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Some Remarks On Public Life
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
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.
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- Copyright © 1970 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
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31 I bid.
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