Cité, démocratie et écriture. Histoire de l'alphabétisation d'Athènes à l'époque classique. (original) (raw)
in : Faraguna, M., Archives and Archival Documents in Ancient Societies. Trieste 30 september-1 october 2011, Legal Documents in Ancient Societies IV, Archives and Archival Documents in Ancient Societies, Trieste, 2013, 107-125
In an article published in 1987, «Cities of reason», Oswyn Murray investigated the level of rationality reached by the Greek polis. His conclusion was definitive. He asserted that the Greek city was a city of reason because the Greek man was a political animal. Since Homeric times, whenever it was, this true nature of the Greek polis was still the same. Nonetheless, he considered that around 400 B.C ., in Athens, the customary democracy had given way to a constitutional democracy, a change accompanied by a transition from an oral culture to a written one. Although he did not dwell on the relations between modes of comunication and political institutions, the author thus noticed an evolution. Without underestimating the general debate which opposes Max Weber’s supporters — Greek cities have invented the political sphere as such since they considered it as distinct and autonomous — to Émile Durkheim’s — it is the religious sphere, and not the political one, which prevails in the Greek societies —, historians seem to have overlooked the importance of archival practices for the level of rationality of the Greek civic organization. Nonetheless, the information about the Athenian case is abundant on this theme. Considering the spatial dimension of the political sphere, through the different kinds of associations, to use N.F. Jones’ term, seems to indicate that the civic institutions’ rational way of functioning in the classical period relied significantly on the existence of archives, both central and peripheral.