Against the new democratic revisionism: the scope of the moral value of democracy in K.-O. Apel

Abstract

The current democracy decline, the systematic non-fulfillment of the expectations of equality, inclusion and participation, is undermining the credibility and trust of the set of institutions that make up the democratic system. The revisionist current of democracy gives a good account of this new scenario where democracy is neither the only nor the best answer to how to organize our life in common, to achieve a collective formation of the will. In this context, democracy runs the risk of blurring its legitimacy under concepts such as illiberal democracy or algorithmic democracy. The expansion of populism, digital technologies and a new vindication of expertocracies, make up a not reassuring horizon. It is necessary to rethink democracy and justify a critical perspective that allows us to morally base the values ??that give it meaning.

For this purpose, we need to recover the intrinsic value of democracy, its moral value. And it is in this reflection where it is important to use some ideas of K.O. Apel. They have to do with his justification of the moral value of democracy and the scope of an ethic of democracy. Throughout his works, Apel insisted on the need to establish a criterion of moral validity, a discursive or communicative ethics, capable of explaining the legitimacy of the expectations generated by democracy, but also the possibility of normative criteria for the application of the moral requirement of reciprocal recognition, a realization that considers the history and the particular situation, the plural, complex and global contexts in which we live. Both moments allow a critical perspective capable of arguing against the current revisionism and justifying the ethical bases that underlie our trust in democracy and its institutions.