In the city-state for the first
time appears an institutioned public sphere. In the market (Agora) of the
city-state, the economic, intellectual and political activities meet the activities
of religion. There conscious and the personality of the citizens are shaped.
It is known that in the city-state there was a strict separation between private
and public sphere. The public sphere was identified through the activities
of the ancient market (Agora) and of politics in general. For the shake of
public life citizens leave the private affairs in side. The participation
to the public was the essence and the objective.
In the city-state the meaning "society" did not exist. Its content exclusively belonged to the private sphere. The public space was dominated from politics. Its rules and values were the speech and the action. There were periods of history though, when people were trying to enforce different rules and values to the public sphere, so that through them they can gain power and fame. In other words, instead of trying through their participation to the public to gain fame, they tried to do so, for example, through getting richer, activity that belongs to the private sphere and is a personal affair.
"Society is an organization
of individuals that instead of trying to gain access to the public sphere,
they ask for protection from it in order to deal with their private affairs.
The only common thing between people in society is their private interests…
The fact that society is been
created in order to defend every kind of private interests on behalf of its
members becomes obvious from the way it is built. Society demands from its
members to act like as if they belong to a great family that has nothing more
than a single opinion and a common interest. Society is working using the
model of the household, since that is what is defended. Society dominates
through the rules of behaviour, through the single opinion and the common
interest that is produces…
The more individuals a society
includes, in other words the more massive it appears, the more it must follow
the rules and the statistics of behaviourism…
The members behave in a common way and they tend to tolerate even less and less the in common behaviour. The vast populations lead to conformism and in the automation of human affairs. In other words, the greater the population is, the more likely it is that the social element and not the political one will consist the public sphere."
Hannah Arendt: The human condition.
When the political transforms
into social, when the individual becomes massive, when the conversation and
the common work (the birth of the something dynamic) transforms into behaviour
and simple coexistence (something passive), when the individual of an action
becomes the subject of rules of behaviour, then the public sphere that expresses
it changes direction and characteristics. Changes texture and content. This
historical and philosophical analysis shows that the public sphere has, through
time, a certain tendency and direction that is attributed to the human nature
of the citizen in general.
Is this tendency reversible? We
claim that it is, if the necessary presumptions will exist…
