My dissertation tackles the question of how to theorize the democratic commitment that collective decisions must accommodate the voices and interests of those subject to them. The rigorous demands of this democratic commitment, on my view, require the thoroughly participatory stance embodied in radical democracy. Drawing on the work of George Herbert Mead, I maintain that we need an account of sociality that highlights its communicative dimension and that will allow us to critically and ethically evaluate political theory and practice. Ultimately I root a conception of democracy in a view of the normative ramifications of human communication that I call universalist perspectivalism. This formulation highlights the simultaneous commitment to (1) a rootedness in perspectives that forecloses the possibility of transcending all perspectives in order to attain an aperspectival standpoint and (2) a robust conception of universality that allows us to attain a critical and normative perspective on legitimacy claims. I argue that the communicative dimension of human sociality involves implicit appeals to universality as openness to an indefinite number of perspectives and contexts; and this can only be adequately translated into the political realm via a conception of cosmopolitan democracy, meaning a conception of democratic legitimation that goes beyond the bounds of territorially-defined nation-states to take into account the interests of all affected by political decisions. The democratic ideal itself consists in the freedom of individuals to criticize and work to reform the social order; as well as the subjection of the collective coordination of human social life to the constraint of legitimation via the input, evaluation, and interplay of the claims, interests, and perspectives of all subject to its decisions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-07212011-230230 |
| Date | 04 August 2011 |
| Creators | Houston, Joshua Wayne |
| Contributors | José Medina, Gregg Horowitz, John Lachs, James Bohman |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-07212011-230230/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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