This article examines the issue of present-day participation and political action in light of the concepts that originated with the republican tradition. Our main concern is how the boundaries that separate the public world from the private world are drawn in contemporary societies. Two problems deserve special attention: the issue of apathy and loneliness of citizens who live in peripheral democratic societies, and the excesses committed by those who adopt the model of action derived from revolutionary Jacobinism.
republicanism; apathy; Jacobinism; public; private