The Democratic Ideal

In this essay I wish to revisit democracy since all the power that our current administration is claiming for itself is supposedly justified by way of the democratic method. But, in fact, only a properly limited democracy is politically just and justified.

Democracy is a process by which some decisions are made and in the context of politics it means the kind of system that depends upon the participation of the citizenry for certain purposes. What grounds democracy as a just mode of political decision-making is that citizens have the ultimate authority concerning certain matters in thepolis. And the reason they do have this ultimate authority is that they are, as adults, equal in their status vis-à-vis the stake they have in their political institutions, their laws, public policies, foreign relations, etc. That they have this equal status hinges on certain extra or pre-political matters, to be discerned by way of reflection upon human nature and proper human relations.

For now, I'll simply note that as I understand political matters, they arise from the moral fact that each individual adult human being has as his or her task in life to live it rationally, to flourish as a rational animal. Since this task for adults can only be achieved if they are not unwillingly subject to the rule of others – in which case it is that other individual's rational choice that would be the ruling principle of one's life – in just communities human beings must be sovereign. From this it follows that they must have a say in their own political fate, ergo, democracy.

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