The Representation Problem of Differences and the Public Sphere 1

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1 The Representation Problem of Differences and the Public Sphere 1 Nazile Kalaycı * Abstract: In recent years, the problem of representation of differences in the public realm has been one of the highly disputed issues on the agenda of Turkey as well as of the world. The ambiguity over the notion of public realm has caused the attribution of a variety of meanings to the concept of the public, depending on political preferences and arbitrary political implementations led by these various meanings. One of the reasons for such ambiguity is that the notion is not only a category of history but also a category of thought. Therefore, thoughts/constitutions about publicity not only have evolved throughout history, but have also been studied by philosophers in the context of different concepts and states. The major aim of this study is to clarify the concept of the public realm. In the first chapter, the development of publicity as a historical category will be portrayed. In the second chapter, philosophical determinations will be examined. In the conclusion section, distinctions about the concept will be made, and conclusions will be drawn on the representation of differences in the public realm. Keywords: Public realm, private realm, civil society, community, publicity. 1 This study has been written based on the author s unpublished doctoral dissertation. Some arguments have been revised, or additions have been made. For more detailed information, See: Kalaycı, Nazile (2007), Kamusal Alan Kavramı Üzerine Bir Çalışma: Aristoteles, Marx, Habermas, Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, H.U. Institute of Social Sciences, Ankara. * Assoc Prof., Faculty of Literature, Department of Philosophy, Hacettepe University, 06800, Beytepe/Ankara/Turkey. Review of Public Administration, Volume 7, Issue 4, December 2013, p

2 2 Review of Public Administration, Volume 7 Issue 4, December 2013, p Introduction The crisis of this era, which is defined as the post-modern condition, can be linked to the political science via the issue of public sphere. Different problems discussed in many countries are different manifestations of this basic problem, Among the examples are the debates over headscarf controversy, the Kurdish issue, the Alevi opening (Turkey), gay rights (Netherlands), and the Quebec issue (Canada). With the globalization, these examples are multiplied and diversified. First, there should be a clear idea of the concept of public sphere in order to develop any suggestion for solving these problems. However, arguments about the concept of public and public-related concepts show that there is not a clear idea of public. Moreover, the fact that the issue is discussed in the context of different problems by different disciplines expands the concept, thus making it vaguer. Some of these problems are cultural relativity, 2 multiculturalism, 3 alienation, mass culture, 4 mass loneliness, 5 freedom of sub-cultures, 6 representation of the subaltern, 7 2 This issue is about whether there is a universal rationality in the common interest of mankind. Undoubtedly, what first comes to mind on this topic is the notion of Enlightenment. However, the notion of Enlightenment, which developed a universal discourse concerning public, was strongly criticized by East Asian countries, which exceedingly suffered from colonialism, and East European countries established after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, this issue has been intertwined with globalization as well, and the future form of public has increasingly become more debatable in a progressively globalizing world. 3 Charles Taylor, regarding the Quebec issue in Canada, lays emphasis on culture-oriented collective rights instead of the idea of individual-oriented human rights, and suggests cultural solutions, rather than universalist ones (Taylor, 2010). 4 C. W. Mills s following distinction between public (Publikum) and mass (Masse) defines public as the opposite concept of mass: In a public; a- virtually as many people express opinions as receive them. b- Public communications are so organized that there is a chance immediately and effectively to answer back any opinion expressed in public. c- Opinions formed by such discussions can easily find an outlet in effective action, which can also aim at the prevailing system of authority, if necessary. d- Authoritative institutions cannot penetrate the public, which is more or less autonomous in its operation [ ]. In a mass; a- The number of people, who express opinions is less than those receiving them, because the community of publics becomes an abstract collection of individuals who receive impressions from the mass media. b- The prevailing communications are organized so as to make it impossible for the individual to respond immediately and effectively. c- The realization of opinion in action is controlled by authorities who organize and control such channels of such action. d- The mass has no autonomy before the institutions. On the contrary, agencies of authorized institutions penetrate this mass, by reducing autonomy it may have while forming opinion by discussion (Habermas, 1971: 293). 5 Simmel s ideas regarding this problem are particularly important. In his book, The Metropolis and Mental Life Simmel addresses loneliness and desperation, which individuals living in metropolitan areas, feel, and their excessive behaviors in order to protect the autonomy of their existence (Simmel, 2006: 99). 6 Subculture refers to the culture of classes or groups outside the public sphere. The basic idea here is that the public sphere, which is defined as the sphere of equalities and identities, does not actually have the power to represent general. Foucault, who identifies the structuring rules of a dominant discourse as exclusion mechanisms that construct its own other, considers today s subcultures as the other end of the dominant discourse (Habermas, 1997: 23). Throughout the history, slaves, women, peasants, workers or unprivileged men, various ethnic and religious groups, and today, LGBT individuals, queer or underground groups have been excluded from the public sphere as a kind of subculture. 7 Today, the issue of the subaltern has been brought up as a topic of discussion particularly by Gayatri Spivak. Spivak addressed the situation of the Hindu women, who get stuck between the patriarchal discourse

