ABSTRACT
Initially, I am inspired by two historical premodern references in this regard: Aristotle’s willingness to blend ethos and polis, and Augustine’s radical rejection of that association. There is a debate between these two positions and it is my contention that current debates over democracy are foreshadowed in the respective arguments presented by Augustine and Aristotle. There are, of course, problems with both views. The problem with the Aristotelian view is that it tends to ground the normative status of politics on the basis of certain assumptions about human capacities and just institutions which are, in modernity at least, difficult to justify. The problem with the Augustinian view is that it tends to be too sceptical of having any valid politics at all because of the assumed impossibility of creating a commonwealth (common will) out of an unorganized horde of corrupt individuals. For both, a valid politics required a form of rational justification. But that is as far as the comparison goes. Aristotle is right to the extent that there should be some kind of link between reason, ethics and politics. But Augustine is appropriately suspicious of the attempt by classical culture to place the burden of goodness on the shoulders of potentially corrupt individuals. My point is that there has to be a rational link between ethics or morality and politics. If one defines that link too
narrowly, as Aristotle did, one loses the possibility of a critical distance between the political institutions of the day and their potential ethical or moral foundation. If one divorces them as radically as did Augustine, politics, and by implication democracy, disintegrate under the weight of ethical critique. Where does one draw the line regarding a certain optimism about the rational justification of politics and a certain pessimism regarding the potentiality of reason in the light of the failure of human beings and their institutions?
