Alterity and conflict: democracy’s hermeneutical task
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Abstract
This work is an attempt to define democracy from a broad philosophical perspective with two dimensions. The first is the ontological condition in which the acceptance of others as different – alterity/otherness – takes place. The second is the acceptance of conflict as an essential component of socio-political phenomena, which must be channeled or regulated. The ways in which the conflictive nature of humans can be regulated non-violently are what we have called “democracy”. And this kind of reflection should be set – epistemologically speaking – in a hermeneutical idea of truth and regulation of social life, where the normative ideal is the negation of fundamentalisms and totalitarianisms.