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Democracy and the Symbolic Constitution of Society
Author(s) -
Lindahl Hans
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
ratio juris
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.344
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1467-9337
pISSN - 0952-1917
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9337.00074
Subject(s) - constitution , politics , democracy , power (physics) , distancing , epistemology , sociology , meaning (existential) , law , the symbolic , political philosophy , mediation , political science , law and economics , philosophy , psychoanalysis , psychology , medicine , physics , disease , covid-19 , quantum mechanics , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty)
Building on Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms, this paper argues that the continuities and discontinuities characterizing the passage from medieval politics to modern democracy can best be understood by reference to political power's symbolic structure. For the one, political power, whether theocratic or democratic, always mediates an absolute power; as mediation, political power enacts the twofold movement which Cassirer has identified as characteristic of all human symbolization: a distancing of, and approximation to, reality. For the other, democracy institutionalizes a category distinction between meaning and being, making of political unity a functional, rather than substantial, unity.