In this article the author considers as a central matter the significance of M. Tullius Cicero’s conception of self-knowledge in his philosophical and political theory. With this purpose, the author justifies the contribution of Ciceronian elaboration to the matter as a rereading of the Socratic-platonic tradition, in the field of Roman philosophy, inquiring its own components. Thus, the author develops an exegesis on the characteristics of Ciceronian conception of self- knowledge in De republica, De legibus, De finibus bonorum et malorum, (...) Tusculanae disputationes and parallel texts, in order to ponder its mediation in the constitution of the political community. In this context, the author examines the rol of natural law in the development of the self-knowledge and the discovery of the human community. (shrink)

The background of the present study is Constant’s interpretation of modern freedom compared with the freedom-participation of the Ancients. In order to understand Tocqueville’s conception of political freedom one has first to explain what he meant by ‘égalité des conditions’ or ‘democracy’. What characterises the democratic era is the disappearance of distinctions of class and cast in and through a process of equalisation, which has long been at work and to which Tocqueville envisages no end. For Tocqueville, a passion for (...) equality animates modern Western societies. Hence his focus on mental mechanisms when he tries to answer the question that disturbs him: where might this passion lead us and more specifically what are the dangers to which freedom is exposed in democracy. The reason behind Tocqueville’s anxiety is his conviction that a subtle cooperation exists between individualism and administrative centralisation that leads to a new kind of despotism. This does not make him into a fatalist. He believes that it is possible to control this passion in such a manner that it becomes compatible with freedom. What we need is a resolve to safeguard freedom and a new political science that not only discovers the dangers that threaten freedom but at the same time exposes the means and remedies that democracy itself produces to control these tendencies. America is here the example.Political freedom existed there prior to the rise of equality, whereas in France freedom was first lost to absolutism, which in turn created a situation of equality that prepared the ground for despotism. Among the remedies that can safeguard freedom, the most important for Tocqueville is ‘l’esprit d’association’. In the closing part of the study, the discussion of the mediating role of this modern kind of ‘corps intermédiaires’ facilitates a comparison of Tocqueville’s conception of political freedom with that of Constant and Rousseau. (shrink)

This volume presents new texts of Cicero's dialogues on political philosophy, De Re Publica and De Legibus, together with corrected versions of the editor's previously published editions of Cato Maior de Senectute and Laelius de Amicitia. The texts are based on a full reconsideration of the manuscript evidence and are presented in a clear and readable form.

Der Philosoph Wilhelm Dilthey nannte Ciceros "Der Staat" eines der größten Kunstwerke in Prosa. Cicero, der die höchsten Ämter im Staat innehatte und sich verzweifelt gegen den Untergang der Republik stemmte, verdichtet seine praktischen Erkenntnisse in diesem Werk zu einem Gefüge von Begriffen, das für das Leben jeder Gemeinschaft gültig ist. In Anlehnung an Platons "Politeia" legt Cicero in Form eines Dialoges die Vor- und Nachteile der unterschiedlichen Staatssysteme dar. Im Gegensatz zu Platon ist sein idealer Staat jedoch keine Fiktion, (...) sondern die römische Republik. Diese Ausgabe des berühmten ciceronischen Werkes, das Dilthey eines der größten Kunstwerke in Prosa nannte, will dem Leser die Bedeutung und Selbständigkeit des Staatsdenkens Ciceros zugänglich machen. In einer Zeit, die Fragen des gesellschaftlichen Zusammenlebens ein besonderes Interesse entgegenbringt, ist es nicht unwesentlich, sich ein Denken gegenwärtig zu halten, das menschliche Existenz ganz im Gemeinwesen des Staats begründet sieht. Mit hellstem Bewusstsein hat Cicero, der selbst das höchste Amt des römischen Staatswesens bekleidet und dabei ein letztes Mal die Eintracht in der Freiheit gerettet hat, Macht, Staat und Gemeinschaft erlebt. Seine Erkenntnisse hat er in seinem Werk über die res publica zu einem in sich konsequenten Gefüge von Lebensbegriffen verdichtet, die für das Leben jeder Gemeinschaft gültig sind. Unsere Ausgabe fügt die erhaltenen Stücke durch verbindenden Text aneinander, so dass ihre Lektüre das Ganze vor Augen stellt. Die Einführung gibt eine Analyse des Aufbaus. Eigennamen werden im Index alphabetisch geordnet und erklärt. (shrink)

