Democracy as Good in Itself: Three Kinds of Non-Instrumental Justification

This chapter addresses the problem of the justification of democracy. It begins with an investigation of political-legal instrumentalism in general and democratic instrumentalism in particular. This is followed by three sections, each of which presents and discusses the three kinds of democratic non-instrumentalism. The argument here proceeds progressively, in the sense that objections to the first kind of justification (Aristotelian non-instrumentalism) lead to the second kind (justice-first non-instrumentalism), and similarly with the transition from the second to the third kind of non-instrumentalism (Kantian non-instrumentalism). The chapter includes an extra section on Kantian non-instrumentalism, since this justification of democracy is the main contribution of the chapter. It argues that the Kantian justification is a justification of a specific form of democracy, namely, constitutional democracy.