Politicizing Skepticism – Agonal Thought for Democracy

• Main Authors: Daniel Nunes Pereira, Lucas Pinheiro Garcia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centro Universitário de Valença 2016-12-01
• Series: Revista Interdisciplinar de Direito
• Subjects: Democracy; skepticism; epistemology
• Online Access: http://revistas.faa.edu.br/index.php/FDV/article/view/89/66

The study hereby proposed aims to show how a skeptical and agonal attitude is an imperative demand on political thinking towards democracy. Departing from the paradigm of several possible political worlds, most theories on democracy reveal themselves as just one of multiple possibilities to configure and reconfigure the ordinary world. Therefore, the skeptic’s legacy on the concept of ‘epoché’accrues an unceasing benevolent debate between theories and Weltanschauungen. This way, some agonal way of thinking causes the inexorability of any judgment in terms of “true/false”, summarizing the absence of a truly political knowledge. The paper discusses how political thought, especially concerning ‘Democracytheories’, must be understood under an unstable axiological reality, which reinforces the fideist approach of any political decision, that is, merely a bet from a circumscribed sovereign power confident on its own potential to provide transition from chaos to order with the consequent normativity.