Topics

General Theme: Democracy and Knowledge: interdependencies and interrelations

a) The European perspective
b) The ambivalence of transparency
c) Knowledge and responsibility
d) Public Choice Theory
e) Governance and accountability
f) The key issue and its history in philosophy

a) The European perspective
This form of governance is a pre-eminent task for Europe, insofar as to do justice to science without abolishing democracy, i.e., to the loss of respect for the rights of others, is at stake. But the process of European unification is a complex affair. Presenting political philosophy with a considerable challenge of 'law without a state', it makes matters even more confusing by the increasing role of scientific considerations in our society.

b) The ambivalence of transparency
Today's frequent calls for transparency seem to provide a necessary boost to democratic styles of life and government. In this context, however, transparency is an ambivalent concept, linked as it is with other concepts such as publicity, openness, accountability, or visibility and, at least implicitly, with truth and virtue. So how does this ambivalence create unity, and how can it be given political substance? How does transparency fit both with anonymity and with access to information, each of which is at the very heart of representations of our societies as 'societies of communication'? And how can it avoid uniformity and conformism, which everyone must keep to, in order to be transparent to others?

c) Knowledge and responsibility
With modern technology, our ability to command scientific knowledge involves a measure of control over, and intervention into, nature. This presents us with an entirely new set of responsibilities. The situations outlined above have more than just a societal and political relevance. For individuals, these situations also have far-reaching moral consequences, which in turn give rise to societal questions, such as how healthcare should be organised. Current scientific developments make it possible for individuals to gain insight into their own genetic makeup, and thereby give them power to dispose over their own reproduction - a process that might bring about increasing resistance to the birth of a child who deviates from the 'normal'.

d) Public Choice Theory
The relevance of social choice theory for a theory of public choice is discussed against the backdrop of the previous issues. There will be a focus on various problems of representation underlying the application of social choice theory.

e) Governance and accountability
As all these points demonstrate, forms of governance within a knowledge-based society should be developed on the basis of the often aporetic relationship between democracy and knowledge. Society as a whole is facing a future that, in scientific terms, is largely unpredictable. While this fact imposes growing responsibilities upon us, that same knowledge cannot help us establish the substance of these responsibilities. And it is precisely in this paradox that we see the value of creating consensus via the help that is provided by democratic forms of deliberation and decision-making.

f) The key issue and its history in philosophy
Conflicts between politics, science, and democracy reach far back into the history of political philosophy and ethics. Each runs counter to the ideal of an inherently rational political order in which the possession of true knowledge is acknowledged as the legitimate basis of political authority. They are made even more complex when science is manipulated so as to deliberately distort an issue that might otherwise be settled by democratic means. Contemporary public choice theorists give particular stress to the idea that political decision-making is influenced by personal interests and by interest groups.