THE REASONABLE DELIBERATION AND THE LIMITS OF THE CONSTRUCTIVIST REASONING
THE REASONABLE DELIBERATION AND THE LIMITS OF THE CONSTRUCTIVIST REASONING

Summary/Abstract: The present study represents an analysis of the epistemic processes implied by the act of democratic deliberation. The finality of this study is analyzing to which extent the rational component of the democratic deliberation can face an epistemic analysis and not only a triumphant, strictly political one. In other words, does the concept of rational deliberation bear with the perspective of knowledge location in the political process? This analysis is thus performed using the distinction Hayek makes between the constructivist and the evolutionary reasoning. The conclusion we come to is that given the fact that the deliberative democracy theory uses a constructivist reasoning, it is only a XXIst century image of the social engineering errors of the past century. At the same time, the properties of rational deliberation must not be ignored nor abandoned but absorbed and used in the branches of the democracy theory which would truly benefit from it.

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