Res Publica Quotes

Why, how can you ask such a question? You are a republican." A republican! Yes; but that word specifies nothing. Res publica; that is, the public thing. Now, whoever is interested in public affairs -- no matter under what form of government -- may call himself a republican. Even kings are republicans." Well! You are a democrat?" No." What! "you would have a monarchy?" No." A Constitutionalist?" God forbid." Then you are an aristocrat?" Not at all!" You want a mixed form of government?" Even less." Then what are you?" I am an anarchist." Oh! I understand you; you speak satirically. This is a hit at the government." By no means. I have just given you my serious and well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me.

So highly did the Roman people prize this ideal of the common good that their name for it – res publica – served as shorthand for their entire system of government.

The sign above the door to the Hypocras Club read PROTEGO RES PUBLICA, engraved into white Italian marble. Miss Alexia Tarabotti, gagged, trussed, bound, and carried by two men—one holding her shoulders, the other her feet—read the words upside down. She had a screaming headache, and it took her a moment to translate the phrase through the nauseating aftereffects of chloroform exposure. Finally she deduced its meaning: to protect the commonwealth. Huh, she thought. / do not buy it. I definitely do not feel protected.

Res publica res est populi A republic is the people's property

America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant. Now that the republic — the res-publica — has been settled, it is time to look after the res-privata, — the private state, — to see, as the Roman senate charged its consuls, "ne quidres-PRIVATA detrimenti caperet," that the private state receive no detriment.

Every government that does not act on the principle of a Republic, or in other words, that does not make the res-publica its whole and sole object, is not a good government. Republican government is no other than government established and conducted for the interest of the public, as well individually as collectively. It is not necessarily connected with any particular form, but it most naturally associates with the representative form, as being best calculated to secure the end for which a nation is at the expense of supporting it.

The emergence of society—the rise of housekeeping, its activities, problems, and organizational devices—from the shadowy interior of the household into the light of the public sphere, has not only blurred the old borderline between private and political, it has also changed almost beyond recognition the meaning of the two terms and their significance for the life of the individual and the citizen. Not only would we not agree with the Greeks that a life spent in the privacy of “one’s own” (idion), outside the world of the common, is “idiotic” by definition, or with the Romans to whom privacy offered but a temporary refuge from the business of the res publica; we call private today a sphere of intimacy whose beginnings we may be able to trace back to late Roman, though hardly to any period of Greek antiquity, but whose peculiar manifoldness and variety were certainly unknown to any period prior to the modern age. This is not merely a matter of shifted emphasis. In ancient feeling the privative trait of privacy, indicated in the word itself, was all-important; it meant literally a state of being deprived of something, and even of the highest and most human of man’s capacities. A man who lived only a private life, who like the slave was not permitted to enter the public realm, or like the barbarian had chosen not to establish such a realm, was not fully human. We no longer think primarily of deprivation when we use the word “privacy,” and this is partly due to the enormous enrichment of the private sphere through modern individualism. However, it seems even more important that modern privacy is at least as sharply opposed to the social realm—unknown to the ancients who considered its content a private matter—as it is to the political, properly speaking. The decisive historical fact is that modern privacy in its most relevant function, to shelter the intimate, was discovered as the opposite not of the political sphere but of the social, to which it is therefore more closely and authentically related. The

ჩვენს დემოკრატიას მთავარი წინაპირობა არ გააჩნია. მე უკვე გამოვიყენე სიტყვა - res publica, რაც დემოკრატიული სისტემის პიკს წარმოადგენს. პოლიტიკური დემოკრატია შეუძლებელია საზოგადოებრივი სივრცესთან დამოკიდებულების გარეშე, რასაც res publica ანუ რესპუბლიკური ურთიერთობა ჰქვია. სხვა ვარიანტი გამორიცხულია. შესაძლოა, იყოთ რესპუბლიკელი და მონარქიულ პოლიტიკურ რეჟიმში ცხოვრობდეთ, მაგალითად - ინგლისში. ეს არაფერს ნიშნავს. ეს დემოკრატიული ფორმა არ არის, მაგრამ დემოკრატიაა, რადგან დემოკრატიის მთავარი არსი "რესპუბლიკური აზროვნებაა". ჩვენ ეს არ გაგვაჩნია. პარტიები თავისი უფლებებისთვის ზრუნავენ, რაც დემოკრატიის პირველი ნაბიჯი სულაც არ გახლავთ, თუ სიტყვა "ნაბიჯს" არა ქრონოლოგიური, არამედ საწყისის, პირველადის მნიშვნელობით გამოვიყენებთ. პარტიებს შორის პარლამენტში ბრძოლა, მეათე ნაბიჯი შეიძლება იყოს. ეს ყოველივე უსარგებლოა, თუ უკან არ დავბრუნდებით, საწყის წერტილში და არ შევქმნით res publica-ს. ჩვენ გვჭირდება რესპუბლიკა, რათა შემთხვევითობაზე არ ვიყოთ დამოკიდებული.

