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with internal debates on Islamic self-understanding. By the way, when considering China’s rise to become a dominant global power, it should be remembered that, in the future, Western ideas of a civil society will also find themselves in competition with completely different East-Asian convictions on the just relationship between the state and the people living in it. However, these combine well-established insights into traditional Chinese statecraft, which were only slipped into the once-fashionable garb of Communism, with such new possibilities of governance based on modern technology relating more to scientific data and “harmonising” social control than on trying to cultivate the willingness of a self-determined citizenry to participate. Whether a political model of this kind is inferior or superior to the Western version must be treated as an open question. The desired answer can only be provided if one’s own efforts to bring about or secure a really “good life” are reinforced through sustainable, successful politics.
In any case, civil society of the Western variety is not something that can be achieved once and for all. Anyway, it can only come about as soon as – and for as long as – its complex cultural requirements are satisfied. But, even then, it remains threatened by anti-pluralist currents regardless of their origin and goals. It can only counter the allure of ideological righteousness, and the willingness to believe in religion, with cumbersome considerations about the fact that being open to criticism is what makes learning possible, and that all historical examples of politics founded on a specific claim to truth are terrifying. A civil society can also threaten itself. This occurs especially when those civil-religious formulas and civil-liturgical practices, which guarantee the stability of the civil society through symbols appealing to feelings, are used tactically and instrumentally to defend current cultural-hegemonic positions against new competition. That is when communication-hygienic rules of political correctness develop into quasi-religious taboos, concern about the preservation of civil liberty becomes political witchcraft, and securing equal rights for all leads to a new caste structure separating the “decent” from the “evil”. In essence, these are precisely the new internal trends in our Western civil societies that, in the meantime, are impairing all the opportunities that a form of pluralism that flourished for many years granted us. For the sake of the wider common good, we should therefore attempt to better understand – and apply more honestly – those rules which, in the West, have so frequently turned selfish individuals and self-righteously competing groups into a public-spirited civil society that takes an active part in its community.
3. Indispensable rules for a civil society
How is it possible to keep a society and its state permanently capable of learning, to be able to adapt to new internal and external challenges and, in this way, realise the common good time after time? The best possible answer seems to be: As long as there is no emergency requiring immediate action, one must initiate unloaded discourse about – real or hypothetical – problems, organise open-ended debates about the causal connections of problems, and make social disputes about solutions possible. Only after all of this has taken place should decisions about what to do next be made. These, in turn, are best designed as majority decisions, because this is precisely the way to create pressure for the widest possible consideration of various opinions and interests. Of course, the majority principle established in this way also includes the protection of minorities. And this political approach has to go hand in hand with a basic attitude of always being ready to start learning anew.
The name given to a political system operating according to these kinds of rules is pluralistic democracy. Among its characteristics are a willingness to accept, and even revere, diversity – not only in matters of skin colour, but also political opinions; acknowledging the right of the individual to define his interests independently and responsibly as a matter of course – and there, especially those that one objects to oneself; and the legitimacy of dispute – even when one is at risk of losing the argument. It is also important for pluralistic democracy that the area that can be disputed, without the parties risking social ostracism, be kept as broad as possible. On the other hand, the areas that are not open to question should be kept as small as possible. It is a fact that dictatorial regimes and their subservient societies are characterised by the minimisation of what can, and the great increase in what cannot, be questioned. This ranges from the dominant role of a single party to the law of God directly influencing politics.
The name given to the “non-dispute” area of a pluralistic democracy is “minimal consensus” and it is made up of three partial consensuses. There is the consensus of values that is principally composed of the consensus that everyone has the same human rights, including that of being different from others in terms of appearance, sexual orientation, religion, and political leanings. Then there is procedural consensus. It includes non-violence and the majority principle, together with the protection of minorities. Non-violence is an especially important aspect. Intimidation through the threat of violence, the anticipation of violence, and violence itself reduce the diversity of viewpoints and interests that are freely brought into the dispute. This is precisely what reduces the opportunities for learning in and through dispute and this deprives a pluralistic democracy of its central advantage. And there is finally regulatory consensus; for example, a consensus that demonstrations on the street are allowable, but that final decisions will be made in parliaments or by the courts. Shaping a state in a way that there can be disputes about as many topics as possible and that, as a result, the ability of politics and society to learn is optimised, is the “highly effectual secret” of pluralistic democracy and the great advantage of functioning civil society.
An additional, extremely special, value of this kind of society is that it is possible to criticise those in power and the existing conditions, and that it does not demand the affirmation, the justification or defence, of what already exists. It is much more the case that, in a pluralistic democracy, the citizenry always takes a critical stance towards any claims that somebody or something is right because that is the way it has always been – going beyond the minimal value, procedural, and regulatory consensus. However, criticism is more than just emotional grumbling. The demonstration of standards for judgement, complete with their rational justification, and likewise the assessment of those already existing based on the same standards, which claim to be logically correct, are also part of this. In other words: Pluralistic democracy is strengthened through rational criticism, not through the emotional defence of existing conditions.
These rules of the game of pluralistic democracy are based on experiences made by trial and error in designing political systems and the societies supporting them. Ultimately, they integrate the “algorithm of evolution” into political practice. However, when all we know about the development of complex systems, from biology, over culture, and into the world of institutions, is taken into consideration, this is really the best possible way for guaranteeing the ability to learn and efficiently coupling systems with their environment. The four steps of the evolutionary algorithm are variation, selection, retention, and as differential reproduction, which looks like this in society and politics: A wide variation of perspectives, priorities, proposed solutions, and self-evident actions required for solving new problems arises through the practical use of the right to diversity, as well as the fear-free articulation of opinions and interests, in continuous controversial discourses. This then leads to an internal selection from the variety offered; i.e., that which is not appropriate to the existing system of pluralistic democracy with its proven routines, or does not fit into the current discoursal structure, is dismissed. This kind of internal selection is carried out in a sensible manner based on a minimal consensus on human rights, non-violence, the principle of majority, and protection of minorities, as well as tried and tested organisational structures. This is followed by the external selection in such a way that not all of those political measures that have been agreed on in pluralistic discourse – with or without a majority decision being reached – will prove themselves in political practice. It is a fact – and this is especially true in politics, which usually acts under conditions of uncertainty – that the path to be followed hardly ever leads to learning from, at best, “well-intentioned” attempts, from inevitable errors and political corrections. Retention then means the preservation of what has proven itself – in the interim or often just until further notice. This can later develop into a component of the internal