Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
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human capacity to self-determination. [8] This was, anyway, an explicit<br />
and open discussion, a highlight topic of the political controversial at<br />
those times, where everything was to be questioned, even the limits<br />
of what can be questioned.<br />
In this process of communitarian self-determination, every person<br />
capable of logos could participate [9] - having logos is to be able to make<br />
speeches. The Aristotelian definitions of human being as Political<br />
Animal and as Rational Animal can be in this sense interrelated:<br />
rationality makes human being capable of Politics, of self-determination.<br />
Rationality inaugurates Politics as pursuit and struggle for the order<br />
of coexistence - all rational beings participating in this search, making<br />
speeches…<br />
Politics cannot be understood without this. It is a contest for the<br />
Polis, by people who know this is in their hands to decide - and who<br />
know that they decide themselves by the same process.<br />
This search for the city, as a political task, is a polemos involving<br />
different people. And this also specifies Politics among Greeks. What<br />
is absolutely new in Politics is the invention of an order of coexistence<br />
within which not only one can achieve eudaimonia as self-realization.<br />
That distinguishes political regimes from family or barbarian despotisms,<br />
systems of coexistence where eudaimonia is possible to only<br />
one. Political orders face a new task: how to make possible, to many<br />
citizens, achieving self-realization at the time? In this sense, equality<br />
remarks a regime as political. Monarchy can still be considered a political<br />
regime while this is orientated to common good. But if it <strong>do</strong>esn’t, it<br />
stops being a political regime, and becomes despotism. The relations<br />
among people under such regime are not political - for same reasons<br />
according to which the relations among people in the horizon of the<br />
family are not political.<br />
Viewed from this point, Politics shows its compromise to common<br />
good. Please note that common good is not considered as a <strong>do</strong>gmatic<br />
19<br />
POLITICS AND EQUALITY<br />
IN GREEK INVENTION<br />
OF DEMOCRACY<br />
Nuno M. M. S. Coelho<br />
8<br />
Participating in this discussion, Antiphon stated that we are all equally accomplished<br />
by nature to be Greeks or Barbarians.<br />
9<br />
At that time, a lot less people than we nowadays admit for this discussion - women,<br />
children, slaves, foreigners were excluded. But this <strong>do</strong>es not invalidate the incommensurable<br />
importance of Greek invention of <strong>Democracy</strong>. In certain sense, contemporary<br />
<strong>Democracy</strong> also excludes many people.