July 2009

Notes and commentary on Chantal Mouffe's "Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?”

Mouffe, Chantal. "Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?” Social Research 66.3 (Fall 1999): 745-758.

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Chantal Mouffe’s article discusses two competing methods of envisioning an extensive (and thus radical) democracy. She confronts the theorists of “deliberative democracy”, particularly Jurgen Habermas, but also summarizes her own epistemological position of “agonistic pluralism”. Her article is clear and succinct, and she writes (as usual) with precise, relatively jargon-free prose. However, Mouffe’s critique tends to simplify Habermas’ position too strongly, and she succumbs to the either-or mentality to which she believes her opponents fall victim.

“Deliberative democracy”, as typified by Seyla Benhabib (and summarized by Mouffe), identifies three central elements as the foundation of its theory:

“1. Participation in such deliberation is governed by the norms of equality and symmetry; all have the same chance to initiate speech acts, to question, interrogate, and to open debate;
2. All have the right to question the assigned topics of conversation;
3. All have the right to initiate reflexive arguments about the very rules of the discourse procedure and the way in which they are applied or carried out. There are no prima facie rules limiting the agenda or the conversation, nor the identity of the participants, as long as each excluded person or group can justifiably show that they are relevantly affected by the proposed norm under question” (747)

Mouffe admits that Habermas and his followers don’t deny that there are obstacles to an “ideal discourse”, difficulties which are particular and contingent. According to Mouffe, this means that Habermasians now conceive of the ideal speech situation as a “regulative idea” (748). Moreover, “Habermas now accepts that there are issues that have to remain outside the practices of rational public debates like existential issues that concern not questions of justice but of the good life, or conflicts between interests groups about distributive problems that can only be resolved by means of compromises” (ibid). Nevertheless, Mouffe points out, Habermas still insists that "‘this differentiation within the field of issues that require political decisions negates neither the prime importance of moral considerations nor the practicability of rational debate as the very form of political communication’ [Habermas, 1991, p. 448]” (ibid).

Mouffe explains that Habermas considers his approach to be superior to Rawls’ because of Habermas’ “strictly procedural character which allow him to ‘leave more questions open because it entrusts more to the process of rational opinion and will formation’ [Habermas, 1995, p. 130]” (748).

Mouffe points to many other theorists to buttress her response. She deploys Wittgenstein as a key weapon against deliberative democracy. For Wittgenstein, procedural rules “are always abridgments of practices, they are inseparable of specific forms of life. Therefore, distinctions between ‘procedural’ and ‘substantial’ or between ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’ that are central to the Habermasian approach cannot be maintained and one must acknowledge that procedures always involve substantial ethical commitments” (749). If we accept Wittgenstein’s “form of life (Lebensform)” (which is the foundation for consensus rather than rational dialogue), then such “an approach requires reintroducing into the process of deliberation the whole rhetorical dimension that the Habermasian discourse perspective is precisely at pains to eliminate” (ibid). As a result, consensus is always provisional, and should be viewed warily rather than positively. Mouffe argues, paraphrasing Stanley Cavell’s critique of Rawls, that the “deprivation of a voice in the conversation of justice can be the work of the moral consensus itself” (750). Mouffe also employs Lacan’s point of view (via Zizek) to bolster her perspective: A “Lacanian approach reveals how discourse itself in its fundamental structure is authoritarian since out of the free-floating dispersion of signifiers, it is only through the intervention of a master signifier that a consistent field of meaning can emerge” (751). In other words, consensus is the result of a particular and temporary constellation of forces, assumptions and discourses, and cannot exist without exclusion and Otherness.

With her critique finished, Mouffe moves on to an alternative way of conceptualizing democracy. What “I am proposing here is the need to acknowledge the dimension of power and antagonism and their ineradicable character…. there can never be total emancipation but only partial ones…. any social objectivity is ultimately political and that it has to show the traces of exclusion that governs its constitution” (752).

