Abstract
The essay places the modern Euro-American (“Atlantic”) conception of publicity (Öffentlichkeit) into the historical and systematic context of the Western political tradition of republicanism. Section 1 features the state as the public realm of political deliberation and decision in the twin traditions of the Greek city state (polis) and the Roman republic (res publica). Section 2 analyzes the redrawing of the boundaries between the public and the private in early modern political thought. Section 3 examines the transformation of the distinction between the public and the private in politico-philosophical reflection on high modern commercial and civil society. The focus throughout is on the republican requisites of the rule of law and of self-rule in political society
© 2016 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
