Desmoralizando a democracia: pródromos de uma ontologia política

Abstract

This dissertation blossomed from the author’s observation of a fundamental absence in the theories of democracy. Sometimes it’s understood either as a – metaphorical – damsel in distress whose existence is always under threat, or an illusion that permits the control of the people by uncomprehended and incomprehensible mechanisms that imply the total loss of any liberty. The proposal herein is to present an ontological definition of democracy that allows its removal from a discussion that is fundamentally teleological. The first chapter is dedicated to presenting an ontological definition of democracy, demonstrating how such a definition enables the deviation of democracy from its immanent character, given condition in the literature. Up next, this concept will be used to reread the works of Ernesto Laclau and Takis Pappas, using metaphysics of democracy to explain the populist phenomenon. The third chapter will be dedicated to the works of Giorgio Agamben, mainly his work on state of exception, in order to show how the same mechanisms that operate populism are present in the creation of the state of exception. The proposal is showing how the absence of an ontology of democracy makes the works of the Italian as an apocalyptical literature about the domination of all of humanity. The conclusion is that this ontology of democracy paves the spaces left open by the authors and can be used as substratum for the construction of causeways that allow the traversal of what is diagnosed as a use of democracy for the fulfillment of a moral agenda.