Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: towards an aversive account of democracy
- 1 Democracy, universalization and (dis)agreement
- 2 Democratic argumentation: rhetoric and imagination
- 3 Democratic identification and aspect change
- 4 Democratic subjectivity: the promise of democratic community
- 5 Conclusion: aversive democracy – exemplarity, imagination and passion
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Democratic argumentation: rhetoric and imagination
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: towards an aversive account of democracy
- 1 Democracy, universalization and (dis)agreement
- 2 Democratic argumentation: rhetoric and imagination
- 3 Democratic identification and aspect change
- 4 Democratic subjectivity: the promise of democratic community
- 5 Conclusion: aversive democracy – exemplarity, imagination and passion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In extreme cases we run up against the limits of our understanding, and the interpretations which we use in vain to solve difficult problems come to a standstill. But they become fluid again when familiar facts are seen in a different light in a new vocabulary, so that fixated problems can be put in a new and more fruitful way.
Only ingenium is able to grasp [coligere] the relationship between things in a concrete situation in order to determine their meaning. This capacity has an ‘inventive’ character, since it attains an insight without merely bringing out what is present in the premises as reason does in a logical derivation. Ingenium reveals something ‘new’ [ingenio … ad res novas proclives], something ‘unexpected’ and ‘astonishing’ by uncovering the ‘similar in the unsimilar,’ i.e., what cannot be deduced rationally.
The force of argument
If there is one of Habermas' expressions set to solicit the agreement of virtually all theorists of democracy it is probably that of the ‘force of the better argument’. There seem to be no plausible grounds upon which one could reasonably disagree with the sentiment that the authority of the better argument should carry the day. Aiming to secure the rational character of motivation, Habermas suggests that ‘the unforced force of the better argument’ should, under idealized conditions, determine the position one takes in a debate.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Aversive DemocracyInheritance and Originality in the Democratic Tradition, pp. 56 - 104Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007