What is the Polis?
Polis is an ancient Greek word. It means City. Polis definition, in Aristotle’s view and his philosophy (Greek philosopher 384-322 BC), is a society characterized by a sense of community aimed at nurturing and increasing the individual and thus collective Virtue, as a fundamental good of society, understood as an integral unifying part of the body of society, for the good of all.
In Aristotle’s view, citizens were to cultivate the ideal of the final good (telos) of the city-state (Polis) community, through lives dedicated to the ethic of harmony, which ultimately makes the life of virtue coherent and good for all members of society.
When the concept of “Polis” or even most of the concept of “Polis” is completely missing in a society, perverse freedom seriously jeopardises the concept of life together … the main pillar of the civil community. Well … let us not delude ourselves … because despite any possible shiny re-varnishing of the demagogues … the fact of giving an apparently pleasing appearance to something that leaks like a sieve (which is an experiment particularly popular with the so-called leaders today) – makes no sense, because sooner or later the chickens come home to roost, right?
What do we have for counteracting all this? The answer is: political civilization. Political civilization acts against perverse vision of freedom, or ought to do it.
After all, what is politics but an attempt to keep together individual freedom and collective experience of society? What is political passion but an attempt to keep together individuality and collective?
This is the civil passion of politics, which we should never forget.
It is too easy to observe cases of corruption in politics not to remember that politics is, for better or for worse, as Aristotle said, the highest science of all. Because politics is concerned with making the life of the “city”, which consists of the integration of all individual freedoms, exist, as a concrete possibility. Making togetherness possible. This is the real mystery that Politics deals with.
The effectiveness, that is the ability to make human beings live together without destroying themselves, without starting wars against each other, without competition, without resorting to being suspicious and paranoid of one another. To make sure that our life together is generative and fruitful, based on the individual’s awareness of belonging to a community.
In my view, a beautiful and touching example comes from a poem by Bertolt Brecht (German playwright, poet 1898-1956) that is always suitable when you don’t seem to understand the world around you.
But at this point … please, I am calling for you all to make an effort of imagination … imagine a politician who’s about to speak on a platform … he is staring at someone at random in the crowd … and all of a sudden he says:
I am talking to YOU
YOU
~To a Waverer (1935)
You say
It looks bad for our cause.
The darkness gets deeper. The powers get less.
Now, after we worked for so many years
We are in a more difficult position than at the start.
But the enemy stands there, stronger than ever before.
His powers appear to have grown. He has taken on
an aspect of invincibility.
We however have made mistakes; there is no denying it.
Our numbers are dwindling.
Our slogans are in disarray.
The enemy has twisted
Part of our words beyond recognition.
What is now false of what we said:
Some or all?
Whom do we still count on? Are we just leftover, thrown out
Of the living stream? Shall we remain behind
Understanding no one and understood by none?
Have we got to be lucky?
This you ask.
Expect
No other answer than your own.
What strikes you about this? The speaker is addressing a crowd … the “Great Body” that swallows individuals and erases proper names. The Crowd offers refuge and in return wants you to forget your individuality, and cancel your subjectivity. But here the thing that strikes beyond all … while the politician speaks to his people is this YOU … He is referring to the singular subject … to each of them …
He is evoking the subjective ethics.
That’s like saying … we can build a different world … we can resist the enemy who works against the common good … against the good of the “Polis” … – if all of us …. if each of us … one by one takes responsibility of his freedom, we can make it. In my view, this is a fundamental point for every civil lexicon. It is something that evokes another word I never mentioned so far … even though it is very important … it is a word that does not enjoy a good reputation in the contemporary world: Institution, Govern, Leadership, Administration … call it what you want.
Usually ordinary people are used to thinking that Institutions are something bureaucratic … anonymous as a whole … adverse to subjective freedom … unreachable as a king on his throne or a commander in chief … and above all far from the ordinary individual. It is true, in a way … because the Institutions remind us that there is also the foundation of the “impossible” in the experience of individual freedom … the rules … but it would be a big mistake to think that the task of the Institution is only this … Institutions do not just draw limits … make laws … or handle power.