She goes on to claim that

“Political practice in a democratic society does not consist in defending the rights of preconstituted identities, but rather in constituting those identities themselves in a precarious and always vulnerable terrain. According to such a view, democracy requires that the purely constructed nature of social relations finds its complement in the purely pragmatic grounds of the claims to power legitimacy…. a) if any power has been able to impose itself, it is because it has been recognized as legitimate in some quarters; and b) if legitimacy is not based in an a prioristic ground, it is because it is based in some form of successful power. This link between legitimacy and power is precisely what the deliberative model is unable to recognize, since it has to posit the possibility of a type of rational argumentation where power has been eliminated and where legitimacy is grounded on pure rationality” (753).

Therefore, “the main question of democratic politics is not how to eliminate power but how to constitute forms of power that are compatible with democratic values” (ibid). Power is always present, so to “acknowledge the existence of relations of power and the need to transform them, while renouncing the illusion that we could free ourselves completely from power, this is what is specific to the project of ‘radical and plural democracy’ that we are advocating” (ibid).

Mouffe moves on to explain what a pluralist democracy would look like. She uses adversarial, even military terminology, and focuses on a democratic “adversary” who is “an enemy with whom we have in common a shared adhesion to the ethico-political principles of democracy. But our disagreement concerning their meaning and implementation is not one that could be resolved through deliberation and rational discussion, hence the antagonistic element in the relation” (755). If we ever come to accept the position of our opponents, then it’s the result of “conversion” (in the Kuhnian sense) rather than purely rational persuasion. Mouffe concludes, “Compromises are possible; they are part of the process of politics. But they should be seen as temporary respites in an ongoing confrontation” (ibid).

Mouffe emphasizes a conflictual model of society and politics, but one where we work with power, rather than pretend it can be ignored “under the veil of rationality or morality” (757). In keeping with other post-modernists like Foucault, power is constitutive of existence and therefore not inherently negative. As such, “… the prime task of democratic politics is not to eliminate passions nor to relegate them to the private sphere in order to render rational consensus possible, but to mobilise those passions towards the promotion of democratic designs. Far from jeopardizing democracy, agonistic confrontation is in fact its very condition of existence” (756).

She concludes with an insistence on flux rather than stasis:

“When we accept that every consensus exists as a temporary result of a provisional hegemony, as a stabilization of power and that always entails some form of exclusion, we can begin to envisage the nature of a democratic public sphere in a different way (ibid).

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I have a few concerns with Mouffe’s article. The first is with her vague use of “ethico-political principles” (755 and 756). She clearly finds these of secondary importance, but it’s not clear from this article what she actually means by them. She does concede some importance to them when she says,

“To be sure, pluralist democracy demands a certain amount of consensus, but such a consensus concerns only some ethico-political principles. Since those ethico-political principles can only exist, however, through many different and conflicting interpretations, such a consensus is bound to be a "conflictual consensus" (756)

Nevertheless, she doesn’t go into any further detail about their definitions. One gets the sense that there is a reflexive distaste for such a topic, and that’s all were going to hear about it. This vagueness is mirrored by the lack of precision about how we ought to organize power and our passions “towards the promotion of democratic designs” (ibid). What kind of principles can we put forth, on behalf of a radical democracy, which go beyond might makes right? Like Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Mouffe seems unwilling to engage in normative issues or examples that may lead her to universalist principles… or at least proposals that sound like universalism. It reminds me of Peter Dews’ epithet that, “For the post-structuralists, the universality implicit in the concept of truth appears as a threat” (Dews 222). And perhaps for Mouffe the best way to deal with a threat is to just avoid it.

In a related manner, Mouffe tends to over-simplify Habermas’ position. For Mouffe, the ideal speech situation is but a few steps to an “authoritarian order” (ibid). There is no mention that post-structuralists like Lyotard, Lacan and Foucault have investigated the communicative logic that’s inherent in intersubjective dialogue. For example, Foucault has argued that,

“In the serious play of questions and answers, in the work of reciprocal elucidation, the rights of each person are in some sense immanent in the discussion. They depend only on the dialogue situation…. [For] the polemicist, on the other hand… the game does not consist of recognizing this person as a subject having any right to speak, but of abolishing him, as interlocutor, from any possible dialogue” (Foucault 381-382).

