Ricoeur's Ethics of Politics and Democracy

In contemporary political theory, democracy embodies the ideals of the Aristotelian state, the one that is most able to realize the ideal life of the political community. Nevertheless, fledgling democracies are confronted with economic and political problems which Paul Ricoeur thinks are due to the essential dissymmetry between the governing authority and the governed, culminating in the violence of the powerful agent. The enjoyment of the good life in a democracy presupposes what Ricoeur calls an ethics of politics, which consists in nothing other than the creation of spaces of freedom which confer on the governed a structure that enables its members to pursue the aim of enduring indefinitely in the future. When the governing authority buries into oblivion the desire of the historical community to live well with and for others in just institutions, the governed are expected to act in concert in order to ascertain their enjoyment of the good life because they feel particularly responsible for the horizontal bond that is constitutive of their will to live together. Thus, Paul Ricoeur explains that the balancing of power in common and domination is an endless task of democracy that seeks to place domination under the control of power-in-common.