Читать книгу Homo Empathicus - Alexander Görlach - Страница 10

IT HAS BECOME FASHIONABLE to speak of the “crisis of liberal democracy.” Those who come to this conclusion frequently refer to two events: the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald Trump as US president. These two events of 2016 are seen as turning points and as corroding and significantly weakening the old, “liberal” order. In fact, both the sharp tone with which supporters of the Leave campaign drummed up support for exiting the European Union, and the crude rhetoric with which presidential candidate Donald Trump fulminated against Mexicans, Chinese, trade deficits, and the idea of climate change, were rejections of a world order based on multilateralism and cooperation. The proverbial “America First” and “Make America Great Again,” Donald Trump’s two slogans, find an implicit echo in England and could also have been written about the Leave campaign: “Britain First” and “Make Britain Great Again,” get out of the EU. In this view, liberal and libertarian ideas have weakened the United Kingdom and the United States of America. According to the advocates of a new, “illiberal democracy,” these two countries were only being exploited by their supposed allies.

Especially the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has become associated with the term “illiberal democracy” as a model for exercising power. By constantly repeating the two phrases and through their polemic use in political discourse, they come to appear as conceptual equivalents of “liberal democracy,” as catchphrases of equal value. Here, as everywhere in political discourse, people create and lay claim to terms with the aim of putting their own stamp on the debate and requiring use of their own terminology. “Liberal democracy” and “illiberal democracy” are a good example of this. Proponents of “illiberal democracy” have succeeded in steering the discourse and the language of discourse to the point where their term was perceived so strongly that it came into general use. Proponents of democracy are now forced to place the qualification “liberal” in front of the actual concept: an adjective, or a grouping of terms that was not at all common in this way in public discourse only a few years ago. The consequence is that these two concepts are now seen by the public as standing side by side on an equal footing. But there is no such thing as an “illiberal democracy.” Shaping and influencing a discourse means changing the consciousness and thinking of those who participate in the discourse. In doing so, it is crucial to link so-called high-value words with one’s own position. In the study of language and politics in Germany, such words are known as miranda (from a Latin word meaning “things that must be admired”). Their opposites are the antimiranda, and one attempts by all means possible to hang these low-value words on an opposing group. In the US, for example, those who preserve and uphold the current form of democracy are subject to terms such as “globalists” or “internationalists,” which are meant to stigmatize them. These two designations are intended to discredit the cosmopolitan worldview. In Germany, there is a similar battle over the word Gutmensch (literally, a good person). This term, which actually has positive denotations, was so stigmatized in the past that it can now be used by supporters of an illiberal social order within their own group as a designation for fellow human beings without causing a stir or raising objections. More on this in chapter 4—but the reference is essential at this point because terms shape thought about phenomena, they define who argues from a position of strength and who argues from a place of weakness. Champions of the liberal order appear to be backed into a corner at the moment.

This is due to the failure of the elites in Western democracies after the financial crisis as sketched out earlier. One feels like shouting at Mr. Orbán and his fans that there is no such thing as an “illiberal democracy.” A democracy today is liberal—or it is not a democracy. What does this mean? There is not just one form of democracy. Like everything else in the world, this form of government has evolved and changed over the millennia. Anyone, no matter from which camp or with what intention, who emphasizes a “primal state” that reflects the ideal form and the optimal nature and functioning of democracy, is arguing ahistorically. Transformation and change are the only constants of human history. Those who do not adapt, who do not act according to the model of the Apostle Paul—“test everything; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21)—lose. How many empires have perished because they did not take this advice to heart, how many kings’ names have become synonymous with decline and ruin, solely because they did not make it over the threshold of a new era?

This means that democracy today does not have to reflect the democracy of Athens to be considered a legitimate democracy: The Athenian aristocrats, as free men, were qualified to engage in politics. Women were excluded, as were slaves. Who would want to go back to such a time? Who would again choose this form of democracy, albeit a form that is historically significant and paradigmatic up to the present day? Only in the modern era does a manner of thinking begin that leads to what we now recognize beyond all doubt as the features of democracies: freedom of expression and religion, freedom of the press, academic freedom. Gradually, a political order emerges from the philosophical construction of the subject that takes these new convictions into account. All of this took time: as in the US, Women’s suffrage is only a hundred years old in Germany, an achievement of the Weimar Republic, and it is much more recent in many other countries.

