Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

hope precedes nihilism. Nihilism can only be a response to failed hope,
to actions which did not succeed. As such, nihilism can never be completely
overcome. Misfortune and despair are always just around the
corner. Being nihilistic means being paralyzed by the unavoidability
of failure. Since democracy reveals and recognizes the public failures
of state officials, government, presidents and more, it will always be
vulnerable to nihilism. And yet, besides this vulnerability to nihilism,
it is also the only regime in which citizens have so many possibilities
to undertake political action. Political hope lives through this action,
and nihilism can only be cured by undertaking action again. So, if
democracy seeks to be a political regime of hope, it will have to be able
to create and stimulate discourses by which people are encouraged to
take action. But which discourse and which action?
Let me begin with action. By this emphasis on action, we come
close to what some republicanists claim. [30] Yet we have to be careful
about embracing republicanism fully. Often, although not always,
republicanism is about undertaking political action in order to uphold
a regime, certain rights or benefits. Democracy has to be more radical
than this, in my view. It should not only stimulate those actions that
benefit the existing regime, but also ones that radically challenge the
regime. As such, there should be room for public contestations, extraparliamentary
action, civil disobedience, manifestations, deviant art
and the more. This goes further than republicanism.
But this raises an important question concerning the discourse of
hope. If hope is necessary for a democracy to survive, then which kind
of hopeful discourses can be conciliated with democracy? Which hope
is democratic? This is a question for further research. But it should be
clear by everything said so far that it should be a kind of open-ended
hope, a hope in which a kind of contingency, a recognition of its own
hegemonic nature and final impossibility, are recognized. Otherwise, we
would become like Orpheus and make every kind of hope impossible
by seeking a direct representation of what we are longing for. There
will thus always be something tragic about democratic hope because
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DEMOCRACY, HOPE
AND NIHILISM
Thomas Decreus
30
Pettit says “…people must be willing to go along with one another in associations and
movements that are essential for republican success but that inevitably require patterns
of mutual reliance and personal trust.” Pettit (1997) 266.