Cultivating Democratic Citizenship Essay

The essay by (Bai 2001) mainly intended to pass the message and the idea of democracy and mutual governance, however, I disagree by his definition of democracy in the first page where he said that "democracy is the idea of people governing themselves rather than being governed by an external authority, be it God, Monarch or Corporation". The use of God in that statement tends to contradict the Christian view that God created all human beings and provided for all humans. The author of the essay goes further to stress the concept of mutual governance as a way of encouraging and promoting democracy. The essay brings in the idea of power to support mutual governance, mutual relationship between the people is the vital factor to exercise the concept of mutual governance. The mutual relationship is only achieved if the group of people think the same and have the same feeling that all of them need to contribute has to how they will conduct themselves.

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In the case where there are domination and superiority the democracy concept fails to be exercised this is shown in (Bai 2001, pg.3) "democracy is a moral vision of life that condemns domination and promotes mutual governance." The way the author argues about the bargaining process on page three is commendable; he goes further to illustrate that if an individual has to bargain to fulfill their self-interest, then democracy is not exercised. To exercise democracy and mutual governance, the people are required to have common good, and good will, (Bai 2001, pg.4) "common good is something we arrive at, something that emerges, and is not a given." Goodwill, on the other hand, is concerned about the rate at which the individuals in a group of people care about each other.

Conclusion

Lastly, the author brings in the idea of intersubjectivity, (Bai 2001, pg. 5) he states that the main obstacle to intersubjectivity as "our times are said to be dominated by instrumentalism." The introduction of instrumentalism by the author is thought-provoking in that people fail to practice democracy and mutual governance because of their view of the world as an object. If democracy is to be fully exercised by the people, the relationship of subject to subject should be stressed. The world should be viewed as an entity which the people should work together to achieve the life goals other than seeing it as an object. In conclusion democracy and mutual governance calls for the people working together by possessing common good and good will amongst themselves. At no point should one person be treated differently from others or dominate over others, all the members of the population should give their contribution and views about a concept.

Reference

Bai, H. (2001). Cultivating democratic citizenship: Towards intersubjectivity. In W. Hare & J. P. Portelli (Eds.), Philosophy of education: Introductory readings (Rev. 3rd ed., pp. 307-319). Calgary, AB: Detselig