idiot. Idiots were people too caught up in their own private affairs to take stock of or contribute to the public life that facilitated that very inaction.

This idea of the private and public realms survived the enlightenment and became a keystone in the idea of how a citizen ought to contribute to society. Immanuel Kant described the distinction like this: Privately we must obey law, but always be ready publicly to challenge it. This way of putting things can seem odd to the contemporary eye.

Generally, it's thought now that privacy involves being master of our own domain – a region of privileged access where we can do, make, say, think what we like. It's something we can protect with appeal to law if we feel it necessary.

The public realm is where we need to obey. It's out there. That's the realm where my ends and yours can clash. We appeal to laws and social norms to anticipate potential problems. We obey in the public realm so that friction is avoided.

Where's the questioning role of the citizen in this tableau? Privately we expect entitlement to hold opinion. Publicly we expect external powers to foreclose on interpersonal clashes. We can think what we like, but are wise to say nothing.

Greco-Roman Wrestling

Not being an idiot in ancient Greece was underwritten by an interpersonal phenomenon. People were physically closer to each other in space, and in terms of social make-up. Getting involved in such a context remains eminently possible.

We now don't have anything like an Athenian democracy. For one thing, we don't keep slaves to exclude. Women are not officially politically subjugated. Our cities, states and constituencies far out-measure anything Athenian. The interpersonal basis of our lot is strained from the beginning. But, in fact, this isn't the real issue.

Europeans think they carry with them a legacy of Greek civilisation in democracy. We're awfully proud of it. Even those who fled to the New World were swift to erect Grecian-looking buildings. Despite that, the democracy we enjoy (to a greater or lesser extent) is Roman democracy.

At the centre of the Greek democratic ideal was the idea of debate. Endless, rarefied debate, usually related to a complex and deeply textured comprehension of 'the good life'. At the centre of Roman democracy is the fasces. The Greek ideal is semantic; the Roman, syntax.

In this contrast we can see why the Kantian sentence could look backwards to us. Kant espoused an enlightenment ideal of Greek reason in public life. The public sphere was the arena for disagreement. For us, that's where control is needed. It's Greece versus Rome, and Rome rules.

A very public privacy

Recently, with the advent of overt market interventions destabilising and removing democratic régimes in Europe we hear national sovereignty is at stake. In the increasingly security-obsessed nations we live in, we feel our privacy is under attack. Personal sovereignty is eroded as well as national. But the problem could be seen the other way around.

The public sphere that does exist for us is eminently Roman. It is where challenge is precluded. But personal sovereignty is coming to dominate the public sphere. We think 'everyone should be allowed to have their own opinion.' But for us the private is free and the public is closed to debate.

Once an opinion is expressed, it is treated as protected. Witness how opposing a view triggers discussion about the ethics of causing offence, not the soundness of that view. As this idea of the private realm encroaches on the public we get instead of argument, unquestionable expressions of taste. We see instead of journalism, gossip. Instead of politics, patronisation.

As long as we presume we have the ancient Greek ideal of democracy, but exist in the Roman, this dissonance will go on. What we need to counter these unsettling tendencies is a swing to the Greek pole of privacy, expressed by Kant. Privately we do what we must, but publicly we take a position, argue, oppose, propose and get involved in the public sphere that facilitates the existence we have.

We need to worry less about protecting our privacy, more about liberating our publicity. Part of this means not waiting for a mechanism to be put in place. It means setting sail fully knowing leaks will spring and have to be plugged at sea. The stake is a revitalisation of the public sphere on Enlightenment terms, and a rebuff of Roman democracy.

If only we weren't such idiots.

Image by Anna Fox. CC licenced.