3 The Representation Problem of Differences and the Public Sphere 3 transformation of critical public to steering public, 8 and nihilism. The common points of these problems can be better understood in view of Hannah Arendt s distinction of the terms public and private. Arendt distinguished the two phenomena concerning the term public : First signifies that everything that appears in public can be seen and heard by everybody (Arendt, 2003: 92); second means that this realm is common to everybody (Arendt, 2003: 95-96). Hence, public is not defined by uncertainty, blurriness, privacy, and individuality, but instead by clarity, certainty, and commonness. In this respect, the public realm is an intersubjective sphere. To live an entirely private life not only prevents the opportunity to be seen and heard by others, but also causes to be deprived of an objective relationship with others thanks to being related to and separated from them via the intermediary of a common world of things. (Arendt, 2003: 95). Moreover, people cannot come together as a community without this common world of sense. For Arendt, the principle of publicity is almost like a table around which everybody sits; the function of the table is to relate people with each other, and thus, to establish a meaningful group of people; the gathering of people, who do not have such a commonness, should be characterized by the term mass, rather than public (Arendt, 2003: 95-96). Today s problems such as alienation, nihilism and mass loneliness are the disappearance of Arendt s common world. The end of the common, its transformation, which can almost be characterized as vanishing has caused the thought of publicity to lose its function of connecting individuals and led to more emphasis on differences. One of the consequences of this situation is the private life boom in Turkey, as is the case throughout the world (Savran, 2004: 151). However, the private s process of gaining a public nature (both through gaining publicity and moving away from individuality) has gradually become alienated to itself, and private issues have become a spectacle material. As for the situation from the perspective of the public; public issues have lost their commonness and publicity, and active publicity has replaced passive spectatorship. Today, when the boundaries between the public and private space are blurred, the concepts of the public space and the private space should be clarified in order to make the above-discussed issues caused by this situation (tradition, sati tradition) and the colonial discourse (modernization, human rights). He noted that they were, in all cases, politically ignored due to their unrepresentable difference, and interpreted the paradox of this situation in political terms (Spivak, 1988). 8 Many thinkers chiefly Habermas, Adorno, and Horkheimer have focused on this change. Habermas said, Newspapers changed from mere institutions for the publication of news into bearers and leaders of public opinion-weapons of party politics (Habermas, 1971: 217). Adorno describes the same process as intentionally integrating the consumers from above ; for Adorno, culture industry shapes the consciousness of people by mediating between industry and public, and transforms consumers into objects of calculation (Adorno, 2003: 76-85).

4 4 Review of Public Administration, Volume 7 Issue 4, December 2013, p subjects of thought. This ascertainment is about the issues of the legitimization of politics and the representation problem in politics (or the representation of differences). Therefore, first, in order to clarify the concept, the publicity as a historical category will be addressed. The second section will discuss the thought of publicity in the history of philosophy; the conclusion section will attempt to make distinctions related to the concept and some ascertainments in the context of the representation problem in politics. The Public Sphere as a Historical Category Jürgen Habermas, in Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere), investigated the transformations, which the public sphere underwent throughout the history, and the forms it took in different periods. The aim of this historical outlook is to find out of the present status of publicity that is, to what extent the society and the state have detached from each other. Looking at the historical development of the public sphere, it is observed, it has expanded in space, while it has weakened functionally (Habermas, 1971: 17). This change can be interpreted as the taking over of publicity by the mass. In history, first, the Hellenistic model of public emerges. This model was based on the distinction of idia (oikos) and koine (polis). 9 Idia refers to the realm of each individual, and emphasizes temporariness and obligation: it is the space where life is produced. This production involves both the continuity of generations and multiplication of food; the place, where this production is made, is the sphere of home. Women and slaves take place in this sphere. Koine is the space of stability and freedom comprising of free, equal, educated, and wealthy citizens. The public sphere that rises above the manatory life is bios politikos. 10 it consists of leksis and praksis; the political life takes place in agoras. The Hellenistic public sphere becomes prominent with its quality of directness. The objectification of politics in the action life and debates of citizens refers to the public sphere s nature of directness. Each citizen directly participates in politics. In the Medieval Age, in feudal castles and on lands, where feudal lords ruled, private and public were intertwined. Territorial sovereignty, the judiciary power, and the political power were not shared among separate spheres and institutions. Each feudal castle was a separate public sphere; however, thus public space was not separate from the private. Castles and 9 İdia: private; oikos: house; koine: common. 10 It is difficult to fully translate leksis and praksis, which are the founding elements of Bios politikos (political life) into Turkish. Praksis refers to action; the distinguished characteristic of this action is that it is based on virtues. Lexis means speech, debate, exchange of ideas, court, and council meetings; it is based on reason/logos.

