Truth versus ignorance in democratic politics: An existentialist perspective on the democratic promise of political free
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Truth versus ignorance in democratic politics: An existentialist perspective on the democratic promise of political freedom Pascal D. Ko¨nig TU Kaiserslautern, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany. [email protected]
Abstract Existentialist philosophy offers an understanding of how trying to eliminate ambiguities that inevitably mark the human condition only seemingly leads to freedom. This existentialist outlook can also serve to shed light on how democratic politics may similarly show tendencies which aim at overcoming immanent tensions. Such tendencies in democratic politics can be clarified using Sartre’s notion of ignorance – and truth as its counterpart. His concept of ignorance goes beyond merely facts or knowledge and refers to a mode of being. It expresses a subject’s desire to avoid, rather than confront, resistances stemming from the world. Based on a distinction of different forms in which this orientation can manifest itself, this article shows how democratic politics, too, can be threatened by ignorance as a way of doing politics. This ignorance comes in different guises which all express a desire to eliminate tensions that democratic politics cannot overcome without undermining itself. Contemporary Political Theory (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-020-00436-y Keywords: liberal democracy; existentialism; truth; ignorance; freedom
Ignorance has long been regarded as a threat to democratic regimes. Lippmann (1922) wrote that citizens were too uninformed and their opinions too fickle to guide the decision-making of a democratic government. In a similar vein, Schumpeter (1975, p. 262) warned that citizens receded to a lower level of mental performance when entering the political sphere. While subsequent diagnoses have largely been less harsh and more nuanced, the general problem remains and has not lost relevance. It appears that political sophistication in the populace has been relatively constant over many decades (Somin, 2013). And in a political system that is founded on the rule of the people, citizens’ ignorance remains a very serious problem for democracy (Landemore, 2013, p. 37). 2020 The Author(s). 1470-8914 Contemporary Political Theory www.palgrave.com/journals
Ko¨nig
Such diagnoses of ignorance as a lack of political knowledge and competence indeed point to a major threat to the working of democracy. Yet they miss how democratic regimes are also threatened by a different kind of ignorance that can take hold at the heart of politics and which, as the present article argues, existential thought and particularly Jean-Paul Sartre’s work can help to clarify. An existentialist outlook refrains from a rationalist quest for completeness and expressly acknowledges the provisional character of all political projects. This makes it valuable for thinking about ambiguities and tensions in democratic politics that can never be entirely overcome. Indeed, such tensions have repeatedly been noted to characterize liberal democracy, understood broadly as a regime that combines a liberal and democ
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