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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Social & political philosophy
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The Struggle for Democracy - Paradoxes of Progress and the Politics of Change (Paperback)
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The Struggle for Democracy - Paradoxes of Progress and the Politics of Change (Paperback)
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Revolutionaries, counter-revolutionaries, and reformers the world
over appeal to democracy to justify their actions. But when
political factions compete over the right to act in "the people's"
name, who is to decide? Although the problem is as old as the great
revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, events
from the Arab Spring to secession referendums suggest that today it
is hardly any closer to being solved. This book defends a new
theory of democratic legitimacy and change that provides an answer.
Christopher Meckstroth shows why familiar views that identify
democracy with timeless principles or institutions fall into
paradox when asked to make sense of democratic founding and change.
Solving the problem, he argues, requires shifting focus to the
historical conditions under which citizens work out what it will
mean to govern themselves in a democratic way. The only way of
sorting out disputes without faith in progress is to show, in
Socratic fashion, that some parties' claims to speak for "the
people" cannot hold up even on their own terms. Meckstroth builds
his argument on provocative and closely-argued interpretations of
Plato, Kant, and Hegel, suggesting that familiar views of them as
foundationalist metaphysicians misunderstand their debt to a method
of radical doubt pioneered by Socrates. Recovering this tradition
of antifoundational argument requires rethinking the place of
German idealism in the history of political thought and opens new
directions for contemporary democratic theory. The historical and
Socratic theory of democracy the book defends makes possible an
entirely new way of approaching struggles over contested notions of
progress, popular sovereignty, political judgment and democratic
change.
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