5 The Representation Problem of Differences and the Public Sphere 5 mansions, where noble families lived, replaced agoras as the new centers of life. This public sphere in the Medieval Age becomes prominent with its quality of being representative (repräsentativ). The Lord represented fame, nobleness, honor, and dignity. The staging of the publicity involved in representation was wedded to personal attributes such as insignia (badges and arms), dress (clothing and coiffure), demeanor (form of greeting and poise) and rhetoric (form of address and formal discourse in general) in a word, to a strict code of "noble" conduct (Habermas, 1971: 20). As it is seen, publicity here points to the social status of feudal authority, rather than fulfilling a political function. In the 15 th century, humanism led to change in the style of courtly life through the tutors to princes, and the humanistically educated courtier replaced the Christian knights. The courtly life changed with the baroque festivities; all elements of the representative public maintained their existence within a courtly life detached from the external world; the people were excluded from the baroque festivities as spectators. Some changes that occurred in the 17 th century are highly important in terms of the function of communication, which the public sphere has assumed today. In that period, the emergence of press that would keep pace with the developing trade became a necessity; the continuity of relations between the circulation of a commodity and the exchange of communications required a continuous state, and thus, permanent administration and army were added to the realm of public power. Now the public was a realm belonging to the state. Growing market relations required the public s regulation and supervision in this sphere. Communication regarding wars, product yield, taxes, mining transportation, and international trade circulation of the mid 17 th century reached the level in the mid 18 th century, where professors of the faculties of law, medicine, and philosophy held activities of rational/critical debate (via the obligation of publication periodically): the scholars were to inform the public of useful truths. (Habermas, 1971: 40). Developing market relations and developments in communication as well the changes towards a permanent state by the end of the eighteenth century led to the disintegration of the feudal powers, the church, the prince, and the nobility, who were the carriers of the representative publicness to split into private elements, on the one hand, and public ones, on the other. Thus, by the end of the 18 th century, the private began to refer to everything outside the state and the public to the things related to the state. Government servants are public people; they have a public duty. The buildings and institutions of the state are also public; the state operates for public benefit, while private persons work in their interest.

6 6 Review of Public Administration, Volume 7 Issue 4, December 2013, p These historical changes developed towards bourgeois society, where the public served as political intermediary between the state and civil society. The first form of this public with a political function, which Habermas took as model for his public sphere was the literary public that began to develop in France. With this public consisting of art and literature followers, the public community acquired a non-private nature in terms of principle, reading rooms, concert halls, theaters, museums and coffee houses became the public spheres of that period. Not that this idea of the public was actually realized in earnest in the coffee houses, the salons, and the societies; but as an idea it had become institutionalized and thereby stated as an objective claim (Habermas, 1971: 52). Hence, the activity of reasoning broke off from the cultural-political environment of the palace, and began to develop in city s bourgeois environment. According to Habermas, this public of literary nature is the preform of the political public. For Habermas, who considered the bourgeoisie public sphere as a category peculiar to a specific era, the development of the public, which assumed a political function in Great Britain and Continental Europe was related with the historical development of bourgeois society, commodity circulation, and the liberal stage, where social labor was freed from the commands of the state and was liberated (Habermas, 1971: 95). At this stage, civil society began to assume more active role in commodity circulation than the state; it even attained a status that influenced state politics. What enabled civil society to influence state politics was the public of political quality. In the early 18 th century, the public opinion s becoming a political power affected the transformation of interpretations and criticisms of the Queen s measures and the Parliament s decisions in Great Britain into an institution. This was the emergence of the public opinion 11 in today s sense. From the early part of the 18 th century on, it became usual to distinguish what was then called the sense of the people from the official election results (Habermas, 1971: 84). The sense of the people, "the common voice," "the general cry of the people," and finally "the public spirit" signified, from now on, a power to which 11 The concept of public opinion is the key to understand bourgeois publicity. The reason is that the function of bourgeois publicity to form public opinion. "Opinion" was derived from Latin word opinio that means opinion or an uncertain judgment whose truth would still have to be proven. However, it is wrong to correspond public opinion to ordinary opinions, uncertain judgments, or the sense of people. The reason is that public opinion is formed within public debate after the people are rendered to comprehend a grounded thought through education and informing (Habermas, 1971: 86). This is the difference between public opinion and vulgar opinions. However, opinion, also means reputation. Reputation that refers to fame, credit, and representation sometimes for example during the feudal era and at present takes precedence over its other meaning in determining the concept of public opinion. Public opinion is defined in relation with the reasoning of a public community with the ability of discernment, which has begun to used from the 18 th century onwards (Habermas, 1971: 113).

