ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the topic of planetary citizenship in terms of the virtues of friendship and phronesis. The chapter explains Aristotle's practical science of politics in which he analyses different constitutional forms. This return involves also a consideration of the actually existing constitution of Athenian democracy. The chapter explores the strands of political theory concerned with deliberative democracy and the public sphere. Today, digitalised media could provide analogical services to citizens of the planet. They could effect what was impossible in the age of print, namely, education regarding the nature of our emergent planetary community and the circulation to all citizens, simultaneously and speedily, of factual knowledge of events and developments in that community. A plethora of cultural, political and economic changes effected in a dialectical relationship with the nurturing of a shared sense, or imagining of, a planet-wide political community will be needed if capitalism is to be displaced by socialism rather than barbarism.
