Persuasion and Compulsion in Democracy

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This collection of essays focuses on the roles that coercion and persuasion should play in contemporary democratic political systems or societies. A number of the authors advocate new approaches to this question, offering various critiques of the dominant classical liberalism views of political justification, freedom, tolerance and the political subject. A major concern is with the conversational character of democracy. Given the problematic and ambiguous status of the many differences present in contemporary society, the authors seek to alert us to the danger, that an emphasis on reasonable consensus will conceal exclusion in practice of some contending positions. The voices of vulnerable peoples can be unconsciously or even deliberately silenced by various institutional processes and operating procedures and a strong media influence can change the tenor of conversations and even lead to deception. To counter these factors, a number of the essays, in differing ways, urge the fostering of local community conversations or democratic agoras so that democratic debate and conversation might maintain the vitality necessary to a strong democratic system.

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Persuasion and Compulsion in Democracy is a thought-provoking collection of chapters on current democratic theory. The authors start with a recognition of familiar critiques of liberal and deliberative democracy theories, and draw upon pragmatist frameworks to explore themes of agonistic discourse, coercion, deception, hegemony, and the radical situatedness of persons and political causes. This is an exciting resource for those who would seriously consider the forms and processes of democracy in the twenty-first century. -- Kelly A. Parker, Grand Valley State University

Author Bio

Jacquelyn Kegley is CSU outstanding professor of philosophy and Wang Family awardee for outstanding teaching, research, and service. She is professor of philosophy and chair of the department of philosophy and religious studies at California State University, Bakersfield. She is author of Josiah Roxce in Focus and Genuine Individuals and Genuine Communities: A Roycean Public Philosophy. She is an author and editor of Genetic Knowledge as well of numerous articles on American Philosophy, Genetic technology, and contributed to the volume, Pragmatic Bioetchics. She also contributed to Library of Living Philosophers volumes on Marjorie Grene, Paul Weiss, and Richard Rorty. She is immediate past president of the society for the advancement of American Philosophy and a recipient of the Herbert Schnieder Award for outstanding contributions of American Philosophy. Krzysztof (Chris) Piotr Skowronski, PhD, teaches contemporary philosophy, aesthetics, cultural anthropology, Polish Philosophy, and American Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy, Opole University, Poland. He co-organizes annual conferences on American and European Values. He authored books: Values and Powers. Re-reading the Philosophical Tradition of American Pragmatism (Rodopi in 2009) and Santayana and America. Values, Liberties, Responsibility (Cambridge Scholars 2007). He co-edited books: (with Matthew Flamm) Under Any Sky. Contemporary Readings of George Santayana (Cambridge Scholars 2007); (with Matthew Flamm and John Lachs) American and European Values: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives (Cambridge Scholars 2008); (with Larry Hickman, Matthew Flamm and Jennifer Rea) The Continuing Relevance of John Dewey: Reflections of Aesthetics, Morality, Science, and Society (Rodopi 2011); (with Kelly Parker) Josiah Royce for the Twenty First Century (Lexington 2012); and (with Cornelis de Waal) The Normative Thought of Charles S. Peirce (Fordham, 2012).