7 The Representation Problem of Differences and the Public Sphere 7 the opposition could depend on. Meanwhile, the right to vote began to expand in line with reforms. In that period, the institutions of the public community that produced political thoughts were newspapers, political associations, public meetings, petitions, and local committees. The public s function as the carrier of public criticism was acknowledged thanks to Fox s speech in the House of Commons. By this incident, for the first time public opinion was mentioned in the Parliament: It is certainly right and prudent to consult the public opinion... If the public opinion did not happen to square with mine; if, after pointing out to them the danger, they did not see it in the same light with me, or if they conceived that another remedy was preferable to mine, I should consider it as my due to my king, due to my Country, due to my honor to retire (cited by Habermas, 1971: 85). The recognition of the public sphere and publicity as one of the most precious rights of man in the context of free communication of ideas and opinions in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was an important step towards the freedom to form public opinion. With the 1793 Constitution, freedom of assembly was included in the protection of freedom of expression. In the 19 th century, the public had become organized to such an extent that it broke the elitism of the Parliament, and became discussion partner of the deputies (Habermas, 1971: 86). As it is seen, the aim of public opinion 12 was not to seize the political power, but to change the executive power and the structure and functioning of the political power. At this point, The constitutional state as a bourgeois state established the public sphere in the political realm as an organ of the state so as to ensure institutionally the connection between law and public opinion (Habermas, 1971: 103).With this publicity, with a potential criticism of modern state, the political authority, too, is divided into two: the state as a political power on the one side and the political public sphere or public opinion on the other side. The duty of political public is while ensuring the formation of the whole of normative rules involving 12 Habermas says, Kant first voiced a concept of publicity that placed communication and criticism at the center. Opinion, which Plato addressed as doxa, corresponds to the temporary phrase related to the world of sense, to which truth cannot be ascribed. Hobbes used the word, conscience in the same meaning with opinion. He considered it a topic, which belongs to the private lives of people, such as religion, and thus, kept it out of the political sphere. Although Locke made a distinction between prejudice and opinion, which rose above the political consent, he addressed this consent as the implicit and tacit consent of individuals, who have not empowered enough to make law, rather than as a product of a critical discussion. Rousseau considered opinion publique as a determination graven on the hearts of citizens, which is devoid of a rational and critical thought of public. Hegel considered public opinion identical with common sense, and described it based on prejudices. Marx regarded public opinion as a mask of bourgeois class interests, and characterized a public opinion consisting of private property owners, who reasoned and comprehended themselves as autonomous people in absolute terms. According to Kant, publicity, which mediates between politics and morals, is the principle of legal order and the method of enlightenment; publicity is based on universality. Therefore, anyone, who can strip off his or her personal status, can participate in public debate. In this respect, Habermas follows Kant, and attributes the legitimacy of the state to the existence of an enlightened critical public opinion, which is the criterion of public freedom (Zabcı, 1997: 74).

8 8 Review of Public Administration, Volume 7 Issue 4, December 2013, p political rights, at the same time, to organize civil society so as to secure the functioning of the market in connection with this function (Zabcı, 1997: 67). According to Habermas, this was the liberal model of the public sphere. Under liberal conditions, everyone, with ability and luck, could own private property, attain the status of man, and could have equal opportunities to access to wealth and education. Thus, the publicity is secured by the opportunity to attain these conditions (Habermas, 1971: 110). The distinctive feature of liberal public sphere is its critical nature. Today, public opinion is defined in the context of its function of manipulation, almost excluding its critical nature. Political sovereigns, thanks to this manipulation, strive to bring a population's dispositions into harmony with political doctrine and structure, with the type and the results of the ongoing decision (Habermas, 1971: 287).This transformation is related with different prominence of publicity as well. Two different meanings of publicity conflict with each other in its relation with the concept of public opinion: Public opinion is either accepted as a critical authority in the context of normative mandate that the exercise of political and social power be subject to publicity, or as an approval authority in the service of persons and institutions, consumer goods, and programs (Habermas, 1971: 278). Habermas characterized the intertwining of these two uses of publicity as contradictory institutionalization of the public or structural transformation of the public sphere; this transformation has occurred from liberal constitutional state to social state. This is a publicity manipulated by mass communication: The public sphere, which was prestructured and dominated by mass media, became an arena equipped with political power, where it was fought out not only to gain influence, but also to dominate communication flows that affect human behaviors for its issues and participation opportunities by concealing their strategic tendencies as much as possible (Habermas, 1997: 32).This is the very contradiction in the publicity of social state; while it is manipulated on the one hand, it is adhered to the condition that it should serve a political function (Habermas, 1971: 274). Undoubtedly, the growth of the market and the deletion of free circulation by trusts and cartels also played major role in the transformation of publicity. In the liberal stage, which is the first period of capitalism, the bourgeois public sphere evolved in the tension-charged field between state and society. But it did so in such a way that it remained itself a part of the private realm (Habermas, 1971: 172).This meant the differentiation of the elements of social reproduction and political power. However, production was removed from the realm of public authority to the extent it spread through exchange relationships. When the problems faced in the sphere of social reproduction grew to the extent they could not be resolved without being transferred to the political sphere, the state

