ABSTRACT
The view of public space common to the "republican virtue" or "civic virtue" tradition is described as the "agonistic" one and the thought of Hannah Arendt be the main point of reference. Hannah Arendt is the central political thinker of this century whose work has reminded us with great poignancy of the “lost treasures” of our tradition of political thought, and specifically of the “loss” of public space, of der öffentliche Raum, under conditions of modernity. In accordance with essentialist assumptions, “public space” is defined either as that space in which only a certain type of activity, namely action as opposed to work or labor, takes place or it is delimited from other “social” spheres with reference to the substantive content of the public dialogue. When compared to Hannah Arend’s reflections, the advantage of the liberal concept of public space is that the link between power, legitimacy and public discourse is made most explicit by it.