This is a situation fraught with risk. In the regions where it is more deeply rooted—the Americas and Europe—representative democracy is in crisis. At the core of this crisis is the widening gap between people’s aspirations and the capacity of political institutions to respond to the demands of society. It is one of the ironies of our age that this deficit of trust in political institutions coexists with the rise of citizens capable of making the choices that shape their lives and influence the future of their societies. To put it in a nutshell, our challenge is to bridge the gap between demos and res publica, between people and the institutions of public interest, reweaving the threads that may reconnect the political system with the demands of society.1

It consisted of the privilege and duty to attend the assembly, speak in debates, judge the arguments, take sides and vote, with the further possibility of serving as a magistrate or on a jury, if required. Ancient liberty did not tolerate indifference to the political process. The public thing, res publica, was everything.

res publica, literally ‘the thing belonging to the people’,

res publica, literally ‘the thing belonging to the people’, and the origin of the modern term republic.

Res publica genel olarak, aralarında aile bağı ya da yakın bağlar olmayan insanlar arasındaki birliktelik ve karşılıklı taahhüt bağlarını temsil eder; arkadaşlık ya da aile bağlarından çok bir kitleye, bir "halk"a, bir politik uygulamaya ilişkin bağdır.

Günümüzde de res publica'ya katılım artık bir oluruna bırakma sorunudur ve bu kamusal yaşamın şehir gibi mekanları da bir bozulma sürecine girmiştir.

The “foreign hand” was Avaaz.org, an organisation that promotes pro-democracy movements through the Internet, social media, phones and sometimes with the help of citizen journalists. Avaaz was co-founded in 2007 by Res Publica, a global civic advocacy group, and Moveon.org, an online community for Internet advocacy in the US. The founding team had social entrepreneurs from six countries, including president and executive director Ricken Patel, Tom Perriello, Tom Pravda, Eli Pariser, Andrea Woodhouse, Jeremy Heimans, and David Madden. By 2011, Avaaz had run a total of 750 pro-democracy campaigns worldwide. Widely regarded as the largest global political web movement in history, Avaaz’s website is blocked in China and Iran.

While the word “republic” derives etymologically from the Latin “res publica”—which literally means “the people’s thing,” what a republic or a “republican form of government” is today remains debatable; but what it is not is clear: No matter its political composition, a government that does not adhere to the rule of law, is ruled by a president who dictates, courts that legislate, and a legislature that is elected by a minority, led by the few, and administered by members who fail to embody the will of the people, represent party caucuses and factious special interests, overlook executive overreach, transfer legislative powers, and maintain monarchic lengths of time in office—and all of this to the detriment of justice, the Union, and the Constitution—is not a republic or republican form of government but something else.

Although the American Revolution cannot exclusively claim to have put Enlightenment ideals into practice, it can claim to have been the first to try to do so. The prospect that a modern nation could be founded on a shared set of ideas, rather than a shared Volk, history, language, or religion (which America had none of), seemed too impossible to achieve and sustain for many observers at the time, including some of the American revolutionaries themselves. Thus, before waging a fearsome war over the future of the colonies, a dramatic intellectual transformation had to occur first. As John Adams later put it: “The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.”19 Enlightenment thinking circulated through all of the highways and byways of the transatlantic republic of letters, catalyzing a radically new view of a progressive universe, and with it, the prospect that the future of humankind could look better than its past. It was crucial to revolutionary-era literate Americans, but it required another intellectual concept to turn its ideals into an actual model of a government and its people. “Liberty” was the key term, but also a hazy one. It was the invocation of the word “republican” that helped give colonists’ angry grievances and vague aspirations their radical form. What they meant by “republican” seems straightforward by modern standards, even indubitable. But for that time, it seemed both outrageous and utopian: namely, a government for the res publica (literally a “public matter” or “public affair,” which in eighteenth-century political thought became identified as “the public good”). What kind of government fosters and defends a public good? The “republican” answer was a government that is run by its citizens rather than one headed by a hereditary king.

La sociedad que habitamos actualmente se encuentra agobiada por las consecuencias de esa historia, la destrucción de la res publica por la creencia de que los significados sociales son generados por los sentimientos de los seres humanos individuales.