Democratic Conclusions

Abstract

If politics concerns the question of ‘what should we do?’ then democracy holds that we should consult the citizenry, empower selected agents to govern effectively and guard against the concentration of power. Since liberalism’s attack on religious dogma and the absolutist state, we have learned to refrain from dictating the good for others and resolved to ask individuals for their own conception of the good. As Jürgen Habermas so cogently asserts, ‘all things considered, the best judge of individual interests is the individual themselves’.¹ Democracy is not, therefore, a universal truth to be imposed on others, but is, instead, a practice evolved to prevent the imposition of a universal truth.- We thus do democracy nol because we know, but because we do not.