Citizenship

Since it is Election Day, and I just came back from voting, I decided to explore the concept of citizenship. It is a word that gets batted around a lot, but what does it really mean?


Of course, being the noodley obsessive-compulsive information glutton that I am, that means I will start by revisiting the Ancient Ones, to see what they had to say.


Going back to an earlier post, Aristotle believed that to live a happy life is the goal, or telos, of human beings. Living a happy life meant living a virtuous life; he describes the path to personal virtue in his Nichomachean Ethics as finding the golden mean (or happy medium) between the extremes of excess and deficiency, either of which is a vice.

Politics was the means by which citizens develop good moral character or virtue vis-a-vis the community. Ethics and politics were thus intertwined in his worldview. Political participation was necessary to be a good citizen, but only if you were not female or a slave, and had at least one Athenian citizen as a parent; citizenship was therefore quite limited, to about 15% of the population.


From Aristotle flowed the republican model of citizenship, which in its essence means that you, citizen, are able to participate in elected office, that you personally are eligible to rule or be ruled. This model was followed in Athens, in Italian city-states, and was direct and not representational. It has been called the "republican ideal" that all citizens be actively engaged in politics. Rousseau's concept of the General Will is congruent with this idea, in that the collective will of the people will lead to the enactment of laws that are for the good of all.


The liberal model of citizenship is broader, and stems from the Roman theory of law, and Rome's practice of extending the legal status of "citizen" to conquered peoples; it therefore, in theory, extended citizenship in an unlimited way and required no reasonable expectation of holding office. Its modern application dates to the sixteen hundreds, and involves the concept of individual rights and obligations under the law. There was a tension in the development of the liberal model of citizenship over the rights of property owners versus non-property owners. John Locke's political philosophy, with its concept of "natural law" existing outside of governmental powers and the right of all peoples to life, liberty and property greatly influenced the liberal model.

These two views are pretty divergent; modern citizenship has obviously embraced the liberal ideal of citizenship, in that we, as citizens, only occasionally participate in the political sphere by voting for representatives to carry out our political will, or by being part of a jury. The "republican ideal" is too impractical for the size and complexity of a modern political state.

Sheesh, can you tell that I was a political science major in college?

Of course, until the late 19th-early 20th century, women and slaves were still excluded from the body politic, and the full rights of citizenship, including voting participation, were held only by white men. After slavery was outlawed, all males of color were included in the full rights of citizenship in 1870 by the 15th amendment to the Constitution, but women were excluded until the 19th amendment was enacted in 1920.


Feminists in the late 20th century disdained the whole prior discussion of citizenship to be invalid, as it historically excluded anything that did not flow from the public sphere, and ignored the private sphere of the family to which women had historically been relegated. Laws that had been enacted affected the private sphere and the lives that women lived; artificial boundaries about what was an appropriate subject for political discourse were challenged; or as Carol Hanisch put it, The Personal is Political.


The concept of citizenship has continued to evolve in the latter 20th century and beyond as the concepts of diversity and multiculturalism have challenged existing wisdom about one standard of rights for everyone.


Fortunately, at this time all citizens of the United States who are over the age of 18 are entitled to participate in the political system by voting.


I hope, Gentle Reader, for all of our sakes, that all who can vote do so.