"Poliittinen" ja perusteiden ongelma Chantal Mouffen demokratiateoriassa

Authors

• Sari Roman-Lagerspetz
• Eerik Lagerspetz

Abstract

Our aim is to examine critically Chantal Mouffe’s ”agonistic” theory of democracy, as formulated in her recent books. Mouffe’s theory is based on powerful criticisms of other, more traditional defenses of pluralistic democracy. Many of her criticisms may be well-founded; we discuss her critical contributions only insofar as they are relevant to the evaluation of her own theory. Our thesis is that, whatever the value of her critical points, her own theory does no better when it is itself evaluated by her own standards. Mouffe claims that the recent theories of pluralistic democracy (those of Rawls, Habermas, Benhabib, and Dworkin) are incoherent or selfdefeating. We try show that her theory is not coherent either. We focus on three possible problems in it: its potentially self-defeating nature, the problematic way it conceptualizes and absolutizes ”the political”, and its anti-foundationalism, which, paradoxically, becomes a sort of foundation in her view.