Abstract
This chapter endeavors to prove the relevance of the wide view of democracy by comparing the philosophical grammar of democratic habits with the most promising contemporary attempt at revivifying the personal dimension of politics, which is the republican theory of civic virtues. The chapter shows what is to be gained by dropping the notion of virtue and replacing it with that of habits, why democratic habits rather than civic virtues provides us with sharp conceptual tools to analyze how personal factors contribute to the democratic quality of a polity.
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For an informed discussion, see Macedo (1990).
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The most comprehensive study of the notion of habit in the pragmatist tradition is Kilpinen (2000). In this valuable book, the reader will find plenty of information concerning the theoretical function this notion has played in the thought of the main figures belonging to this tradition, with an emphasis on theories of action.
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Here meant in the sense of the French ‘psychologie des foules’ popularized by authors such as Gustave Le Bon at the turn of the century.
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For compelling analyses focusing on habits of racial discrimination, see Sullivan (2006), MacMullan (2009), Alexander (2012). Along similar lines, and still in a pragmatist-wise perspective, José Medina (Medina, 2012) proposes an insightful analysis of the habitual, tacit texture of social injustice.
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Frega, R. (2019). From Civic Virtues to Democratic Habits. In: Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18561-9_6
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