Wolfgang Mazal
A Person with Courage Inspires Courage The Example of Kolping Austria
Christine Leopold
The Protection of Life in the Civil Society
Martina Kronthaler
Elisabeth Anselm
Emmaus – From Paris to St. Pölten Social Work Concerns Us All
Karl Langer
Foreword
In addition to the separation of powers and the liberal constitutional state, active citizens who help fashion the community are central pillars of our democracy. In this respect, citizens are not only the addressees of the state’s rules and norms, but also co-creators of precisely those norms. And, the community in a liberal state is more than government order; it is the interaction between people and their relationships to each other – in families and friendships, at work, and in organisations.
Active participation in the personal and public environment enriches many different facets of human life and, in doing so, makes our society more diverse and colourful. There can be no question that humans are political and social beings, and that their individuality can only fully develop within a community.
We find many different answers to how we want to organise our community, and our society, in democracies of the Western kind. Broadly speaking, the following differentiations can be made: Politics that are typically located on the left define themselves principally by way of the paternalistic state that monitors all spheres of life, and plans and regulates the way lives are led down to the smallest detail. In our eyes, although conservative politics relies on the state to set general parameters, it places individual freedom and responsibility at the core. It trusts the intrinsic drive in each and every citizen to want to make a contribution to a functioning community according to their abilities. This is the fundamental idea of the political concept of a “civil society” as a community of free and responsible people.
The Political Academy of the People’s Party and the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies have extensively discussed and studied just how varied and heterogeneous the concepts of the civil society are in theory and practice in its current focus of research.
The essential basis for this can be found in the image of man rooted in the Judeo-Christian-Greco-Roman tradition concept of humankind with the dignity of the individual person as its foundation. However, this also includes the obligation of actively making use of one’s abilities to benefit society, as expressed in the parable of the talents in the Bible. Or, to use Immanuel Kant’s words: “Man has an individual imperfect obligation – namely, that of developing one’s own talents – for oneself, as well as for others.”
In this publication, we requested that highly-respected scientists, publicists, and practicians give their fundamental thoughts on the potential and possibilities of the civil society in the 21st century.
Theoretical, historical, and philosophical contributions can be found here, as well as various case studies from practice. The diversity and pluralism of ideas of the contributions make it clear that the permanent voice and participation of an active public can enrich the political discourse and policy formulation of our country.
Wolfgang Mazal Bettina Rausch
From the Community of Citizens to the Civil Society
Political Participation in Antiquity and Modern Times
Simon Varga
Summary: This contribution focuses on the differences and evolution from the ancient community of citizens to the modern civil society. The question about the necessity and significance of political participation in antiquity and modern times forms the central point of this study. From the present socio-political perspective, it can be seen that the core of today’s civil society still incorporates a large section of the community of citizens. In the final analysis, this awareness calls for community-political empathy – understood as civil rights and obligations.
Introduction
At first sight, linking antiquity and the present day in political affairs might awaken suspicions of anachronism, especially seeing that political practice has already undergone many metamorphoses over the course of history, and will obviously also experience even more changes in the future. However, at second sight, a project of this kind seems to be not only historically, but also systematically, logical. Already present in the early stages of Greek political thought in its classical tradition, a question – that is still unavoidable for life in a union or community and that many modern states still struggle with – was asked and attempted to be answered, in theory and practice: that of the level and significance of the political participation of the individual in the political community.
Although it is not possible to provide a comprehensive portrayal of the many historical developments leading from the community of citizens of ancient times to today’s civil society in all its nuances, even sketching these developments leads to the – in no way surprising – conclusion that, then and now, citizen participation was and is an essential necessity for the organisation of political coexistence – and will continue to be so. However, as already indicated, this is something of a truism. The two central questions deal much more with the intensity of political participation the citizens can demand and where the fundamental differences between the ancient community of citizens and modern civil society can actually be discerned.
This essay begins with a brief depiction of the immediate ancient political practice of the so-called community of citizens, connected with a historical-political overview of political life in the classical Greek period (1). This was followed by a change in the political theory of antiquity. In it, the fundamentals of the politico-anthropological philosophy of Aristotle and his concept of political participation in the course of the “best imaginable state” developed by him are discussed (2). The transformation from the ancient community of citizens to the modern civil society – especially based on sociological observations – will, at least, be touched on in the next step (3). Taking the current global socio-political developments into consideration, the next section handles the current importance of the civil society that, in my opinion, can still be regarded to a large degree as a community of citizens – and maybe even increasingly so – without questioning the modern developments and achievements such as human rights, democracy, and civil liberties in any way (4). Finally, the last point leads to an investigation of the foundation of community policy empathy as a civic right and duty (5).
1. Ancient political practice: Organisation, participation, and dichotomy
There can be no doubt that ancient Greece occupies an important place in connection with the development and fundamental understanding