2
Deliberative democrats have no more reason to shy away from democracy’s connection to
the Enlightenment than do other democratic theorists. In fact, they should be more anxious to
embrace it. There is a strong emphasis in deliberative democracy on creating a public sphere in
which the competing claims of citizens can be evaluated for their validity rather than their mere
popularity. The objective is to move the views of participants toward a reasoned consensus
based upon sound argument and reliable evidence (Habermas, 1997, 1996, 1995). This cognitive
quality of deliberative democracy should mean that rational inquiry is more important to this
view of politics than to most others. The difficulty arises, however, when one begins to explore
the applicability of this more rational and cognitive version of democracy to the problem of
environmental protection.
There is a widely shared view in the environmental community that modern ecological
problems are nature’s revenge on our individualistic, rationalized society for its oppressiveness
(Alford, 1985). This indictment of our enlightenment political culture has to do, in the first
instance, with its bent toward a techno-scientific world-view. Horkheimer and Adorno (1972)
traced the roots of the individualism and scientific domination of nature that are characteristic of
enlightenment democracies to their roots in our Greco-Roman past and explored the possible
consequences of these trends for modern man. They foresaw a revolt of human nature against
the endlessly delayed gratification that results from the perpetual search for new technological
capabilities necessary for continued reproduction of a society whose social relations are
fundamentally irrational. The frustration that results from modernity’s permanent delay of
human gratification makes its domination of nature ultimately unsustainable. So the enterprise
of the enlightenment is destined to be thwarted by its own internal contradictions. More
recently, it has been argued that another contradiction of the Enlightenment (not discussed by
Convention