In other words, what is sought by deliberative democratic theorists, and some radical pluralists, too, is the procedural logic within communication itself. It may lead to procedures which are mired in particularist assumptions, but Mouffe has not (in this article) clearly explained what those assumptions are, and why they should be viewed sceptically. All she has argued is that all assumptions about rational procedure come from some perspective, so that’s enough to discredit any attempt.

Perhaps, as Dews explains in defence of Habermas, “it is not the quest for truth, but rather the violation of these [intersubjective] rights that will tend to take the form of coercion and intimidation”, and be the basis from which we resist domination (Dews 220; emphasis added). If so, then perhaps there is room for stable, meta-ethical principles of rational and moral conduct within a plurality of discourses. Otherwise, Mouffe’s conception of truth – where all paths to truth lead to domination – is as monistic as that which she claims comes from Habermas and his followers.

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Referenced Articles:

Dews, Peter. Logics of Disintegration, (New York: Verso, 1987).

Foucault, Michel. "Polemics, Politics and Problemizations," in The Foucault Reader, Rabinow, Paul, ed. (New York: Pantheon, 1984).

Habermas, Jurgen. "Further Reflections on the Public Sphere," in Habermas and the Public Sphere, Calhoun, Craig, ed. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1991).

Habermas, Jurgen. "Reconciliation through the Public Use of Reason. Remarks on John Rawls's Political Liberalism," The Journal of Philosophy (March 1995), XXCII:3.

Notes and commentary on "No Contest? Assessing the Agonistic Critiques of Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of the Public Sphere”

Notes and commentary on:

Brady, John. "No Contest? Assessing the Agonistic Critiques of Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of the Public Sphere.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 30.3 (2004): 331-354.

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John Brady’s article, "No Contest? Assessing the Agonistic Critiques of Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of the Public Sphere”, is a defence of Jurgen Habermas’ theory of deliberative democracy. It attempts to address the general critique of Habermas’ theory by “post-modern”, radical pluralists like Jodi Dean and Chantal Mouffe. These writers argue that Habermas not only ignores the essential role of an essentially contested public sphere, but that his overly optimistic rationalism leaves us dangerously incapable of accounting for, in Mouffe’s words, an essential “pluralism of values” where consensus is conditional and based on exclusion. Brady responds that these writers have misread Habermas, and that he is neither overly rationalistic nor politically and ethically naïve. Habermas, according to Brady, is attempting to establish a “meta-ethical” (343) set of principles and procedures that are “limited, but nonetheless significant”, and which assist “the further development of agonistic politics” (349).

Habermas’ central philosophical project has been to “specify the norms that should govern citizens’ interactions on the public stage” (332). According to Brady, the “agonistic critique” views this “theory of the public sphere [as] hopelessly unrealistic in so far as it continues to rely on a conception of public politics as the rational exchange of opinions, despite copious and daily proof of the messy, conflict-laden nature of contemporary political practice” (ibid).

Brady provides an excellent summary of postmodern theory, and how we have learned from post-modernism that binary oppositions often mask the contingent nature of social life as well as the “constitutive nature” of excluding the Other (333).

Nevertheless, Brady notes that one such binary opposition remains strong among all theorists:

“… it is perhaps surprising how stubbornly one particular binary opposition has managed to shape the discussion between agonistic and deliberative democrats, namely the purported opposition between contest and consensus. With remarkable regularity, theorists on both sides insist on the fundamental opposition between a democratic political practice based on contestation and one based on consensus formation” (333).

This is a rich and suggestive point. Apart from academia’s apparent need for adversarial positioning, it does seem from my own reading that such a dualism remains quite strong within this debate on democracy. Like Brady, I wonder if both sides are talking past each other, and evaluating each other with categories that don’t really describe what the other is thinking. In any case, Brady’s point lays the groundwork for attempting a reconciliation of the two perspectives, to which we will later return.

