THE CONCEPTUAL PROBLEM OF DEMOCRACY IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

Nations, Countries, States of the world practice one form of political system or the other geared towards maintaining peace and order in such society, nation or state. In the quest of this, they have experimented one form of government or the other. Democracy seen as the rule by the people is a form of decision making or government whose meaning can be made more precise by contrast with rival forms, such as dictatorship, oligarchy or monarchy. In these rival forms a single person or a select group rules. With democracy, it is not so. The people themselves rule and they rule themselves. The same body is both ruler and ruled. This paper adopts philosophical analyses to examine the conceptualization of democracy, its nature and discuss of its value. Since the above cannot be completely separated. Any account which explains the value of democracy has to provide or presuppose an account of what it is holding to be of value. Some shortcomings were identified and one answer to all of these problems is to dispense with the idea of democracy being a mechanism for satisfying antecedently given preferences. Instead of taking these as given, democracy should be held as a device in which people develop and discover their views about what is right. And, in thinking about what is right, they should think about what is right for the group as a whole, and not just themselves. People should therefore participate in a form of decision making in which they share their ideas, discuss together and eventually reach general agreement.