On Political Edification, Eloquence and Memory

Citizenship is not terra incognita for political science, but it is not home ground either. Citizenship is more art than science, more practice than theory, and in the education of citizens, political science is subject to two obvious limitations. In the first place, the basic character of citizens is formed before they become students of political science and even before they are taught civics by the schools. The first principles by which they perceive the world and relate to others already have been shaped by the family, by the laws and by early education generally. In that sense, political science influences citizens most profoundly when it teaches their teachers, although in a more superficial way political science can and does instruct citizens themselves. Second, as Aristotle taught us, civic virtue is not identical with human goodness, and citizenship is a questionable excellence. The art of citizenship is specific to and limited by the regime in which the citizen is to practice it. In the ordinary sense of the term, a good citizen accepts the laws and “works within the system,” and even if we argue that citizens should pursue ends which are universal and by nature, citizenship requires them to do so in ways which are adapted to a particular people, place and time.