Political Theory

H17(a) - Democratic Theory and Practice II

Date: Jun 5 | Time: 10:15am to 11:45am | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Aleksander Masternak (McGill University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Susan Dieleman (University of Lethbridge)

The Uses and Abuses of Empathy and Anger in Democratic Theory: Victor Bruzzone (Pennsylvania State University)
Abstract: Many have argued against the notion that empathy and understanding should be prioritized as democratic values. Empathy approaches to democracy have been criticized for being overly individualistic in their emphasis on imagination (Scudder, 2020). That is, authors like Sharon Krause (2011), Michael Morell (2003), and Robert Goodin (2003) all tend to emphasize imaginative empathy as an individualistic process of imagining the plight of others without meaningfully engaging and listening (Scudder, 2020: 51-56). Others argue that calls for more empathy and understanding in democratic deliberation threaten to depoliticize social struggle and impose an undue burden on those deeply affected by political struggles (see: Young, 2001). Indeed, calls to set aside our anger and cultivate greater understanding are argued to erase lived experience and ignore what can be a motivating and productive force (Thompson, 2017). Against these views, my paper seeks to defend the democratic value of empathy as a crucial ideal for democracy in a polarized world. First, I review the democratic theory literature on how empathy is defined and its potential as an ideal. Second, I examine defences of anger as a productive political force. While anger and rage can be motivating, I argue that empathetic understanding is more productive in almost all circumstances if it is rooted in a sense of justice. I offer a few demonstrative examples of how this is the case. Finally, Following Hannon (2020), I argue for a new way of thinking of empathy as a process of re-enactive cross ideological understanding.

Democracy is for Losers: Loss, Dissent, and Dignity in Plato's Crito: Lindsay Mahon Rathnam (Duke Kunshan University)
Abstract: In this paper, I argue that Plato’s Crito, which on its surface seems to argue for uncritical acceptance of unjust verdicts, in fact offers an account of the dignity and necessity of dissent, even or especially if this dissent is unheeded – or, indeed, doomed. In Socrates’ speech ventriloquizing the personified ‘Laws’, the duty of obedience is predicated upon space for dissent and critique. Socrates’ imprisonment highlights an extreme example of the doomed or tragic nature of much critique – but, in this, offers an account of the dignity of such doomed endeavors. With this, the Crito underscores the importance of being a loser. My account thus suggests that, read with the Apology, the Crito thus offer an unorthodox defense of democracy (alongside a more evident critique). Democracy is the lone form of government where all have a hope of winning; this means that most people will at some point lose. The regular experience of loss in democracy is, in my reading, not merely an unfortunate byproduct of a system characterized by contest, conflict, and defeat, but key to understanding the particular virtues made possible by democratic life. Loss, however, is extraordinarily painful, and so its educative and character-forming effects are only possible if it can be made tolerable. The right to verbal dissent is, in the Crito, shown to be essential for making loss tolerable, and thus cultivating democratic humility – the ability to be a loser.

Representations of Democracy: Three Phases: Grant Andersen (York University)
Abstract: Democratic theorists are now broadly familiar with Bernard Manin’s thesis that contemporary representative government "evolved from a political system that was conceived by its founders as opposed to democracy." Today, we associate democracy with institutions of political representation not because these institutions were imagined a technical device for permitting democracy to exist in extensive nation states, but rather because our understanding of what democracy entails has been transformed to better facilitate the legitimation of procedures of representative government. From antiquity to the age of the Atlantic revolutions and the development of modern representative government, the representation of democracy featured in western political philosophy was remarkably stable. Democracy was understood as a polity featuring a chaotic mixture of variety and factional struggle, a libertine and appetitive regime that indiscriminately allocated public power to the worst, or to anyone at all. The political theorist of the early modern period were content to reiterate this Platonic image of democracy. However, over the course of the nineteen century, the representation of democracy underwent to a two-phase transformation. In the first phase, democracy, formerly understood as a polity featuring excessive private freedom, was increasingly depicted as a regime type that exercised a tyrannical discipline over private life, private subjection appearing as the obverse of public liberty. This transformation may be understood as a strategy on behalf of nineteenth century thinkers to establish liberalism as the philosophy of private freedom by severing the connection between private and public liberty. In the second phase, democracy was for the first time disassociated from the historical example of the ancient polity. Increasingly, it came to be associated with those very apparatus of political representation which were originally formulated as alternatives to, or means of attenuating the influence of, democratic politics and democratic society. This essay examines the development of anti-democratic polemic in the history of western political thought by presenting a historical survey of several transformative and characteristic representations of democracy. Special attention will be given to the representations found in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Benjamin Constant, Fustel de Coulanges, Alexis de Tocqueville, and J. S. Mill.