On Tuesday, Colorado State University’s philosophy department hosted Philip Pettit for a conversation on the what, why and how of our democracy. Pettit is the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Human Values at Princeton University. He has taught political theory and philosophy since 2002, with a particular focus on moral and political philosophy, the philosophy of mind and republicanism.
This event is a part of the Bodaken Philosophy Symposium, a five-year series designed to bring students, faculty and community members together for philosophical discussions that contribute to the betterment of society. Ken Shockley, a professor at CSU and chair of the philosophy department, emphasized the importance of these conversations in our current political climate.
“In the current environment, where talk of a fractured and divided society seems prevalent, a discussion of democracy through this lens is particularly pertinent,” Shockley said.
For the what, Pettit defined democracy as the mechanism which gives the people a high degree of control and agency over how the government operates, allowing everyone to play a part in governance.
“If ordinary people are to have a good deal of power over government, there has to be some system whereby those in government are actually controlled,” Pettit said. “In this system, we’re all going to have equal access to a system of intuitively adequate control over those in government.”
As for the why of democracy, Pettit pointed out the defense that a democratic system provides against corruptive governance or arbitrary power.
“Someone has an arbitrary power over you if they can affect you in various ways and how they choose to affect you is not in any way responsive to your wishes,” Pettit said. “The basic reason (of) why democracy is really important is to guard us, the ordinary people, against governments having an arbitrary power over us.”
Petitt explained that in this system, for democracy to function at its strongest, compromise and a mutual understanding of our differences is vital.
“No one of us can control government on their own, obviously,” Pettit said. “No one of us can expect one government to do something and everybody else to agree with us.”
A good test of whether democracy is performing well, Pettit explained, is how people feel when they don’t agree with the actions taken by their government. Rather than feeling angry or resentful, he said, you should simply feel disappointed that it didn’t go your way.
“They didn’t want that law; they didn’t want that measure imposed; they didn’t want that judgement,” Pettit said. “They may not have wanted it because it went against their interest. If you lived in a democracy where you accept that other people think differently (and) that you’re not particularly special, you have to accept (that) with many laws you will be disappointed.”
Pettit insisted that this understanding of our differences can help reduce political polarization and negative feelings toward our government and each other.
To wrap up, Pettit explained how a successful democracy works by highlighting five elements: a constitution to organize government, checks and balances, access to information, fair elections run by qualified, impartial officials and the rule of law. In other words, laws must be clear, fair and applied equally across the three branches of government.
“We want that system to give us, the people, channels of control that can be effective if the government is controllable,” Pettit said. “If you have that sort of system, what I would say is, we the people are going to hold government to account.”
After the lecture, attendees asked Pettit questions about this system, especially about how his ideas connect to real-world events and politics.
Vivian Szostak, a first-year studying international relations and economics, attended the lecture hoping to get a good grasp of what democracy means and how it functions. She thought the Q&A was especially helpful in tying big concepts to practical challenges.
“A lot of the questions that people were asking were about how a society doesn’t become defeatist when it comes to checks and balances failing, which definitely intrigued me,” Szostak said.
Earlier, Shockley had emphasized the value of starting public discussions about democracy like this.
“This way of thinking about governance leads to a new form of thinking of the states and emphasizing the importance of deliberative participation — people talking to one another,” Shockley said. “Because of that, it seems to capture, especially in this time, a great opportunity to talk about democracy to the public and bring it as the spirit of Bodaken.”
Reach Claire VanDeventer at news@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.
