The Betrayal of Democratic Space

I spoke recently to a friend who reported that he and several of his colleagues in other universities were searching for a philosophical language and conceptual structure by which they could address some of the issues of identity and social justice that they perceive and experience. They find the philosophical discipline in which they were trained inadequate to formulate their perceptions and experiences into an intelligent and appropriate discourse: Something vital and having to do with human issues was lost in the translation process. Their experiences of identity, lineage, and justice exposed the limits of the sensible, disciplined thought that they previously considered the standard of responsible utterance. Did their traditional discipline betray their experiences? Did their experiences betray their training?

Betray is a strong word. Its linguistic root in common with traitor is the Latin tradere, which means to hand over, give up, or surrender. To betray is to deliver something into the hands of an enemy by treachery. It suggests faithlessness and violation of trust. It also can mean to reveal something that prudence would conceal—her eyes betrayed her love—or to reveal something not at first obvious. The word can also mean to mislead or to lead into danger.

For the purposes of this discussion I will not stress the word's kinship with treason and intentional deception. I will have in mind, instead, leading into danger and making apparent things that, in given contexts, good sense would conceal. I will talk about the issue of betrayal in relation to groups of values and well-intended situations as distinct to people betraying other people. So let us look again at the two questions above: Did my friend's traditional discipline betray his experiences? Or did his experiences betray his training?

I am leaving unstated which approach to philosophy he learned because I believe that it is a widespread experience to find one's philosophical orientation too limited to address cogently emerging problems and realities including those of value conflict, justice, and injustice. In the force of these experiences many of us find limits—I am inclined to say the danger of irrelevance—in the way we speak together professionally. We might well feel in those experiences betrayed by our discipline and its manner of responsible rigor. Or we could say that our experience betrays the limits of our discipline. With either emphasis we note a border that we encounter, a limit-experience, that does not invalidate the way we have thought philosophically but, rather, makes possible transformations to accommodate something that is becoming evident. In the instance of my friend, his responsible discipline misled him (betrayed him) in the sense that it did not enable him to address responsibly major issues of truth and justice; and his experiences made apparent (betrayed) the previously unapparent limits and inadequacy of his discipline. This experience encouraged him to find an altered language and conceptuality that are informed by his encounters at the borders of his trained good sense.

In this essay I will give primary attention to the experience of what I shall call (experimentally) democratic space. The question of betrayal provides an initial orientation to a larger question of the importance of transformative experiences for a democratic society. After an account of democratic space as occasioning boundary experiences I will discuss an objection regarding the betrayal by democratic space of values regarding it. I will close with observations about the ethical importance of actively affirming democratic space. The connection with my friend's efforts is found in the importance of boundary experiences and the transformations their accommodation seems to require of some traditional language and conceptual formation. My effort is to find a way to speak with ethical import at the boundary of sense and no sense at all in our lives together.

Democratic Space

By "democratic" I have in mind a political organization (1) whose constituents comprise countervailing forces of value, belief, and cultural practices; (2) whose collective governance and decision-making processes systematically include participation by its members; (3) whose procedures are based on a constitution and statement of the rights for all citizens; and...