Andreas Kalyvas

SOLONIAN CITIZENSHIP:
DEMOCRACY, CONFLICT, PARTICIPATION

ESTRATTO
da

ATHENIAN LEGACIES
EUROPEAN DEBATES
ON CITIZENSHIP
Edited by
Paschalis M. Kitromilides

Leo S. Olschki Editore

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ATHENIAN LEGACIES
EUROPEAN DEBATES
ON CITIZENSHIP
Edited by
Paschalis M. Kitromilides

Leo S. Olschki
2014
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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pag. 7

Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Redeeming European Political Thought. 9

Aspects of Citizenship in the Classical City

Andreas Kalyvas, Solonian Citizenship: Democracy, Conflict, Parti-

cipation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
George Th. Mavrogordatos, Citizenship and Military Obligation
in Classical Athens: The Anomaly of the Metics . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Ioannis Kyriakantonakis, Citizenship and Initiation: Common Realms
and Concepts in Classical Greece. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Geoff Kennedy, Senatus Populusque Romanus against the Demos:
Roman Republicanism versus Athenian Democracy. . . . . . . . . . 69

Citizenship in Greek Political Philosophy

Pericles S. Vallianos, Politics as Mediation: Law and the Private

Sphere in the Late Plato. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Anthony Makrydemetres, Leadership and Citizenship in Platos
Politicus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Dimitrios Mourtzilas, The Notion of Citizenship in Aristotles
Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Charilaos Platanakis, Aristotle on Political Participation. . . . . . . 135

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Ideas of Citizenship in Renaissance

and Early Modern Political Thought

Adriana Zangara, La dmocratie athnienne vue depuis Florence:

Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Giannotti et la question de lostracisme. Pag. 159
Marco Giani, Athenian Ostracism in Venetian Disguise: an Historical
Diatribe in Late Renaissance Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Xavier Gil, City, Communication and Concord in Renaissance Spain
and Spanish America. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Tomasz Gromelski, Citizenship in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania. 223
Johan Olsthoorn, Forfeiting Citizenship: Hobbes on Rebels, Trai-
tors and Enemies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

Human Nature and Citizenship

in an Age of Enlightenment and Revolution

Peter Schrder, Une distinction frivole Enlightenment Discus-

sions of Citizenship. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Mark Somos, The Lost Treasures of Sethos, Enlightened Prince of
Egypt (1731). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
James Livesey, From Athens to Paris: The Legislative Assembly and
Democracy in the Summer of 1792. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

Classical Evocations and the Challenge of Modernity

Charles H. Clavey, An Athens in Weimar: The Political Theory of

Werner Jaegers Paideia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Niall Bond, Ferdinand Tnnies Community-Society Dichotomy and
its Relevance for Discussions of Citizenship. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359

Contemporary Challenges

Giuseppe Ballacci, Actualizing Democratic Citizenship: Arendt and

Classical Rhetoric on Judgment and Persuasion. . . . . . . . . . . . . 381

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Davide Cadeddu, The Active Citizenship of Twentieth-Century In-

tellectuals: Reading Bendas La trahison des clercs. . . . . . . . . . Pag. 413
Konstantinos Papageorgiou, Cosmopolitan Citizenship in a Com-
plex World. Arguments for an Impure View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425

Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450

Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451

7
 Andreas Kalyvas

SOLONIAN CITIZENSHIP:
DEMOCRACY, CONFLICT, PARTICIPATION

Only the actual participants can correctly recognize,

understand, and judge the concrete situation and
settle the extreme case of conflict. Each participant
is in a position to judge whether the adversary in-
tends to negate his opponents way of life, and there-
fore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve
ones own form of existence.
Carl Schmitt1

Citizenship is a central, if not the central constitutive attribute of demo-

cratic politics. Absent the former, the latter hardly makes any sense. This tru-
ism needs to be restated in face of a looming crisis of citizenship, underway in
the very geopolitical space that historically became closely associated with the
idea, concept, and practice of the citizen. This crisis of citizenship is in fact
a crisis of democracy itself; it is moreover a crisis of Western modernity as a
political project with self-professed democratic aspirations. I will not touch
on such vast and contested topic. My intention is tentative and nominal: to
revisit a very early, formative moment in European political history, that of
archaic Greece, in order to rethink the meaning and value of citizenship and
to suggest an orientation that might contribute to the opening up of a demo-
cratic alternative to our current political predicament.
For such a rethinking of citizenship, I examine Solons archaic law against
neutrality and political apathy during a stasis. This law is recorded in four
ancient authors: Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch, and Aulus Gellius.2 It was one

1 C. Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, expanded version, trans. G. Schwab with a fore-

word by T.Strong (Chicago, London, 2007), p. 27.

2 Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution, 8:5 (Loeb Classical Library, 1996), pp. 30-31; Cicero,

Letters to Atticus, Vol. III, Letter 190, X.1.2, (Loeb Classical Library, 1999), pp. 106-107; Plutarch,
Solon, 20.1 (Loeb Classical Library, 1998), pp. 456-457; Id., Precepts of Statecraft, 32 (824) (Loeb
Classical Library, 1991), pp. 288-291; Id., The Divine Vengeance, 550C (Loeb Classical Library,

19
 ANDREAS KALYVAS

among Solons sweeping reforms of Athens, dating back to the early 6th cen-
tury (around 594/3 B.C.),3 and associated with the historical invention of
democratic citizenship.4
Even though in antiquity Solons law was well known and profound-
ly and thoroughly studied, as Gellius reports,5 in the last century scholars
have questioned its authenticity.6 The debate pertains as to whether this law
has ever existed, and if it did, whether it was still in force after Kleisthenes
democratic revolution in the late 6th century (508/7 B.C.). I will not focus on
this controversy.7 Neither will I discuss the law in relation to Solons overall
legal reforms within the broader socio-economic context of archaic Attica.8
Instead, I will concentrate on its political meaning in an effort to identify
its core principles and reconstruct its constitutive attributes. Clarifying the
conceptual structure of Solons law may help to expose its political logic and
democratic content, and elucidate its distinct theory of citizenship.

2000), pp. 192-193; Aulus Gellius, The Attic Nights, Book II: 12 (Loeb Classical Library, 1946),
pp. 154-159. For Solon and Aristotle, see H.-J. Gehrke, The Figure of Solon in the Athnain
Politeia, pp. 276-289 and for Solon and Plutarch, see L. de Blois, Plutarchs Solon: A Tissue of
Commonplace or a Historical Account? pp. 429-440, both in Solon of Athens. New Historical and
Philological Approaches, eds. J. H. Blok and Andr P.M.H. Lardinois (Leiden and Boston, 2011).

