ABSTRACT
Durkheim’s ideas about symbolic systems in modern society are used to explore the connection between knowledge and democracy. The disposition of partial loyalty is theorised as a necessary component of citizenship with the disposition created in the contradictory individualisation-socialisation function of modern education. In turn, that function is characterised by the way each generation is socialised into the collective representations of the symbolic system and at the same time, into the partial loyalty that enables criticism of society through the exercise of citizenship. Rational knowledge, as both the instrument of symbolic thought and the means of communicating this thought, links the logical component of knowledge found in abstract concepts to its social function as the means of communication in modern society. It is in this link that knowledge and the socio-ethical principles of democracy may be connected. The continued strength of democracy depends upon whether education systems maintain the progressive consensus created in the logical-conformity link and exercised in citizenship.
