Organic Theory Of Democracy By I.A. Ilyin: Basic Principles And Rules

Abstract

The crisis of the sovereign nation-state of the modern era, legitimation systems of power and political representation is obvious and repeatedly described in the literature by authors belonging to different/opposite research traditions in political philosophy and political theory. The assertion in the context of liberal paradigm of political philosophy of the need for a consistent replacement of political dominance by management and organization and, consequently, the “abolition” of sovereignty, political boundaries, and nation-states is presented by many researchers as the only possibility of the global political order evolution. Along with this, there has been an increasing assertion that the functions of a nation-state remain necessary and, at the same time, there are no supra-national mechanisms of legitimizing power that correspond to generally accepted democratic principles; the gap arising in the new global political order between decision and responsibility actually eliminates what is considered to be democracy. The foregoing explains the interest in theories of democracy, which emphasize the content maintaining the distinction between formal democratic procedures and the content of democratic institutions. The theory of Organic Democracy by I.A. Ilyin combining the ideas of German classical philosophy of law (primarily Hegel) and the desire of ontological and religious foundations of social and political phenomena traditional for Russian philosophy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries to examine them in the perspective of their metaphysical deepening, opens (in theory) the opportunity to study democracy and democracy-oriented political activities beyond the prevailing liberal paradigm.