Democracy And Citizen Participation

Hanna Arendt, one of the most outstanding and distinctive political philosophers of twentieth century, her political thinking with a strong flavor of classical republicanism flies its own colors and catches everyone's eye in the circle of western political philosophy of the late twentieth century. Being neither a transcendental, rational thinker, nor a hermit one, Arendt is pondering under the guide of contemporary political phenomena with a purpose of helping modern people to consciously establish "duty ethics" and awaken them to their determination and courage that they should burden. Her theory of public sphere, in particular, is where her ideas are reflected apparently.Arendt's concern of public sphere problems originated from her introspection on the decline of public sphere. In Arendt's opinion, the variety and projected characteristics embodied by ancient Greece's city-state are gradually being shadowed by singularity and instrumentality since Plato has placed the contemplative life over the active life and separated people's cognition and their behaviors, regarding political practice as techniques and manufacturing. Accompanied by the ascending of world alienation and subjectivism, the great geographical discovery and capitalism deprival of poverty starting from modem times, have resulted in an abrupt rising of private sphere in production, thus replacing and swallowing public sphere consequently. The decline of public sphere has directly put modernity of 20th century, political modernity least of all, in a tight spot. Unheard-of Crises from modern politics are exposed, for example, Nazism, imperialism, totalitarianism, the Holocaust, the collapse of people's politics and culture, the monopoly of money and power on politics, etc. In consideration of this, Arendt has pointed out that the sense of human's existence is people, together with others, can demonstrate themselves by their behaviors and talks; whereas the decline of public sphere in modern society has brought about the situation of individual isolationism, which shows some form, an anti-humanism of the most extreme. A real politics is an activity in which people interact and freely communicate with each other. Therefore, the public sphere fulfilled by political activity plays an essentially important role in human's existence. In the case of plural co-existence and mutual competition ofmodern social politics, morality and religious languages, to seek for a "public reason" for holding the plural languages and making possible the social unity as the basis has become an ideal goal of politics for the republicans who advocate positive citizen participation.Arendt utilizes a classical citizen republican mode to examine the modem foundation of public life and to criticize present public life under the so-called mode as standard. Different not only from "society", but from "community", according to Arendt, public sphere is, first of all, where people can demonstrate their uniqueness and where each citizen is to show "who" he is in front of other people through what he speeches and what he does, instead of a place in which people negotiate about individual interests or display their human affections. Besides, the public environment can help people show selves more than private environment can do. Second, public sphere is an "outward appearance", an "orderly drama", and provides with a stage for each citizen's participation and with an opportunity by which they can extend their life limits with their public achievements. As a result, Arendt's public sphere is more a normative concept than a historical category since it is an answer to such a question of how positive citizen life is possible.On the analysis to Arendt's statement, one can see that the normative meaning of public sphere concept has given expression to three aspects. First, it offers a feasible mode for fulfilling participant democracy. Second, it gives people a realistic area for their public life. And third, it provides a special system that supervises whether the political systems work or not. Hence it should be said that what Arendt's public sphere matters lies in that it sufficiently activates the political public sphere, individualism against non-political masses and legitimacy brought by nationalization of political parties, thus attaching a mode of de-centralized self-management to the citizen qualifications recovered for re-mastering the bureaucratic state power.Therefore, it's better to believe that Arendt's philosophical thinking derives from expectations, appealing and pursuit liberty than from depression upon freedom. Her analysis and criticism in origin of totalitarianism, human's situation and the society, as a matter of fact, are permeated with her reminisce on human's condition and theirpossibility. Although Arendt has not given a clear answer to the question on how to build up a leisurely public space and how to maintain an enough private space as well, she has proved the uniqueness of human's existence that can never be replaced, and put emphasis on human in a plural sense through kinds of phenomena in political areas like fear of ideology, loss of human rights, human's "inevitable birth", plurality, acting ability, thinking power and judgment; She has not only stated her thinking of anti-totalitarianism and anti-imperialism theoretically, but also expressed her alarm against the erosion on private sphere from public sphere and society, and furthermore, her concerns about the regeneration of public sphere.In a word, Arendt's thinking of public sphere with a tendency of classical republicanism reveals various ideas, for example, the noble politics, free negotiation and highly transparent public sphere, plural but equal public life and citizen enlightenment corresponding to the universal democratic values and practice (liberty, equality and legal system), that right echo the spirits of ancient Greece and that hit hard at a good deal of theoretical issues posed by modern problems in reality. Her mind has become nowadays a bright pearl in the human's history of political thinking of twentieth century with a significance drawing more and more attention from later generations.