9 The Representation Problem of Differences and the Public Sphere 9 began to intervene in the social realm, and the distance between the state and the society gradually deteriorated. This led to the disorganization of the public, which once served as intermediary between the state and the public; various parties and institutions, which emerged out of the private sphere, began to manipulate the people as they wished by using mass communication. The state, which represented the late stage of capitalism, was shaped by the state s increasing interventions in the private sphere. The public sphere failed to fulfill its function of mediating between civil society and the state; now, it was a realm, where interest groups competed. Not only such a public sphere lost its publicity, but also it no longer represented common interests. In this process, the family also evolved; it entirely lost its production function, and was reduced merely to consumer: The family, which also lost its roles of upbringing, education, protection, care, and guidance, totally evolved into a consumer of income and leisure time, as well as into the recipient of publicly guaranteed compensations and assistance. What fell to the share of public sphere from these developments was that the activity of public reasoning turned into a kind of consumption activity. The market laws that dominated the realms of commodity exchange and social labor transformed the activity of public rational/critical debate into consumption activity; public communication in favor of adopting the dominant thought. Hence, after the literary public and political public, consuming public emerged; consuming public was divided into two as so-called public sphere on the one side and ostensibly private sphere on the other side. According to Habermas, mass media took the nature of public, and this was resulted in the transformation of private sphere into a material of show; the public sphere turned into a realm, where private life stories were told to the public. Problems were addressed as the material of entertainment, rather than criticizing them. Indeed, the public sphere becomes the sphere for the publicizing of private biographies, so that the accidental fate of the so-called man in the street or that of systematically managed stars attain publicity, while publicly relevant developments and decisions are garbed in private dress and through personalization distorted to the point of unrecognizability (Habermas, 1971: 206). Hence, the sphere of interest of the educated stratum trained in the public use of reason has been shattered; the public has been divided between minorities of specialists, who unpublicly reason, and great masses of consumers in the position of public recipients. Moreover, the form of communication specific to a public group has also been lost now (Habermas, 1971: 210). In that period, the advertising industry replaced the weakened institutions of critical publicity. The public sphere s acquiring advertising function is related with the commercialization of media. The media has been commercialized: it

10 10 Review of Public Administration, Volume 7 Issue 4, December 2013, p lost its critical nature, and has been organized based on private interests. Rather than promoting critical-rational discussions, it has created virtual discussions itself. Culture that has been spread by mass communication is a culture of integration (Habermas, 1971: 211).This process shook the position of the parliamentary public as well, and caused the strengthening of intermediaries providing transformation from the state to the society and vice versa, and from the state to society towards associations of interest and political parties (Habermas, 1971: 235).In that period, the parties set themselves as a power over the public, and thus, rational-critical publicity totally surrendered manipulative publicity. Public opinion lost its nature of being a public group s deed to form judgment and opinion. Thus, its meaning has shifted from opinion to reputation, and has begun to imply not conducting public rational/critical debate, but providing a person or an incident with prestige. Now, the public sphere is not a realm, where consensus is reached through discussion. Instead, it is a realm, where individuals make their own propaganda and achieve prestige. To sum up, according to Habermas, the public sphere has gone through four phases of transformation: Polis, feudal state, bourgeois public, and social state. It has expanded at the end of this transformation; however, it has weakened in functional terms (Habermas, 1971: 17). The Public History in the History of Philosophy It will probably not be wrong to say that in the history of philosophy, the debates over the public sphere gained a new momentum particularly with the Frankfurt School. Habermas s book, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere became the most referred and discussed work in those debates. Nevertheless, it will also be wrong to say that the concept of public sphere was not previously addressed in the history of philosophy. The concept was discussed in the context of different problems and thoughts throughout the history of philosophy, and was identified in its relationship with different concepts by different philosophers in different eras; these ascertainments also reflect the historical course to some extent. The Hellenistic model of public mentioned in the part of the study, which was shaped by the distinction of oikos and polis, influenced first Plato and then, Aristotle. In Politeia, Plato addressed ideal state in the context of the idea of justice. Justice is the essential virtue that can be achieved when each class (grulers, guardians, manual workers) fulfills their duty (to govern, to protect, to produce), by the exercise of the virtue specific to its class (wisdom, courage, temperance). Ideal state, which Plato mentioned in Politeia, is based on virtues, not on laws; therefore, the primary duty of ideal state is to bring up virtuous people (Plato, 1992a: 427e-430e). In such a society based on the supremacy of virtues, philosophers, who can combine power of mind power of the state,