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After his introduction, Brady summarizes the critics’ position. According to Brady, Jodi Dean and others critics believe that Habermas’ theory has three central flaws:

“… the adoption of an homogenous and homogenizing conception of the public sphere; the denial of the constitutive role played by the exclusion of marginal groups, especially women, in the public sphere’s development; and, finally, the formulation of a concept of political subjectivity that belies the ‘conflicts and multiplicities already present’ in any subject” (337).

This apparently leads to an omission of the major role played by “gender, racial, cultural and ethnic differences” (ibid) in the public sphere.

Likewise, Chantal Mouffe argues (as summarized by Brady) that Habermas’ theory is flawed because of

“… Habermas’s adamant insistence that political questions can be decided rationally and that a public exchange of arguments and counter-arguments that takes place under conditions of equality, impartiality, and openness is the most suitable means of producing rational political opinion. To maintain such a position in the face of the ample evidence testifying to the irrational, power-soaked nature of contemporary politics, underscores the unrealistic, idealistic nature of Habermas’s model” (338).

The agonistic, pluralist model, on the other hand, redirects our attention to the tangible interplay of power. As Brady concludes, this model seeks to “address the bodily, psychic and emotional harms that Habermas, according to Dean, relegates to secondary importance by assigning them to the domain of ethics, tradition, and culture” (339).

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Brady responds to this critique by reminding the critics that Habermas has never forsaken the realm of contested political activity (340-341). Brady contends that Habermas has always confronted “power, conflict, and political contestation over issues of difference” (341). Nevertheless, Habermas does not reduce himself to such concerns. He instead

“… offers an analysis that is at once more subtle and more realistic: it acknowledges the play of power in politics but also the real role that rationality and non-strategic political communication play in shaping public debate. Thus what Dean and Mouffe interpret as a preoccupation with idealistic aspects of public debate is actually part of Habermas’s attempt to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the public sphere, one that avoids a one-dimensional, reductionist depiction of politics as simply power politics” (341).

We see from Brady an attempt to break Habermas’ theory out of the suffocating binary dualism that Brady noted earlier. He directs our attention to the second-order nature of Habermas’ theory that escapes the unitary notion of politics which typifies Mouffe’s and Dean’s approach.

“From Habermas’s perspective, the articulation of basic norms of law and morality [with which Mouffe and Dean are primarily concerned] falls outside the domain of moral theory [Habermas’ central concern]. Moral theory’s charge is, instead, meta-ethical: it is to develop the principles and criteria of fair procedure that should govern any process of argumentation through which individuals attempt either to restore the validity of a norm that has been contested or to arrive at a valid new norm” (343; emphasis added).

Brady adds that such a domain is reflexive and self-critical (ibid). It must be capable of defending itself against “other ethical approaches” in order to provide a “theoretical reconstruction of the pre-theoretical knowledge that subjects possess regarding what makes normative argumentation possible”. Brady emphasizes the second-order, meta-theoretical nature of Habermas’ task:

“Communicative rationality is not, however, a subjective capacity that individuals possess and that would tell them what they ought to do. This is a decisive point. It means that a theory that aims to describe communicative rationality will not produce prescriptions for individual action; it will not tell individuals how they should best lead their lives or how they should best organize their society” (345).

Instead, Habermas provides a neutral set of procedures “through which political actors can test the desirability of political contestation as an ingredient in the continuing project of democratization” (346). Therefore, “Habermas’s theory opens up a space for democratic reflection and democratic action, a space that necessarily contains room for a consideration of agonistic politics. In this sense, Habermas’s theory facilitates the agonistic approach to politics” (348).

Brady concludes with a subtle rebuke of post-modern, agonistic theories with the following question: “Does the endless subversion of codes and norms contribute to democratic politics or simply to political frustration?” (349) Brady’s point is that we can’t afford to dismiss Habermas’ project. At some point, we need to establish norms and rules which govern our political lives. After all, politics is, by its very nature, the process by which we regulate and institutionalize the competing demands and values of citizens. Can “endless subversion” even reach a tentative or conditional set of norms and rules? Brady and Habermas would surely say no.

