Abstract
ABSTRACT The agonistic vs. epistemic dichotomy is fairly widespread in contemporary democratic theory and is endorsed by scholars as outstanding as Luis Felipe Miguel, Chantal Mouffe, and Nadia Urbinati. According to them, the idea that democratic deliberation can work as a rational exchange of arguments that aims at truth is incompatible with the recognition of conflict as a central feature of politics. In other words, the epistemic approach is bound to obliterate the agonistic and conflictive dimension of democracy. This article takes this dichotomized way of thinking to task by reconstructing the association between democracy and compromise made by John Stuart Mill, John Morley, and Hans Kelsen. It concludes that the conceptualization of democracy as compromise offers an alternative to the agonistic vs. epistemic divide that disconcerts a significant part of political philosophy today.
Highlights
The agonistic vs. epistemic divide disconcerts a significant part of contemporary democratic theory
Briefly reviewing their arguments my goal in sections three, four, and five will be to demonstrate how the association between democracy and compromise made by John Stuart Mill, John Morley, and Hans Kelsen offers an alternative to the agonistic vs. epistemic divide that disconcerts a significant part of democratic theory today
In the place of the depoliticized technocracy promoted by epistemic democracy, Urbinati proposes a democratic theory that is truly political because it recognizes passions and conflict as key features of democracy
Summary
The agonistic vs. epistemic divide disconcerts a significant part of contemporary democratic theory. In the place of the depoliticized technocracy promoted by epistemic democracy, Urbinati proposes a democratic theory that is truly political because it recognizes passions and conflict as key features of democracy. This brief overview of Miguel, Mouffe, and Urbinati brings to the fore one common thesis that lurks behind the epistemic vs agonistic dichotomy they endorse, namely, the thesis that characterizing democracy as a deliberative quest for truth denies the political role played by passions and conflict. The idea that one could acknowledge the epistemic properties of democratic deliberation without undermining the constitutive role of passions and conflict in politics does not appear in Miguel’s, Mouffe’s, and Urbinati’s writings This absence exposes a limitation of their thinking, for the epistemic and agonistic. In order to prove that, one must turn to the characterization of democracy as compromise found in the political philosophy of Mill, Morley, and Kelsen
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