11 The Representation Problem of Differences and the Public Sphere 11 should be rulers, because only they can distinguish belief and knowledge, i.e. temporary and permanent ones; they are in pursuit of true, good and beautiful (Plato, 1992a: 480a). Plato s view that describes the society in the context of classes and virtues in Politeia has a dimension eliminating the dichotomy between the private sphere and public sphere. This is an ideal that can be attained through conveying the private sphere-related problems and assignments to the public sphere, thus, dissolving the private sphere in the public sphere: private property will be eliminated; women and men will be held equal in state affairs; children will be jointly raised and educated; the private lives of particularly political classes will either be prevented, or controlled (Plato, 1992a: 543a, 518d-e).Thus, a more socialization will be achieved by controlling the individualizing effects of the private life. Because of the difficulty of achieving the ideal, in Nomoi (Laws), Plato thins over a model of society compliant with the conditions. The best feasible form of government is the mix of aristocracy and democracy; the property should be privatized to some extent. In this state, laws are superior to rulers. The ultimate goal of these laws, which are the products of mind, is to ensure virtuous living. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to distribute land equally, to determine the number of families, to oversee marriages, to regulate the inheritance of property from generation to generation within the family and the economic life in the state. These will be ensured by laws. The aim of laws is to achieve human goods under the guidance of divine goods (courage, wisdom, temperance, justice) and to regulate issues such as marriage and education (Plato, 1982: 631a). In Politics, Aristotle, of three different lifestyles people can freely choose, discusses the political life that deals with the problems of polis (the other two are life of pleasure that refers to bodily pleasures and theoria life, which is devoted to questioning necessary and eternal things, and he characterizes the public sphere (koine) as political group ; it is a group, where free citizens participate in decision-making process. The economic, i.e. the man s foodproviding labor and the woman s fertility, is not a political matter, but a matter of family. The distinctive feature of family is that here, people live depending on their natural desires and needs. Family, which is a natural group in this respect, is built on necessity. However, the polis space is the space of freedom. The family life, which is established in the framework of necessities, is the prerequisite for ensuring good life and freedom of citizens in polis. The fundamental characteristics expected from Polis are freedom (eleutheria), autonomy (autonomia) and self-reliance (autarkheia). As man is by nature a political animal 13 (physeipolitikonzoon), the origin of polis is inherent inhuman 13 This living being differs from other living beings by his or her capability of reasoned speaking (logos). Animals, too, have the power to express their feelings through sounds they make. Speech (logos) is for

12 12 Review of Public Administration, Volume 7 Issue 4, December 2013, p nature (Aristotle, 1998: 1253a5). Polis, which is the ultimate aim (telos) of all communities, is not an artificial restriction of freedom or a conventional institution, but a natural being. 14 As it is seen, Aristotle conveyed his theological explanation about the being to the field of political philosophy too. Considering that the development that makes the ultimate aim real is a development fitting to the nature, polis, which is the ultimate aim of all communities, is a natural being, and the process that develops from the family to polis is a natural process. What should be emphasized in Aristotle s thoughts is that sociality and politicality are not used in the same meaning (politics is not the art that regulates social life; it is a free activity, where the citizen establishes equal relations with his or her peers; regulating social life is subject to the secondary activity of the citizen, i.e. to the activity he regulates the relations within the family as the head of the family), and that polis is a natural being. However, in the 17 th century nature was identified as the sphere that should be over, and that should be regulated by the political power. However, the necessity of the political power was grounded differently by each philosopher of that era. Locke says there is not a qualitative difference between the political power and the state of nature, and identifies the duty of the political power as ensuring the law of nature that operates in the state of nature as well. As the law of nature is based on the assumption that human is a rational being, the rights and duties determined by the law of nature are rational too. However, in the state of nature, if everyone has the executive power of the law of Nature, this may sometimes lead to confusion and disorder. Therefore, the government is empowered to apply the law of nature. The government exists to restrain the partiality and violence of mankind. The community, which is established by everyone s resignation from executing the law of nature and delegating to the public, is civil or political society; the power of laws is restricted to the public interest of the society (Locke, 2004: 145). Locke distinguishes the political power from the patriarchal power between man and wife, master and servant, and father and child. There exists an absolute power in the political power; on the other hand, the power in the private sphere is not absolute, but limited. The absoluteness of the political powers ensured by the exclusion of the personal judgments of members; thus, it becomes a common authority of appeal, which is impartial to its members. Hobbes argued that the state of nature is a state of war. Natural right, as Locke puts it, is based on personal perceptions and subjective judgments, rather making clear what is beneficial and harmful, and hence, also what is just or unjust. Dike is the foundation of political community (Aristotle, 1998: 1253a35.) 14 This view aimed at Sophists, who defined state as a conventional entity based on power over citizens. Sophists, with their distinction of physei and thesei, argued that natural and conventional laws are contrary to each other. Later, Cynics laso continued to think in this direction.

