Ruby Suazo

This paper theorizes that the success of the People Power Revolution of 1986 to end a dictatorship is a concrete exercise of how would a democracy work. In a democracy, the people elect among themselves those who will be charged of forming the government and who will have power over them in order to assure their living of a life of justice and opportunity where they enjoy fully the exercise of their civil liberties anchored on a tradition of utmost respect for the rule of law. Therefore, at any moment that the governing authority subverts the will of the people, the latter has to reassert its power through civil disobedience or revolution on the institution that has already become violent. This will, however, turn into a vicious cycle unless the essential dissymmetry embedded in any political community which usually ends in the violence perpetrated by the more powerful agent, be it the government or the people, will be corrected. The strength of a democracy lies always on the collaborative and cooperative efforts between the governing authority lording over the people and the governed legitimating the former's authority. But the perception of politics as only a matter of strategic alliances, expediency, favoritism, and political realism will more likely lead to an unacceptable state violence. Thus, a vision of an ethics in politics must be instituted. Since ethics can provide rational order and so, curbs the violence that politics engenders, the ethical character of the state which is a matter of both the prudence exercised by the government and the participation of the citizens in democratic processes geared to negotiating conflicts and distributing power must be enshrined on institutions that assures the maximum participation of its citizens; such institutions as the political parties which consolidates people's interests and the judiciary whose fifth pillar of its criminal justice system is the community.

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.

In a society ravaged by poverty and underdevelopment, a hope for the privileged group to initiate genuine programs to alleviate their condition is prayed. The materialization of the said expectation, however, presupposes solicitude between the two groups. Solicitude is very basic as it expands the ethical life. From the value of self-confinement, the subject slowly recognizes the face of the other. Solicitude, the concrete care for the other as other and benevolent spontaneity, indicates the two parties’ awareness of the mutual suffering, of the fragility, especially of the mortality that they all share in common. This being the case, solicitude has a more fundamental character than obedience to duty, which character Ricoeur defines as benevolent spontaneity based on self-esteem. This disposition allows the benevolent and compassionate self to rectify the initial asymmetry involved in either receiving an injunction from a “master of justice” or offering sympathy toward one who is suffering. Through this awareness, persons take the initiative to reach out to the other. Initiative as an intervention of the agent of action in the course of the world which effectively causes changes in the world of the self and of the other has to be a product of mutual recognition. Initiative as a product of mutual recognition is also a product of dialogical exchange. This being the case, an ethics of responsibility has to be set in place. The self must not force his way into the other.