Reseña

The author has carried out a historical-sociological study to compare features of democracy in ancient Greece with the resurgence of the model in the modern era of the seventeenth century, beginning with the thought of Baruch Spinoza. Although these were very different periods and contexts in which concepts may hold distinct meanings, it is worth recalling what Benjamin Constant once affirmed: “Athens was the one which most resembles the modern ones”.
Both in Antiquity and in Modern times, the democratic model has had its great successes and failures, its lights and shadows. While it remains a preferable system compared to the dictatorship of an individual or the oligarchies of powerful groups, it can also become a model where freedom is suppressed and the interests of a few prevail over those of the majority.
Here, a fundamental feature is highlighted: the freedom of every individual to think and to express themselves. The struggle is carried over into the ideological and political arena, where many groups seek to impose a post-truth outlook on the population’s mind as a distortion of reality.
Finally, the work revisits the proposal of deliberative democracy.