Democracy demands wisdom

J. A. Scott Kelso

Chapter 7 in The Crisis of Democracy in the Age of Cities, 2023, pp 136-146 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The title of this piece is the motto, or at least the clarion call, of the US National Endowment for the Humanities which supports research and education in that broad endeavor. Wisdom, one might say, is more the object than the subject of democracy, though as we shall see, the present piece - while recognizing their distinctness - adopts a particular perspective on the relation between object and subject, and indeed between the humanities and the sciences. For that matter, our focus is the scientific nature of the relation between the opposing parts of all dualities. What’s wrong with democracy, why it is in crisis, goes much deeper than democracy itself. What’s wrong, fundamentally, is that people see their relations with themselves, others and the world as either-or. The result is that they are unable to tolerate dissent and acceptance of opposing views. This is what has to be fixed. The following, unorthodox piece, contains two main parts. The first part contains a statement regarding the root cause of the crisis and a solution to how it may be overcome. The second part is an unedited, free-flowing dialogue between the author and editor (JP) that attempts to place the first part in the context of the problem at hand, namely the crisis of democracy in the age of cities. The piece begins and ends with a brief remark regarding how the perspective taken here had and has practical cultural and economic consequences for a city that is still not out of its darkest days but is making progress toward reconciliation - a hard and demanding word that lies at the very core of democracy.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Geography; Politics and Public Policy Urban and Regional Studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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