Why is democracy desirable? Neo-Aristotelian, critical realist, and psychodynamic approaches

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the question of why democracy is desirable in terms of a relational theory of democracy. The theory draws on concepts from Aristotelian, critical realist, and psychoanalytic theory. From Aristotle it takes the concepts of human flourishing and human virtues; from critical realism it takes the concepts of relational subjects and relational goods; from psychoanalysis it takes the concept of mutuality. The relational theory argues that democracy, particularly deliberative democracy, is desirable because it requires and facilitates the development of citizens with the relational capacity of mutuality. The theory is developed sequentially in the following four theses. (1) The function of government is to promote the flourishing of its citizens. (2) Human flourishing results from citizens having access to relational goods. (3) Access to relational goods requires that citizens possess the relational capacity of mutuality. (4) Deliberative democracy is desirable because it both requires and facilitates mutuality,

KEYWORDS:

• Aristotle
• critical realism
• deliberative democracy
• democracy
• mutuality
• psychoanalysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Carl Auerbach is an Emeritus professor at the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University. His research area is in the psychology of trauma, with a particular focus on collective social trauma. He has researched trauma and resilience in post-genocide Rwanda using a grounded theory qualitative research methodology. In 2011 he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to teach and do research at the National University of Rwanda. His thoughts on the desirability of democracy were prompted by his observations of how democracy was being reconstructed in post-genocide Rwanda.

Notes

1 The validity of these two assumptions depends upon an important issue in ethical and moral philosophy –whether there are universal human goods and objective moral truths. If there are such goods and truths then the assumptions are valid; if there are no such goods and truths then they are not. Alisdair Macintyre in his classic book ‘After Virtue,’ (MacIntyre 1981) gives a history of this issue. According to MacIntyre, the existence of universality and objectivity were presupposed in the classical philosophy of Aristotle and his successors. However, this presupposition was questioned by the philosophers of the Enlightenment and their successors. The philosophy that replaced them what MacIntyre calls emotivism, by which he means subjective rather than objective accounts of ethics and morality. The end result of this movement was postmodernism. Philosophical postmodernism questions the concepts of objective truth, asserting instead that we are mistaken when we think we are making objective statements about the world. What we are in fact doing is making use of semiotic structures whose terms refer only to each other (Hicks 2004). Recently the classic view has been revived, under the broad heading of neo–Aristotelianism. For example, Christian Smith (Smith 2015) has developed a critical realist personalist account of the basic human goods and virtues. Alisdair MacIntyre has continued to elaborate the point of view he sketched out in ‘After Virtue.’ (MacIntyre 1999, 2016). Richard Kraut has given a modern account of Aristotelian thought (Kraut 2007, 2018).

2 Jessica Benjamin is one of the founders of relational psychoanalysis. She developed her work in four important books, beginning with the well-known ‘The bonds of love,’ (Benjamin 1988) followed by ‘Like subjects, love objects,’ (Benjamin 1995) ‘Shadow of the other,’ (Benjamin 1998) and most recently ‘Beyond doer and done to’ (Benjamin 2018)). Her work deals with the concepts of intersubjectivity, mutual recognition, aggression, dominance, and gender. The basic thesis of her work is that failures of recognition predispose individuals to relations of aggression and dominance, often despite their intention to act otherwise. The concepts used in this paper – mutuality, doer/done-to, and thirdness are part of her more general theoretical framework. For an overview of her work and its place in relational analysis see Aron and Harris (2012). The concept of thirdness has been developed by many psychoanalytic theorists. For an overview of these developments, and Benjamin’s relationship to other theorists see Coelho Junior (2016).

3 Deliberative democracy, a relatively new concept in political philosophy and political science, has both its advocates and its critics. The advocates present the case for deliberative democracy as follows (See Beachtiger et al. 2017, for an up to date review of the area). Deliberative democracy allows citizens to participate in creating the policies that affect them. The very act of collective deliberation increases social solidarity and trust and thereby reduces conflict and polarization. The policies developed in this way are likely to be implemented because citizens will support policies to which they have contributed. In addition, these policies are likely to be better than policies made by top down government, because of the diversity of perspectives that went into their formulation. The critics point out potential problems with deliberative democracy at both the social and the individual level. At the social level they argue that the ideal of deliberative democracy ignores the realities of interest groups and power. At the individual level they argue that the ideal of deliberative democracy ignores the realities of human irrationality, self-interest, and negative emotionality. This paper adds critical realist and psychodynamic arguments in favor of deliberative democracy. The response to the critics of deliberative democracy is presented at the conclusion of this paper.