In the third book of Cicero's De re publica L. Furius Philus, one of the protagonists, is assigned the task of putting the case against justice. Among his arguments he makes the familiar claim that justice is a product of society, not of nature . If, he explains, justice and injustice were natural phenomena, they would be the same for all men, but in fact people hold very diverse views on what is just. This argument is supported by a (...) motley collection of exempla: the Egyptians worship Apis, a bull; while the Greeks and the Romans fill their temples with statues in human form, the Persians consider such practices to be sacrilege; various nations indulge in human sacrifice; the Cretans and Aetolians hold the view that brigandage is perfectly respectable; the Spartans used to claim as their own all the territory which their spears might touch; the Athenians used to take public oaths that all land which produced olives and grain belonged to them; the Gauls despised corn-growing and raided the fields of others instead. All these instances would be familiar to Cicero's audience. (shrink)

Diese Ausgabe des berühmten ciceronischen Werkes, das Dilthey eines der größten Kunstwerke in Prosa nannte, will dem Leser die Bedeutung und Selbständigkeit des Staatsdenkens Ciceros zugänglich machen. In einer Zeit, die Fragen des gesellschaftlichen Zusammenlebens ein besonderes Interesse entgegenbringt, ist es nicht unwesentlich, sich ein Denken gegenwärtig zu halten, das menschliche Existenz ganz im Gemeinwesen des Staats begründet sieht. Mit hellstem Bewusstsein hat Cicero, der selbst das höchste Amt des römischen Staatswesens bekleidet und dabei ein letztes Mal die Eintracht in (...) der Freiheit gerettet hat, Macht, Staat und Gemeinschaft erlebt. Seine Erkenntnisse hat er in seinem Werk über die res publica zu einem in sich konsequenten Gefüge von Lebensbegriffen verdichtet, die für das Leben jeder Gemeinschaft gültig sind. Unsere Ausgabe fügt die erhaltenen Stücke durch verbindenden Text aneinander, so dass ihre Lektüre das Ganze vor Augen stellt. Die Einführung gibt eine Analyse des Aufbaus. Eigennamen werden im Index alphabetisch geordnet und erklärt. (shrink)

Only one year after the global wave of protest movements and revolts—starting with the ‘Arab Spring’, then, subsequently, the Indignados movement and Occupy- our appreciation of such movements turned sour. The aim of this contribution is to question the predominantly sceptical and defeatist discourse on these movements. One element central to many defeatist discourses on the 2011 movements, is the way in which a lack of demonstrable ‘outcomes’ or ‘successes’ is retrospectively ascribed to them. Therefore, an alternative approach should be (...) formulated, which would allow us to recognise the significant or valuable aspects of these movements and their practices, without downplaying them as ‘unsuccessful’ or ‘failures’ altogether. Pierre Rosanvallon’s concept of ‘counter-democracy’ and Hardt and Negri’s perspective of a ‘Multitude’ will be evaluated as alternative approaches to current political movements. Although they are meritorious, both perspectives do not go far enough and need further articulation. The notion of ‘prefiguration’, originally derived from contemporary anarchist discourse, could be beneficial to this endeavour. After defining and deepening this concept from an anarchist perspective, it will be applied to one particular context: the occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo, during the 2011 revolution in Egypt. As will be concluded, in its application this concept of ‘prefiguration’ could teach us more about the recent wave of protest movements in general, and could help us to formulate a different approach to such movements. (shrink)

In Belgium, as in most countries, each Minister or Secretary is assisted by a limited number of trusted collaborators who constitute the Ministerial Office.The article is an attempt to shed a light on the Chief Ministerial Officer who is the closest collaborator of the Minister.In order to show the role of the Chief Ministerial Officer, the article first describes the tasks, powers and composition of the Ministerial Office to proceed to a more extensive analysis of the functions, the appointment of (...) the Chief Ministerial Officer, and the question whether he can exercise executive power.The most important tasks of the Chief Ministerial Officer are: organization and coordination of the Office and its activities, acting as a «Liaison-Officer» with the Minister, passing on of information, exercising of a form of internal, political and administrative control.The article closes with some more personal remarks, pointing out a few guidelines which a Chief Ministerial Office, should keep in mind. (shrink)

The existence of the German cultural community was guaranteed by the articles 3ter and 59ter of the Constitution and its organisation was institutionalized by the Law of July 10th, 1973. In 1980 the notion «German cultural community» in art. 3ter of the Constitution was replaced by the notion «German-speaking community».The reform of the statute of the German-speaking community has to be executed within the following limits : 1° an executive power that is accountable to the council can only be granted (...) after revision of art. 59ter of the Constitution; 2° there seems no harm in granting power to modify laws and to legislate with exclusion of the national legislator to the council, as long as the exercise of this power is submitted to, judicial review ; 3° the enlargement of the council's competence to the «personalized matters» does not require the revision of art. 59ter. The enlargement of the council's competence to some «regional affairs» is possible without revision of the Constitution, as long as the council does not receive the same competence as the Flemish, Wallon and Brussels region; 4° it is possible to grant the German-speaking community theyield of a part of some taxes. (shrink)

