Western ‘Civic Totalism’, Sovereignty of the People, and the Need for Limited Government

Abstract

In a fascinating, comparative philosophical article, Sungmoon Kim attempts ‘to revamp Confucian democracy, which is originally presented as the communitarian corrective and cultural alternative to liberal democracy, into a robust democratic political theory and practice that is plausible in the societal context of pluralism’. The same source of inspiration that Kim uses to reconstruct Confucian democracy – William Galston’s notion of liberal pluralism – can be used to critically appraise the current state of Western liberal democracy, to consider, more specifically, the extent to which Western liberal democracy still manages to realize the principle of expressive liberty, defined by Galston as ‘the absence of constraints, imposed by some individuals on others, that make it impossible (or significantly more difficult) for the affected individuals to live their lives in ways that express their deepest beliefs about what gives meaning or value to life’.