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Moral and political attitudes - Part 1
1.0 INTRODUCTION
The relationship between political culture and democracy is very old. Classical Greek political thinkers talked about it. Aristotle pointed out the importance of moderation and tolerance, and also warned about the dangers of political extremism and unfettered populism. These elements of political culture were necessary conditions to cope with one of the central dilemmas of democracy, namely, to balance division and conflict with the need for consensus.
These elements can be induced by structural and institutional incentives and disincentives. However, these orientations cannot survive unless they are deeply embedded in the system of beliefs and values not only of elites but also of the masses.
Although recent treatments have realized and recognized the importance of developing these variables for a successful democracy, treatment suffers, from three defects:
- Firstly, mass culture has either been completely ignored or given scant attention.
- Secondly, behaviour has been talked about, but not about how it becomes rooted in enduring values.
- Thirdly, other elements of political culture, relevant at mass level, have been completely neglected.
"The people for whom the form of government is intended must be willing to accept it, or at least not so unwilling as to oppose the insurmountable obstacle to its establishment. They must be willing and be able to do what is necessary to keep it standing. And they must be willing and be able to do what it requires of them to enable it to fulfill its purposes.”
If a moral attitude is the answer to the question 'how ought we to live' at the individual level, political attitudes answer the same question at the level of society, governance and international politics. Group morality develops from shared concepts and beliefs and is often codified to regulate behaviour within a culture or community. Various defined actions come to be called moral or immoral. Individuals who choose moral action are popularly held to possess "moral fiber", whereas those who indulge in immoral behaviour may be labelled as socially degenerate.
Today's political attitudes are influenced heavily by a complex mixture of religious ideologies, societal divisions and a keen instinct for preservation of self-interest.
2.0 Attitudes toward Authority, Legitimacy, Participation and the Civic Culture
Attitudes toward authority is an important variable of democracy. These attitudes are governed by the following elements.
flexibility, trust, efficacy, openness to new ideas and experiences, tolerance of differences and ambiguities, acceptance of others and an attitude towards authority that is neither blindly submissive nor 'hostilely rejecting' but rather 'responsible' and 'watchful'
Another condition necessary for democracy is the belief in the legitimacy of democracy. Performance of democracy in a regime is to be evaluated not only in terms of economic growth and social reform but also in terms of capacity to maintain law and order, to govern with transparency and to maintain rule of law. Participation of the citizen enhances the legitimacy of the system.
Participation here means a norm of political life and the behavioural disposition to actually participate in politics. The civic culture' involves an active rule of the self in the polity. This role involves not only voting but also a high level of political interest, information, knowledge, opinion formation and organizational membership. The absence of these qualities is a way of life that generates an authoritarian political system. Early socialization, the actual responsiveness of the political system and the general belief in democratic legitimacy are some of the factors that shape competence of the citizen.
A study of political culture implies the study of several aspects of citizens thinking about the nature and functioning of democracy as well as about the relationship between the government and individual citizens. Thus, political culture serves as an important filter affecting political action because of the way that it constrains perceptions regarding politics, notions of what constitutes political problems and prescriptions for resolving these problems. Among the citizens of any country the young occupy a very important place. They play a vital role in the continuation and strengthening of democracy.
If we look at the history of the world, we will find that youth have been growing in historical importance. Youth is the developmental phase during which essential values, attitudes, perspectives for action and finally personality are formed. Youth today occupy a pivotal position in the democratic system.
Surveys have found out that economic self-sufficiency is necessary for democracy. However there is a belief that economic equality of people had not been achieved so far. In the field of economic democracy, people prefer the use of modern science and technology to solve the contemporary problems of India.
However, they made a distinction between the use of modern science and technology for industrial purposes; for purpose of consumption with regard to industrial products; and, for the development of a scientific attitude.
A large majority favours economic rather than political aspects of democracy. The situation is serious and alarming and has ramifications for governance. The success of government is going to depend upon its economic performance. If the economy slows down, the support of people will also slip down.
2.2 Elections
The success of a representative democracy depends upon the conduct of free and fair elections.
In India a sizeable section of the population may feel that India does not have a culture of free and fair elections. Though we have had sixteen general elections (first one in 1951-52) and participation of people has shown a steady upward trend, yet there was a large section of population (the poor) which had no say in the electoral process. They did not have a real choice of candidates. Money and muscle power, communalism and other malpractices of our electoral system adversely affected the democratic outcome of elections. Failure of the system to meet the expectations of the people may lead to protests, demonstrations and violence. Increased participation is, therefore, illusive and does not necessarily increase the concern or enshrining of democratic values. Dynamic officers like T.N.Seshan (the Chief Election Commissioner from 1990-1996) tried to reform the system from time to time, achieving moderate to sterling successes.
2.3 Equality
Equality is one of the essential ingredients of democracy. As a matter of fact democracy is based on the principle of equality.
