The Promise of Democracy, livre ebook

A new ethical concept of democracy as the cultivation and practice of civic virtues in a pluralistic setting is presented in this thoughtful and wide-ranging study. Drawing upon such figures as Aristotle, Montesquieu, Hegel, Dewey, Heidegger, Arendt, and Lefort, Fred Dallmayr emphasizes the need for civic education and practical-ethical engagement in all societies aspiring to be democratic. With reference to Middle Eastern societies and especially Iran, Dallmayr explores the possible compatibility between democracy and Islamic faith. In a similar vein, he discusses the strengths of Gandhian and Confucian democracy as possible correctives to current versions of "minimalist" democracy and the cult of laissez-faire liberalism and neoliberalism. Addressing how to instill a democratic ethos in societies where corporations and elites exercise a great deal of power, The Promise of Democracy presents an inspired vision of democracy as popular "self-rule" in which ethical cultivation and self-transformation make possible a nondomineering kind of political agency. Against this background, Dallmayr casts democracy as a "promise," making room for the unlimited horizons opened up by a new understanding of liberty and equality.
Preface
1. Introduction: The Promise of Democracy
2. Hegel for Our Time: Negativity and Democratic Ethos
3. Democratic Action and Experience: Dewey’s “Holistic” Pragmatism
4. Agency and Letting-Be: Heidegger on Primordial Praxis
5. Action in the Public Realm: Arendt Between Past and Future
6. Postmodernism and Radical Democracy: Laclau and Mouffe on “Hegemony”
7. Jacques Derrida’s Legacy:“Democracy to Come”
8. Who Are We Now? For an “Other” Humanism
9. Religion, Politics, and Islam: Toward Multiple Modes of Democracy
10. Beyond Minimal Democracy: Voices from East and West
Appendices
A. Democracy Without Banisters: Reading Claude Lefort
B. The Return of the Political: On Chantal Mouffe
C. Exiting Liberal Democracy? Bell and Confucian Thought
Notes
Index