S1503 Venice and the Republican Tradition. Self-Governance and Empire in Ancient and Modern Political Philosophy

The course will examine the cultural tradition of political republicanism in a local Venetian and a global international perspective. The seminar will address first ancient Greek and Roman anti-monarchical thought about democratic and republican self-governance and non-domination and then turn to modern accounts of popular rule and the sovereignty of the people. Throughout the seminar the republican constitution of Venice will serve as a unique historical example for linking ancient and modern forms and functions of anti-monarchism and self-governance in politics. Historical reading will range from Plato and Aristotle through Machiavelli and Montesquieu to the Federalists and Tocqueville and will be supplemented with more recent contributions on the relation between republicanism and democracy.
The core concern of the republican tradition to be examined in the course is with the freedom of a state's citizens from arbitrary rule and foreign domination. While closely associated with the rejection of monarchical rule, especially in the latter's extreme manifestations as tyranny and despotism, political republicanism focuses on the rule of (just) laws and the self-government of the citizenry. The very term "republic" goes back to Rome's political set-up after the expulsion of its last king and before the neo-monarchical ascent to absolute power of the later Emperors – a period of some five hundred years during which the republic (from the Latin for "common affair," res publica) was constituted by the joint rule of the people and the patricians (SPQR/Senatus Populusque Romanus/The Senate and the People of Rome).
Earlier forms of self-rule included popular self-rule in fifth-century Athens (Greek: demokratia) and, arguably, the political set-up of the Hebrew people under their covenant with God and prior to the rule of priests and kings ("Hebrew republic"). Later forms of self-rule typically were confined to local communities operating independently of established states and empires, such as the "free" cities of the medieval and early modern Germano-Roman Empire and the Northern Italian city republics. Throughout, political thinkers distinguished between democracy as direct popular rule, deemed dangerous and impractical ("tyranny of the majority"), and the republic as a prudent political balancing act between self-government and indirect rule through representative bodies.
With the American Revolution and the French Revolution at the close of the 18th century, a republican form of modern government emerged that was no longer confined to a city state but encompassed large territories previously deemed to be governable only by a centralized monarchical state. While the new French republic soon degenerated into political fundamentalism and civic terrorism which then gave way to the neo-imperial rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, the United States of America developed into the testing ground for the compatibility of democratic and republican forms of government. By this time Venice, the oldest surviving republic of the non-democratic, aristocratic type, had ceased to exist. Today political republicanism's civic culture of self-rule has received serious consideration as a historically inspired alternative to the polar opposites of individualistic liberalism and anti-individualistic communitarianism.

Learning Outcomes
On a formal level, students will learn to read closely, reconstruct analytically and assess critically challenging philosophical texts and their complex arguments. In terms of content, students will learn about the past and present of philosophical thinking about political self-rule and the status of autonomy, freedom and self-determination in the Western philosophical-political tradition.

Required Knowledge
There are no formal requirements for taking the course. But given the challenging readings and demanding discussions expected from all course participants, students should be willing and able to think critically, read closely and argue convincingly – or to learn to do so.