The next stage is to consider if such norms and rules – reached by reason-giving citizens – can claim to be truthful in a Rational, universal sense, or merely historical and contingent. Brady, Habermas and others, like John Rawls, attempt to offer a different way of looking at things. They want to refuse a choice between flux or stasis; they want to regulate the inevitability of the former with an enduring vision of the latter. It remains to be seen whether their attempt to order politics in a first-order and second-order manner will be successful. It’s certainly an immensely interesting and important question to me, and one that I will continue to examine.

Some thoughts on Barbara Herrnstein Smith's Contingencies of Value

Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. Contingencies of Value. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988.

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One of the best accounts of post-modern epistemology that I've read comes from Barbara Herrnstein Smith's Contingencies of Value. She provides a plausible and thorough explanation of what a "post-axiological" epistemology would look like, and offers a series of effective rebuttals to what the objectivists decry as "relativism".

I place "relativism" in quotation marks because Smith emphasizes that what her critics consider to be relativism is not how she views the concept. Indeed, much of the book revolves around the contested notion of relativism, and providing a new conception that, by definition, does not fall victim to the supposed self-referential contradiction of the "relativist" position. For Smith, the failure of the objectivists to take the post-modern conception seriously means their critique is nothing more than a straw man attack, though they are so wedded to their own perspective that they're probably unaware of the operating fallacy.

For Smith, value - moral, aesthetic, literary, social - does not have a timeless essence. Every time we point to one or more apparently objective truths, we can find contrary values at some other place and time. (Initially, at least, she builds on the skepticism of thinkers like Hume.) Values, and the judgments that follow, are the outcomes of a complex and interdependent set of interlocking positions, positions which change over time and space. Such values and judgments are contingent on social, psychological, economic, cultural and historical factors, and are not relative as the objectivists choose to see it:

"... value is "relative" in the sense of contingent (that is, a changing function of multiple variables) rather than subjective (that is, personally whimsical, locked into the consciousness of individual subjects and/or without interest or value for other people)(11).

To Smith, her conception of knowledge does not mean "anything goes" (in Paul Feyerabend's poorly understood phrase (217)). What we consider to be "truth" is anchored in a concrete reality, but a reality, for Smith, that is complex and shifting and impossible to objectify. It is from these positions that we make truth claims, but not truth claims as understood by objectivists. The claims made by post-moderns are provisional rather than a priori or foundational. If this analysis is correct, then Smith is positing a perspectivist account of truth, rather than a subjectivist or objectivist account. It also appears closely aligned with what is now called critical realism. We can make good arguments to defend our position or refute our opponents, but at no time do we (or should we) believe in their ultimate, timeless objectiveness. Therefore, making a provisional truth claim about the impossibility of objective truth claims is not contradictory. From this vantage point, truth seeking is always open, revisable and modest. Smith goes on to argue, specifically against Habermas, that

"... there's no such thing as an honest opinion: no judgment, that is, totally unaffected by the particular social, institutional, and other conditions of its production or totally immune to the (assumed) interests and desires of its (assumed) audience... [these judgments are] the conditions under which all verbal transactions take place and which give them - or are, precisely, the conditions of possibility for - whatever value they do have for those actually involved in them" (102).

She also addresses one of the central charges against her post-modern stance: that her perspective renders her unable to produce coherent judgments, and thus leads to quietism. Such a charge, Smith replies, is an example of the Egalitarian Fallacy, which she characterizes in the following way: "unless one judgment can be said or shown to be more 'valid' than another, then all judgments must be 'equal' or 'equally valid'" (98). In response, she says that (from her position) "it does not follow that all value judgments are equally valid. On the contrary, what does follow is that the concept of 'validity' in that [objectivist] sense is unavailable as a parameter by which to measure or compare judgments". In other words, value judgments must be "understood, evaluated, and compared" by "something other than 'truth-value' or 'validity' in the objectivist, essentialist sense" (ibid).

