Qué hacer con el pluralismo: la política democrática más allá de la evitación y la decisión

Abstract

Value pluralism is an inherent characteristic of modern democratic societies, and it is also the starting point of Political Liberalism and the Agonist Conception of Democracy. However, the descriptions of pluralism these two conceptions offer are controversial. Despite their own differences, they both assume the impossibility of bringing under rational control those deep moral beliefs that lie at the heart of the problem concerning pluralism. It is facing this fact  that each view recommend, in turn, to avoid the introduction of those deep moral beliefs into the public debate,  or, admitting the hegemonic nature of any institutional configuration, proceed to widen the institutional channels for political contestation.Nonetheless, two observations allow us to relativize the strategies above-stated. The first one highlights the practical character of politics –associated with the centrality of problems of cooperation as a source of normative orientation. The second observation deals with the impossibility of determining the meaning of those expressions without appealing to contextual conditions. Together, these observations let us suspend the application of avoidance and decision strategies and enable us to recreate a more complex characterization of value pluralism.