Filozofija i drustvo 2016 Volume 27, Issue 4, Pages: 920-937
https://doi.org/10.2298/FID1604920S
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Deliberative democracy between moralism and realism
Šoć Andrija (Filozofski fakultet, Institut za filozofiju, Beograd)
The topic of this paper is the debate between political moralists and
political realists. I will try to show that it is possible to find the middle
ground that simultaneously satisfies the main demands of both camps while
resisting objections directed against each. In the first part, I start with
the view shared by both moralists and realists: that the main challenge lying
before a political theory is solving the problem of legitimacy. I first
sketch Rawls’ moralist approach. I then move to outline the realist
criticisms of such moralism. I will mainly follow one of the most detailed
recent theories - Sleat’s realist theory, although I will also draw from
other well-known realists. In the second part, I outline objections against
realism. They somewhat similar to the same criticisms they themselves direct
against moralists. The main issue is, in short, the problem of
underdetermination - that is, the insufficient determination of political
action by facts. Since realists hold that a political theory has to be
applicable, their view is thus considerably weakened by such criticism. In
the third part of the paper, I point to deliberative theory as a view that
can answer both realist criticism - because its main aspect is dealing with
the way things work in actual politics of concrete societies - but it can
also answer criticisms directed against realists themselves, because
empirical research of deliberation suggests an actual and viable way to solve
the problem of legitimacy - by raising the quality of deliberation. Moreover,
a deliberative theory retains autonomy of the ethical, although it doesn’t do
that, unlike moralism, by encroaching on the autonomy of politics. Thus, at
the end of the paper, I claim that such a deliberative approach can be
accepted by both realists and moralists.
Keywords: Political realism, political moralism, legitimacy, democracy, deliberation
Projekat Ministarstva nauke
Republike Srbije, br. 179067: Logičko-epistemološki osnovi nauke i
metafizike