Political Philosophy and Empowering Citizens
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2004.00509.x |
| Date | 01 December 2004 |
| Published date | 01 December 2004 |
| Author | Avner de-Shalit |
| Subject Matter | Original Article |
Political Philosophy and Empowering
Citizens
Avner de-Shalit
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
This paper defends the idea of empowering citizens by means of teaching them political philoso-
phy. First, I explain and define empowerment as an experience leading to the development of
critical and philosophical capabilities. Several challenges to using philosophy to empower citizens
are then discussed and rejected. This group of challenges is called the ‘divorce theory’, because,
according to them, philosophy and politics should be distinguished, as if divorced from each other,
so that they can live happily side by side, but not together. Finally, empowerment is normatively
defended and distinguished from paternalism, and examine the relationships between empower-
ment through political philosophy and deliberative democracy.
Political philosophers used to reflect upon what they were doing more often than
they do nowadays. It seems reasonable to argue that this was partly so because
they felt insecure during the rise of behaviouralism (Ricci, 1984; Strauss, 1988,
1962; Riker, 1962; Almond, 1966; Wolin, 1969), whereas political philosophy is
now acknowledged as a legitimate child in the family of those studying politics.
However, for some of us, the challenge to what we do derives from reality, from
the experience of teaching students and writing our papers and books. Do we make
an impact on our society? Are we able to transform public opinion? This is espe-
cially troubling when we face very controversial policies (such as the war in Iraq),
when we believe that democracy is becoming unstable or when liberal values are
continuously challenged. The wishes of those theorists to empower citizens is
therefore not only a scholars’ position but also a political one. In this paper, I want
to defend their position. First, I define the notion of ‘empowerment’ of the citizens
through political philosophy. I then defend it against claims in favour of separat-
ing academic research and teaching about politics from politics itself. Finally, I
defend empowerment by analysing its contribution to deliberative democracy and
by claiming that empowerment is not a paternalistic attitude.
Philosophy, Capabilities and Empowerment
Whenever political philosophers teach and write, they become engaged in two pro-
jects. One is the immediate and more trivial goal of solving certain moral and polit-
ical dilemmas. For example, if we write about whether the state should subsidize
the arts, or about the circumstances in which a war is justified, we contribute
towards finding answers to these questions. However, there is a further project,
which has to do with the aggregation of all the little projects of contributing
towards answering questions. It is like a grand picture whose components are all
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P O L I T I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y A N D E M P O W E R I N G C I T I Z E N S
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the papers and books that philosophers write and all the seminars and classes that
philosophers teach. This grand picture, this big project, is not so much academic
as social and political: when political philosophers teach, write and research, they
can help to empower citizens. They help their audience not so much to know the
right answer to certain questions, but to benefit from being autonomous, rational,
more critical, more attuned to political events and to better comprehend politics.
Notice that the grand project entails a collective effort. Jones who teaches issue X
cannot, by herself, realize it; however, the aggregation of Jones teaching issue
X and Smith teaching Y, and so on, builds up to meeting the grand project’s
challenge.
At this point, I would like to refer to interviews I have made with four groups:
unemployed people who were active in social justice campaigns; environmental
activists; high school teachers; and university students. I asked all these people if
they could remember occasions in which they felt that they were ‘empowered’,
and what they sensed during those events. Three elements were common to all
answers. First, a sense of trust. There was always somebody who fully trusted them
and their abilities to change things, whether this was finding a decent job, making
an impact on environmental policies or being able to pass the exams. Second, they
all mentioned an experience similar to learning a new language. They pointed out
that they had learnt new ways of conceptualizing politics, which enabled them not
only to understand but also to analyse economic, social and political issues, as well
as their own situations vis-à-vis the authorities, or why they were poor, and so on.
They often said that after being empowered they examined political events or insti-
tutions that had been there before, but now they could see things that they could
not see before. Third, they all thought that they were empowered because they
experienced a capability to be autonomous, whereas before the event that ‘em-
powered’ them they had been manipulated to hold opinions that were not
authentically their own.
In general, it seems fair to say that all these people were talking about a combi-
nation of ‘understanding’ and ‘becoming critical’. They were empowered because
they could better understand what was going on in politics or the economy, or in
the texts they were studying, and this understanding was immediately and inti-
mately related to becoming critical of what they saw. By ‘critical’, I do not neces-
sarily mean that they were against something; rather, I mean that they were able
to rationally and critically scrutinize, closely examine and analyse whatever they
realized about the world. ‘Critical’ thus implies not taking things as they appear to
be prima facie.
However, what does it mean for a philosopher to make her audience, for instance,
more capable of criticizing? The answer lies in the concept of ‘capabilities’, which
has been discussed by Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum and, in the context of
democracy, Elizabeth Anderson. I want to explain my position on the basis of their
works.
A person’s capabilities are ‘parts of the state of a person, in particular the various
things that he or she manages to do or be in leading a life’ (Sen, 1993, p. 31).
Relating capabilities to ‘functioning’, Sen and his colleague Dreze write:
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The life of a person can be seen as a sequence of things that constitute
a collection of ‘functionings’ – doings and beings the person achieves.
‘Capability’ refers to the alternative combinations of functionings from
which a person can [effectively] choose. (Dreze and Sen, 1995, p. 35)
Hence, the notion of capability is essentially one of freedom – the range of options
available to a person in deciding what kind of life to lead.
Several authors have compiled lists of basic capabilities – for example, to read and
write, or to escape preventable illnesses. Focusing more on education, Nussbaum
lists three capabilities that are essential to the ‘cultivation of humanity’: the capac-
ity of critical examination of oneself and one’s traditions; the ability to see oneself
not simply as a citizen of some local region or group but also, and above all, as a
human being bound also to other human beings by ties of recognition and concern;
and the ability to imagine oneself in other people’s shoes (2000, pp. 8–10). Imply-
ing Sen’s theory in the democratic sphere, Anderson discusses ‘democratic equal-
ity’ as a capability to function as an equal citizen (1999, p. 317).
Following Sen and, perhaps even more so, Nussbaum and Anderson, and referring
again to the interviews I have mentioned, empowerment can now be described as
the human ability to use one sort of capability, or one type of freedom, to boost
other kinds of capacity or freedom. Teaching political philosophy empowers
because it enables those taught the freedom to achieve what I have elsewhere
called ‘political literacy’, ‘political awareness’ and ‘political consciousness’ (de-
Shalit, 2000). ‘Political literacy’ is the level of knowledge about normative politics
(for example, being familiar with different notions of equality or justice); ‘political
awareness’ is when one is aware of the moral dilemmas involved in politics; and
‘political consciousness’ is when one acknowledges that the moral dilemma is polit-
ical and should be solved within the realm of the political. These are three levels
of critical reflection on politics that can be taught using political philosophy, and
they should be a means to boost the capacity of self-government and the capacity
to make better use of the opportunities that one faces in the political sphere
(de-Shalit, 2000).
To see why such capacities help, consider somebody who is given a chance to defend
himself in court, but does not know the law or the court’s procedures and norms,
and hence cannot use the opportunity. The same is true of political rights and oppor-
tunities. It is not enough if citizens are officially allowed to have such rights. If they
enter the political arena with no skills and tools, they will waste their time and
energy, and eventually give up, become frustrated and alienated, and cease partici-
pating. These citizens need to know how to conceptualize, theorize, criticize and put
forward arguments that may modify public policies. With regard to this, the politi-
cal...
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