3 For the dating of Solons law against neutrality, see G.E.M. De Ste. Croix, The Date of

Solons Nomothesia, Athenian Democratic Origins (Oxford, 2004), pp. 75-80.

4 P. Manville, Solons Law of Stasis and Atimia in Archaic Athens, Transactions of the Amer-

ican Philological Association, 110 (1980) pp. 213-221; P.B. Manville, Solon and the Invention
of the Athenian Polis, The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Greece (Princeton N.J. and Oxford,
1997), pp. 124-156.

5 Gellius, The Attic Nights, Book II: 12, p. 156-157. Also, see G. Grote, History of Greece,

Vol. III (New York, 1859), p. 143.

6 For the debate among classicists, historians, and philologists regarding the authenticity of

Solons law, see C. Hignet, A History of the Athenian Constitution to the end of the Fifth Century
B.C (Oxford, 1952), pp. 26-27; J.A. Goldstein, Solons Law for an Activist Citizenry, Historia:
Zeitschrift fr Alte Geschichte 21:4 (1972), pp. 538-545; V. Bers, Solons Law Forbidding Neutrality
and Lysias 31, Historia: Zeitschrift fr Alte Geschichte, 24:3 (1975), pp. 493-498; R. Develin, So-
lons Law on Stasis, Historia: Zeitschrift fr Alte Geschichte, 26:4 (1977), pp. 507-508; D. Ephraim,
Solon, Neutrality, and Partisan Literature of Late Fifth-Century Athens, Museum Helveticum, 41
(1984), pp. 130-138; P.E.VanT Wout, Solons Law on Stasis: Promoting Active Neutrality, Clas-
sical Quarterly, 60:2 (2010), pp. 289-301.

7 This might be one of the reasons as to why contemporary political theorists and especially

those working around the relationship of citizenship and democracy have generally ignored this law.

8 For an authoritative compilation of all the surviving sources of Solons reforms, see E. Rus-

chenbusch, Solon: Das Gesetzeswerk Fragmente. bersetzung und Kommentar (Stuttgart, 2010).
For a general discussion of Solons reforms, see Grote, Solonian Laws and Constitution, History
of Greece, Vol. III, pp. 88-159; M.H. Hansen, Solonian Democracy in Fourth-Century Athens,
Aspects of Athenian Democracy, ed. W.R. Connor (Copenhagen, 1990), pp. 71-99; C. Moss, How
a Political Myth Takes Shape: Solon, Founding Father of the Athenian Democracy, Athenian
Democracy, ed. P.J. Rhodes, (Oxford, 2004), pp. 242-259; P.J. Rhodes, The Reforms and Laws of
Solon: An Optimistic View, Solon of Athens. New Historical and Philological Approaches, pp. 248-
260; A.C. Scafuro, Identifying Solonian Laws, Solon of Athens, pp. 175-196.

20
 SOLONIAN CITIZENSHIP: DEMOCRACY, CONFLICT, PARTICIPATION

To avoid any misunderstanding, this return to the past is meant as nei-

ther an expression of nostalgia for a lost golden age nor the idealization of
an ancient political tradition. If the discussion that follows makes a certain
reading and recuperation of a specific episode in antiquity, it is only because
it seeks to break away from the political and intellectual closure of the pres-
ent, in an ongoing search of other possibilities. The period I revisit is not a
foundation or an origin, and does not function as an archetype; rather, it is
a contingent historical source of democratic inspiration, one among several,
that potentially could play a critical role in the preliminary elaboration of a
theory of democratic citizenship as partisanship in exceptional times.

A Typology of Solonian Citizenship

The first surviving explicit reference to this law appears in Aristotles

Athenian Constitution (8:5):
Seeing that the city was often in civil strife (), but that some of the
citizens through slackness () were content to accept whatever happened,
he [Solon] made a law aimed at them, that whoever when the city is in civil strife
() does not join forces with either party, shall be disfranchised ()
and have no share in the city ( ).9

The first, most noticeable element of the law is the relationship it estab-
lishes between citizenship and stasis. The advent of citizenship coincides with
the occurrence of a stasis. Solon brings the two together in that the latter
comes to designate the former. Here lies the singularity of his law: as a law
of stasis is also a law of citizenship. Stasis, lets remember, was a common
term with a long history and a broad range of significations, appearing in
the archaic poetry of Solon, Alcaeus, and Theognis, used in the histories of
Herodotus and Thucydides, and theorized in Platos and Aristotles politi-
cal philosophies.10 Originally, its etymological meaning signified standing,

9 Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution, 8:5, p. 30 (my translation). For the problems in trans-

lating Solons law, see R. Sealey, How Citizenship and the City Began in Athens, The American
Journal of Ancient History, 8:2 (1987) pp. 100-105 and P.E. Van T Wout, Solons Law on Stasis:
Promoting Active Neutrality, pp. 289-301.

10 For informed but diverging discussions of the concept of stasis in Greek antiquity, see D.

Loenen, Stasis. Enige aspecten van de begrippen partij-en klassenstrijd in oud Griekenland (Amster-
dam, 1953); R.P. Legon, Demos and Stasis. Studies in the Factional Politics of Classical Greece, Dis-
sertation (Cornel University, 1966); P. Mikat, Die Begundung der Begriffe Stasis und Aponoia fr das
Verstndnis des 1. Clemensbriefes (Kln and Opladen, 1969), pp. 20-39; A. Lintott, Violence, Civil
Strife, and Revolution in the Classical City (London and Sydney, 1982), pp. 34-81, 239-263, 272-273;

