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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

the salvation of democracy « Previous | |Next »
August 2, 2005

George Pell, the conservative Australian Cardinal and Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, gave a speech on democracy to the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in late 2004. I found it hard to follow but I got the bit about liberal democracy is a world of 'empty secularism' that is over-focused on 'individual autonomy'. This leads to unquestioned acceptance of abortion, euthanasia and genetic experimentation, and to the claim that opposition to such things is undemocratic.

The problem with democracy is that it is neither a value-free mechanism for regulating interests, nor a good in itself; its value depends on the moral vision that it serves, and a secular democracy is lacking in moral vision. Since individualism coupled to equality and freedom is not a moral vision, he suggests 'democratic personalism'is the best form of 'normative democracy'.

By this he means a vision of human beings as centres of transcendent dignity whose existence and happiness are bound to mutual relationships. Democracy serves the flourishing of human dignity and of mutual relationships. He argues that to implement this vision we would need to change culture through persuasion and not political activism.

What he means by 'transcendent' is that we need to recognize our 'dependence on God' and place this at the centre of our system of governance. But, he asserts, 'placing democracy on this basis does not mean theocracy':

"Placing democracy on this basis does not mean theocracy.To re-found democracy on our need for others, and our need to make a gift of ourselves to them, is to bring a whole new form of democracy into being. Democratic personalism is perhaps the last alternative to secular democracy still possible within Western culture as it is presently configured."

He justifies this conception of normative democracy thus:
"The recrudescence of intolerant religion is not a problem that secular democracy can resolve, but rather a problem that it tends to engender. The past century provided examples enough of how the emptiness within secular democracy can be filled with darkness by political substitutes for religion. Democratic personalism provides another, better possibility; one that does not require democracy to cancel itself out."


| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:57 PM | | Comments (0)
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