Abstract
The paper argues that the Battle of Salamis was a victory for freedom and self-determination which paved the way for democracy to evolve in classical times. It directly addresses the question of its relevancy for our own times. The paper reviews the literature for relevancy studies and builds towards a normative interpretation of Athenian democracy. It raises a series of key intertemporal issues, such as the relationship between freedom and democracy and freedom and equality. It further refers to present-day democratic worries in the light of the ancient experience: Modern democracies show increasing inequality and a degeneration of formal democracy towards de facto oligarchy. Elites seem discredited. In addition to the above, the paper raises a series of further pivotal issues such as (i) the lack of political competence of citizens necessary for participation, (ii) a democracy of populism and of group interests rather than one of democratic values, (iii) the effectiveness of democracy in securing a sustainable future for its people and (iv) quintessential problems that plague modern democracies, such as a lack of cultural education, which could prove to be the Achilles heel of our democracies. The paper concludes that democracy still has value in itself and that more philosophizing is needed, issuing a serious commandment to think clearly and act virtuously. If we prove ready to learn from the classical experience it might help us make the modern world a better place.
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Notes
- 1.
Cf. for such an understanding of the event the title of Barry Strauss’ book: The Battle of Salamis : The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece and Western Civilization, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.
- 2.
Bleicken p. 682.
- 3.
- 4.
Guy Féaux de la Croix (2010), “Introduction”, in: The Marathon 2500 Declaration – For a Renewal of Democracy: Lessons from the Classical Athenian Experience, Athens 2010. In Greek and English with its 21 articles, published by Psychogios Ed., Athens, p. 18:
In this declaration we seek to extrapolate, from the experience of the Marathon Battle and the Classical Athenian democracy, a number of suggestions and guide-lines which might be helpful in rethinking and reforming our democracies, not least in the light of certain fallacies of our political systems and of the challenges which democracy faces in the 21st century.
- 5.
Canfora (2007, pp. 69, 354) however points out: “The term ‘democracy’ rarely appeared in the political vocabulary of the French revolution”. The bone of contention was especially the perception that the freedom of the Athenians had been founded on the grounds of their slavery system, which in turn hardly irritated the American founding fathers.
- 6.
- 7.
Canfora (2007, p. 22) referring to Demosthenes (Philippic 4, 33).
- 8.
Cf. Féaux de la Croix (2018, p. 75).
- 9.
As quoted by Aristoteles, Der Staat der Athener, s. Mittermaier and Mair (2013, p. 6f).
- 10.
Michels at first was a supporter of the German social democracy movement, until ultimately he turned to Mussolini’s ideology, s. Finley (1986, p. 15).
- 11.
First answers are suggested in the Economists “Democracy Index”, https://infographics.economist.com/2020/democracy-index-2019/index.html: Among the ‘full democracies’, Norway ranks 1st, Germany 13th, Britain 14th, France 20th, the USA 25th, Greece 39th, etc.
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Féaux de la Croix, G. (2022). Democracy in Ancient and Modern Times: About the Relevancy of the Ancient Greek Experience for Our Own Societies. In: Economou, E.M., Kyriazis, N.C., Platias, A. (eds) Democracy in Times of Crises. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97295-0_9
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