21
 ANDREAS KALYVAS

a place of standing, and a position and a posture.11 Later it came to mean

a political faction, discord, dissensus, division, unrest, insurrection, and con-
flict. It was the name the ancients used to describe domestic strife, the fac-
tional rivalry that splits the city into opposing parts.12 It corresponds to the
Roman concept of sedition (seditio), which indicates a going apart (sed- +
-ition), a forceful movement of disassociation, a disagreement that turns into
a division cutting across the city.13 In Gellius terms, for instance, sedition
provokes a division of the people (discessio populi) into two parties (in duas
partes).14 Such was the political intensity of the division associated with stasis
that Plato described it as an internal war, a war within the city, far more
perilous than external wars.15 In the first book of the Laws and while discuss-
ing the lawgivers task and the politics of foundations, the Athenian Stranger
introduces a distinction between two kinds of war: external and internal,
which goes by the name of stasis.16 He calls stasis then a war, a civil war, an
extreme condition of political life in the city that turns enmity inwards, an
exceptional moment of being at war with oneself, a self-laceration during an
intense and extreme quarrel.17
Solons unique blending of stasis and citizenship, their joining and mutual
determination, sets the conditions for a highly atypical concept of citizen-
ship. By combining the two, Solons law differs radically from the modern
figure of the citizen as coming into politics in the form of a fictitious homo-
geneous unitary subject, associated with a preexisting identity, an absolute

M.I. Finley, Politics in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 105-121; H.J. Gehrke, Stasis: Un-
tersuchungen inneren Kriegen in den griechischen Staaten des 5. und 4. Jahrhundertsv. Chr. (Munich,
1985); P. Manicas, War, Stasis, and Greek Political Thought, Comparative Studies in Society and
History, 24: 4 (1982) pp. 673-688; W. Caldwell, Hellenic Conceptions of Peace (New York, 1919),
pp. 45-46; K. Kalimtzis, Aristotle on Political Enmity and Disease: An Inquiry into Stasis (Albany,
2000); N. Loraux, The Divided City: On Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens (New York,
2006), pp. 24-31, 37-39, 64-69, 94-98, 102-103,104-109, 218-220.

11 Lintott, Violence, Civil Strife, and Revolution in the Classical City, p. 34; Finley, Athenian

Demagogues, Athenian Democracy, p. 166.

12 Loraux, The Divided City, p. 24.

13 P. Botteri, Stasis: Le mot grec, la chose romaine, Mtis, 4 (1989) pp. 87-100. I disagree

here with M.I. Finleys attempt to disassociate stasis from seditio. See, Finley, Politics in the Ancient
World, p. 106.

14 Gellius, The Attic Nights, Book II: 12.1, p. 155.

15 Plato, Laws, Book VIII.829a (Loeb Classical Library, 1994), pp. 126-127.

16 Id., Laws, Book I.628b-c, pp. 14-15. Also, see Id., Sophist, 249-254; Id., The Republic, Book

V, 470.

17 For an illuminating discussion of stasis and civil war, see Loraux, The Divided City, pp.

64-67. For an ambitious contemporary attempt to define stasis as a civil war, see Gehrke, Stasis, pp.
1-12, 203-267. Note here a key difference between Plato and Solon: while Plato sought to criminal-
ize stasis, Solon chose to penalize the avoidance of stasis. See Plato, Laws, Book IX.856b, p. 209.

22
 SOLONIAN CITIZENSHIP: DEMOCRACY, CONFLICT, PARTICIPATION

collective individual with a single will.18 The Solonian citizen, instead, arises
from within a city in turmoil, grows out of discord in a city divided and agi-
tated.19 For Solon, the citizen exists when a fighting collectivity confronts a
rival collectivity on a shared public space. This incipient notion of citizenship
is predicated on an internal difference that resists unification and sameness.
It challenges the very space where the conflict is staged. Thus, citizenship ap-
pears as disunity, always more than one, split into rival parts, constituted by
an inner otherness, and divided by a political contest over a public dispute.20
It presupposes the partition, heterogeneity, and non-identity of the people in
the context of a divisive conflict.
I begin with an enumeration and brief description of the constitutive el-
ements of Solons law. I identify four such main attributes, each correspond-
ing to a basic intrinsic principle of Solonian citizenship. Taken together as a
bundle, always simultaneously present, they allude to another experience of
being a citizen:
1. Active citizenship
2. Antagonistic citizenship
3. Participatory citizenship
4. Exceptional citizenship

Active Citizenship:
Solons law states a necessary condition for citizenship as it stipulates the
defining circumstance under which it is lost.21 Its semantic formulation is
negative. The law names the criterion of citizenship negatively, by way of a
deprivation and disfranchisement: if one does not take part in a stasis, one
should not have part in the life of the city and therefore should be deprived
of ones citizenship. Now, by inverting this principle, that is, by restating it
as a positive proposition, the first principle of Solons law appears in full
force.22 One has a share in the life of the city, that is, one is a citizen, if one

18 The People-as-One in C. Leforts pertinent formulation. C. Lefort, The Political Forms

of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism, ed. J.B. Thompson (Cambridge, 1986),
chs 8, 9; Id., Democracy and Political Theory, trans. D. Macey (Minneapolis, 1989), chs 1, 11.

19 On the divided city and stasis, see Loraux, The Divided City, pp. 93-122.

20 On this point, see J. Rancire, Does Democracy Mean Something?, Dissensus: On Politics

and Aesthetics, edited and translated by Steven Corcoran (London, 2010), pp. 52-53. See, also Id.,
Disagreement. Politics and Philosophy, trans. J. Rose (Minneapolis, 1999). However, an important
difference between Solonian citizenship and Rancires theory of politics is that the latter puts em-
phasis on the part that has no part, while the former calls attention to the part that has a part.

21 This is a necessary but not a sufficient condition.

22 The method of inversion postulates in this instance that a rule of exclusion (i.e. disfranchise-

ment), if correctly reversed, can indicate a rule of inclusion (citizenship). I should note, however,

23
 ANDREAS KALYVAS

participates in a political conflict and takes sides in a stasis. One is a citizen,

therefore, if one partakes in civil strife.
This is the first principle of active citizenship, according to which, a cit-
izen is someone who takes part in a factional strife. I call it active citizenship
because the law does not say who the citizen is, but what the citizen does
and what makes the citizen.23 The decisive criterion is not a pre-political
identity or a set of abstract legal requirements of, lets say, national or ethnic
status, but rather a specific kind of activity, an enactment, and a performance.
Citizenship is thus understood as practice and not as entitlement, that is, in
terms of acts and deeds, and not by the actors fixed status, a subject of privi-
leges.24 It is important to stress here that Solons emphasis on particular pub-
lic acts as constitutive of citizenship is crucial for understanding it as an active
political practice, a sheer expression of vita activa.25 It is consequent then that
this archaic law does not say anything about autochthony and anchisteia but
defines the concept of the citizen solely as a specific kind of political activity,
firmly delinking it from any extra-political substance or norm.26

Antagonistic Citizenship:
According to Solons law, it is a very concrete political situation that iden-
tifies the experience of citizenship and endows it with its profoundly political
meaning. Citizenship is enacted in moments of intense political strife and an-

that the defining principle that emerges from this inversion by no means implies a necessary concep-
tual monopoly and thus does not eliminate other attributes and possibilities being simultaneously
at work.

