SCHUBERTH AND SCHUBERTH

The metaphor has been giv­en dif­fer­ent, almost oppos­ing inter­pre­ta­tions. In her “Vita acti­va”, pub­lished in 1958, Han­nah Arendt exam­ined a the­o­ry of the pub­lic sphere and polit­i­cal action. It was based on the ancient Greek polis, the city-state as an asso­ci­a­tion of peo­ple.
“The polit­i­cal sphere in the sense of the Greeks resem­bles such a per­pet­u­al stage, on which there is, so to speak, only an appear­ance, but no depar­ture, and this sphere aris­es direct­ly from a togeth­er­ness, the com­mu­nica­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion in words and deeds”. It is about the pres­ence of a fel­low world, being seen and heard, appear­ing in front of oth­ers. This audi­ence in an audi­to­ri­um, in which every­one is both a spec­ta­tor and a par­tic­i­pant, is the polis.
The Amer­i­can soci­ol­o­gist Richard Sen­net went even fur­ther. In the mid-1970s, he described in his book “Ver­fall und Ende des öffentlichen Lebens. The tyran­ny of inti­ma­cy”, he described how the pri­vate and the pub­lic inter­pen­e­trate. His the­sis: pub­lic action is always action with masks. When these masks are miss­ing, some­thing like a “ter­ror of inti­ma­cy” aris­es. Express­ing one­self” replaces polit­i­cal dis­course.
The city as a stage and polit­i­cal loca­tion is giv­en a clear­ly pos­i­tive charge.