Opinion vs. interest: Can Hannah Arendt's dichotomy be sustained in a democratic conception of participation?
Abstract
The relation between Hannah Arendt and contemporary theories of democracy reveals a paradox: In Arednt's thought, civic participation is at the centre of her conception of political freedom, and thereby, her conception of a free republic. However, her conception of participation is practically absent from contemporary theories of participative and deliberative democracy.
Can this be put down to an ommission, or perhaps the different theoretical backgrounds of respective theories? In this contribution, I try first to lay out Arenmdt's conception of participation, based mainly on her work On revolution, and then point to what I see as one of the main reasons for the difficult transferability of her conception to contemporary democratic theories based on participation, namely the limits of the epistemic dichotomies that Arendt encloses her conception in, the dichotomy of interest and opinion and that of the political and the social. My critique of these dichotomies, to the difference of numerous other critiques is focusing on its implications for the democratic potential of participation.
The following questions are thus being asked: Can leaving the realm of the social behind be a pre-condition for entering the realm of the political? Is the desire for "public happinness", a concept dear to the American federalists of the 18th century, be a sufficient motivation for participation? And, what is more, can it be a legitimate criterion for differentiating between those who will take part in public life and those who will stay out of its borders? And finally, can such a conception of participation be a foundation of a politics more democratic than that based on representation?