13 The Representation Problem of Differences and the Public Sphere 13 than on mind. Hobbes says natural right is the liberty each man has to use his own power as he will himself for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life; and consequently, of doing anything which, in his own judgment and reason, and a law of nature, is a precept, or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same, and to omit that by which he thinketh it may be best preserved (Hobbes, 1966: 16). Thus, the state, where civil society or a sovereign power does not exist, is a state of undeclared war. In Leviathan, Hobbes devises a state based on the absolute power of the sovereign, and explains this state as the individuals transferor their rights by a contract in order to get rid of the state of insecurity caused by the state of limitless competition and the state of war they are in. According to Hobbes, individual safety is not ensured by natural law, but by the state. Peace is possible only in civil society. A state is said to be instituted when a multitude of men do agree, and covenant, everyone with every one, that to whatsoever man, or assembly of men, shall be given by the major part the right to present the person of them all, that is to say, to be their representative (Hobbes, 1966: 159). The concepts related to ethics or law (such as good-evil, just-unjust) can only be used within civil society. There is a complete contrast between Hobbes s cautious natural man and Locke s natural man, who is rational in essence: the second one applies the laws of nature in the state of nature by exercising his natural rights; the first finds himself in the state of war, instead of in law and order when he exercises his natural rights (Savran, 2003: 34). Rousseau, in his The Social Contract, voices a society model compatible with order of nature (Rousseau, 1998: 46). Rousseau identified the problem of his era as the disconnection of man from nature. According to him, this detachment led to the division of the individual as man (homme) and citizen (citoyen). The Social Contract aims at eliminating this disconnection, which can be described as man s alienation to his own nature. For Rousseau, the state of war is not an outcome of state of nature, but an outcome of societalization. Societalization began with gathering of people with an aim to meet their most basic needs; however, this societalization, which was harmless in the beginning, resulted in the state of war with the emergence of division of labor and private property. This state of war will end by the Social Contract that will protect private property. As it is seen, state of war that appears with the societalization of people is not the outcome of state of nature, but of deteriorated state of nature. The state of war neither exists in state of nature, where there is not established property, nor in a society, where laws rule (Rousseau, 1998: 10). Thus, as Hobbes said, the cause of war is not human s instinct to survive or love of ego; war arises from different requirements brought by increasing societalization and private property that has emerged as a result of these. With

14 14 Review of Public Administration, Volume 7 Issue 4, December 2013, p the Social Contract, natural inequality among people is replaced by a spiritual, legitimate equality based on rights; each of the members of this contract surrenders himself to the command of general will with all their rights. Rousseau, in his Social Contract, makes the distinction of general will and private will. For Rousseau, each individual has a private will as a human, and general will as a citizen. The Social Contract does not represent private will or will of everybody, which is the sum of private wills, but general will. General will consider only common interests (Rousseau, 1998: 59). When human reconstructs himself as citizen under general will, ethical human will replace natural and physical human. Therefore, modern society is not a group consisting of natural individuals, but its form of laws. What the law voices is general will. The thought of Enlightenment addresses publicity in the context of reason and criticism through reason. Enlightenment is a state that can be attained with the development of the principle of publicity; it is the pervasion of the public use of reason. Kant developed the principle of publicity in terms of law and philosophy of history, and addressed it both as the principle of rule of law and as the method of the Enlightenment. Here, Kant makes an important distinction: The public use of reason is not the business of the government, but of philosophers. The reason is that they (intellectuals, critics, philosophers) are ruled only by the interests of reason independent from the interests of the government. The public use of reason (der öffentliche Gebrauch) is a person s, for example a scholar s presentation of his/her knowledge or thought, i.e. his/her reason, to his/her followers and readers so as to be useful for them, while the private use of reason (der Privatgebrauch) one s use of his/her reason in his/her civil post or office which is entrusted to him (Kant, 1984b: 216). Although rational/critical debate is about the use of reason for the benefit of the public, obedience is mandatory in its second form of use. The public of human beings engaged in rational-critical debate would be constituted into the public of human beings consisting of citizens, wherever an agreement was reached on the problems of the "commonwealth." This is the Enlightenment. However, the realization of Enlightenment depends on making politics in the framework of moral law: True politics cannot progress without paying homage to morality (Kant, 1984a: 260). The public space, which mediates politics, morality and law, is the realm of criticism, where free, neutral and communicable thoughts determined by imperative of practical reason are voiced freely and publicly. The development of such a public space will pave the way for a real progress towards the Federation of Nations that would ensure the world peace. This progress is the progress of legality. Kant, in this respect, differs from Hobbes, who says, sovereignty is the source of law, and considers every critical/rational debate on ethics a useless task in terms of

