Ontological Foundation of Democracy cont'd

This is the third and final installment of this article.

Autonomy is basic to democracy

For there to be a democracy there must be a fundamental commitment to ontology. Our beingness, according to Heidegger, is influenced by the situations we find our self in and practices we are immersed in. Most modern-day ontologists believe that individuals in society are shaped by historically situated linguistics. We can separate our selves from society, but our beingness is built by our language, history, and the meaning we place on words. Democratic debate relies on the value laden ideas of true and false, in this we are separated from a state of wholeness, lunging us into a binary world. The ontological pursuit allows the debate to flush out the Truth of realities being presented by each side. Individuals bring their idea of reality to the debates in democracy. Without a common agreed upon reality the debates are riddled with pluralism. The ontologists scientist is always conditioned by personal values even when they try to escape a propensity to judge while aspiring to value neutral observations.

The first branch is ontology, or the ‘study of being’, which is concerned with what actually exists in the world about in which humans can acquire knowledge. Ontology helps researchers recognize how certain they can be about the nature and existence of objects they are researching. For instance, what ‘truth claims’ can a researcher make about reality? Who decides the legitimacy of what is ‘real’? How do researchers deal with different and conflicting ideas of reality?

To illustrate, realist ontology relates to the existence of one single reality which can be studied, understood, and experienced as a Truth; a real world exists independent of human experience. Meanwhile, ontology is based on the philosophy that reality is constructed within the mind, such that no one ‘true’ reality exists in society. Instead, reality is ‘relative’ according to how individuals experience it at any given time and place.