23 C. Patterson, Athenian Citizenship Law, The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek

Law, eds. M. Gagarin and D. Cohen (Cambridge, 2005), p. 273.

24 For the concept of active and/or activist citizenship, see . Balibar, Droit de cit or Apart-

heid, We, The People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship, trans. J. Swenson (Prince-
ton, N.J. and Oxford, 2004), pp. 31-50; E.F. Isin, Citizenship in Flux: The Figure of the Activist
Citizen, Subjectivity, 29 (2009) pp. 367-388.

25 For the concept of vita activa and its relation to political action, see Hannah Arendts fa-

mous formulation in The Human Condition (Chicago, London, 1958).

26 Tellingly, Solon is also credited as the author of the first Athenian immigration law that

granted the right of citizenship to immigrant craftsmen, in particular to potters from Corinth. With
this law, Solon privileged jus domicili over jus sanguinis. According to Plutarch, Solons law concern-
ing naturalized citizens is a surprising one, because it granted naturalization only to those who had
been permanently exiled from their own country, or who had emigrated with their families to prac-
tice a trade. Solons object here, we are told, was not so much to discourage other types of immigrant
as to invite these particular categories to Athens with the assurance that they could become citizens
there. He also judged that one could safely rely on the loyalty of men who had been compelled to
leave their country, and also of those who had left it with a definitive end in view, see, Plurarch,
Solon, 24.4, pp. 471-473; D. Whitehead, The Ideology of the Athenian Metic (Cambridge, 1977),
pp. 140-147; R. Sealey, How Citizenship and the City Began in Athens, pp. 111-117; J.K. Davis,
Athenian Citizenship: The Descent Group and the Alternatives, Athenian Democracy, pp. 30-31.

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 SOLONIAN CITIZENSHIP: DEMOCRACY, CONFLICT, PARTICIPATION

tagonism. The Solonian law recognizes citizenship as partisanship and rivalry

(taking sides/joining rival parties) in times of discord and sedition, when the
institution of the city becomes the object of disagreement and the political
divisions are played out in a public confrontational manner.
Citizenship entails antagonistic confrontation, involvement in a political
contest, in a struggle between rival parties for preeminence. To be a citizen
means to distinguish between friends and enemies, to join opposing camps,
to chose ones concrete place on a divided political field, to take oppositional
sides on a contested public issue of common interest, and to stake openly
ones position during a disagreement.27 Solons law evokes a conception of
the citizen suited for public conflict when the risks of civic engagement are
significantly higher. Thus, according to the second principle, citizenship is
performed in and as antagonism.
Worth noting here is an important difference with the Aristotelian tra-
dition that theorizes citizenship during normal times, that is, in the ordinary
politics of peace and order. Aristotle famously defined the citizen as he who
partakes () in the deliberative and judicial practices of the city, who
takes part in the power of judge and magistrate, who takes turns in ruling.28
Aristotles citizen exhibits moderation and temperance, is impartial, rules
and is ruled, and seeks to avoid extremes in search for a balance situated
in a middle position between two extremes: the normal self-ruled citizen.
By contrast, Solons law subtracts rule from normalcy to highlight the more
contingent and indeterminate manifestation of citizenship as a public clash
between opposing forces, as dissensus and disagreement. Solons citizen is
disruptive and rebellious: a seditious citizen.29
However, it is critical to stress that Solons definition of citizenship in
terms of antagonism does not suggest in any way a positive axiological en-
dorsement of conflict. There is no hint of a glorification of enmity or struggle
and no aestheticization of political violence. Similarly, no idealizing exaltation
of heroic masculinity appears in this law. It cannot, therefore, be considered
agonistic.30 In fact, it is very likely that Solon held a negative view of stasis,

27 This conception of citizenship anticipates and corresponds to Carl Schmitts famous defi-

nition of the political as the distinction between friend and enemy. It is in this very specific sense
that Solons law inaugurates a decisively political theory of citizenship. Schmitt, The Concept of the
Political, pp. 25-37.

28 Aristotle, Politics, Book III, 1275a-b, 1278a.

29 Loraux, The Divided City, pp. 102-103.

30 Ancient agonism as discussed in A. Kalyvas, The Democratic Narcissus: The Agonism of

the Ancients Compared to that of the (Post) Moderns, Law and Agonistic Politics, ed. A. Schaap
(Aldershot, 2009), pp. 15-42.

25
 ANDREAS KALYVAS

was troubled by it, and with his legislation he sought to find ways to respond
to it.31 I will return to this point in the next section but for now suffice to say
that in one of his most famous verses he warned against the greed of men
who ignore the solemn foundations of Justice and whose actions will bring
revenge upon the whole community:
For it comes upon the entire polis like some relentless wound
Which quickly turns into evil slavery
Which in turn rouses civil strife ( ) and slumbering war

Thus public ruin invades each mans own house

Nor can the outer doors keep it out
But it vaults over the high wall and finds him everywhere
Even if he should flee into the innermost corner of his chamber.32

Participatory Citizenship:
An important implication that follows from the second principle pertains
to the form of Solons law, which is genuinely participatory, albeit in an un-
usual and uncommon fashion. As Plutarch correctly observed, the law indi-
cates that a citizen is one who shares in the experience and consequences of
civil conflict. Solon, he wrote,
wished that a man should not be insensible or indifferent to the common good, ar-
ranging his private affairs securely and glorying in the fact that he has no share in
the distempers and distresses of his country, but should rather espouse promptly the
better and more righteous cause, share its perils () and give it his aid
(), instead of waiting in safety to see what cause prevails.33

Plutarch recognized that the Solonian law on stasis understood participa-

tion in the terms of conflict. It prescribed against privatization and de-polit-
icization during the exceptional occurrence of civil strife and penalized ab-
sence by stipulating participation, on the grounds that it is not fitting in times
of civil strife ( ) to sit without feeling or grief, singing the praises of
your own impassiveness and of the inactive and blessed life, and rejoicing in
the follies of others.34 Gellius similarly acknowledged the singular meaning
of political participation underpinning Solons law. He commented on how
this law as an expression of public concern and civic responsibility because

31
Gellius, The Attic Nights, Book II: 12, pp. 156-157; Loraux, Divided City, p. 103.
32
Solon, Poems, Fragments 17-19, 26-29, Loeb Classical Library, p. 115.

