Crises of democracy: critical theory and the diagnosis of present time

Abstract

The goal of this project is to investigate the crises of democracy departing from the notion of diagnosis of present time typical of Critical Theory. This goal implies the simultaneous and interconnected tasks of investigating the intellectual heritage of Critical Theory from the perspective of questions that are being presented by the current crisis of democracy (the reconstructive moment) and to interpret the current situation through empirical investigations that are based upon categories that were developed by this intellectual tradition (the "updating" moment). Therefore, this project proposes two subprojects, internally vinculated to each other: (i) the first aims at reconstructing classical studies of various Critical Theorists in their multiple dimensions (empirical and theoretical), having as its focus the political theory and, more precisely, the specific understanding of democracy of this tradition, both at the time of the crisis of the Weimar Republic and the rise of nazism, as well as in the context of the post second world war, in a world divided by two superpower countries and defined in other countries as a mass democracy of a new kind; (ii) the second intends to update hypotheses and categories of the Critical Theory intellectual heritage to understand the current crisis of democracy and the simultaneous crisis of theories of democracy, with a focus on the distinctive nature of the concept of public sphere in the theoretical-critical contributions, as well as on the correlate categories of counterpublics and its economic, cultural and political dimensions. (AU)