The Ideology of Democratism by Emily B. Finley

Author:Emily B. Finley [Finley, Emily B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780197642290
Publisher: OxfordUP
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Autonomy of Reason?

“Political reason,” Cohen says, following Rawls, is “autonomous” and does not need to rely on “an encompassing philosophy of life” in order to articulate a conception of democracy.35 Deliberative democracy believes that citizen deliberation, properly ordered, would have a general purifying effect when reason is permitted to “float freely.”36 Parochial beliefs would tend to give way to the common good, which is assumed to be in line with reason. Deliberative democracy agrees with John Stuart Mill that reason and free inquiry ought to be promoted so that the truth can emerge through public filtration of ideas.37 Jefferson also held this belief about the epistemological role of reason; it is why he was so committed to the idea that the people, when permitted to debate freely, would come to the right opinions. The belief that rational inquiry and dialogue can act as disinterested forces in the search for truth and justice is quintessential of Enlightenment thinking and informed its progressive philosophy of history. As citizens become more educated in scientific and rational principles, they will naturally discern what is right and moral. These ideas helped to give life to a new sensibility and ethic that held that morality is not a result of habit and struggle with self, as the older classical and Christian traditions held, but a function of right reasoning. Deliberative democracy follows this Enlightenment tradition, believing that the major obstacle to a thriving democracy is not moral-spiritual but rational and educational.

Deliberative democracy’s first principle is the belief that reason is autonomous and that, through it, we can arrive at shared conceptions of the good, regardless of our personal beliefs. “Citizens must judge, from within [their] separate philosophies,” Cohen says, “that autonomous political argument is appropriate, and accept, as a public matter, that the diversity of such philosophies recommends an autonomous political reason.”38 Historical circumstance and personal experience, identity, and worldview are not only unnecessary in determining what is politically just but cloud that determination. The procedures and methods of proper deliberation are to guide citizens toward the type of thinking that deliberative democracy believes is “objectively reasonable.” That such thinking must be cultivated suggests that it is not as natural as deliberative democracy would initially have us believe.

Deliberative democracy’s belief that abstract reason ought to guide discussion places quite a burden on citizens. They must practice “conversational restraint,” listening to and engaging with other speakers on equal terms. A citizen is not permitted to “respond by appealing to (his understanding of) the moral truth; he must instead be prepared, in principle, to engage in a restrained dialogic effort to locate normative premises that both sides find reasonable,” Ackerman says.39 Using one’s own experience or philosophical views as justifications for an argument is not acceptable. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson expect “citizens and officials to espouse their moral positions independently of the circumstances in which they speak. This is consistency in speech and is a sign of political sincerity: it indicates that a person holds the position because it is a moral position, not for reasons of political advantage.

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