The Preamble of the Indian Constitution expresses the solemn resolve of the people of India to secure to all citizens "Justice, Social, Economic and Political .... Equality of Status and of Opportunity". The Constitution also provides for fundamental rights, one of which guarantees equality of opportunity for all citizens and also prohibits discrimination against any citizen "on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of these".
India, however, is a country which is well known for institutionalized inequalities. Large sections of people suffer under many historical disabilities and they are victims of calculated oppression and deliberate exploitation. Reservation is the device, used by India, for removal of social distortions that have erupt historically in our social system. Objectives of reservation are advancement and integration of the disadvantaged sections of the society in the mainstream of our national life.
In modern Indian society, reservations have become a very divisive issue. Quotas have become source of benefits and privileges especially for the creamy layers. They have become a source of caste jealousies and rivalries threatening to cause fragmentation of the society. Instead of becoming forward, many castes and groups are seen competing for getting declared as backwards! Many groups, however, have now started asking for rationalization of reservation policy. They prefer a vibrant system of accessible and affordable quality education along with schemes of affirmative actions to help under privileged children, youth and adults irrespective of their caste, creed or gender. On top of this there is an increasing perception that elected representatives of people serve their own interest.
Political parties are major structures of politics in modern societies. A party in a democracy is a group that competes for political power by contesting elections, mobilizing social interests and advocating ideological positions, thus linking citizens to the political system. Success of democracy depends, to a large extent, upon the functioning of political parties.
3.0 New trends in Moral and Political Philosophy
There have been two good trends in moral and political philosophy over the last fifty years or so. These are a trend toward rejecting special foundations, attempts to use intuitions about particular cases in order to arrive at new and often arcane moral principles like that of double effect.
3.1 Rejecting special foundations
Advocates of the old special foundationalism saw an important difference between foundational beliefs and other, non-foundational, beliefs. Justification was to begin from a limited number of special foundational beliefs and proceed from there to non-foundational beliefs. Foundational beliefs were supposed to be either self-evident or directly justified by experience. Non-foundational beliefs were supposed to be justified only if there was an argument for them from other things a person was justified in believing. Special foundationalists also saw an important difference between special foundational methods of reasoning that were thought to be directly or self-evidently justified and non-foundational methods that could only be indirectly justified.
Special foundationalists supposed that non-foundational beliefs and methods were justified only if they could be derived from special foundational premises using only foundational methods. The foundational beliefs and methods were foundational in the sense that we must start with them and justify everything else in terms of them. They were special in that most of our beliefs and methods are not foundational. In this view, beliefs and methods that had no foundational justification were supposed to be abandoned as unjustified.
Principles of liberty of conscience and religious toleration initially were accepted only because the alternative was religious war. But once they were accepted, their acceptance had an impact on other things people believed through the mutual adjustment of beliefs with each other aiming at reflective equilibrium. As people came to accept moral and religious principles that fit in with liberty of conscience and toleration, their religious and moral views were reinterpreted.
Eventually, they came to have more coherent systems of thought in which principles of toleration and liberty of conscience figured as important values. Many people with a variety of religious views now agree on principles of toleration and liberty of thought even though the principles fit in different ways into their various religious views and are seen as having different religious justifications.
3.2 Finding new principles
The second trend in moral and political philosophy consists in an attempt to uncover new moral principles through a consideration of ordinary intuitions or judgments about cases. Here philosophers begin with initial judgments or intuitions about cases and reason using a Neurathian procedure in the search for reflective equilibrium.
Often the principles in question are unfamiliar to ordinary moral thought: the principle of double effect, according to which it is worse to aim at harm to someone else than to act in a way that produces the same harm as a mere side effect; the principle that positive duties to help others are less strict than negative duties not to harm others; a deflection principle that takes it to be worse to initiate harm to some in order to prevent harm to others than it is to deflect harm from some to others. Some philosophers see an analogy between moral philosophy and linguistics. They speculate that our ordinary intuitions or judgments depend on internalized principles of which we are ordinarily unaware, just as we are unaware of the linguistic principles that are reflected in our intuitive linguistic judgments. The strangeness or counter-intuitiveness of a principle like the principle of doubt effect might or might not be taken to be a reason to reject that principle and perhaps also to reject the intuitive judgments the principle would account for.
Dworkin offers the following explanation of the curve of value or tragedy in terms of a notion of investment toward a fulfilling life. As a fetus develops, the parents and perhaps also nature have invested a certain amount in the fetus, an investment that increases over time. After birth, there is more investment by the parents and by the child also. Increasingly also there is a return on the investment, as the child matures, becomes an adult, and lives his or her life. The degree of tragedy involved in the loss of the life is a function of the investment so far and the payback so far. When there has been considerable investment and payback lies mainly in the future, loss of life is especially tragic. When the investment has been largely recovered in old age, loss of life is less tragic. Dworkin's other principle, about how value attaches to what already exists with no implication that it would be good to have more, does seem to capture an important aspect of ordinary thinking.
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