Abstract
Jürgen Habermas’s theory of ‘discourse ethics’ has been an important source of inspiration for theories of deliberative democracy and is typically contrasted with agonistic conceptions of democracy represented by theorists such as Chantal Mouffe. In this article I show that this contrast is overstated. By focusing on the different philosophical traditions that underpin Mouffe’s and Habermas’s respective approaches, commentators have generally overlooked the political similarities between these thinkers. I examine Habermas’s and Mouffe’s respective conceptions of democratic politics and argue that they cannot be so neatly distinguished from each other. I show that much of Mouffe’s criticism of Habermas’s theory does not hold up to careful scrutiny, and discourse ethics shares important points of similarity with her own democratic theory. By using critical republican theory to show the similarities in their work, I push beyond the agonistic versus deliberative debate, and show that at the heart of both of these approaches is a critical republican emphasis on the need for civic solidarity, on the constructive role of conflict in democratic politics and on the vital importance of self-government. These are crucial ingredients for the regeneration of democracy in contemporary pluralistic societies.
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Notes
See Dryzek 2000 and Brady 2004.
See Boucher 2005 for a republican interpretation of Oakeshott’s work.
Seyla Benhabib (1990) and Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson (1996) read the term moral in discourse ethics to refer to individual moral judgments. Benhabib (1990, pp. 346–347) says that the term moral ‘if interpreted correctly could help our [individual] moral intuitions’. Moreover, in discussions about the tensions between agonistic and deliberative approaches, Kapoor (2002), Brady 2004 and Schaap (2006) all reiterate Mouffe’s view that Habermas defends an essentially Kantian inspired conception of morality.
Both Knops 2007 and Olson 2009 have identified similarities between the deliberative and agonistic theories of democracy.
Mouffe rejects cosmopolitanism, and she emphasises the renewal of democracy at the local level, at the level the nation state and at the regional level, such as the Europe Union (Mouffe, 2005, pp. 107, 128).
Habermas’s (1994) privileging of communicative action over rhetoric is unsustainable and inconsistent. Contrary to (Habermas 1984, pp. 285–286), rhetoric is not a calculated activity in the manner of rational choice theory, but a key strategy of deliberation and central to a thriving and participatory polity. Indeed, deliberative democrats such as John Dryzek acknowledge the power of rhetoric. He cites Martin Luther King, Jr’s speeches as a paradigmatic example of the potentially progressive power of non-rational forms of communication (Dryzek, 2000, pp. 51–52, 101).
Both (Habermas 1992, p. 141) and Mouffe emphasise the need for the construction of a common will to work against the danger of a de-centered or ‘fragmented’ society. The way in which the common will is forged differs in each account. For Habermas, it needs to be based on the solidarity of an unforced agreement but is not necessarily free from conflict, whereas for Mouffe it entails both force and consent.
(Habermas 1998, p. 227) says that the ‘ethical substance of a political integration that unites the citizens of the nation must remain “neutral” with respect to the differences between the ethical-cultural communities within the nation, each of which is integrated around it own conception of the good’. The diverse ethical communities are integrated around a conception of morality that is able to command a degree of loyalty but cannot be legally enforced.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Joel Olson and Mark Wenman for their constructive comments on this article. I would also like to thank the two anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions. This article is dedicated to the late Joel Olson who did not just interpret the world but actively tried to change it for the better. May your ethos, struggle against inequality, and passion for life, emancipation and freedom provide an example to us all.
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Khan, G. Critical republicanism: Jürgen Habermas and Chantal Mouffe. Contemp Polit Theory 12, 318–337 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2013.3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2013.3