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Some Remarks On Public Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Rolf Dieter Herrmann
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Extract

This paper sketches an analysis of the public realm in Western democracies. It has often been said that there is a decline of public life in advanced industrial societies, and that this decline threatens the nature and function of political democracy. I doubt this. The most that I would claim at this stage is that large masses of the citizenry are excluded from the contemporary political scene, and that the most urgent political problems are discussed by social organizations representing the interest of individuals and groups. This is of philosophical interest; for these organizations, and not individual citizens, are constituting now the public life. It would take me too far afield to show how the new radicalism of the 1960s and many other social and political movements of today reacted against the threatened liquidation of the public realm. My main object is to draw attention to the lack of participation, least of all of political participation, of the citizens, and to answer the question why this happened.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 18 , Issue 69 , March 1970 , pp. 28 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © 1970 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago & London, University of Chicago Press, 1958, p. 28.

2 John G. Gunnell, Political Philosophy and Time, Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University Press, 1968, p. 95.

3 Gunnell, op. cit., p. 97.

4 Alan F. Westin, Privacy and Freedom, New York, Atheneum, 1967, p. 24: "These areas of individual pursuit prevent the total politicizing of life and permit other models of success and happiness to serve as alternatives to the political career and the citizenship role. Personal retreats for securing perspective and critical judgment are also significant for democratic life. A liberal democratic system maintains a strong commitment to the family as a basic and autonomous unit responsible for important educational, religious, and moral roles, and therefore the family is allowed to assert claims to physical and legal privacy against both society and the state."

5 See C. B. Macpherson, Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1962.

6 Oscar and Mary Handlin, The Dimensions of Liberty, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1961, chap. I "Liberty and Power," pp. 9-22, see 20, 21.

7 See Brian Barry, "The Public Interest," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl., vol. 38 (1964), pp. 1-18.

8 Francis G. Wilson, A Theory of Public Opinion, Chicago, Henry Regnery Comp., 1962, p. 229.

9 Wilson, op. cit., p. 230.

10 See Paul A. Smith, Jr., "Protest in Moscow," in Foreign Affairs, 47 (Oct. 1968), pp. 151-163.

11 Robert E. Lane, Political Ideology, New York, Free Press, 1962.

12 Seymour M. Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, Garden City, N. Y., Anchor Books, 1963, pp. 437-456, see 443 and 456.

13 Barrington Moore, Jr., Political Power and Social Theory, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1958, p. 183.

14 See Maurice Stein, The Eclipse of Community, Princeton, N. J., Princeton University Press, 1960.

15 Wilbert E. Moore, Order and Change: Essays in Comparative Sociology, New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1967, pp. 220-233, see 222.

16 William A. Faunce, Problems of an Industrial Society, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1968, chap. IV: "Freedom, Control, and the Future of In dustrial Society," pp. 134-175.

17 American Journal of Sociology, vol. 66 (Nov. 1960), pp. 346-358.

18 Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1960, p. 4.

19 Schelling, op. cit., p. 5.

20 Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 71.

21 Otto Kirchheimer, "Private Man and Society," in Political Science Quarterly, vol. 81 (March 1966), pp. 1-24

22 Kirchheimer, op. cit., p. 16.

23 Kirchheimer, op. cit., p. 7.

24 Kirchheimer, op. cit., p. 24.

25 Steven Lukes, "Alienation and Anomie," in Philosophy, Politics and Society, third series, ed. Laslett and Runciman, New York, Barnes & Noble, 1967, pp. 134-156.

26 See W. G. Runciman, Social Science and Political Theory, Cambridge, Mass., Cambridge University Press, 1963, chap. III.

27 William Kornhauser, The Politics of Mass Society, Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1959, pp. 183-193, see 186.

28 Kornhauser, op. cit.

29 Nelson Polsky, Community Power and Political Theory, New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 1963.

30 Amitai Etzioni, The Active Society. A Theory of Societal and Political Processes, New York, Free Press, 1968, p. 319.

31 I bid.

32 Gerhard E. Lenski, Power and Privilege, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1966.

33 In Political Studies, vol. 8 (1960), pp. 37-47.