{"title":"Democracy as a Society of Equals","authors":"R. Talisse","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197556450.003.0002","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Democracy is many things: a system of government, a procedure for making decisions, a set of institutions, and so on. But democracy is also a moral idea. It is the idea that a relatively just, decent, and stable society is possible in the absence of kings and nobility. It is the idea of a society of self-governing equals. That democratic citizens are political equals means that they must regard one another in certain ways. This chapter spells out a conception of the ethos of democratic citizenship, a collection of duties and virtues that apply to citizens. Ultimately, it defends the idea of democracy as a practical ideal, the aspiration for a society that is governed by its citizens.","PeriodicalId":331269,"journal":{"name":"Sustaining Democracy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Sustaining Democracy","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197556450.003.0002","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Democracy is many things: a system of government, a procedure for making decisions, a set of institutions, and so on. But democracy is also a moral idea. It is the idea that a relatively just, decent, and stable society is possible in the absence of kings and nobility. It is the idea of a society of self-governing equals. That democratic citizens are political equals means that they must regard one another in certain ways. This chapter spells out a conception of the ethos of democratic citizenship, a collection of duties and virtues that apply to citizens. Ultimately, it defends the idea of democracy as a practical ideal, the aspiration for a society that is governed by its citizens.