What I think Rorty means by saying that democracy is prior to philosophy is pretty much what you say, plus what I said before -- that our adherence to democracy is more basic than any argument we might produce for or against it. Even if there was a strong-appearing argument against democracy, or we failed to produce a beter one for it than the usual banalities, or we could not agree on the merits of different arguments we had for it, we would still hold to the view that democracy is the best kind of government. So I don't see that we disagree. jks
--- joanna bujes <jbujes at covad.net> wrote:
>
>
> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> >That was the point I was making to BM -- it doesn't
> >matter to us if we have a justification of
> democracy
> >or an answer to the objections or problems. We'd
> like
> >a justification, but as long as we agree on
> democratic
> >procedures, it's onlt icing. Democracy (as Rorty
> says)
> >is prior to philosophy, deeper than justification.
> jks
> >
> >
> I don't follow. Agreeing on democratic procedures is
> kind of like saying
> that there are no a priori solutions and that the
> best way forward is
> through freely-arrived-at consensus -- a social
> working through of a
> social problem. This only makes it prior to
> philosophy if you restrict
> what philosophy can be about. Plato/Socrates
> referred to this kind of
> working through in the Phaedrus when discussing the
> truth value of
> dialog over text.... No?
>
> Joanna
>
> >
> >
>
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