Word: publica
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...problem arises at the outset, when Sennett defines public life in a private, idiosyncratic and almost arbitrary way. Rather than updating the classical idea of res publica he exhumes from the attic (a notion of private citizens redefining themselves by subordinating their individual interests to the greater good of the community) Sennett merely fabricates a new definition. Public life "flowers" in Sennett's world when the proper "balance" is found between the public and private realms. The material for these conditions existed, according to Sennett, in 18th century London where citizens created through women's elaborate wigs, men's formal...
...vision of the controlled clash of private interests, and when he presents this vision as a return to the happier days of public man, then it is time to call the emperor naked. Rather than demanding that individual wills be subordinated to the greater good in the old res publica, Sennett claims in his new vision to maintain the distance between public and private. But his argument that we must return to a kind of open market where "rules" and "conventions" are the only things governing the free play of individual whims is not new at all; it is simply...
...word Republic I use as Thomas Paine, propagandist of the American Revolution, used it in his Rights of Man, to mean "not any particular form of government" but "the matter or object for which government ought to be instituted . . . res-publica, the public affairs, or the public good; or, literally translated, the public thing." This word describes the shared public concerns of people in different nations, the community of those who share these concerns...