Challenging Democracy - 9th Dialogue on Science of the Academia Engelberg Foundation 2010
In his presentation, Professor Günter Abel from the...
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Challenging Democracy - 9th Dialogue on Science of the Academia Engelberg Foundation 2010
In his presentation, Professor Günter Abel from the Technical University of Berlin asked the question of whether society can provide reasons for an understanding of democracy beyond the stranglehold of the dichotomy between metaphysical absolutism and resigned relativism. He asked to leave behind the whole picture of the political as a space of truth and knowledge. Rather, one might conceive the political as a space of opinions and beliefs. Being systematically cut off from possessing the truth becomes the starting point of a pluralistic and perspectival ethics of intersubjective relations as well as of the space of political rule. This is even more evident under the current conditions of globalization and interculturality. The task is to show democracy to be the type of political rule affinitive to this structure. He further said, that given this setting, the ethos of democracy might increasingly gain rational acceptability, hence reasonableness and well-foundedness. The simple but crucial fact is that different persons, groups, societies and cultures can obviously have different views and perspectives. For Abel, democracy is the only form of government which assumes responsibility for its own actions.
