Johannes Heinrichs' Theory of a Four-Chambers Democracy
Source
* Book: Johannes Heinrichs. Value-Levels-Democracy. The Reflection-System-Theory of Four-Segmentation. 2018
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"This book is an English adaption of the original German title “Demokratiemanifest” (2005) which is a short version of the author`s “Revolution der Demokratie” (2003/2014). Translation by Joscha Thiele."
Description
From the preface, Karl Albrecht Schachtschneider:
"In this book, Johannes Heinrichs offers a “real utopia”. His theory of democracy is as fundamental as it is subversive and necessary. It is fundamental because it rests on an elementary anthropology, namely his social theory of reflection. It is subversive because it disputes the ideology of the party state. It is necessary because the freedom of humanity is the vision of the Enlightenment and the goal of all politics.
Heinrich’s oeuvre teaches revolution in its proper sense, that is to say: as the liberation to law and humanity of all people.
Johannes Heinrichs is moved by the conviction that the party state cannot be the answer to the big question of the Enlightenment, indeed of humanity: the question of the good life for all. His proposal makes sophisticated distinctions, but it gives democracy a real chance for the first time.
'Heinrichs conceives a four-chamber parliament with independent tasks, independent responsibilities, and independent personnel: a parliament of fundamental values, a culture parliament, a political parliament, and an economic parliament. The laws passed by these parliaments are all binding. This requires clearly defined limits of the powers of each parliament and an order of priority between them.
Aside from the four-segmentation of the system, fundamental values, culture, politics, and economics, Heinrichs conceives of a further structural dimension: the trinity of state, private and public.
While already practiced today, this trinity is not yet supported by an adequate legal order. Like the four-segmentation of parliament, it is a structural element of the separation of powers, systemically justified here for the first time.
Johannes Heinrichs is the best expert in contemporary social philosophy. He knows of his responsibility for our republic and submits a well-reasoned proposal for human life in all states of the world.
Heinrich’s work is a great contribution to political philosophy and to democratic theory. I will help to lead his revolution to victory."
Contents
Chapter 1
Preliminary remarks 7
Chapter 2
Historical orientation: Yesterday’s democracy 17
Chapter 3
The systemic approach: from acting man to a social systemic 23
Chapter 4
Leap into the great organism: differentiation of subsystems 31
Chapter 5
The core demand: four heart-chambers of democracy 37
Chapter 6
Consequences aplenty: the non-parliamentary powers 65
Chapter 7
A further architectonic dimension: the triad of state – private – public 71
Chapter 8
The socio-ethical aspect – social principles and their evolution 77
Chapter 9
Future-oriented syntheses: tomorrow’s democracy 83
Chapter 10
Strategies and delineations – Enlightenment as revolutionary praxis 87
Chapter 11
Outlook: Architectures of European and Global Democracy 97
Excerpts
Social reality can only be constructed spontaneously from below
The powers of spontaneous association from below cannot flourish without consideration of the societal framework, of the whole. The Weimar Republic serves as the perfect example of numerous valuable, hopeful reformist departures from below (so-called “life reform” in the aftermath of the Youth Movement). All these good initiatives, now returned in the form of the green movement, were proven at the time to be nothing but parlor games on the sinking Titanic, because they did not take the wider political climate seriously enough. And because they never properly adopted democracy.
This should have happened in a specifically German manner, developing classical German philosophy (including Marx), to which Heinrich Heine ascribed world historical significance, both before and after the failed bourgeois revolution of 1848. The German authorities ignored this and built their Empire on power and the industrial revolution: the German division of power and spirit. In its wake, the majority of German intelligentsia refrained from politics and declined the Western democratic offer. “The German spirit is apolitical and will always remain thus.” (Thomas Mann, Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man, 1918). Meanwhile, a revolution, proletarian and downright nasty to the aesthetically-minded bourgeois, “had to” be crushed in 1918/19. Here were at least two spontaneous movements from below that lacked something to be succeed against the power of the existing order – and against violence.
Today, 70 years after the end of the war, aren’t we called upon to contribute to the development of our second, imported democracy, rather than passively decrying the dangerous growing democratic decadence of the former example across the Atlantic. That which is justified in the demand for the spontaneous From-Below is taken up by the principle of subsidiarity in chapter eight.
But one must not confuse the prerogative of the lower, smaller social units with supremacy. Said prerogative requires conscious protection by way of thinking the whole."
More information
- Johannes Heinrichs wiki is in German only: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Heinrichs_(Philosoph)
*book link https://www.amazon.com/Integral-Philosophy-Anthropology-Politics-Spirituality/dp/3838211480