The Republic, Old and New

Abstract

Or think about how you would feel as the member of a cultural minority if you had to rely on the humour of majority groups for whether you escaped humiliation; or as an elderly person if you depended on escaping the notice of youth gangs for walking safely home; or as a citizen if you were dependent on winning the favour of some insider group for whether you or your kind ever caught the eye of government. Familiar from its instantiation in classical Rome, the idea was re-ignited in medieval and Renaissance Italy; spread throughout Europe in the modern era, sparking the English Civil War and the French Revolution; and inflamed the passions of England's American colonists in the late eighteenth century, leading to the foundation of the world's first modern democracy. The population might vote unanimously, to take an extreme example, to deny votes to women. Since such a possibility would be anathema from a republican viewpoint, it follows that we ought to exempt the recommendation to do things democratically, and that recommendation alone, from the democratic proviso Show more