BREAK THE CHAINS OF OPPRESION AND THE YOKE OF ...

point modern democracies are open to attack. More security at the price of freedom
breeds discontent and the fear of ultimately falling into the hands of a control-state.
However, it is precisely this that guarantees the continued existence of
freedom in democracy.
Democracy and reason
The foundation for democratic decisions is not necessarily the reason or good
sense of a nation – whatever that may be – but its will. This does not automatically
mean, on the one hand, that the democratic will of the people is unreasonable –
on the contrary, Kant already made the freedom of the will a prerequisite of reason
and was convinced that humankind has the ability to make reasonable decisions in
spite of other desires: “Reason is not an antithesis but a sign of freedom.” 13
We cannot deny that in political theory there have been those who have maintained
exactly the opposite. The constitutional lawyer Carl Schmitt, for example,
argued vehemently against democracy on the grounds that precisely the formation
of majorities always encourages fragmentation of that which is reasonable. 14
Democracy lives by participation and creates the foundations of the same. It
does this, for example, by creating the conditions for the social and political
emancipation of whole sections of the population. But all is not accomplished by
the creation of preconditions: democracy does not simply create conditions; it
lives by the translation of these conditions into action. This being the case,
democracy is, as it were, a self-perpetuating model of emancipation if it is in the
position of allowing rationality to arise within its processes. The inclusion of varied
interests, the depiction of facts and the necessity to justify and explain in order
to obtain majorities � �– these �are mechanisms � that �create
an open and correctible
process of knowledge – i.e. rationality.
Democracy and its subject
DEMoc rAcy Against this background it becomes clear that a not insignificant part of the difficulties
which faced by democracy in the global context arises from the fact that
from the beginning the debate on what constitutes the subject of political action
is not an unambiguous one. Even if there is an almost universal – and in large
parts legally undergirded – agreement – on the kind of demands facing a state
that defines itself as “democratic”, there still remains disagreement on who the
active subject of democracy should be. Is it the people integrated into a nation,
or is it the individual affected?
There is also no clarity on what the goal of political action within a democratic
13 Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785), first section.
14 Carl Schmitt, Verfassunslehre, München/Leipzig, Dunker und Humblot, 1928, 128.
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– DEMOCRACY – A MATTER OF CHOICE!? –