33 Plutarch, Solon, 20.1, pp. 456-457.

34 Id., Precepts of Statecraft, 824 (32), pp. 288-291.

26
 SOLONIAN CITIZENSHIP: DEMOCRACY, CONFLICT, PARTICIPATION

it promoted commitment and dedication to the city in one of its most diffi-
cult moments. Gellius Latin rendition of the law is quite illuminating in this
respect:
If because of strife and disagreement civil dissension (seditio) shall ensue and a
division of the people into two parties, and if for that reason each side, led by their
angry feelings, shall take up arms and fight, then if anyone at that time, and in such
condition of civil discord, shall not ally himself with one or the other faction, but by
himself and apart shall hold aloof from the common calamity of the city, let him de-
prived of his home, his country, and all his property, and be an exile and an outlaw.35

Participation in a stasis means that one should share with and against
others in the common political risks and the calamities of the city. The citys
problems become the citizens problems.36 The law of Solon envisions citi-
zens who partake in the agony and adversities of their city, rather than desert-
ing it by withdrawing into detachment, seeking refuge in the purported safety
of their private space.37 Again, in inverted form, implicit in the very Solonian
law, there is a positive injunction to act on behalf of the good of the city, to
participate, to be present, and get involved in the name of the public good,
the good of our city;38 a good shared and divided, evoked but disputed by
the rival forces.
Therefore, according to the third principle of participatory citizenship, to
be a citizen is to participate in the citys distresses, to take part in the conflict, and
share in the citys dangers in order to assist it in the name of a common good.

Exceptional Citizenship:
Finally, the last principle points at another unique attribute of the citizen,
one that emerges from Solons striking equation of crisis and citizenship. The
law was legislated for exceptional states of conflict, discord, and sedition, that
is, during a domestic crisis. According to Solon, it is during critical times of fac-
tional strife that the meaning and value of citizenship is revealed and not with
ordinary, consensual politics. Solonian citizenship, in other words, is predi-
cated on crisis and devised specifically for crisis. As Cicero fittingly remarked,

35
Gellius, The Attic Nights, Book II: 12, pp. 154-155.
36
I thank Daniel Gamper for making sharper this point.

37 Here, identification with ones city, the political bond itself, is made of (and renewed by) di-

vision and practices of de-identification. As Jonathan Goldstein has correctly observed, the law is in
harmony with other utterances of the Athenian legislator, who believed in the solidarity of the body
politic: no one should escape the consequences of civil ills. Goldstein, Solons Law for an Activist
Citizenry, p. 538. Also, see Manville, The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens, pp. 148-149.

38 Solon, Poems (Loeb Classical Library, 1999), p. 113.

27
 ANDREAS KALYVAS

this is a law about sedition (seditione) that penalizes neutrality in a strife of par-
ties.39 To put it in a more fashionable language and perhaps also more timely,
the truth of citizenship as partisanship is manifested in exceptional moments,
when divisions are politicized, a split becomes public, and existing norms and
procedures are contested by political conflict.40 The exception is the occasion
for and the disclosure of citizenship. The great novelty of Solon, therefore,
is that he treats citizenship as a borderline concept located at the margins of
normal politics, representing a threshold, a division and a dispute, from which
the meaning and logic of political action become fully exposed.
According to this fourth principle of exceptional citizenship, citizen is s/
he who participates actively in a state of exception.
Solons law focuses on crisis rather than order, on discord rather than
concord, on discontinuity rather than continuity. Exceptional citizenship,
thus, entails involvement in an urgent situation, acting during an exception,
outside the repetition and the routine of the normal instituted order.41
Now, Solons law against neutrality and apathy during a stasis consists of
four intrinsic political principles, which are constitutive of a singular concept
of citizenship. They also determine its democratic content.42 The Solonian
law designates the citizen adversarially, as someone who has a part in the
life of the city if one decides to take part in a sedition over the good of ones
political community. This antagonistic logic is manifested in a crisis, during
a stasis. Discord is not a norm; it looks more like an exception. By asking all
citizens to join the dispute, Solons law democratizes the exception. Demo-
cratic participation is predicated on the involvement of all in an intense pub-
lic quarrel between friends and enemies. The law expands democratic action
to the spaces of crisis, in times of conflict. One becomes a citizen by affirming
ones commitment to the common good, however imagined or experienced
by the opposing parties, in a divisive struggle. Respectively, according to this
Solonian civic logic, one who opts for ones own private security and tran-
quility by deserting the public sphere to escape the crisis ignores the common
good not a citizen, but an .43

39
Cicero, Letters to Atticus, Letter 190 (X.1.2), pp. 106-107.
40
M.I. Finley, Athenian Demagogues, pp. 167-168.

41 Loraux, Divided City, p. 103.

42 As Carlos Forment has correctly reminded me, Solons law was the act of a single legislator, who

handed it down to the city. Forment is right to argue that the democratic content of the law contradicts
its legal origins as the act of one person/lawgiver. I thank Forment for his insightful comment, which
exposes the incomplete democratic character of Solons law. For the key importance of democratic
foundings, see A. Kalyvas, The Politics of the Extraordinary: Weber, Schmitt, Arendt (Cambridge, 2008).

