This dissertation examines Chantal Mouffe’s political philosophy in term of its key concepts, ‘radical democracy’ which is approached from an ''anti-essentialist'' perspective, and eventually attempts to defend her thesis.
In a first moment, She argues that John Rawls''liberal philosophy is an inadequate means of facing today''s varied social and political challenges, because it is incapable of grasping the antagonistic dimension which is constitutive of the political. drawing on the critique of Political Liberalism that she has developed in The Return of the Political and The Democratic Paradox, she centre her attention on Rawls'' conception of politics in a well-ordered liberal society.
According to Rawls, the problem of political liberalism can be formulated in the following way; ''How is it possible that there may exist over time a stable and just society of free and equal citizens profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical and moral doctrines?'' The problem is for him one of political justice and it requires the establishment of fair terms of social cooperation between citizens envisaged as free and equal but also as divided by profound doctrinal conflict. but she argues that Political liberalism can provide a consensus among reasonable persons who are persons who accept the principles of political liberalism.
Unfortunately, liberal democratic societies are ill-prepared to confront the present challenge, since they are unable to grasp its nature. One of the main reasons for this inability lies in the type of political theory currently in vogue, dominated as it is by an individualistic, universalistic, and rationalistic framework. such a framework erases the dimension of the political and impedes envisaging in an adequate manner the nature of a pluralistic democratic public sphere.
She formulates an alternative to the model of "deliberative democracy" one that she calles "agonistic pluralism."
In order to clarify the basis of this alternative view, she proposes to distinguish between "the political" and "politics." By "the political," she refers to the dimension of antagonism that is inherent in all human society, antagonism that can take many different forms and can emerge in diverse social relations. "Politics," on the other hand, refers to the ensemble of practices, discourses and institutions that seek to establish a certain order and to organize human coexistence in conditions that are always potentially conflictual because they are affected by the dimension of "the political."
It is only when we acknowledge this dimension of "the political" and understand that "politics" consists in domesticating hostility, only in trying to defuse the potential antagonism that exists in human relations, that we can pose the fundamental question for democratic politics. This question, pace the rationalists, is not how to arrive at a rational consensus reached without exclusion, that is impossibility. Politics aims at the creation of unity in a context of conflict and diversity; it is always concerned with the creation of an "us" by the determination of a "them." The novelty of democratic politics is not the overcoming of this us/them distinction--which is what a consensus without exclusion pretends to achieve--but the different way in which is established. What is at stake is how to establish the us/them discrimination in a way that is compatible with pluralist democracy.
In the realm of politics, this presupposes that the "other" is no longer seen as an enemy to be destroyed, but as an "adversary, "i.e.,somebody with whose ideas we are going to struggle but whose right to defend those ideas we will not put into question. This category of the adversary does not eliminate antagonism, though, and it should be distinguished from the liberal notion of the competitor, with which it is sometimes identified. An adversary is a legitimate enemy, an enemy with whom we have in common a shared adhesion to the ethico-political principles of democracy. But our disagreement concerning their meaning and implementational discussion, hence the antagonistic element in the relation. To come to accept the position of the adversary is to undergo a radical change in political identity, it has more of a quality of a conversion than of rational persuasion. To be sure, compromises are possible; they are part of the process of politics. But they should be seen as temporary respites in an ongoing confrontation.
Hence, the importance of distinguishing between two types of political relations: one of antagonism between enemies, and one of agonism between adversaries. We could say that the aim of democratic politics is to transform an "antagonism" into an "agonism." This has important consequences for the way we envisage politics.
But contrary to Mouffe''s claims, she is criticaled, i.e. politics without economy, and her agonistic model is compatible with a deliberative framework.
I maintain that these attacks are false antitheses. It is my general thesis that Mouffe'' theory treats the political, she hopes political turn and the Democratic Revolution. therefore she has been defining the political.
When we accept that every consensus exists as a temporary result of a provisional hegemony, as a stabilization of power and that always entails some form of exclusion, such a consensus is bound to be a "conflictual consensus."
An "agonistic" democratic approach acknowledges the real nature of its frontiers and recognizes the forms of exclusion that they embody, instead of trying to disguise them under the veil of rationality or morality.