Looking back thousands of years to create politics for the future
- By Wan Lixin
0 Comment(s)
Print
E-mail Shanghai Daily, May 15, 2015
Often differences are only skin deep.
For example, while the Internet and social media play a big role in shaping public opinion today, this does not differ too much from the role played by rhetoric in Athens.
“Why did Greek citizens so prize the polis and the possibility of caring together for ta politica? They valued being respected as equals (as well as the possibility of being esteemed differentially as individuals), and they valued collective flourishing,” the book claims.
This activity protected themselves against domination, which could mean despoliation, enslavement or death.
“It is perhaps in their answer to how that the Greeks innovated most dramatically: by developing mechanisms of decision-making and accountability that allowed ta politika to be considered and determined collectively.”
The eight ideas cited in the book constitute the core of politics and can help us to envision what politics should be.
The author’s guiding principle is to choose ideas “that can be used to illuminate key aspects of ancient thought while also informing contemporary reflections.”
Of these, two ideas address what power might possibly achieve: justice and virtue, while six address how to organize extent to which varying kinds of control should be brought to bear upon these relations: constitution, democracy, citizenship, cosmopolitanism, republic and sovereignty. Each of these concepts enriches our understanding of what politics should be in different ways.
Fountain of ideas
“Pliteia,” often translated in English as “constitution,” for instance, is a means of preventing the poor from being exploited or even enslaved by the rich.
Examination of modern democracies suggest how they achieve, or could achieve, the ideas that they value most.
As Lane writes, “It proves that a political system can exist in which the richest citizens cannot use their wealth to dominate the poor or to accumulate a lasting and far-reaching power base in politics.”
Thus, it is profitable for us to drink from the fountain of ideas from thousands of years ago.
“The Romans balanced the role of the political elite (overlapping with the economic elite) against the role of ordinary Romans, whereas the Athenian democrats had enabled the poor to control and adjudicate, in crucial ways, the claims of the elite,” Lane observes.
That’s a contrast to the lack of resistance today to the nexus of organized wealth and power.
Similarly, in the globalized era, given wholesale environmental degradation — for all the appearances of increasing connectivity — initiatives to address climate change easily get obstructed.
People are reluctant to act because they feel they are sacrificing for something that might benefit others.
There is a need to examine the idea of cosmopolitanism, which refers to the entire universe (Kosmos) as a realm of citizens (politai), with a wide range of ethical and political implications, leading to related discussion about, among other things, human fellowship or the higher human ideal of friendship.
In this gilded age of globalization, we are also reminded of the exploitation of labor and the environment beyond national boundaries.
By engaging with the political ideas of the Greeks and Romans, we can equip and empower ourselves to identify some of the evils we have come to take for granted, and fight for change.
Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)