|
January 17, 2007
I want to return to, and pick up on, this earlier post. This was based on Chantal Mouffe's text The Return of the Political, and it explored the tension between the pluralist logic of liberalism and the logic of identity of democracy in liberal democratic regimes.
Mouffe relies on Schmitt to explore the tensions between the two logics. She says that the pluralist logic of liberalism refers to each individual having the freedom to pursue their own happiness as they see fit, to set their own goals and to achive them in their own way. What is abandoned is the substantive conception of the common good and that of eudaemonia. The logic of identity of democracy, on her account, refers to the logic of identity between governors and governed, between the law and popular will, that has its basis in the sovereignty of the people.
Mouffe rightly argues that how we understand democracy today is in its modern liberal form. She says that:
we now have to examine the liberal problematic in order to determine which of its different elements must be defended and which rejected if the aim is to provide the liberal democratic regime with an ethical and philosophical content .....To defend liberalism whilst at the same time accepting the criticisms Schmitt makes of individuals and rationalism, we must separate what constitutes liberal thinking's fundamental contribution to democratic modernity--namely pluralism and the whole range of institutions characteristic of poltiical liberalism---from the other discourses that are often presented as forming an integral part of liberal doctrine. (p.123)
This gives us a cutdown liberalism. For instance, Mouffe argues that rationalism---understood as the dictates of universal (foundational) reason--- needs to be prised away (revised) and replaced by reason understood as argument, persuasion and rhetoric.
Another strand of liberalism that needs to be cut away is the liberal doctrine of the neutrality of the state. The neutrality thesis holds that in order to respect pluralism and not to intefere with the freedom of individuals to chose their own goals it is necessary to deny any authority to the state re it promoting or facilitating a particular conception of the good life. It needs to be dropped because the liberal state does promote some forms of life and forbids others in that it promotes the liberal way of life based on personal freedom or autonomy.
Another strand is the liberal conception of democracy as a set of procedures rather than being based on principles such as equality, freedom or political unity or homogeneity. Though procedures are required they are not enough to create the political unity of democracy.
|
