Idiot (Athenian democracy)

An idiot in Athenian democracy was someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private--as opposed to public--affairs. Idiocy was the natural state of ignorance into which all persons were born and its opposite, citizenship, was effected through formalized education. In Athenian democracy, idiots were born and citizens were made through education (although citizenship was also largely hereditary).

Today, educators and political scientists increasingly resurrect this terminology's etymological origins in order to discuss a growing major problem with modern American republican democracy: self-centeredness. They do so in order to understand the major modern problem in American participatory government in apathy in distinguishing between its underlying causes: idiocy (self-centeredness) and alienation.

History and etymology

Main article: Idiot

From Idiot:

"Idiot" originally referred to "layman, person lacking professional skill", "person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning". Declining to take part in public life, such as democratic government of the polis (city state), such as the Athenian democracy, was considered dishonorable. "Idiots" were seen as having bad judgment in public and political matters. Over time, the term "idiot" shifted away from its original connotation of selfishness and came to refer to individuals with overall bad judgment–individuals who are "stupid". In modern English usage, the terms "idiot" and "idiocy" describe an extreme folly or stupidity, and its symptoms (foolish or stupid utterance or deed). In psychology, it is a historical term for the state or condition now called profound mental retardation.

Idiot as a word derived from the Greek ἰδιώτης, idiōtēs ("person lacking professional skill," "a private citizen," "individual"), from ἴδιος, idios ("private," "one's own"). In Latin the word idiota ("ordinary person, layman") preceded the Late Latin meaning "uneducated or ignorant person." Its modern meaning and form dates back to Middle English around the year 1300, from the Old French idiote ("uneducated or ignorant person"). The related word idiocy dates to 1487 and may have been analogously modeled on the words prophet and prophecy. The word has cognates in many other languages.

Modern Usage

While the term idiot or the state of idiocy largely denotes to a modern audience a mentally deficient person or someone who acts in a foolish, self-defeating, or counterproductive way (see Idiot (Person)), American civics and social studies educators increasingly resurrect its etymological origins in order to frame and discuss one major problem with modern American republican democracy: self-centeredness.

Walter C. Parker writes in Phi Delta Kappan (January 2005):

"Idiocy shares with idiom and idiosyncratic the root idios, which means private, separate, self-centered -- selfish. 'Idiotic' was in the Greek context a term of reproach. When a person's behavior became idiotic--concerned myopically with private things and unmindful of common things--then the person was believed to be like a rudderless ship, without consequence save for the danger it posed to others. This meaning of idiocy achieves its force when contrasted with polites (citizens) or public. Here we have a powerful opposition: the private individual versus the public citizen...An idiot is one whose self-centeredness undermines his or her citizen identity, causing it to wither or never to take root in the first place. Private gain is the goal, and the community had better not get in the way. An idiot is suicidal in a certain way, definitely self-defeating, for the idiot does not know that privacy and individual autonomy are entirely dependent on the community. As Aristotle wrote, 'Individuals are so many parts all equally depending on the whole which alone can bring self-sufficiency.' Idiots do not take part in public life; they do not have a public life. In this sense, idiots are immature in the most fundamental way. Their lives are out of balance, disoriented, untethered, and unrealized. Tragically, idiots have not yet met the challenge of 'puberty,' which is the transition to public life."

Parker continues in quoting former Missoula, Montana mayor Daniel Kemmis's The Good City and the Good Life to provide an instructive example for how the word citizen has become muddied in being equated to taxpayer which actually mean two entirely different things:

"People who customarily refer to themselves as taxpayers are not even remotely related to democratic citizens. Yet this is precisely the word that now regularly holds the place which in a true democracy would be occupied by 'citizens.' Taxpayers bear a dual relationship to government, neither half of which has anything at all to do with democracy. Taxpayers pay tribute to the government, and they receive services from it. So does every subject of a totalitarian regime. What taxpayers do not do, and what people who call themselves taxpayers have long since stopped even imagining themselves doing, is governing. In a democracy, by the very meaning of the word, the people govern."

Modern American civics and social studies educators and politicians increasingly use this terminology to describe with derision the American body politic and electorate in order to create civic dialogue about the causes of modern American self-centeredness that threaten the society as a whole.

Harvard's Kennedy School of Government found with their Vanishing Voter Project (2000) that of the 100 million eligible voters who did not vote in that election, 4 in 10 nonvoters did not vote because "they care little about politics and public affairs" (contrary to the conventional wisdom about apathetic voters who are disaffected voters due to alienation caused by to corruption in government and elections, these voters simply do not see how government or public matters affect them and are idiots in the Classical Greek sense). Idiocy, indeed, is a growing problem in American politics.

See also

• Ignorance
• Apathy
• Bread and Circuses

External links

• "Teaching Against Idiocy" Phi Delta Kappan Magazine
• "Teaching Against Idiocy" Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC)
• Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government's Shorenstein's Center's Vanishing Voter Project's Election 2000 Reports
• Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government's Shorenstein's Center's Vanishing Voter Project's September 2002 Summary Report: "The Vanishing Voter: Public Involvement in an Age of Uncertainty"