Wiredu and Eze on consensual democracy and the question of consensual rationality

Abstract

The essay raises objections to Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze’s criticisms of Kwasi Wiredu’s notion of consensual rationality. Wiredu promotes traditional African consensual democracy as an alternative political system to the Western majoritarian model of democracy, which he claims is adversarial. However, Eze raises some queries against Wiredu which seem to undermine the validity of Wiredu’s traditional model of consensual democracy. Foremost among these complainants is the assumption that Wiredu’s model of political consensus may fail to embrace rationality in deliberation that gives rise to it because the chief’s or king’s sacred position may influence deliberation at council. The other criticism which is consequent on the one above suggests that human beings frequently do not deploy reason in political decision-making: an indication that traditional African consensus is not fundamentally inspired by reason. I argue that Eze’s argument is simply false because: (1) it rests on a misguided assumption about the nature of logical persuasion in deliberation; and (2) it is false that human beings are frequently swayed or inspired by non-rational factors to derive consensus in decision-making.