43 Loraux, Divided City, p. 103.

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 SOLONIAN CITIZENSHIP: DEMOCRACY, CONFLICT, PARTICIPATION

Stasis and Democracy

A distinctive feature of Solons law is the advocacy of democratic par-

ticipation and antagonistic rivalry as the response to the problem of stasis.
As already mentioned, Solon did not idealize civil strife for its own sake. It
is likely that his law against neutrality and apathy had a pragmatic intent to
overcome the dangers of public discord and to terminate domestic crisis. In
that sense, the law seems intended as a reaction to the challenges of intense
political conflict. Most importantly, by prescribing the involvement of all cit-
izens in a stasis, by making the quality of citizenship to depend on factional
strife, Solons law suggests that the broadening of participation in a conflict
will eventually end the conflict. To put it more succinctly, for Solon, democ-
racy is the solution to conflict.
It is precisely this assumption that since antiquity made the law so con-
troversial.44 It sounds counter-intuitive, contradictory, and impractical. Is the
remedy better than the illness? Conflict was largely perceived as an expres-
sion of a democratic vice, specific to this regime form, the symptom of a
democratic disease. Solons law does not specify how by simply widening the
scope of the conflict the crisis will be successfully eliminated. It is only fair to
object that widespread partisanship will intensify the conflict and exasperate
the disagreement. Antagonistic partisanship might lead to revenge, cruelty,
bloodshed, violence, and destroy the very unity of the city. With Solons law,
stasis could well end in a radical, irreversible split whereby the city is violently
cut into two, doubled, giving birth to two hostile cities.45
Plutarchs critique of the law focused on this threat. He repeatedly ex-
pressed surprise at how paradoxical () the law was, how ridiculous
() and absurd ().46 He treated it as unnatural ( ), the
symptom of a sick body politic ( ) that negates peace, security,
and concord.47 Simply put, it undermines the very conditions for political
unity and stability. Plutarch traced the source the laws absurdity to an ir-
rational and misguided confidence that the disease of civil strife could be
cured by itself. He strongly refuted this claim. For in a body afflicted with
disease, he claimed, the beginning of a change to health does not come from

44 C. Gilliard, Quelques rformes de Solon (Lausanne, 1907), p. 292; Loraux, The Divided

City, pp. 102-103.

45 I wish to thank Daniel Gamper, Tracy Strong, and Ivor Chipkin for pressing me on this

important point. For an informed discussion, see ibid., pp. 16-26, 94-98, 101, 103.

46 Plutarch, Solon, 20.1-2, p. 45; Id., Precepts of Statecraft, 824A (32), p. 289; Id., The Divine

Vengeance, 550C, 193.

47 Id., Precepts of Statecraft, 824C (32), p. 291.

29
 ANDREAS KALYVAS

the diseased part, but it comes when the condition in the healthy parts gains
strength.48 Civil strife cannot heal itself and a people afflicted with this dis-
ease cannot treat themselves back to health. For Plutarch, there is no demo-
cratic cure to stasis.
Instead, he appealed to a force from the outside, an external necessity
( ) that intervenes and compels forcibly the city back to order.
Such a political force chastises the people, making them quiet and tranquil.49
Directed against civil strife, it aims to eliminate it with a strong, permanent,
and permeating admixture of sanity and soundness, which flows from the
men of understanding and permeates the part that is diseased.50 Plutarch
argued for a superior, more effective solution to the problem of discord and
sedition than Solons. He advocated the intervention of men of higher wisdom
and standing, who stay outside the conflict, neutral and impartial, joining nei-
ther party but conversing with both, and thus acting as a common partisan of
all by coming to their aid.51 For Plutarch, the solution to a stasis is external
and it presupposes political detachment, symbolic authority, civic distance,
not sharing in the common misfortunes, but sympathizing with all.
Plutarchs objections pose a serious challenge to Solons law. They inter-
rogate democratic participation as an appropriate solution. As for conflict,
Plutarch considered it as the worst ill that can befall the political body, an evil
capable of utterly destroying the city. This interpretation of stasis is not novel
and Plutarch renews a Platonic reading. However, he brings an imperial sen-
sibility that reflects the new Roman expansionist ideology of peace and order.
The values of harmony and concord, the unity under the imperial monarchy
are elevated as central in Plutarchs political thought and inform his objec-
tions. This critique cannot be easily dismissed. Even if Plutarchs assumptions
were politically motivated, animated by the monarchical model of imperial
rule, his objections express a legitimate concern at the seemingly unruly and
destructive nature of the Solonian concept of citizenship.
Gellius, a century later, disagreed. Although he conceded that, at first
sight the law seems unfair and unjust, in reality, he asserted, and on closer
examination, is found to be altogether helpful and salutary. Solons law, he
insisted was the result of careful thought and consideration, designed not
to increase but to terminate dissension and for restoring harmony.52 Gel-

48
Plutarch , Precepts of Statecraft, 824B (32), p. 289.
49
Id., Precepts of Statecraft, 824A-B (32), p. 289.

50 Id., Precepts of Statecraft, 824A (32), p. 289.

51 Id., Precepts of Statecraft, 824C (32), p. 291.

52 Gellius, The Attic Nights, Book II: 12.1-6, pp. 155, 157.

30
 SOLONIAN CITIZENSHIP: DEMOCRACY, CONFLICT, PARTICIPATION

lius, contrary to Plutarch, saw in the law an ingenious mechanism of conflict

resolution. The juridical norm that Solon created, the result of pragmatic
reason, judgment, and prudence, was intended to channel conflict, overcome
strife, and end the crisis. According to Gellius, Solon discovered that partici-
pation in a stasis increases the probability of a peaceful return to order.
For Gellius, the law, by stipulating general partisanship, the involvement
of all, it also induces the active participation of all good men, men of more
than ordinary influence to enter the public, take part, join sides, and ally
themselves with one or the other faction.53 Absent this law, he asserted, the
wise few are inclined to remain inactive and uninvolved, to abandon the
aroused and frenzied people, and let the opposing parties destroy each oth-
er.54 According to Gellius interpretation, the addressees of the law are pre-
cisely Plutarchs men of influence and high standing, who otherwise might
avoid the dispute and keep out of the civic contest. Solons law was intended
for a small-enlightened elite and not for the many:
For, if all good men, who have been unequal to checking the dissension at the
outset, do not abandon the aroused and frenzied people, but divide and ally them-
selves with one or another action, then the result will be, that when they have become
members of the two opposing parties, and being men of more than ordinary influ-
ence, have begun to guide and direct those parties, harmony can best be restored
and established through the efforts of such men, controlling and soothing as they
will be the members of their respective factions, and desiring to reconcile rather than
destroy their opponents.55

It is interesting to note that like Plutarch, Gellius favors the role of the few
in overcoming factional strife thus ignoring the democratic and participatory
implications of Solons law. Despite their disagreement on the effectiveness of
the law, both authors concur that elite intervention is a necessary and suffi-
cient factor for the peaceful termination of civil conflict and political discord.
They are also of the same opinion that concord, harmony, and order are the
highest principles of political life. Their overlapping views, however, miss al-
together an important component of Solons legislation. By reducing the law
to a purely legal devise for conflict resolution, they disregard a key Solonian
tenet, namely that it is the duty of all citizens to partake in civil strife. As a
consequence of this omission, Plutarch and Gellius overlook the participatory
aspect of the law and disassociate it from citizenship. They propose a mechan-

53
Id., The Attic Nights, Book II: 12.3-5, p. 157.
54
Id., The Attic Nights, Book II: 12.4, 6, pp. 157-159.

55 Id., The Attic Nights, Book II: 12.4, p. 157.

31
 ANDREAS KALYVAS

ical and instrumental reading according to which the law is a formal means,
a juridical and institutional method, for the management and containment of
conflict and the realization of the superior ends of peace, stability, harmony,
and security. In their critical engagement, Solons law is converted into an ab-
stract (failed or successful) procedure of administration and government that
promotes the preeminence of order and the illegitimacy of civil strife.

