Reason and Democracy: The Potential Renewal of the Idea of Aristocracy

Existe una relación entre diferentes clases de discusión y losroles que ésta juega en las instituciones del gobierno representativo. Esposible distinguir tres tipos de discusión, que caen en una escaladecreciente según su afinidad con estándares racionales de toma dedecisiones. El argumento es que mientras más se ajuste una discusión aestándares racionales, menos democrática será. Esta tensión entredemocracia y discusión racional es en realidad la tensión entredemocracia y aristocracia, y sugiere un camino para reintroducir laaristocracia como concepto significativo hoy. Sólo admitiendo lanaturaleza aristocrática de la discusión racional es posible preservar elcarácter democrático de una institución.This article studies the relationship between different kinds of discussion and the roles that they play in the diverse institutions of modern representative democracy. It distinguishes between three kinds of discussion: Platonic dialectic, deliberation, and democratic debate, and places them on a scale of decreasing attunement to rational standards of decision-making. It is argued that the more discussions are attuned to rational standards, the less democratic they become, because the less they are in sync with the mode of discussion that is proper to, and that in fact obtains in the demos. This tension between rational decision-making and democracy is identified as the tension between aristocracy and democracy as it was understood by the vast tradition of political philosophy, and suggests a way in which aristocracy may be reintroduced as a meaningful concept in modern constitutional thought. It is argued that only by acknowledging the existence of an aristocratic quality to rational decision-making is it possible to truly preserve the democratic character of representative institutions