Con người do đó có thể đạt được sự hoàn hảo về đạo đức chỉ trong Polis. Trong lĩnh vực công cộng của Polis, công dân đến với nhau để thảo luận về ý nghĩa của cuộc sống tốt đẹp và cuộc tranh luận chính trị và cuộc sống riêng tư phải được thực hiện. | 15 The cartography of citizenship with others or who does not need to because he is self-sufficient is no part of a city-state - he is either a beast or a god . Human beings could thus achieve moral perfection only within the polis. In the public arena of the polis citizens came together to discuss the meaning of the good life and to debate how politics and the private life ought to be conducted. The political was the koinon the common that applied to and concerned everybody. In fact according to Maier 1988 p. 13 the word koinon was so closely connected with the political association of free and equal citizens that it often meant the opposite of despotic and oligarchic forms of government. Thus the process of broadening the oligarchy was equated with making it more political. But the idyllic picture of the polis should not lead us to overlook that political participation was confined to Athenian adult males almost all of Athenian descent. Slaves metics and women did not have a share in the offices and honours of the state. Nor should the preceding discussion lead us to assume that there existed a uniform understanding of citizenship in ancient Greece. Aristotle 1948 p. 1274 himself disclosed this by stating the nature of citizenship . is a question which is often disputed there is no general agreement on a single definition . In Sparta for example citizenship did not imply democracy as it did in the Athenian city-state. The citizens of Sparta did not enjoy the freedom to participate in self-government. Instead they were required to conform to the requirements of a highly disciplined society and to display militaristic loyalty. Indeed Athenians always took such pride of their poỉiteuma which had institutionalised rule by the people that is full participation by the citizenry in the popular assembly that regarded oligarchies monarchies and aristocracies as inferior forms of government. True no one can argue that the assembly s decisions were always correct. .
