Democracy and Democratic Hope: Rortian Meditations for the 21st Century

In the first part of this paper we introduce some of the main ideas of two great philosophers of democracy - Richard Rorty and Luce Irigaray. We show that in a similar manner both deal with an ethical ideal of community to be imagined, and achieved in the future. In the second part of this paper we present two ideas about democracy as an ethical and spiritual community - i.e., democracy as it relates to the idea of the >> child << and democracy as shared atmosphere of >> breath <<. Finally, in the third part of this paper, we elaborate on the future of democracy in an eschatological sense, and argue, as Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Luce Irigaray would claim, that if democracy is related to the process of our own divinization, then it is precisely within this process that with our creativity, imagination, and love we indeed can become unlimited and infinite.