The emergence of populism at different times, advocating for political movement rather than reflection on politics, reveals that democracy is in a constant state of crisis. This crisis manifests as a legitimacy crisis in representative democracy because traditional representatives are deemed incapable of truly representing the people. Consequently, factions proliferate within a nation, making consensus increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. The confrontation between friend and foe undermines the universal validity of norms that sustain the legitimacy of democracy among the people. Nevertheless, for those familiar with the crisis of democracy in the Weimar period and the skepticism about democracy in the so-called “late constitutionalism” of the late 19th century, 20thcentury populism seems far from unprecedented. It is well-known that during the Weimar period, diversity was too vast to build a stable state; this extreme division ultimately led to the downfall of the first democracy and the rise of Nazism in Germany. The infamous totalitarianism of Nazism had its ideological roots traced back to romanticist nationalism, which appealed to homogeneous nationality and moved people with euphuism rather than reason to establish a nation-state, excluding any impure nationals and resulting in extreme racism in the 19th century. Faced with these issues, a number of German intellectuals in the 19th and 20th century have provided insightful diagnoses to the crisis with the hope of strengthening democracy.

Our workshop aims to discuss the crisis and diagnoses of democracy in Germany from the perspectives of legal and political philosophy and will focus on German intellectuals of the time. It is widely acknowledged that the modern democracy can be traced back to the French Revolution, and German intellectuals reflected on the meaning of democracy based on French experience. Fichte was one of the important philosophers of that time who held the theory of freedom based on French Revolution. In face of the dual challenges of democratic crises and the modernity, Arendt turns to ancient Greek philosophy, particularly Aristotle, in attempt to reconstruct he classical understanding of democracy and politics in the modern era. Her discussion of aristocracy and friendship in democracy may inspire the readers today to reconsider the meaning of democracy. In addition, how and under what circumstances people can move form one country to another without being forbidden from their country of origin is significant to the globalization and, more importantly, to the current immigration issues. Furthermore, as democracy is not only a of philosophical concept, but also a legal one, many German jurists have attempted to comprehend the meaning of democracy from a legal perspective. Jellinek, one of the most important German jurist during the transition from the “late Constitutionalism” to Weimar Democracy, reconsider the meaning of people and their representatives as the necessary media to reflect the people’s will. According to Schmitt in conjunction with Agamben, one of the problems of democracy is that a divers society could tear a country apart, which should be unified. Based on his famous theory of “friend-enemy differentiation”, one of the problems of modern democracy would be how to treat those within a country who have different opinions from our own. In a diverse society, the competition of different opinions is inevitable. It is perhaps one of the most important values of democracy to ensure that they can be freely expressed with the support of the relativism of values, according to Radbruch, a famous German jurist.
By and large, we will investigate how these theorists analyzed the democratic crisis in Germany between the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The topics we discuss include freedom German pursuing, which through democracy to be realized, possible basis of democracy and so on. By doing so, we can find possible solutions to the democratic problems that have happened in Taiwan nowadays, such as the rise of the populism, the legitimacy of the representatives, the lack of public discussion on policies, and the division of society due to the politics.

The floor is still open; anyone interested in this topic is welcome to contact us. Dr.
Yuen-Hung TAI: jackytai@g-mail.nsysu.edu.tw
Dr. Chao-Chin CHAN: chaochin0610@gmail.com

Tentative Titles of Presentations in Sequence of Authors’ Names:

1. CHAN, Chao-Chin (Faculty of Law, University of Göttingen, Germany):
What counts as a Demos and Who can represent the Demos? On Georg Jellinek’s Difference between „Vertretung“ and „Repräsentant“
2. CHIANG, Po-Yin (Department of Philosophy, University of Göttingen, Germany):
Is Aristocracy the salvation or enemy of representative democracy? On the Nature of Politics in Hannah Arendt
3. LAM, Eric (Department of Philosophy, University of Bonn, Germany):
Fichte’s Calling - Historical Commitment, Social Dimension and Freedom
4. Schive, Hsi-Ping (School of Law, Soochow University, Taiwan):
Enemy or Bare Life? A Dialogue between Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben
5. TAI, Jacky Yuen-Hung (Assistant Professor, Institute of Philosophy, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan):
On the right to move: Arendt and Caloz-Tschopp
6. TU, Kun-Feng (Assistant Professor, Institute of Political Science, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan):
Friend in Need Is Not Friend indeed ― Reconsidering Hannah Arendt’s Concept of Friendship, Public Happiness, and the Logic of Collective Actions
7. YANG, Sheng-An (Faculty of Law, University of Göttingen, Germany):
Value - Relativism as the Basis of Democracy. Gustav Radbruch’s Relativistic Political Philosophy