It would interesting to actually see how she evaluates something in a manner "other than 'truth-value' or 'validity' in the objectivist, essentialist sense". Smith comes tantalizingly close when she "answer[s] the Nazi" (154). If she were to act against the fascist, Smith says, "I would look for the fastest and surest way to escape his power; under yet other conditions, I would do what I could, no doubt with others, to destroy him" (ibid). The question that immediately springs to mind is, why? Why would she fight the Nazi? Why is he wrong? To this, Smith provides no answer, but argues that "'answering the Nazi' with axiologically grounded arguments will do nothing at all to prevent or destroy his power" (155). That's true, but questions of "Why?' are not meant to be functional or programmatic. In this context, "why" is an intrinsically normative concern. I suspect she would want to respond with concepts like freedom, autonomy and respect. The problem, of course, is that these words are universalistic in nature.

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And this leads me to my biggest concern with Smith's general argument: she appears to conflate the act of making a truth claim (through speech or text) with the logical or objective truthfulness that the claim aims to reveal. In doing so, she counsels against any axiological or objective claims because they are grounded in the domination of "asymmetric epistemology", a domination that appears to ensnare even the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School (173 to 175).

This leads to a problem. Smith herself cannot but help make (unlike the Nazi example above) a series of claims that, at the level of communication itself, appear to imply an objective character. For example, she states that

"There are no transcendental guarantees, and also no objective truths of History, Experience, Science, or Logic, and also no theoretical analyses, whether economic, anthropological, historical, political, or other, that can expose a state of affairs as objectively (that is, empirically, mathematically, or transcendentally) unjust or wrong, and thereby, justify objectively (that is, independent of our particular identities and perspectives) our desire that it be otherwise" (175).

At most times during her essay, she qualifies her statements, but in many important instances like above - where she wants to draw together her premises into clear points - she does not. Does this refute her own argument? I don't believe so, but it does point to something that I believe she's missed.

Is it possible for people to continually qualify their statements, particularly when they make some judgment as to wrong and right, or good and bad? Can they say, with every written or spoken sentence, "I believe..." or "To be sure..." or "From this point of view..."? It seems to me that this is exhausting and self-defeating. Not only do you get tired from language that steers you away from your original point, but its repetitiveness attacks your own sense of coherency and the confidence that your speech partner or reader has in the legitimacy of your claim.

And it may go deeper than that. Following cognitive psychology*, if we conceive human beings as creatures who seek to make meaning of their lives (in an abstract, moral sense), then these meaning-bearing creatures must seek consistency, not the "multiplicity of play". To make sense of the world requires that we find a coherent and stable set of beliefs and doctrines. Such stability requires language that seeks stasis rather than flux. But let me be clear: what I'm positing is a human need to make truth claims as if they are objective claims, but this in no way necessitates - contra Habermas - an objective world of Rational norms. In this manner, I am postulating a psychological premise where "objective" truth is sought because we seek coherency with our basic moral and value perspectives; this position seems close to Rawls' theory of justice as derived from a reflective equilibrium, and is something I will continue to investigate.

So how is this a problem for Smith? I believe that she ignores the necessary performative requirement to communicate as truth tellers, and that our language and human requirements make it impossible to live in the communicative world she recommends. It's just too exhausting and confusing and cognitively painful. She may be correct - indeed, I believe she is correct - in the essentially contingent nature of moral and social truths, but that doesn't mean people can always think and communicate like that.

As such, radical pluralists like Smith should not dismiss Habermas so readily. He might be wrong; but then again, as skepticists should always admit, Habermas could be correct. But even if he isn't (or if he is not as objectivist as Smith believes), why do thinkers continue to seek standards of truth and reason? Is it intellectual imperialism, or is it an ingrained need (however futile) to make sense of our world? If it's the latter, then maybe the all-or-nothing position she detects in her critics also drives her own theory into a corner.

Perhaps a more modest and provisional neo-Rawlsian/Habermasian project is in order.

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*See, for example, Jesse Bering (August 2003), "Towards a cognitive theory of existential meaning." New Ideas in Psychology, Vol. 21, Issue 2: 101-120.

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