Is Democracy the Best Form of Government?

Abstract

In posing again the traditional question about the ‘best form of government’, we might take a lead (this time around) from an idea prevalent in a philosophical movement which is not expressly political — the phenomenological movement. Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and other exponents of ‘phenomenology’ (or ‘existential phenomenology’), although they disagree about many things, seem to concur in at least one important insight: there is no possibility of studying consciousness in and for itself; consciousness is always consciousnessof something. In a somewhat parallel fashion, most people in our relativistic social milieu would be inclined to assent to the proposition that there is no validity to the pursuit of an ‘absolutely best’ form of government; in other words, a government can be adjudged ‘best’ only insofar as it is best-for the people who are governed.