Soupçon II.ii

                        Soupçon II.ii                                              Antiquity and the Public Sphere

To understand the concept of the public sphere in some depth, it is necessary to know in some detail its roots in the antiquity. 

Let us begin with Socrates.                                    Socrates' " Dialogues"  1) initiate thinking together through the method of feigning ignorance and cross questioning 2) believe in 'critique'ing 3) open up ethical and conceptual growth 4) could take place anywhere.                                                                   

Which of these options are close to the modern ideas of the public space? a) only 1 b) both 1 and 2 c) 2 and 3 d) 1 and 4.                                The correct option is "c".                                           

All the statements above, 1 to 4, describe the Socratic method accurately.  Yet, it is only statements 2 and 3 which are close to the notion of the public sphere as it is now understood.                     

 Next comes Plato's position and its relevance to the idea of the public space.  To begin with, Plato, as his metaphor of the 'ship' and the unruly crew suggests, is quite doubtful about "ochlos", that is, the crowd. He feels that the public sphere is meant more for the demagogues. He fears that they are more 'self'ish, and thus terrify good people out of the public sphere. He wants a 'polis' which is highly organised, more harmonious, and less full of individualistic cacophony.                                        

Plato's "Republic", Chapter XII (alais  Books VIII and IX) and the city of Magnesia in "Laws" 1) are dismissive about the public sphere 2) accept the notion of public sphere 3)find the notion quite ambivalent.                    

Which of these statements describes Plato's position closely?                                                            The correct option is '3'.   

Aristotle's "Lyceum" truly instituted the Socratic peripatetic (walking the talk, to put it the t.v. channels way!) mode. Yet, for Aristotle, the mobility is more metaphorical. He considers the peripatetic mode more as a meandering across unrelated themes.                        

 In addition, the 'polis', a combination of the 'agora' and the 'gymnasia', is for him more an ethical idea, governed basically by 'honour', and less by civic debates, as  it is a mode of 'eudaimonia', a method for building good life through cultivating virtue and communal well-being through civic friendliness. The political overtones are rather distant in his philosophical insistence on the moral perspective.                                                       

      Suffice hence it may to conclude that in the thought of the antiquity may lie the roots of the notion of the public sphere which bears distinctly different fruits in the twentieth century debates, and beyond.                                    Pratima Agnihotri                                                      Pune