Is there a way to reconcile the four principles of democratic citizen-

ship with the demands of conflict resolution so that Solons law can avoid
Plutarchs criticisms without being reduced to Gellius elitist solution?56
Given the fact that Solon did not glorify conflict for its own sake, the
crucial element to consider is the laws assumption that the indifference and
apathy of citizens during a civil strife preclude its timely conclusion. This
assumption suggests that the chief obstacle for ending a conflict is the small
number of those involved in the discord. If this is the case, then it follows that
for Solon a stasis between the few is more likely to result in an endless cycle of
violence and bloodshed than a stasis among the many. It is likely it will harm
the city more. One plausible explanation as to why a conflict of few might
lead to unrestricted extreme aggression detrimental to the city is that the few
can operate without constraints, uninhibited from any limitations that the
participation of the many could impose on them.57 But what kind of limits
does the civic engagement of the many impose on the few and why? It could
be that the few often are minorities who usurp a public dispute to satisfy their
own ends and promote their interests by any means, willing to resolve their
competing differences with the city as their trophy. The belief that as soon
as they have defeated and eliminated their opponents they can seize power
and enforce their rule over a passive population of neutral private observ-
ers is most likely to encourage aggression on their part because it increases
the chances of their success. For Solon, the conflict is exasperated when the
many let few combatants to fight out the dispute amongst themselves only
to submit afterwards to the victorious party. Respectively, citizens apathy
and neutrality during a sedition could turn them into victims of those who
monopolize the public sphere during a tumult to advance their own plans
and determine the future outcome at the detriment of the many. By shunning

56 I follow here the general lines of Grotes interpretation, although I depart from his claim

that Solons law was meant solely to prevent tyrannical usurpations of power and instead I empha-
size the democratic aspects of this law. Grote, History of Greece, Vol. III, pp. 143-145.

57 Aristotle reports that according to Solon always the rich are the cause of stasis, Aristotle,

Constitution of Athens, 6.1, p. 23.

32
 SOLONIAN CITIZENSHIP: DEMOCRACY, CONFLICT, PARTICIPATION

away from the stasis, the many will fail to have any say in the final outcome,
which they will have to passively accept by giving in to the victors wishes.
Solons law indicates that the more participation there is in a crisis, the
more likely the crisis will be resolved. Conflict does indeed provide a remedy
to conflict and the involvement and presence of citizens strengthens the pos-
sibility of peace. If, for instance, the many decide to participate in the fight,
the few could be held accountable, their ambition checked, and the final
outcome decided by the active and partisan involvement of all. By publicly
declaring their support for one or the other of the rival parties and siding
accordingly, the many are in the position to compel the few to readjust their
aims and strategies with respect to the pressure and demands of all those
present who have joined with them. Broadly speaking, popular participation
in a civil strife lends itself to two types of intervention. On the one hand, if
popular support is evenly distributed between the contending parties, the
many will be less prone to opt for an open confrontation against each other
and stake their lives, freedoms, and interests on a brutal fight with uncertain
outcomes. Instead, they can seek to resolve the conflict with a fair public
compromise.58 On the other hand, if the balance of power is asymmetrical,
then the minority might feel compelled to back down, renounce its claims
and aspirations, seek a pragmatic accommodation with the majority that will
secure some of its interests, and wait for another day to fight under more ad-
vantageous conditions. Either way, for Solon, the sooner the many decide to
join the fight and take part in the discord, the faster the stasis is likely to end.
Democratic participation and antagonistic partisanship, thus, become the
main condition for a timely resolution of the conflict and the renewal of the
political bond. As Nicolet Loraux notes, when stasis arises, everyone must
take a side, for that is the only way to recreate a totality out of the divided
city that is, through the remainderless engagement of all its members and
the only way to glue the antagonistic halves back together.59
From the perspective of Solonian citizenship, the unity of the democratic
city is constructed, negotiated, and affirmed in the instability and unpredict-
ability of disagreement, dissensus, and conflict.60 Engaging in sedition and
becoming a partisan do not only make the citizen; they also create a demo-
cratic city out of oppositional and antagonistic relations. Hence, an open and

58 This is an instance of the reaffirmation of the political bond: association through internal

conflict and self-laceration.

59 Loraux, Divided City, pp. 103, 67.

60 Ibid., pp. 106-108; Ch. Mouffe, Democratic Citizenship and the Political Community, The

Return of the Political (London, 1993), p. 84.

33
 ANDREAS KALYVAS

inclusive civil strife becomes the condition of possibility for a democratic

order always revisable, provisional, and subject to political contestation.

Implications

This final section is a brief exposition of some preliminary reflections on

the broader implications of Solons law as reconstructed in the first section.
When it comes to questions of membership and inclusion, the law of
Solon destabilizes certain modern notions of citizenship as those based on
pre-political criteria of ethnic and national belonging that tend to attach the
citizen into either a formal juridical status of distinction or a particular sub-
stantive identity. Also, this law interrogates the equation of citizenship with
the ritual of electoral politics and the formalism of institutional representa-
tion, and departs from mediated and passive forms of citizenship, which ex-
cuse and encourage indolence and meekness in periods of distress by desert-
ing the public realm and thus abandoning the city to either the repressive
mechanisms of the modern state and/or the decisions of a select few. The
Solonian law exposes political participation to critical moments of strife and
sedition and it is in these extreme cases of domestic emergencies that it dis-
covers the qualities of the democratic citizen.
This brings me to one last observation, related to the history of political
ideas and the not so recent revival of neo-Roman political theory. The law of
Solon indicates a fundamental, almost irreconcilable difference between the
democratic culture of Athens and that of republican Rome. Solonian citizen-
ship provides a unique vantage point to reconsider the broader relationship
between the two (ancient) regimes. It encourages a comparison between de-
mocracy and republicanism.61
The first difference to notice is that whereas democratic Athens in crit-
ical moments of internal strife and division upheld the rule of law and the
equality of civic participation, the Roman republic took the risk to suspend
rights and protections by temporarily resurrecting powers that ominously
resembled those traditionally associated with kingship.62 For most of the re-

61 For elements of such a comparison, see A. Kalyvas, The Tyranny of Dictatorship: When the

Greek Tyrant met the Roman Dictator, Political Theory, 35:4 (2007).

