Democracy is not only a form of government. It is also the moral aspiration for a society of self-governing political equals who disagree about politics. Citizens are called on to be active democratic participants, but they must also acknowledge one another’s political equality. Democracy thus involves an ethic of civility among opposed citizens. Upholding this ethic is more difficult than it may look. When the political stakes are high, the opposition seems to us to be advocating injustice. Sustaining Democracy poses the question: why should we uphold democratic relations with those whose politics we despise?
____________________________________
Imagine we wake to find depraved, angry beasts everywhere. Desperate to save our town, we form an armed militia--but we can't stop feuding over who of us is fit to fight. All that saves us is that the brutes are also attacking each other, like we are attacking ourselves. Robert Talisse diagnoses the diseases that distort how we see our political opponents--and that then set us against our allies. Talisse shows that to save our democracy we must remedy the maladies that make us see monsters everywhere.
-- Leif Wenar, Olive H. Palmer Chair of Humanities, Stanford University