Rethinking Ethical-Political Education by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030495244
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

II. Deliberative Democracy Transcends the Liberal-Republican Dichotomy

The preconditions of deliberative politics are found in Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas 1981/1988), where he argues that every factual proposition presupposes ideal claims regarding truth , rightness and authenticity (see FG 43). It is this counterfactual aspect of facticity that explains the original German title of Between Facts and Norms , namely Facticity and Validity. Only the latter distinction enables a radical critique of what in fact is recognized as valid and acceptable norms, thus referring to ideal criteria for validity and acceptability per se. The point is, however, that such validity can nevertheless be claimed to be inherent in reality, i.e. facticity. Ideals are – or become – real, since we act on them.

With this complex and, some would say, dialectical idea of social and political reality, reconstructing the ideals already there becomes a reasonable normative approach; if societal reality was not already in itself substantially normative, reconstructing discursively its logics could not sustain any normative conclusion.

For the mature Habermas the normative agenda is strictly political, thus providing a theory of the democratic state of law that through a rational discursive reconstruction of the political realities can claim to have descriptive validity backing up normative claims. As it has become common in political philosophy , he distinguishes between a liberal and a republican approach to politics, the former emphasizing individual pre-political rights of every single human being , the latter in contrast the political rights of the citizen. We thus get a contrast between human rights and political rights, or between negative rights limiting the power of the state specified by law and the positive right to participate in the constitution and the political rule of the state of law.

Hence, for republicans the legitimacy of the state does not consist in providing laws that defend subjective human rights, as the liberals would have it, but in facilitating an “inclusive process of opinion and will formation ”, in which the citizens can reach a mutual understanding about “what goals and norms may be of common interest” (FG 329). Republicanism thus implies continuous education of the citizenry. Still Habermas argues that republicanism is too idealist, making the democratic process dependent on the ethical virtues of the citizens (see Habermas 1996, 283). Moreover, republicanism thus has a tendency to closure around the citizens of a particular state , and the liberal insistence on law and universal human rights brings this to the fore. Hence, deliberative politics recognize the value of human rights, thus transcending the liberal-republican dichotomy, allegedly retaining what is best from both of them, i.e. from the former law and right , from the latter popular formation , i.e. Bildung.

The dialectical argument sublating the dichotomy is backed up by another similar argument, namely the reasoning behind Habermas’s philosophical claim about the co-originality of moral and political autonomy (see FG 112). Hence, the claim is that political rights do not only find their foundation in human rights; the opposite is also the case. Private autonomy presupposes public autonomy and vice versa.

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