The Peculiar Place of Enlightenment Ideals in the Governance Concept of Citizenship and Democracy

In Michael Peters, Harry Blee, Penny Enslin & Alan Britton (eds.), Global Citizenship Education. SENSE Publishers (2007)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This chapter examines a foundational democratic practice by considering how it expresses concepts of the Enlightenment. The practice is that of the vote or plebiscite as it appears in governance. The leading enlightenment concept is rationality as it is expounded by Kant. Kant did not participate in national democratic processes. He expected decisions of any consequence to be made in Berlin and thrived when his City was invaded by the Russians and their officers became his students, until they left suddenly in 1762 (Kuehn, 2001, p.126). Kant participated in political debate where the issues were in the main constitutional and about the processes of government reform. He became known for his theory of natural law and the justification of positive law. He advocated the separation of powers, but denied the right of revolution. This latter onclusion was in apparent contradiction of his support for republicanism, including the French, English, and American revolutions (Beck, 1971, p.413). The term “republican” in Kant’s writings is sometimes interpreted to mean “parliamentary democracy”. This is probably a mistake, and Reiss suggests Kant’s term does not carry the “connotation” of modern Western democracy (Reiss's "Introduction" in Kant, 1991a, p.25). Kant himself wrote that he wanted to prevent “the republican constitution from being confused with the democratic one, as commonly happens” (Kant, 1991a, .100). So it is that, whilst Kant wrote about the interaction of morality and politics, he did not write on the topic of the present chapter which focuses on those mechanisms or mechanics that democracy displays when it works.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The Phenomenology of Democracy.Robert Keith Shaw - 2009 - Policy Futures in Education 7 (3):340-348.
Enlightenment and freedom.Jonathan Peterson - 2008 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 46 (2):pp. 223-244.
Kant’s Conception of Enlightenment.Henry E. Allison - 2000 - The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 7:35-44.
Philosophical Essays.Teodros Kiros - 2011 - Red Sea Press.
Foucault and Enlightenment: A Critical Reappraisal.Amy Allen - 2003 - Constellations 10 (2):180-198.
Kant's Argument for the Apperception Principle.Melissa McBay Merritt - 2011 - European Journal of Philosophy 19 (1):59-84.
First democracy: the challenge of an ancient idea.Paul Woodruff - 2005 - New York: Oxford University Press.

Analytics

Added to PP
2011-08-05

Downloads
51 (#277,647)

6 months
12 (#122,866)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Robert Keith Shaw
University of Auckland (PhD)

Citations of this work

The Phenomenology of Democracy.Robert Keith Shaw - 2009 - Policy Futures in Education 7 (3):340-348.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Critique of Pure Reason.I. Kant - 1787/1998 - Philosophy 59 (230):555-557.
Ethics and education.Richard Stanley Peters - 1966 - London,: Allen & Unwin.
The Question concerning Technology and Other Essays.Martin Heidegger & William Lovitt - 1981 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 12 (3):186-188.

View all 25 references / Add more references