Abstract

This work aims to expose an inadequacy in contemporary ethical theories in application to the philosophy of democracy and show how fraternity fills the conceptual gap thus revealed. My method will be to appeal to common sense against gaps in conceptual connections between ethical theory and liberal democratic goals to show how contemporary theories may fail when those gaps appear. This will require six chapters. Chapter One explains why the presence of a certain attitudinal disposition, civic friendship, is important for continued social cooperation. Chapter Two argues that the citizens of a liberal democracy must participate in an extended fraternal bond if that democracy is to approximate the liberal ideal of a haven of political and economic liberty and of moral equality. Specifically, unless citizens are united by a bond of fraternity it is not likely that they will be able to sustain the level of social cooperation necessary for continued preservation of liberty and equality for all. Fraternity is what makes these goals both attractive and feasible. This claim poses a vital challenge to the advocates of two currently central approaches to political philosophy, contractarianism and communitarianism, who offer explanations of democratic cooperation that do not give a place for fraternity. The following chapters defend these arguments against some prominent advocates of the latter approaches. Chapter Three argues that a Hobbesian contractarian system, influenced as it is by a strong moral skepticism, cannot offer an adequate picture of liberal democratic cooperation. Chapter Four follows this with an argument less skeptical forms of contractarianism fail to adopt an adequately robust view of fraternity and its place in liberal democratic cooperation. Chapter Five argues that, communitarianism while it gives a place for moral sentiments such as civic friendship, fails to distinguish between the types of civic friendship appropriate to different political systems. This omission renders communitarianism, at least as now defended, unable to give us a complete picture of liberal democratic cooperation. Finally, Chapter Six completes my discussion of the role of fraternity in liberal democracy, focusing on how fraternity has become a way of life in the liberal West