15 The Representation Problem of Differences and the Public Sphere 15 politics, and Montesquieu and Rousseau, who say, Contract is the source of law. Kant s principle of publicity is the principle that can guarantee the convergence of politics and morality (Habermas, 1971: 129). Hegel, in Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Elements of the Philosophy of Right), criticizes Kant s idea of progress in line with a natural order, and argues that progress is the result of a dialectic process. Despite natural basis of law, the privatized realm of commodity exchange and social labor is an obstacle to progress in the form of natural order assumed by Kant. Its sign is that the bourgeois society is about to dissolve because of its own internal conflicts and contradictions. Under these circumstances, it will be wrong to consider publicity a principle that compromises politics and ethics. According to Hegel, publicity is a remedy, an instrument of education for both individuals and masses disease of boasting with insignificant things, not a principle of Enlightenment or self-realization of reason (Hegel, 1986: ). Publicity, which is considered as a principle of education, brings up the concepts of public administration and public opinion. The primary objective of public administration is to realize and protect the universal found within the civil society; it achieves this goal in the form of external order, i.e. by means of institutions that aim for the protection and security of private goals and interests as a whole. The reason is that these goals and interests can maintain their existence only within the universal (Hegel, 1991: 195). Thus, publicity serves the articulation of private opinion to objectivity; the state is the product of full realization of objectivity. Reason realizes itself within the state, not within the consciousness of public opinion as Kant maintains in Phänomenologie des Geistes (Phenomenology of Spirit), Hegel, who sees the accordance of politics with ethics as a wrongly identified problem, puts his own idea of the universalhistorical existence of spirit against the idea of the rationalization of sovereignty through publicity. In the framework of this idea, the private sphere, social sphere, and the public sphere are addressed as the moments (stages) of the development process of spirit. Publicity begins in the form of the protection of private interests as common interests via public administration and corporations in the third phase of civil society: It finds it full meaning in the state, which is the realm of universal. As the synthesis of the private sphere and social sphere, the public sphere is the realm that goes beyond them, encompassing both. However, still something is missing here. Spirit will realize itself in full sense within the state. Marx conveys his views on publicity by criticizing the foundations of bourgeois society in Zur Judenfrage (On the Jewish Question). This criticism also targets Hegel. Marx interprets both the public and public opinion completely different from Hegel: The public consists of private property

16 16 Review of Public Administration, Volume 7 Issue 4, December 2013, p owners; therefore, public opinion is false consciousness. Hegel thinks the same up to a point; the difference is that while Hegel describes public and public opinion as a relatively progressed moment in the emancipation process of spirit, Marx totally ascribes negative value to them. According to Marx, public opinion is a mask for bourgeois class interests. Private property, unequal distribution of property, and inequality of opportunity among individuals, have positioned the state and the society as two opposite forces. According to Marx, this opposite positioning of the state and the society has led to the division of the individual as public person and private person, and thus, to his alienation (alienation to himself, his species, labor and the society). Marx criticizes Kant like Hegel, who identifies publicity as the principle of Enlightenment. For Marx, as long as the power relations are not neutralized and the bourgeois society continues to withstand the difficult in the process of reproduction of social life, a state of law, where the political authority overlaps with the rational authority, cannot be established. The bourgeois state of law, with publicity, which is the basic principle of its organization, is nothing more than a simple ideology. However, this publicity, as required by its dialectic, will be occupied by the groups deprived of private property. When these groups, as an expanded public community, rise to the status of the subject of publicity, the structure of publicity will undergo change as well: The class differences will disappear, and over time, the public power will lose its political character. With the dissolution of political power into public power, the bourgeois idea that serves political function will find its socialist formulation (Habermas, 1971: ). Subsequent thoughts on the subject, which were voiced in the history of philosophy, have been put forward based on Kant, Hegel and Marx s views. The thought of Enlightenment addressed publicity as a principle that would rationalize politics. Social conditions of publicity that will serve a political function were designed as some kind of natural order. The historical process was continuously progressing like a natural order towards a competent world citizenship. The publicity model with political function, which purported to harmonize the public opinion with reason, would prevent conflicts of interest because of this very natural order. The reason is that the society as a whole was advancing towards the general interest. Marx and his successors criticized the public opinion voiced in the framework of this idea on the ground that it was a mask for bourgeois class interests, and argued that it should be founded on a social basis. The starting point of liberalism is that dialectic in the bourgeois publicity did not end up in the way Marx projected. Liberalism intends to give a more realistic form to the principle of publicity by moving it away from both its natural and historical foundations; it concerns with the need for expanding the public community, rather than addressing the principle of publicity alone.