The Common Good

     

I had a similar reaction to Charlotte Thomas's, except it was Thomas Hobbes who came to my mind. He, too, insisted on the proper signification of terms as the first step towards avoiding conflict, and both Confucius and Hobbes have a point. There are at least three difficulties, however, that we must face when considering such terms as "democracy" and "republic." The first is true of all terms, insofar as they are designations attempting to capture the essence of a Venn Diagram. In the best of cases, terms more or less effectively capture and convey the overlapping section. The trouble begins outside the overlap, where the differences can often be bewildering. The second problem is especially true of political terms, which are almost always tinged with some element of approbation or disapprobation, and are therefore subject not just to descriptive or indifferent use, but also to partisan appropriation. As I indicated in my opening remarks, both "democracy" and "republic" have enjoyed periods of widespread approbation, and at present are generally seen in a positive light, despite their differences. There is perhaps no more eloquent example of their currency than the fact that North Korea claims to be both democratic and a republic. The third difficulty arises from the fact that, having been used widely and wildly, these already complex terms have become even harder to pin down. As I noted earlier, the term "republic" was used just as much by monarchists as by those pushing for popular sovereignty. As Mogens Herman Hansen reminds us, "Tyrants also summoned assemblies, and a tyrant's power often rested on his occupying the city-state's top administrative post and terrorising the city-state's political institutions into doing his bidding by means of his clique of followers or his bodyguard."[1] As Carl Richard, Marco Romani, and Charlotte Thomas note, the real story about both Athenian and Roman institutions is far more complicated than their typical ossified summaries (themselves products of not just well-intentioned historical research, but also of political agendas).. Indeed, "democratic" Athens had thought deeply about the problems of direct rule and devised intricate representative institutions, just as "republican" Rome was very often an oligarchy in fact.

These cautionary notes, then, should lead us to ask what it is that we prize in democracy and republicanism, and three things raised in this discussion seem to me to stand out. The first element is freedom, but not just any freedom. As both Plato and Hobbes pointed out, absolute liberty for everyone is nothing but anarchy, and that condition is not one that any reasonable person would want to be in. The American founders knew this well as they kept their eyes on the prize of ordered liberty. But it is very easy to lose sight of it. The call to less than complete freedom is, of course, far less attractive than the call to freedom, but that attraction is superficial. The second element is therefore civic education, because only thereby can we be brought to the point where we realize that less than complete freedom is actually better than living in the state of nature. Civic education would also make clear what Plato, Hobbes, and many others, including the American founders, considered the essence of a republic—democratic or otherwise—namely a robust understanding of and commitment to the common good, the third and crucial element. That is hard to focus on in a society that has come to take commodious living for granted, but it is no less necessary there than it is among those who are striving to get from tyranny to popular sovereignty. Benjamin Franklin's "if you can keep it" is a challenge greater than might appear at first, but it is one we must heed.

[1] Mogens Herman Hansen, Polis: An Introduction to the Ancient Greek City-State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 112-13.