ABSTRACT
This final chapter brings the discussions of the previous chapters together to make the case that an education for democracy ought to be understood as involving existentially authentic spiritual growth. As such, this growth has seven characteristics which are able to jointly address the natural vulnerabilities which people have. These characteristics include recognition of one's existing spirituality; authentically choosing one's spirituality; living well with uncertainty; living the questions via existential dialectics; forming personal identity via desire and will; empathy for others; and care and courage to dissent. By embodying caring confrontation as a way-of-being, these characteristics are able to make people less vulnerable to anti-democratic manipulations and more enabled to enact genuine democracy.
