This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC wreath lectures. This lecture in the series

Government and the Governed, given by Douglas Was, was originally broadcast in 1983.

When Aristotle stated that man is by nature a political animal, he was not only seeking to

distinguish humanity from the lower animals, he was asserting the importance of the

state, or as we might say, government in the human condition. And when in book three of the

politics, he examines what elements go to determine the nature of being a citizen, he explicitly

identifies participation in giving judgment. This concept of participation in government

is one which ran through a great deal of Athenian political thought and action.

The Greek city state, the Polis,

was small enough to permit all free men to share in the taking of political decisions.

And it was an important duty laid upon the citizen to accept the

responsibility that this entailed. Representative government, as we know it today, would have been a

peculiar, indeed a questionable idea. Of course, offices of state existed in Athens, and their holders

had a measure of delegated discretion.

But they were often filled by lot,

and were in any case subject to a degree of popular oversight in their daily actions,

which governments today would find hard to stomach.

The size alone of the modern state rules out the Athenian model as one we should try to copy,

even if we wanted to.

Debate can only be organised in an assembly of a few hundred people,

and decisions must be entrusted to an even smaller number.

And a good thing, too, say some.

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