BETWEEN THE AGORA AND THE ALGORITHM: A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY AND THE OCCUPATION OF THE PUBLIC SPACE IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

This article offers a philosophical examination of the transformations of liberal-pluralist democracy and of the occupation of the public space in the face of the growing algorithmic mediation and artificial intelligence. Departing from the historical trajectory that runs from the Greek Agora to the algorithm and to the projected horizon of Artificial Superintelligence, it argues that the migration of the public space from physical co-presence to private informational architectures constitutes not a mere technical evolution but an ontopolitical transformation of the conditions of appearance of the political. Drawing on Hannah Arendt, for whom politics is realised in appearance, plurality, and unpredictable action, and against the backdrop of the Habermasian ideal of procedural legitimacy, it maintains that the algorithmic ordering of visibility shifts the foundation of public discourse from rational deliberation to measurable performativity oriented by engagement metrics. Mobilising the notions of symbolic power (Bourdieu) and surveillance capitalism (Zuboff), the text analyses how the automated curation of content fragments the common horizon into echo chambers and processes of cyberbalkanization, corroding the distinction between pluralism and fragmentation that sustains the liberal model. It concludes that algorithms do not impose an external crisis but exploit and amplify normative tensions already internal to liberal democracy, demanding the reinvention of an ethics of deliberation grounded in transparency, accountability, and inclusion, capable of preserving the public space as a place of liberty, plurality, and reciprocal recognition.