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HERMENEUTICAL CRITIQUE IN DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to explore whether hermeneutical critique is a good method for describing, evaluating, and implementing deliberative democracy. The well-known philosophical direction is critical hermeneutics and key authors of this school of thought include Jürgen Habermas, Paul Ricoeur and Hans-Herbert Kögler. We want to inquire how they work with critical hermeneutics and we aim to show why it may be better to establish hermeneutical critique in the place of critical hermeneutics. One of our inquiring authors, Jürgen Habermas, is also one of the authors of deliberative democracy. Deliberative democracy is a kind of democracy that was invented in the USA in the 1980s, even though some look for its origin in ancient Greece, in the words of Pericles or in the work of Aristotle, as well as that of Edmund Burke, J. S. Mill, or Alexis de Tocqueville. We see some deliberative thoughts in the works of these older authors, but deliberative democracy as a modern democratical theory rose in the 1980s and 1990s. Joshua Cohen, John Dryzek, Robert Goodin, Seyla Benhabib and Robert Talisse represent contemporary deliberative theorists. Critical hermeneutics is an older Habermas’ theory. We will ask why we should revive this method when we know that theories of communicative action or discoursive ethics are newer ones. Some features of hermeneutical critique and of deliberative democracy can be seen in the works of Czech democratical theorists, especially in the work of T. G. Masaryk, Emanuel Rádl and in the human rights movement Charter 77. We think that deliberative democracy needs critical readers and critical participants and we assert that hermeneutical critique is a good method for them. Finally, we will research the various roles of critical hermeneutical practice for democratical citizens and deliberative theorists in the process of building a deliberative democracy.
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