PHL 101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 15: Deliberative Democracy, Negative And Positive Rights, Individual And Group Rights
4 Dec 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Evan Reed
PHL 101
Introduction to Philosophy
Fall 2018
Professor Herman
Jürgen Habermas: “Three Normative Models of Democracy”
● Habermas engages the liberal/communitarian debate with the aim of presenting a third
alternative, namely, that of deliberative democracy which he sees as the appropriate
model of democracy.
● He begins by characterizing liberal model of democracy as one where the state, as an
apparatus of public administration is organized to serve the interest of the society, where
society is conceived as a system of market-structured interactions of private persons.
On this model politics serves to gather private public interests and bring it to bear against
the administrative power of the state. 377
● Republicanism: the role of politics is not exhausted by its mediating function between
the state and society, but it rather is itself constitutive of the process of socialization.
Politics is conceived as the reflexive form of the good life, where the individual
member’s identity is constituted through her communal ties.
● What this change of focus entails for government and society is that in addition to the
administrative power and economic self-interest, solidarity appears as third source of
social integration. 377
● These two views on politics and democracy have different implications for conceptions
of citizenship, law, and the nature of political process. On the liberal view a citizen is
the bearer of individual rights, which he or she has in relation to the state. Individual
rights are negative rights that mark what is not allowed by law, demarcating the area of
individual’s freedom.
● For republicans, the status of citizens is not determined by negative liberties, but rather
by positive rights as rights of political participation and communication. Positive
liberties guarantee the possibility of participating in a common practice which is
constitutive of the citizens. 378
● On the concept of law: For liberals the point of a legal order is to determine which
individual in each case are entitled to which rights. For republican, however, these
subjective rights owe their existence to an objective legal order that both enables and
guarantees the integrity of an autonomous life in common based on equality and mutual
respect
● The political process: For liberals the process is basically a competition for positions
that grant access to administrative power. The standard of success on this view is the
citizens’ approval of persons or policies as measured by numbers of votes. Politics here is
understood as the strategic struggle for power under law, and is in this sense it resembles
market competition.
● While according to republicans political process as the practice of citizens’ self-
determination the model is not the market; instead, it is dialogue, as in the structure of
public communication oriented to mutual understanding
● Now, with respect to this overview of the liberal/communitarian debate, Habermas thinks
that the republican view of democracy has certain strengths and also some weaknesses.
Document Summary
Habermas engages the liberal/communitarian debate with the aim of presenting a third alternative, namely, that of deliberative democracy which he sees as the appropriate model of democracy. On this model politics serves to gather private public interests and bring it to bear against the administrative power of the state. Republicanism: the role of politics is not exhausted by its mediating function between the state and society, but it rather is itself constitutive of the process of socialization. Politics is conceived as the reflexive form of the good life, where the individual member"s identity is constituted through her communal ties. What this change of focus entails for government and society is that in addition to the administrative power and economic self-interest, solidarity appears as third source of social integration. These two views on politics and democracy have different implications for conceptions of citizenship, law, and the nature of political process.
