The City and the Democratic Ideal
François Hartog on how urban living has coincided with the advocacy of popular rule from Plato through to Machiavelli, Rousseau and 20th-century sociologists.
The Greek city will continue to be present at the base of our political existence for as long as the word ‘political’ is on our lips (Hannah Arendt)
'City', the word, comes to us from the Latin (civitas), but the city as an entity was an ancient Greek invention under the name of polis. Almost all our political vocabulary, from 'political' on, is rooted therefore in the ancient Greek city, and it was within that very special cultural context that democracy, another Greek political invention, was born.
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