ABSTRACT
Dallmayr describes the ethical quality of public space and the public sphere. Citizens become citizens by virtue of public space. The question of public space is not simply a matter of physical or geometrical extension; it shares the awe surrounding spatiality. Whenever individual or corporate agents seek to seize or appropriate the “empty” space of the public center, democratic citizenship vanishes, and with it democracy itself. Dallmayr explains why dealing with the “public” is always challenging, as it means participating in a “happening” stretching the individual beyond himself. In Heideggerian language, the happening occurs at the edge of human self-interest, or at the edge of the Platonic “cave.” Despite secularization, commercialization, and the rise of scientism and technology, the public has lived on. However, due to democracy’s “fugitive character”, it has slipped in the direction of appropriation, ownership, and embodiment of public “things”. Neoliberal strategy privatizes schools, prisons, military forces, and the White House, undermining democracy and hollowing it out from within; citizens are viewed as resources rather than as subjects of integrity. What follows from these considerations is a lesson about public agency: citizens are not “sovereign” masters, but participants in the multilayered “happening” of public spatiality.
