ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a society as democratic that combines the greatest possible cultural diversity with the most extensive possible use of reason. Democracy is the political expression of a general tendency to recompose the world, and it affects every domain of social life: the economic, the cultural, and the national. Democratic culture cannot exist without a reconstruction of public space or a return to political debate. Democratic culture is associated with modernity because modernity is based on the elimination of all central principles that can be used to define a unitary society. The creators of modern republics and the modern economy were an elite made up of adult, educated, male property owners above a multitude of inferior groups, which were irrational. Many observers denounce the worldwide absence of democratic culture, even in places where there is a certain political liberty.
