Democracy as a Gamble Worth Taking
Democracy as a Gamble Worth Taking
This concluding chapter returns to the metaphor of the maze and the masses introduced in the first chapter and addresses a few concerns about the possibility of democratic “unreason.” Introducing the dimension of time and reflection over time, the chapter suggests, first, that democracies can learn from their mistakes and, second, that certain democratic institutions and norms serve as cognitive artifacts that help the people control for or correct their potential cognitive failures. Those cognitive artifacts at the level of society include institutions and norms that embody the collective intelligence of the people distributed across both space and time. Democratic reason thus includes the wisdom of the past “many” crystallized into social cognitive artifacts that help reduce democratic unreason. Because of the synchronic and diachronic collective intelligence tapped by democratic institutions, democracy, this chapter concludes, is a gamble worth taking.
Keywords: maze, democracy, democratic unreason, cognitive artifacts, democratic institutions, democratic norms, democratic reason, social cognitive artifacts, collective intelligence
Princeton Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
