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JÜRGEN HABERMAS AND DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY
Walter Reese-Schäfer
; Fakultet društvenih znanosti Sveučilišta Georga Augusta u Goettingenu, Goettingen, Njemačka
Sažetak
The author looks into Habermas’ theory of deliberative democracy in the context
of the present-day debates on the theory of morals and politics. The starting
point of Habermas’ theory is his idea of discourse ethics. This is cognitivist ethics
in the tradition of Kant, Rawls, Tugendhat and Apel that is built around the concept
of normative correctness analogous to the descriptive notion of truth. This
idea is best expressed by Kant’s categorical imperative, according to which the
validity of norms depends on their generalizability. Habermas, in line with Kant,
is aware of the impossibility to rationally found universalist ethics. Instead of the
final (deductive) foundations he offers the reflexion about the assumptions of a
meaningful discourse i.e. the argumentation rules that must be respected if languge
communication is to be meaningful. Habermas’ outline of the theory of law
in his book Between Facts and Norms (Faktizität und Geltung) builds on this
moral-theoretical position. In modern society the function of law is to facilitate
social communication: law is the legitimate framework of social communication
on which the actors can rely. Habermas considers the specific link between human
rights and popular sovereignty as the source of legitimacy. Human rights and
popular sovereignty mutually condition each other and at the same time there is
tension between them. The absolutization of individual rights makes democracy
impossible since decision-making is obstructed; absolutization of popular sovereignty
leads to the tyranny of the majority and the loss of rights. Habermas thinks
that law can be legitimized by communicational mediation between the individual
rights and popular sovereignty, in line with the principle that the claim to validity
can only be laid by those norms that are approved of by all potentially affected individuals
as rational discourse participants. Popular sovereignty is consistently
procedurally interpreted. On the one hand, it is practised by means of public discourses
and on the other through decision-making processes within democratically
structured political institutions. The two dimensions of legitimizing law are
different yet complementary: public discourses take place in civil society, political
decisions are made in democratic institutions of the state. This is also an outline of
the specific position of Habermas’ political theory of deliberative democracy. It is
equally distant from the model of liberal democracy which emphasizes possessive
individualism and the protection of citizens’ private interests, and from the republican
democratic model that emphasizes political participation of active citizens.
The theory of deliberative democracy emphasizes the importance of civil society:
It is a sort of a practical verification of discourse ethics. Civil society is a sphere
of autonomous public communication that is complementary to state administration
but cannot substitute it. Communication power is exercised in the “siege
mode” i.e. multiple discourses of civil society should contribute to the rationality
and legitimacy of the decisions made by the political system, but do not have to
replace them nor expose them to populist pressures.
Ključne riječi
moral; ethics; law; discourse; discourse ethics; human rights; popular sovereignty; civil society; deliberative democracy
Hrčak ID:
21813
URI
Datum izdavanja:
25.7.2005.
Posjeta: 6.657 *