“Democracy” is defined as “rule by the people.” But the people are diverse and not homogeneous. There are various opinions and views in every community that, even if suppressed through coercion and violence, can still persist. People have different preferences, which is why deliberations about substantive issues can have varying outcomes. There are regional, cultural, and religious differences. There are different generations, and they have to learn together how to communicate and how to take consideration of each other. No family gets by without this capability. It is the same with society, or with the many societies in which we as modern subjects interact: We behave in our roles as family members in a certain way that differs from our roles in professional life. To live successfully in these different contexts requires tact, empathy, and patience. Each generation works on its own tasks: the question of religious freedom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the question of women’s suffrage in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Anyone who is aware of this understands why talk of the “will of the people,” which so-called strongmen such as Viktor Orbán invoke, is so fundamentally wrong. No society is a monolith—pardon, no free society is a monolith. This can be clearly observed in countries ruled by people like Viktor Orbán and their parties: Critics are shut down, both at the universities and in the media. The constitutions that guarantee and legally secure the achievements of the modern era—such as the attribution of human rights and then their codification—are being unraveled just so that in the end, the illusion of a uniform society can be created. Four hundred years of European intellectual, cultural, and legal history are being swept aside. It is a historical irony that, in the name of democracy, those very freedoms that make our present democracy possible in the first place should be curtailed. If “the liberal secularized state lives by prerequisites which it cannot guarantee itself,” as expressed by the scholar of constitutional law Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, then this assertion must be understood in a different way than how it is commonly interpreted. This dictum is generally used to point out the alleged metaphysical foundations of our democracy. It is usually cited by devout Christians to highlight what they see as the clear and evident Christian character of our democracies. I do not want to enter into that discussion, but I would like to state quite clearly that the current form of democracy explicitly and deliberately accepts the fact that it does not impose one premise of its existence on all its members. It is therefore true that the foundations of our humanness, of who we are, lie outside the sphere of what can be said in a democracy. The fact is recognized, enshrined, and defended—and that is the essential trait of our democracies today—that there is more to human beings than one can see. Human dignity, with its recognition and legal codification being the sole legitimation of the constitutional state under the rule of law, is ultimately not demonstrable in a scientific sense. Its existence also becomes relevant only when it is legally safeguarded and cannot be set aside. The liberal state under the rule of law therefore does not force its citizens to profess and practice a particular religion, for example, or to elect a particular party, or to cheer for a particular football team. Plurality is the hallmark of our democracies today; it is why we call them liberal. Anyone who proclaims homogeneity as the cause, essence, and goal of democracy is mistaken. A look at history shows that precisely this homogeneity can be established only through coercion and violence and perpetuated only through injustice, torture, and murder.

To anticipate an accusation often made by enemies of this value system, plurality never simply means arbitrariness—as should be clear from what has already been said. The criteria mentioned here that characterize a democracy today are the values that govern coexistence: respect for others, listening, openness to discussion, critical thinking, tolerance, empathy. In the face of this incomplete catalog of values and norms that emerge from what has been said about the nature of today’s democracy, I cannot see how one could conclude that a “liberal democracy” succumbs to relativism and thus capitulates.

The form of democracy we have today in Europe, the Americas, Australia, East Asia, and other parts of the world is the one that took shape after the end of World War II. Just from the geographic distribution of this form of government and society, one can recognize that this democracy cannot, due to philosophical convictions or religious traditions, be valid exclusively in only one cultural sphere. There are liberal democracies in the Christian world as well as in the Buddhist world. A Muslim can live just as well in a democracy as an atheist. The prerequisite for participation in community life is the acknowledgment of the liberal values that one would also like to have applied to oneself. If this mutual acknowledgment is lacking, if disparagement based on religion or skin color becomes the rule for certain groups in a society—in short, if the rules do not apply or do not apply to everyone—then a crisis like the one we are now experiencing will arise. The political scientist Francis Fukuyama describes this forcefully in his book Identity: The opposite of dignity is indignation, the recognition that one has been deprived of dignity or humiliated. It arises from the disparagement of people based on gender or ethnicity, age, or physical disability. It also includes economic factors that make possible participation in community life. Those denied a good education or a good job due to their skin color remain perpetually excluded from the opportunities that are available to large parts of society. The list of examples can—unfortunately—be extended. A retiree who has worked her entire life but does not receive enough in retirement benefits to make ends meet, let alone go to the movies or a café on occasion, will experience indignation. People who lost everything in the financial crisis, and then are forced to watch as those responsible are not held accountable or brought to justice, will experience indignation as well.

The promoters of “illiberal democracy” always claim that we have too many options, that liberals only stand up for minorities, that a democracy is supposed to be for the majority. They are wrong on every count. We do not have too many options, but rather a few principles; if they are to count as principles, however, they should and must apply—and be applied—universally.

These principles do not simply fall out of the sky, however—hence Dahrendorf was quite right about the concept of mentality and its transformation—but are, rather, discovered, discussed, negotiated, and further developed by people. The principle of justice may be stated simply, but what it means in concrete terms today must be worked out through discussion. What it will mean in fifty years is something our descendants will have to grapple with one day.

Therefore a liberal democracy does not represent relativism or particularism: it is the vessel in which talk of human dignity and attendant rights takes on a secured form. If all this is so clear, why have the “illiberals” succeeded in turning the discourse in their favor? Put simply, it is because they have the “powerful images.” The refugee crisis of 2015 made it possible to align discontent about the financial crisis and how the powerful handled it with a threat for which there were images. In the Old World, the refugees from Syria’s civil war making their way to central Europe on foot evoked the primeval human fear of Überfremdung, what might be termed “excessive foreign influence” or “foreign infiltration.” This motif, however, was not the predominant one. Talk of preserving one’s own culture or saving the Christian West was actually only meant to conceal that the true threat was perceived as economic in nature. As one could read on social networks, “The refugees have cell phones!!!”—social envy toward people who had demonstrably lost everything but held on to a cell phone during their exodus in order to stay in contact with those left at home. For the billions that the major banks had squandered, it was difficult to create a direct visual context. With the refugees, it was quite simple. Since that time, the issue of migration has gripped the entire world. At the end of 2018, in many parts of the world, the United Nations Global Compact for Migration was heatedly and fiercely debated like perhaps no other document before it. Various countries’ news media noted when a UN member state refrained from signing the compact. The way migration became the focus of attention shows that it is not about migration per se, but about coping with economic circumstances and conditions and inequalities that can be directly attributed to how those responsible dealt with the financial crisis in 2008. The crisis of liberal democracy—that is to say, of democracy as such—is a moral crisis that is being intensified by powerful images.