This paper argues that at Cicero, De re publica 6.17 the manuscript text unum globum should be kept instead of the conjecture summum globum. This conjecture is unanimously attributed to Fr. Boll (1910), but it was proposed already in 1790 by G. W. Maier. The use of unus in this context, in which the set of harmonic spheres of our cosmos is described, can be explained as an alternative to primus when referring to the first element of a sequence; (...) further instances in Cicero’s works support this interpretation. (shrink)

En este artículo se explican los elementos esenciales de la teoría performativa de la manifestación de Judith Butler y su relación crítica con la teoría arendtiana de la acción política. La tesis que se defiende es que la performatividad corporeizada de las congregaciones de agentes excluidos o sometidos a precariedad en el espacio público, descrita por Butler, crea nuevos espacios de aparición, en sentido arendtiano. Sin embargo, y yendo más allá de Arendt, para Butler las congregaciones de estos agentes constituyen (...) el símbolo material de la precariedad a la que han sido sometidos y con sus cuerpos intervienen directamente en la vida política mediante acciones de resistencia. (shrink)

It often appears that leading politicians in Belgium consider the results of the municipal elections in the light of national polities. They stick to the thesis that the municipal poll-results, at least in the bigger towns, are more and more influenced by the constellation of the nation's politics.Is it really so that the municipal elections indicate the hearings of the national political situation? Can one draw conclusions from the results of these elections as if they were national ones? And can (...) one,any how, compare municipal to parliamentary elections? By comparison of the results of municipal elections 1964 and of parliamentary elections 1965 it was checked which shifts in party-choice havehappened during this short period of eight months. If no oscillations, or only a few, were detected between both elections, one could conclude that the municipal elections 1964 indicated indeed the hearings of the parliamentary elections 1965.Successively, the national and provincial results of these elections were compared and the party-shifts on national and provincial level were calculated.To make a relevant comparison between the election-results on a lower level, a comparable basic unity had to be found. As there were no municipal data available at parliamentary elections on one side, andonly municipal results at the municipal elections on the other side, the least possible unity for which parliamentary election-results are known, the electoral canton namely, was chosen as a comparison-basis. For that purpose however the results per party had to be additioned in all municipalities belonging to one canton.Part of the electoral cantons was unfit for use as comparison-material for two reasons : the highly varied and often strongly local-coloured political party-structure on one hand, the big number of municipalitieswithout elections on the other hand. So we were bound to make a choice out of 212 electoral cantons. Finally the cantons with a maximum of 4 municipalities were chosen, which limited the number of cantons to 28. These cantons were classified by degree of urbanisation according to the typology of W. Van Waelvelde and H. Van der Haegen.In that classification the percentages of votes in favour of the political parties, at the occasion of these elections, were tabulated and compared.The participating parties and lists were grouped as much as possible around the traditional parties to which they were most related. So we distinguish in Flanders : CVP, BSP, PVV, VU, CPB and other parties ;in the Walloon region: PSC, PSB, PLP PCB, French-speaking lists and other parties.For this analysis we also thought it was relevant to control separately the shifts of the electoral corps in the Flemish, the Walloon and the Brussels cantons. These shifts were then specified according to thedegree of urbanisation.To measure the size of the party-shifts for these elections, the external election-shift standard was calculated for the chosen Flemish, Walloon and Brussels cantons, with a special attention for the degree of urbanisation. Finally we examined which attitude was assumed by the government, the governmental and the opposition parties, in relation to the results of the municipal 1964 elections.It appeared that some notable party-shifts had been realized during the short period between the municipal elections of 1964 and the legislative elections of 1965. In general, a certain polarization has taken place due to a centrifugal vote-shift to the left and still more to the right. The direction of vote-shifts, which had shown at the municipal elections of 1964, was affirmed at the legislative elections of 1965 and for some parties, CVP and PVV namely, it was even accentuated. The parallelism between both elections in relation to the direction of the vote-shifts did not mean however that the size of these shifts was the same everywhere. The image of the shifts was different according to linguistic region and degree of urbanisation.The analysis of the urbanisation-degree showed that the level of oscillations grew higher as the urbanisation-degree grew lower. Seen per linguistic region, the largest shifts had taken place in the Walloon cantons. According to the calculations of the electoral shift standards during the period 1964-1965, the lowest oscillations were noted in the Flemish and Brussels cantons, i.e. the voting-behaviour of the big agglomerations during the municipal elections of 1964 were the closest to the national electoral pattern. Seen that way they were, up to a certain degree, a value-measure for the general policy.Finally the remark should be made that the limitation to the two above-mentioned elections does not allow any generalization of the obtained conclusions. The short period between those elections was itself an exceptional situation which may have been of influence on the results of the comparisons. (shrink)