Syllabus
1)Normative assumptions of democracy. Democratical values and norms: freedom, equality, justice.
Civics, state, democratic discourse. Methods of researsch: hermeneutical, critical, pragmatical.
Sartori: normative assumptions of empiric theory 2)Theory of democracy in Athens: freedom and eaquality. Practice before theory.
Solon. Pericles speech.
Democracy in Herodotos and Thukydides. Platon´s and Aristotle´s critique of democracy.
Biblical assumptions of democracy: Decalogue, prophets, equality in front of God, God´s kingdom. 3)Republican theory of democracy: Tocqueville. Democracy as equality of conditions.
Democratical revolution as historical process. Religion assumptions of democracy.
Dangers of democracy. 4)Liberal theory of democracy: J.S.Mill. Personel and political freedom as the first and fundamental value and social norm.
Democracy as free and equal discussion. Protection of individuality against prevailing public opinion. 5)Czech contribution to normative theory of democracy.
Masaryk: humanistic democracy, democracy as a discussion, political form of love to another. Rádl: just democracy, critique of nationalism.
Komárková: human righst as a fundament of democracy 6)Popper. Democracy as a movement from the closed society to open society.
Individual freedom and responsibility. Critique of Plato, Hegel, Marx.
How to prevent from the bad government. Why should we prefer democracy to dictatorship. 7)Neoliberalism.
Berlin´s concetpt of negative and positive freedom. Freedom an democracy.
Critique of harmonical theories of democracy. Hayek: order and market. 8)Rawls: Theory of justice.
Free and equal civics and good established society. Human and civic righst as the first principle of justice.
Justice as fairness. The original state.
The veil of ignorance. 9)Liberalism and comunitarism as an answer to Rawls theory of justice. Liberals: Nozick, Dworkin, Nagel.
Komunitarians: Walzer, Sandel, MacIntyre, Ch.Taylor 10)Habermas: Discoursive theory of democracy as a third way between liberal and republican theory of democracy. The boundation with communicative theory of action.
Deliberative democracy. 11)Critique from perspektive of radical pluralistic, agonal democracy. Critique of universalism from the point of view of contextualism: R.Rorty, Ch.Mouffe 12)Discussion about multiculturalism and interculturalism: Ch.Taylor, Habermas, Appiah, Barša.
Culture, ethnicity, solving of conflicts and democracy. 13)Discussion about cosmopolitism and its critique: Held, Habermas, Ferrara, Mouffe.
Annotation
The subject introduces into contemporary normative theory of demokracy through searching of classical, Czech and contemporary normative theory democracies, their comparations and possible outline of normative theory of democracy in context of theoretical and practical democratical discourse. The subject is a combination of a lecture, seminar reading and student papers.