Citizenship

Citizenship consists in sharing a political community, and enjoying the benefits and assuming the political responsibilities that give effect to this experience of shared political community. If the purpose of political philosophy is to provide a principled account of the nature and appropriate boundaries of political community, then it makes sense to say that the tradition of political philosophy from Aristotle to the present is more or less defined by a tradition of reflection on the normative foundations of citizenship. In an important sense, then, the whole history of political philosophy offers a continuing reflection on and dialogue about the nature of citizenship, and it is not clear that one can give a full report on the history of reflection about citizenship with anything less than a thorough and comprehensive account of the history of political philosophy in its totality. This is impossible here, and therefore a short summary of basic themes in the tradition of political philosophy, and its relation to thinking concerning the meaning of citizenship, will have to suffice.