The logic of democracy

From a political point of view people still believe in nostalgic and dangerous ideas like "objectivity" "reality", "truth" and "values" as a precondition for democracy. But believers in absolutes forget a crucial lesson borne out of the historic record namely, that the tide of secularisation is irreversible and remains inextricably bound-up in the human condition. This reality necessarily checks and harnesses the search for fanatical, absolute truth-claims that, we maintain, are contrary to the very nature of democracy.

Indeed the demand democracy places on us is therefore a commitment to maximising critical, open dialogue whilst maintaining a minimal peaceable solidarity among different social and political actors. We thus submit the need to dispense with arrogant notions of truth opting instead for more temperate and humble philosophical programmes, ones that, for example help nurture a larger more volatile discourse of human flourishing.