A HYPOCRITICAL STAGE? DEMOCRACY: BETWEEN LITTLE COUNTERVAILING LIES AND HALF-TRUTHS

Yıl 2019, Sayı: 28, 439 - 451, 29.12.2019

Önder Özden

Öz

In this paper I try to discuss a peculiar understanding of democracy’s
relation to mendacity. According to this reading, democracy is its best when it
is located between “little countervailing lies and half-truths” and the main
threat to democracy comes from our strong feeling of sincere politics. I will be
claiming that this line of argument depicts a certain type of political actor and
divides democratic politics into two separate domains. As a result, I argue that
conceptualizing democracy depending on a middle ground between “little
countervailing lies and half-truths”, disregards the problem of trust, which is a
crucial social bond and, depicts a political sphere which is unburdened from
moral constraints. And, eventually, it ends up being a version of political
realism. 

Anahtar Kelimeler

Mendacity, Sincerity, Democracy, Political Actor, Hypocrisy, Socratic Citizen

İKİYÜZLÜ BİR SAHNE: DEMOKRASİ; ‘UFAK TELAFİ EDİCİ YALANLAR VE YARI GERÇEKLER’ ARASINDA

Öz

Bu yazıda, demokrasinin siyasal yalanla olan ilişkisine dair özgün bir anlayışa değinilmeye çalışılmıştır. Bu okumaya göre, demokrasi “ufak telafi edici yalanlar ve yarı gerçekler” arasında yer aldığında en iyi durumdadır ve demokrasiye yönelik en büyük tehdit samimiyete olan güçlü hislerimizden kaynaklanmaktadır. Bu argümanın, belli bir tür siyasi aktör profili resmettiği ve demokratik siyaseti iki ayrı alana böldüğü iddia edilmiştir. Sonuç olarak, demokrasiyi “ufak telafi edici yalanlar ve yarı gerçekler” arasındaki orta alan üzerinden kavramsallaştırmanın, çok önemli sosyal bir bağ olan güveni göz ardı ettiği ve ahlaki kısıtlamalardan muaf bir siyasal alan resmettiği savunulmuştur. Ve nihayetinde bu anlayışın, siyasal gerçekçiliğin bir yönü olmanın ötesine geçemediği öne sürülmüştür.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Siyasal yalan, Samimiyet, Demokrasi, Siyasal Aktör, İkiyüzlülük, Sokratik Yurttaş

Kaynakça

• Arendt, Hannah, The Life of the Mind, eds. Mary McCarthy, Harcourt Publishing, New York, 1981.
• Bok, Sissela, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, Pantheon Books USA, 1999.
• Fraser, Nancy and Jaeggi, Rahel, Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2018.
• Foucault, Michel, The Courage of Truth: The Government of Self and Others II; Lectures at the Collège de France, 1983-1984, trans. Graham Burchell, Picador, USA, 2012.
• Grant, Ruth Weissbourd, Hypocrisy and Integrity: Machiavelli, Rousseau and the Ethics of Politics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1999.
• Hardt, Michael, “Militant Life”, New Left Review, vol. 64, 2010, 151-160
• Jay, Martin, Virtues of Mendacity, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, 2013
• Markovitz, Elizabeth, The Politics of Sincerity: Plato, Frank Speech and Democratic Judgment, Pennsylvania State University Press, Pennsylvania, 2008,
• Markovitz, Elizabeth, “Trump ‘tells it like it is.’ That’s not Necessarily a Good Thing for Democracy”, Washington Post, March 4, 2016.
• Runciman, David, Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power, From Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2008.
• Shklar, Judith N., Ordinary Vices, Harvard University Press, USA, 1984.
• Tillyris, Demetris, “The Virtue of Vice: A Defence of Hypocrisy in Democratic Politics”, Contemporary Politics, vol. 22(1), 2016, p. 1-19.
• Urbinati, Nadia, Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth and the People, Harvard University Press, USA, 2014.
• Villa, Dana, Socratic Citizenship, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001.
• Weber, Max, “Politics as Vocation”, trans. Rodney Livingstone, in The Vocation Lectures (eds) David Owen and Tracy B. Strong, Hackett Press, Indianapolis, 2004.
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig, On Certainty, Blackwell, Oxford, 1969.
• Zagorin, Perez, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe, Harvard University Press, USA, 1990.