Practical Philosophy Seminar: Zsolt Kapelner

Non-instrumentalist justifications of democracy usually appeal to two values: liberty or equality. Liberty-based justifications assert that democracy is uniquely suited to ensure our freedom under political rule, while equality-based views claim that democracy is necessary for ensuring that a certain kind of equality (e.g., basic, public, relational, etc.) obtain among citizens. In this paper I argue, first, that both liberty-based and equality-based justifications of democracy suffer from serious shortcomings which, while do not definitively defeat either view, give us sufficient reason to consider alternatives. I propose a non-instrumentalist justification of democracy in terms of the third major Enlightenment value: fraternity. Fraternity is an ideal of the civic relationship modelled on good siblinghood; in a fraternal society, citizens relate, in some sense, as brothers as sisters. Drawing on recent literature on the value of siblinghood, I develop a novel account of political fraternity which requires that citizens relate in the mode of reciprocal, non-paternalistic, and non-perfectionistic political care. I further argue that democracy is necessary for realizing this value of fraternity among citizens. Only if all citizens have an equal say in shaping the system of public rules governing the shared life of the polity, are they able appropriately to enact that kind of civic care fraternity demands. This fraternity-based justification of democracy, I argue, can overcome the central problems that plague liberty-based and equality-based accounts.