62 Cicero, The Republic, Book I: 40.63; Book II: 32.56 (Loeb Classical Library), pp. 95, 168-

169; Id., Philippic, I: 1.3 (Loeb Classical Library), pp. 22-23; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman
Antiquities, Book X: 24 (Loeb Classical Library), pp. 246-247; Dio Cassius, Roman History, Book
IV (Zonaras, 7:13) (Loeb Classical Library), pp. 106-107; Appian, The Civil Wars, Book I: 99 (Loeb
Classical Library), pp. 182-185; Strabo, Geography, Book VI: 1.3 (Loeb Classical Library), p. 11; N.

34
 SOLONIAN CITIZENSHIP: DEMOCRACY, CONFLICT, PARTICIPATION

publics life span, in times of sedition and factional strife, the Romans revert-
ed to the exceptional powers of a dictator with absolute powers to impose
order and peace (dictatura seditionis sedandae).63 Athenian democracy, by
contrast, did not have provisions in the constitution for dealing with emer-
gencies and accidents.64 According to the Solonian law, all citizens could
join the strife and decide it among themselves, without having recourse to
a higher norm suspending freedoms and protections. This happened quite
frequently in ancient Greek political history. According to Plato and Aris-
totle, for instance, it happened all too often, as they viewed stasis endemic
to and symptomatic of the democratic city.65 Whereas in the first case the
crisis was resolved through a temporary increase of executive power and its
discretionary prerogatives (bordering on monarchy) with the intention to re-
press conflict and rebellion, in the second instance the resolution of the crisis
was sought through increased political participation in civil conflict. For do-
mestic emergencies the Solonian law prescribed participation, antagonism,
and the civic presence of All, while the Roman institution of dictatorship
legislated the militarization of politics, privatization, and the discretionary
powers of the One.66 Republicanism sought to depoliticize domestic con-
flict; democracy over-politicized it.

Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, I:34, p. 75; A. Schwegler, Die Dictatur als
mittelstufe zwischen Knigtum und Consulat, Rmische Geschichte, Vol. II (Tbingen, 1856), pp.
92-95; Th. Mommsen, Le droit public romain Vol. III (Paris, 1894), pp. 191-197; C. Rossiter, Constitu-
tional Dictatorship. Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies (New Brunswick, NJ, 2004), p. 17.

63 Cicero, The Laws, Book III: 3.9 (Loeb Classical Library), p. 467; The Digest of Justinian,

Book I: 2, p. 5; Polybius, Histories, Book III: 82.7-82-9 (Loeb Classical Library), p. 213; Livy,
History of Rome, Book II: 1.86-7 (Loeb Classical Library), p. 277; Book III: 29.2-3, p. 99; Book V:
9.6, p. 33; F. Frost Abbot, A History and Description of Roman Political Institutions (Boston, 1901),
pp. 153, 166, 168; C.W.Keyes, The Constitutional Position of the Roman Dictatorship, Studies
in Philology, 14:4 (1917) pp. 298-305; C. Schmitt, Die Dictatur: Von den Anfngen des modernen
Souvernittsgedanken bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf (Berlin, 1994, 1921); F.E. Adcock, Ro-
man Political Ideas and Practice (Ann Arbor, 1959), p. 9; A. Kaplan, Dictatorships and Ultimate
Degrees in the Early Roman Republic 501-201 BC (New York, 1977), p. 4; C. Nicolet, Dictatorship
in Rome, eds. P. Baehr and M. Richter, Dictatorship in History and Theory. Bonapartism, Caesarism,
and Totalitarianism (Cambridge, 2004).

64 R.J. Bonner, Emergency Government in Rome and Athens The Classical Journal, 18:3

(1922) p. 144; Saint-Bonnet, Ltat dexception (Paris, 2001), pp. 45-46.

65 Plato, The Republic, Book VIII; Aristotle, Politics (Loeb Classical Library), 1317a; 1281a-

2a; 1273b-4a; 1304a-b. Since Plato and Aristotle, it has become a classical trope of anti-democratic
discourses (republican, liberal, or conservative) to indict democracys natural tendencies for con-
flict, factionalism, tumult, instability, volatility, and as a consequence, for its turbulent, ephemeral
existence. This paper suggests that what has been traditionally considered a vice of democracy
should instead be viewed as its great virtue.

66 Extremely telling for this precise reason is Plutarchs Roman critique of Solons law against

neutrality, in the name of harmony, consensus, and order. Plutarch, Precepts of Statecraft, 824b-c,
pp. 288-291.

35
 ANDREAS KALYVAS

For democratic Athens, thus, the problem of political conflict and disa-
greement was not dealt through an increase and concentration of executive
powers, nor with extraordinary commissions and delegations of military and
coercive force. Against the Roman dictatorial remedy of militarizing and de-
politicizing the emergency, that is, by repressing and thus disavowing strife,
the Solonian law mandates antagonistic commitment, political participation,
the citizens taking sides, making a stance against others, and deciding their
concrete presence in the civic realm during the stasis. It prescribes a surplus
of public engagement, the making of new political subjectivities, defined by
distinct civic duties and responsibilities. For the law, it is only the citizens
themselves who can and should save the city. It is with this kind of citizenship
that democracy contaminates the state of exception, opening the emergency
to a participatory civic confrontation.

To conclude: Solons law against neutrality and apathy in special cases of

civil strife indicates that a democratic remedy to the democratic disease
of dissension and tumult, to the crisis itself, is more participation, presence,
and discord and not less, as the ancient Romans and their modern liberal
epigones erroneously thought.67

67 See for instance the republican-liberal constitution of the Unites States, which in article

1:9.2 declares the suspension of the habeas corpus in cases of rebellion.

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