ABSTRACT
Relativism and democracy have long been regarded as corollary theory and practice. The saving relativism gets variously identified–as a liberal neutrality of ends, an indifferent bazaar of ethical communities, or a pragmatic accommodation to contingent privileged vocabularies. The very idea of legitimating democracy by appealing to relativism seems hopelessly absurd in light of the arguments that led Plato and Aristotle to dismiss majority rule. John Rawls and Habermas have attempted to redeem the justification of democracy from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s equivocations, reformulating the relativism of ends in terms of cultural pluralism and a relativity of reasonable notions of the good. Once democracy is duly recognized as an institution of freedom, and the special normativity of self-determination is comprehended, the connection between relativism and democracy, assumed by its traditional detractors and contemporary advocates alike, falls by the wayside. The formal idea of community can therefore hardly provide a justification of democracy as a universally valid form of government.
